Portal:Current events/2006 April 18

April 18, 2006 (Tuesday)

Hu Jintao arrives in Seattle, Washington, on his first visit to the United States since becoming President of the People's Republic of China in 2003. (CNN).
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza is reported in Sudan following reports in neighbouring Egypt. (BBC)
The New York Stock Exchange is in merger talks with London Stock Exchange. If the merger went ahead, it would create a stock exchange giant. (Reuters)
The Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam opens in Hanoi amid the PMU-18 corruption scandal. (Reuters) (BBC)
2006 European floods: Thousands of emergency workers in Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia try to bolster dikes to prevent flooding along the swollen Danube River, which has surged to its highest level in more than a century. (CNN) Several thousand people have been evacuated from their homes. (BBC)
An El Al airplane in which a malfunction had been detected made a successful emergency landing at the Ben Gurion Airport. The flight, which had departed for Moscow made its way back to Tel Aviv after a malfunction was discovered in one of its wheels upon liftoff. The plane emptied its fuel tank above the sea and then landed at the Ben Gurion airport. (Ynetnews)
Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Events marking the centennial will be held today and will continue through the end of the year. (CBS) (BBC)
The head of Gazprom, Russia's natural-gas monopoly, told officials of the European Union not to "politicize" the gas market—the speech was part of an escalating war of words between Russia as supplier and the EU as customer. (Moscow Times)