Portal:Current events/2006 January 23

January 23, 2006 (Monday)

In the ongoing dispute between the United States and Venezuela, the US has tried to veto a sale of Embraer airplanes to Venezuela. Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim branded the US attempted veto as "indefensible nonsense". The US recently failed to block a large sale of Spanish military equipment to Venezuela. (El Universal), (Spain Herald).
In the Canadian federal election, the Conservatives win a plurality of seats in the House of Commons to form a minority government. Stephen Harper is to become the next Prime Minister. (Globe and Mail)
An archeological expedition from Johns Hopkins University uncovers a statue of Queen Tiye, wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaten, at the temple complex at Karnak. (Al-Jazeera)
Kuwait emir Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah has agreed to abdicate his position. (Al-Jazeera)
After its brakes fail, a train crashes near Bioče, a village nine miles northeast of Podgorica in Montenegro, killing at least 39 and injuring more than 130 people, in the country's worst train disaster. (BBC News)
Another case of mad cow disease has been confirmed in Canada but officials do not expect international borders to close to Canadian beef as a result. (CBC)
United Nations says eight Guatemalan special forces soldiers deployed as U.N. peacekeepers in eastern DR Congo were killed and five wounded in a battle with Ugandan LRA rebels. (Reuters)
Ford Motor Company announces plans to close 14 plants and cut up to 30,000 jobs (25% of its workforce) by 2012. (Detroit News)
A five-story building in Nairobi, Kenya, collapses and kills at least eight people, burying dozens more. Rescuers use their bare hands to dig through the rubble. (Sky News) (BBC) (CTV) Archived 2007-03-14 at archive.today
Azerbaijan has started supplying Russian natural gas to Georgia, the Georgian gas company says, helping compensate for a fuel cutoff caused by explosions in southern Russian pipelines that brought a new energy crisis to the region this weekend. (International Herald Tribune) (CBC)
The U.S. Supreme Court rejects an appeal from Research In Motion Ltd. which had asked it to reverse a lower-court ruling that found its BlackBerry wireless email device in violation of patents held by NTP, Inc., a Virginia patent-holding firm. The case now moves to a federal district court in Virginia, which will decide whether to reinstate an injunction against the U.S. sale of the popular BlackBerrys. (MarketWatch)