Portal:Current events/2007 November 12

November 12, 2007 (Monday)

Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of Lands and Security of Zimbabwe, admits in a court in Paris, France, that the Mugabe government stole land from ten citizens of the Netherlands. If the government does not voluntarily compensate the citizens then they have the right to seize property owned by the Zimbabwean government of equal value. (VOA)
The Milan Court of Appeal sentences Giovanni Consorte, Ivano Sacchetti and Emilio Gnutti to six months in jail for insider trading in the Unipol case. (Rainews24)
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki reappoints Samuel Kivuitu as the head of Kenya's Electoral Commission ahead of the 2007 general election. (BBC)
Georgian opposition parties choose Levan Gachechiladze as their common candidate to challenge President Mikheil Saakashvili in the 2008 presidential election. (BBC)
IBM announces it will buy business intelligence firm Cognos for US$5 billion. (BBC)
A 16-year-old Spanish anti-racism activist is killed during a far-right anti-immigration protest in Madrid. (BBC)
The trial of Yvan Colonna, a Corsican separatist accused of murdering former Prefect of Corse-du-Sud Claude Érignac in 1998, opens in Paris. (BBC)
Airbus and Boeing both win a giant order of 100 planes from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, a United Arab Emirates jet leasing corporation. (BBC)
A new government headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, India's main opposition party, takes office in the state of Karnataka. (BBC)
Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase agree to a US$75 billion plan designed to heal the credit markets. (BBC)
War in Afghanistan: The United States Army kills 15 insurgents and three civilians in the Helmand Province. (BBC)
Nigeria's State Security Service arrests a group of Islamic militants with suspected links to al-Qaeda. (BBC)
Thousands of Fatah supporters gather in Gaza to mark the third anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death. Hamas security forces kill seven people and wound several. (BBC)
2007 Pakistani state of emergency:
- Pakistan Army renews air attacks in the Swat valley targeting extremists positions.
- Foreign ministers of the Commonwealth of Nations meet in London to discuss the issue of Pakistan. They demand that President Pervez Musharraf lift the state of emergency, release political prisoners and step down as army chief by November 22, or otherwise the country will be "suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth." (BBC)
- Pakistan Supreme Court summons President General Pervez Musharraf to the hearing of a petition filed against him for proclaiming the state of emergency.
- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto tells journalists in Lahore that she has ended talks with President Pervez Musharraf over power sharing. (BBC)
Russian troops kill eight suspected militants in Makhachkala, Dagestan. (BBC)
Ceferino Namuncurá is the first indigenous Argentinian to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. 100,000 people attend the ceremony in Chimpay. (BBC)
Four ships sink during a powerful storm in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil are spilled into the Strait of Kerch. Three sailors die and eight are missing. (BBC)
Intel announces that it is using a hafnium compound instead of silicon dioxide to insulate transistors in its newly introduced Penryn microprocessor, eliminating power leakage through the gate (but not through the channel). (WSJ)