Portal:Current events/2008 January 23
< Portal:Current events
January 23, 2008 (Wednesday)
- 20 people are killed in a military transport plane crash near Mirosławiec, northern Poland; senior Polish Air Force officers are among the victims. (BBC News)
- Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, being built for Virgin Galactic to become the world's first commercial spacecraft, is unveiled, and will begin test flights in mid-2008. (BBC News)
- Contractors for the Big Dig project pay $400 million to settle a lawsuit from the Massachusetts government over a fatal tunnel collapse and associated flaws. (AP via Google News)
- January 2008 stock market downturn:
- Asian stock markets recover, with the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index rising 10.7% and the Mumbai BSE Sensex rising 5.2%, but European markets are still weak, with the London FTSE 100 Index, the Paris CAC 40 and the Frankfurt DAX all posting significant losses. (AP via Yahoo! Finance)
- Despite early added losses, as much as 323 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes up 298.98 points (2.5%) to 12,270.17. (AP via Yahoo! Finance)
- Thousands of Palestinians flee into Egypt, as the border wall with Gaza in Rafah is blown up by militants. (BBC News) (AP via Google News)
- Police in Zimbabwe arrest Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal opposition party. (ABC News Australia)