Portal:Current events/2010 March 12

March 12, 2010 (Friday)

The 2010 Indian Premier League starts under "heavy security" in DY Patil Stadium Navi Mumbai. (BBC) (The Guardian)
Madagascar's disaster officials say at least 14 people have died and 32,000 have been affected by Tropical Storm Hubert. (Miami Herald) (AJC)
Nine suicide bombing attacks on the Pakistani military kill more than 350 people in Lahore. (ABC News)
Middle East:
- Israel fires its first missiles into Gaza this month injuring several civilians, following a rocket attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel which causes damage but no injuries.(The Jerusalem Post) (The Australian) (Ynetnews)
- Israeli courts charge two Israeli soldiers for allegedly using a 9-year-old Palestinian as a human shield (considered a war crime) in Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza in January 2009 after the United Nations intervenes. (The Jerusalem Post) (Ha'aretz) (BBC) (France24) (The New Zealand Herald)
- The United Nations tells Israel to end its blockade of Gaza, with Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes saying it is inappropriate for Israel to link this act to the imprisonment of a soldier. (The Hindu) (BBC)
- Israel seals off the West Bank until midnight on Saturday, fearing repeats of riots which injured dozens of young Palestinians due to Israel preventing Palestinians under the age of 50 and without Israeli identity cards from attending their Jumu'ah (Friday prayers) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. (The Daily Telegraph)
- The Palestinian worshipers prevented from attending Al-Aqsa Mosque are fired on by police tear gas and bullets after they pray in the streets of the old city of East Jerusalem. (Xinhua)
- In the villages of Deir Nizam, Bel'ien and Ne'lien near Ramallah in the West Bank and Gaza Strip hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli peace activists protest against Israel's decision to build a wall and expand Jewish settlements, while several of them are injured by Israeli tear gas and bullets. (Xinhua)
Pope Benedict XVI is "distraught" by news alleged of child sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses in Germany, according to Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, as the church also faces paedophilia scandals in Ireland, Austria, and the Netherlands, while Pope Benedict defends clerical celibacy, calling it a symbol of "full devotion" and of "giving oneself to God and to others." (BBC) (AFP) (The New York Times) (RAINews24) (CNN)
Karl Rove appears on British television to promote waterboarding and speaks of his pride that "we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists", saying these techniques were "appropriate". (BBC) (The Hindu) (RTÉ) (The Guardian)
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) alleges the Egyptian interior ministry manipulated the legal system to target blogger Wael Abbas who posted videos of police corruption and abuse online and has been jailed for six months for "providing a telecommunications service to the public without permission". (BBC)
Irish authorities release three of the seven Muslims they detained over an alleged plot to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. Vilks says he has not been put off the idea of visiting Ireland by the threat. (BBC) (RTÉ) (Irish Independent)
Mayor Abdurisaq Mohamed Nor instructs residents to leave the war zones of Mogadishu after at least 50 of them are killed in three days of violence. (BBC)
Security is increased in Bangkok, Thailand, ahead of anti-government protesters by the "red shirts" over the coming days. (Thai News Agency) (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
The United Nations Special Rapporteur to Burma Tomas Quintana calls for investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against Burmese civilians. (AFP) (DailyIndia.com)
Darfur peace talks are threatened by new violence as Sudanese army steps up military operations against a major Darfur rebel faction. (Voice of America)
Russia signs a nuclear reactor deal with India which will see it build 16 nuclear reactors in India. (BBC)
Taoiseach Brian Cowen departs for the United States ahead of his Saint Patrick's Day engagements with President Barack Obama. (RTÉ) (ABC News) (The Washington Post) (The Irish Times)
Eleven rare Siberian tigers—of which only an estimated 300 remain in the wild—die of malnutrition after living in little cages and eating chicken bones at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo in Liaoning. (BBC) (The Guardian) (The Sydney Morning Herald) (The Daily Telegraph) (The Times)
American photographer Jill Sonsteby from Jacksonville, Florida captures a zebra putting its head inside the mouth of a hippopotamus and surviving at Zürich Zoologischer Garten. (BBC)
Margaret Thatcher, in a rare moment of publicity since her withdrawal from public life, puts her weight and "heavy heart" behind a campaign by Combat Stress for the mental health of ex-servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq. (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Sahil Saeed's father returns to the United Kingdom from Pakistan to work with police there on his son's case. (Sky News)
The award-winning hardcore porn director Anna Arrowsmith is selected as a Liberal Democrat candidate for Gravesham in Kent to fight the 2010 general election. (Sky News) (Mirror) (BBC) (The Times) (The Guardian) (Mail Online) (Belfast Telegraph) (Argus) (New Kerala)