Portal:Current events/2012 December 10

• Syrian civil war:
  • Rebel forces seize parts of the Sheikh Suleiman army base near Aleppo after weeks of heavy fighting. Ground clashes continue in the suburbs of Damascus as the government carries out further air raids against opposition forces. (Al Jazeera)
  • Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra is declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. (Washington Post)
• War in Afghanistan:
  • Mohammad Musa Rasouli, the police chief of Afghanistan's Nimroz Province, is killed by a roadside bomb while returning home from Herat Province. (AP via Yahoo! News)
  • Unknown gunmen assassinate Nadia Sediqqi, head of the women's affairs department in Laghman Province, Afghanistan. She was shot as she was getting into her rickshaw on her way to work in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam, according to a provincial government spokesperson. (NBC News)

• Google begins selling basic laptop computers for $99, meeting the $100 price point set out as a challenge by a prominent professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Nicholas Negroponte) eight years ago. (Reuters)

• The death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Bopha rises to 647 with 780 people still missing. (Al-Jazeera)
• A New Zealand Royal Commission finds that the CTV Building that collapsed during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake killing 115 people was poorly designed and built and should not have received a building permit. (AP via Washington Post)
• Eleven people are killed and 23 injured in Minquan County, Henan province, China, after a passenger bus swerves off the road and falls in a roadside pond. (China Daily) (RIA Novosti)
• At least nine people are killed and at 32 others are wounded in Tolima department, Colombia, after a bus falls of a 300-meter cliff. (Colombia Reports) (Xinhua)

• Japan goes on full alert as North Korea announces it has delayed its launch of a long range Unha rocket until 29 December. (AP) (AFP via Google News) (Al Jazeera)
• Leaders of the European Union accept the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. (Bloomberg via Business Week)

• John Hickenlooper, the Governor of the US state of Colorado, issues a proclamation allowing the personal use of marijuana following the passage of an amendment to the state constitution last month. (AP)
• Baghdadi Mahmudi, a former Prime Minister of Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi, goes on trial in Tripoli charged with "acts that led to the unjust killing of Libyans". (AAP via SBS)
• The two 2Day FM presenters who made a prank call to London's King Edward VII's Hospital give their first interviews to Australian television following the death of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who answered the call. (BBC)

• Former President of Bangladesh Iajuddin Ahmed dies at the age of 81. (The Times of India)
• The President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez flies to Cuba for cancer surgery. (Reuters)
• In a landslide victory, Prime Minister Victor Ponta's ruling Social Liberal Union wins nearly 60% of votes in Romania's parliamentary election, with a projected 66-67% of MP mandates. (Al Jazeera)
• The government of Malta loses a budget vote, causing early elections to be called. (Time of Malta)

• Specialists from Thales Alenia Space carry out some maneuvers to bring the Russian Yamal-402 satellite into its designated orbit after a premature separation from Briz-M, the upper stage of a Proton-M carrier rocket, during the launch on 8 December. (RIA Novosti)

• Norwegian chess player Magnus Carlsen wins the 2012 London Chess Classic ahead of Vladimir Kramnik from Russia. His performance is enough to break the 13-year-old Elo rating record of Garry Kasparov. (Chess News) (ChessVibes) (ChessBase)
• The NHL announces the cancellation of the 2012–13 regular-season schedule through 30 December due to the 2012 NHL lockout. (Reuters) (NHL)