Portal:Current events/2008 June 13

June 13, 2008 (Friday)

The Chamber of Deputies of Haiti rejects Robert Manuel, who was the second nominee for the post of prime minister after Jacques-Édouard Alexis resigned in April 2008. (AP via Google News)^{[permanent dead link]}
A Taliban attack on a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan allows almost all of the 1150 inmates to escape, including 390 Taliban inmates. (AP via Google News) (Reuters)
A Zimbabwe judge orders the police to bring Tendai Biti, the arrested Secretary-General of the Movement for Democratic Change to court on Saturday. (Zimbabwe Guardian via All Africa)
Kim Jong-hoon, the South Korean Minister for Trade, heads to the United States to push for additional safeguards against mad cow disease in talks with Susan Schwab, the United States Trade Representative as protests continue in South Korea over the decision to resume importing beef from the United States. (VOA)
June 2008 Midwest United States floods:
- The Governor of Iowa Chet Culver declares that 83 of the 99 counties in Iowa are disaster areas as flooding leads to evacuations in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines. (AP via Forbes)
- The upper Mississippi River is closed to shipping as three people die in Indiana and three in Iowa. (Reuters)
Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, states talks with the United States on a long-term security agreement have reached "a dead end". (AP via The International Herald Tribune)
A hydrogen sulfide leak at a fertiliser plant in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province in China, kills six people and injures 28. (AFP via ABC News Australia)
At least 40 people are injured on Sagar Island in the Ganges delta in clashes between supporters of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and local Muslim villagers. (BBC News)
Finance ministers from the Group of Eight meet in Osaka, Japan with rising food and oil prices high on the Agenda. (AFP)^{[permanent dead link]}
Pakistani lawyers hold a protest rally in Islamabad to demand the reinstatement of judges sacked by the President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf. (BBC News)
The People's Republic of China and Taiwan agree to regular civil aviation flights across the Taiwan Strait for the first time since 1949 with flights limited to weekend charters. (Reuters via The Guardian)
Irish voters reject the Treaty of Lisbon in a referendum, thus putting into question the reform programme of the European Union. (RTÉ)
The Station nightclub fire: Sealed Air pay a US$25 million settlement for manufacturing foam used in the club. 100 people died in the disaster. (AP via Google News)^{[permanent dead link]} (Wikinews)
American political news reporter Tim Russert dies after collapsing at the NBC Washington D.C. Bureau offices where he worked. (AP)