Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian requests that the Chinese government meet directly with his government after China meets with Taiwan's opposition leader, Lien Chan. Taiwan and China are in conflict over Taiwan's increased calls for independence from the mainland. (CBC)(ABC)
Palestinian city of Tulkarm, one Israeli soldier and one Islamic Jihad leader are killed. The soldier was killed in a gunfight with 3 members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The three were suspected to have been part of the cell which was involved in Tel Aviv "Stage" club bombing in February 2005. Shafiq Abdul Rani, the leader of the Jihad cell in Tulkarm was killed and another militant was arrested. (Haaretz)
Israeli Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky resigned from the government as a protest against Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan. (Haaretz), (BBC)
Cairo terrorism: Following Saturday's terrorist incidents in Cairo, some 200 people are brought in for questioning by Egyptian police. Ten people were injured in the attacks, and three militants were killed. (BBC)
F/A-18 Hornet jets collide over Iraq while flying a mission in Iraq. The body of one of the pilots is later recovered and an ejected seat was found, but the second one is still missing. (BBC)(Washington Post)
A Togolese constitutional court announces Faure Gnassingbé as a winner of presidential election. Refugees continue to flee to neighboring countries. (News24)
In Peru, four members of a government health team are found with their throats slit.
An explosion in a football stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia kills 15 people when new prime minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi begins his speech. Authorities later state that a security guard accidentally set off a grenade. (IOL)(IHT)
Eight people are arrested in
advance fee fraud e-mail scam that had fooled at least one American and one Norwegian victim. (BBC)
Palestinian Authority. Israel claims they will resume the handover process when militant groups are disarmed. The Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, had agreed to hand over five West Bank towns to Palestinian control, but thus far has only handed over Tulkarm and Jericho. (BBC)
Israeli troops shoot dead two teenage boys. The cousins were protesting against the building of the Israeli West Bank barrier among a group of people, many of whom were throwing stones at the soldiers. According to the Stop the Wall group, protestors were chased by Israeli soldiers using live ammunition. (BBC)
War on Terrorism
:
The Pakistani government announces that it has captured Abu Faraj al-Libbi. If verified, this is the most important Al-Qaeda suspect to have been arrested thus far. (BBC)
A former
September 11, 2001 attacks with orders to "Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice" and to leave other Al-Qaeda leaders' "heads up on pikes." (BBC)(Wikinews)
Conflict in Iraq
:
A
Kurdish city of Northern Iraq, kills more than 50 people. (BBC)
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Israelicommander is suspended, pending a full inquiry, from his position following the deaths of two teenage cousins in Beit Lakia, near Ramallah, on May 4. (BBC)
Qalqiliya and El Boureij. Election participation was 70 percent in the West Bank and 80 percent in Gaza. (CNN)
United Kingdom general election, 2005
:
At 04:28 BST, The Labour Party wins a parliamentary majority. Despite a substantially reduced majority, Tony Blair becomes the first Labour Prime Minister to lead his party to three election victories. (Reuters)Archived 2005-05-15 at the Wayback Machine(Scotsman) He ends up with a majority of 66, on the lowest percentage vote for a government in modern history.
suicide bomber in a car blows himself up near a vegetable market in a southern Iraqi town, killing at least 22 people and wounding 45. (Reuters)[permanent dead link
George Peter Nanos announces that he will step down as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, making his term the shortest of any previous director. (LA Times)
EDT at the East Campus Courtyard and in Walker Memorial at MIT. That location is 42.360007 degrees north latitude, 71.087870 degrees west longitude. The spacetime coordinates continue to be publicized prominently and indefinitely, so that future time travelers will be aware and have the opportunity to have attended.[1]
United States President George W. Bush uses the anniversary of V-E Day to call the Soviet Union's occupation of the Baltic states after World War II "one of the greatest wrongs of history". He also attended Europe's third largest war cemetery in the town of Margraten, the Netherlands. (CNN)
neo-Nazis. They stood in a 33 km (21 mile) chain from Spandau to Mahlsdorf passing through the Brandenburg Gate, protesting a planned march by neo-Nazis to mark the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender. (Reuters)
banks. As of May 5, the flooding in Somali Region alone has caused over 100 confirmed deaths and widespread property damage affecting over 100,000 persons. The floods have also destroyed shelters housing 25,000 Somali refugees in Kenya. (UN IRIN)(UN News)
House of Commons on the federal budget. He said if his government loses the vote of confidence, he will seek the dissolution of Parliament. This means an election could come as early as June 27. (CBC)
A United States Senate probe releases evidence showing two prominent British and French politicians received vouchers for millions of barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for their support of Saddam Hussein's regime. George Galloway is accused of using the Mariam Appeal, the children's leukemia charity he founded, to conceal the transfer of 3 million barrels of oil, although he denies any wrongdoing. (BBC), (ABC News)
These are the Voyages..., after a run of 98 episodes. Enterprise was canceled by UPN on February 8th due to lack of ratings, marking the first Star Trek series to be canceled since the original series in 1969
Thousands of Uzbeks take over a high security jail in Andijan, freeing thousands of prisoners in protest against the jail sentence of 23 businessmen who were accused of being Islamicextremists. (CBC)
Violence breaks out in Andijan and in the capital Tashkent. There are reports of firefights in the streets and snipers firing into the crowd. A political rally in Andijan demands the resignation of the government, which claims that the situation is under control. (BBC)(Interfax)(CNN)
At least twenty protesters – some reports say as many as 500 – are shot dead in Uzbekistan. Thirty soldiers have been taken hostage as a result. (Yahoo!)(BBC)(The Guardian)
A man is fatally shot outside
suicide bomber. He walked through to the building, despite warning shots in the air and a bullet to the leg, and was eventually shot dead. The American embassy reported he was a suicide bomber and one Uzbek police officer said the man was carrying only a harmless package. However, it was later reported that the man was carrying a mock explosive belt. (Haaretz), (Ynet)
Michael Ross becomes the first person executed in the U.S. state of Connecticut since 1960. He was convicted in 1987 of the murder of four girls and young women. He confessed to having committed four more killings. (CNN)
Anime Central 8 kicks off today with over 10000 attendees.
Red Cross visit the affected areas to evaluate the situation. Phone and internet access has been cut. There are varying reports of at least 700 people dead and continuing firefights in Andijan and other towns like Teshiktosh. Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local human rights advocacy group Appeal, says that government troops had killed 200 in Pakhtabad and expects mass arrests. Opposition supporters and human rights campaigners rally in the capital Tashkent. Hundreds of refugees have fled over the border of Kyrgyzstan; they believe that the death toll may be in thousands. (IHT)(CBC)(Reuters AlertNet)(Reuters)[permanent dead link](CNN)(BBC)(Moscow Times)(Wikinews)
Landless Workers Movement ends with violence in the capital when the demonstrators clash with the riot police. Over 50 people are injured. (Bloomberg)(Reuters)[permanent dead link](BBC)
House of Commons to sit with the Liberals, two days before a crucial budget vote that could determine whether the Liberal government falls or not. (CBC)
U.S. President George W. Bush last week in Tbilisi failed to function, although it was live and could have exploded. It was originally thought to have been a dummy grenade. (CNN)
Unrest in Uzbekistan: 36 foreign diplomats visit Andijan in a government-sponsored trip and under heavy guard. The Uzbek government continues to deny that civilians were killed. The official death toll has risen to 169 but some human rights groups state that it can be as high as 750. A group of Islamic rebels led by a man called Baxtiyor Rahimov claim that they now control the border town of Qorasuv. (Mosnews)(BBC)(IHT)(Forbes)
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was the longest ever recorded — lasting nearly ten minutes when most powerful earthquakes last no more than a few seconds — and shook the entire planet. (CNN)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, at the time purported to be the final Star Wars film, is released in the United States. Just hours after its release, the workprintDVD of the film was "leaked" to file sharing networks. (BBC)
Reggie Miller plays his last game as an Indiana Pacer, losing to the Detroit Pistons in Game 6 of the second round of the NBA Playoffs. He tallied 27 points in his final game.
Calvin College to give a commencement speech, U.S. PresidentGeorge W. Bush is met with a petition by a third of the college faculty, stating "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.", and strongly criticizing his policies. (Fox News)
In Shenzhen, China, what is believed to be the largest urban demolition blast in China uses 1,500 lb (680 kg) of explosives to simultaneously topple 16 tower blocks. Because of misplaced charges, one tower does not topple, but is reduced from 14 stories to 12, and will have to be demolished manually. (Xinhua (Pictures))(The Star (Malaysia))(Boston Globe).
Legionnaires' Disease epidemic after the death of four people during the last five days and the hospitalisation of many others in southeastern county of Østfold, particularly in the Fredrikstad-Sarpsborg urban area. At least 24 people are known to be infected, with many of them in critical condition. Legionnaires' Disease killed seven people in the southwestern city of Stavanger in 2001, in an outbreak that was later traced to a hotel air conditioning system. (Aftenposten)
11,000 journalists and other employees of the
BBC go on a 24-hour strike to protest over approximately 4,000 planned job cuts. TV and Radio news output has been the worst affected, with few new stories materialising and only a skeleton service being offered. (BBC)(Reuters UK)(Bloomberg)(BBC strike Q&A)
The Chilean army buries 24 of 46 conscripts that died in a snow storm in the Andes. Presidential candidates have called for an end to compulsory military service. 13 bodies still unfound.(SantiagoTimes)(BBC)
Canadian Liberal candidate Todd Russell wins a crucial by-election in the federal riding of Labrador. This result consolidates the shaky Liberal balance of power in the federal government. (CBC)
Jurors in the criminal trial of
HealthSouth Corporation, send notes to the presiding judge that indicate they are having difficulty reaching unanimity. The case is part of the wave of U.S. corporate scandals of recent years. Prosecutors allege that Mr. Scrushy and others conspired to overstate profits at HealthSouth by circa $2.7 billion, in the period 1996 - 2002. (Reuters)
Vivian Liberto
, first wife of Johnny Cash, dies due to complications from surgery to remove lung cancer.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that economic growth will slow a bit in the industrialised world this year to an annual rate of 2.6 percent. The OECD's report blames rising energy costs and economic problems in Europe for the slowdown. (VOA News), (The Telegraph)
power substation causes a power outage that cuts electricity from Moscow and four surrounding regions. Government blames RAO UES and the Prosecutor General's Office opens an investigation for "criminal negligence". UES CEO Anatoly Chubais accepts responsibility. Energy minister Viktor Khristenko states that the power cuts have nothing to do with terrorism. (Moscow Times)(RIA Novosti)(IHT)
Ethiopian general elections: European Union observers report that the National Elections Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) may be losing control of the vote counting for the recent May 15 election, potentially marring the most open election in Ethiopian history. Meanwhile the NEBE has postponed announcement of the election's provisional results until June 8, due to the volume of complaints of election irregularities. (CBC)
Popular singer
Isle Of Wight Festival on the 11th of June as scheduled. The pressure of preparing the new album and losing his drummer earlier this month has made it impossible to do the gig without massively compromising both the gig and the album. Apologies to all the fans, the organisers and the people of the Isle Of Wight."[3][permanent dead link
]
In the
Nathan G. Brown broke his leg in a horrific incident involving Melbourne defender Matthew Whelan
. It was one of the most shocking injuries suffered by an AFL player ever.
Joseph Dunn, local school officials, and environmental professionals meet with parents of Kennedy Elementary School students in a town-hall style meeting in Santa Ana Thursday evening. The parents air their concerns over health issues at schools and workplaces, including a rash of leukemia cases in the student population, and begin a dialogue they have been working toward for years. (Wikinews)
JP Morgan to defect. An anonymous source/headhunter quoted in the newspaper predicted that the seventeen will be working at Merrill Lynch by the end of the summer. (Reuters)
Pope Benedict XVI says he wants to heal the rift with the Orthodox Church during his papacy. He spoke to hundreds-of-thousands of people attending a mass in the southern Italian city of Bari during his first pilgrimage away from the Vatican since he was elected less than two months ago. (VOA News)
Lebanese general election, 2005
:
Preliminary results indicate that political alliance of
Hamas have declared that they will be boycotting the re-vote which was requested in three Districts of the Gaza Strip. (BBC)
hack into rivals' systems and 20 people have so far been arrested. (BBC)
China and Japan have opened two days of closed-door negotiations in Beijing aimed at resolving a long-running dispute over natural gas drilling rights in a disputed area of the East China Sea(VOA News)
U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of defunct accounting giant Arthur Andersen on charges arising from the Enron scandal, on the ground that the jury instructions were faulty, (thestreet.com)
