Portal:Current events/2012 August 19

August 19, 2012 (Sunday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Mexican Drug War:
- A photo journalist is ambushed and killed by unknown assailants while driving a vehicle in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. (Milenio)
- Two photographers are tortured and killed execution-style in the state of Michoacán. Their bodies were found inside the trunk of a car with a bullet through their heads. (Proceso)
Syrian civil war: At least 19 people are killed across Syria in ongoing violence on Eid-ul-Fitr holiday. President Assad makes a public appearance, praying in Damascus. Lakhdar Brahimi accepts to become the new UN envoy. (Al Jazeera) (Washington Times)
Two explosions strike near government buildings in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, killing at least two people. These are the first bomb attacks since the end of the Libyan Civil War.(BBC)
War on Terror:
- Afghanistan: A bomb kills three NATO soldiers in east Afghanistan. An explosion in a cemetery in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, in Afghanistan kills two people. A NATO soldier is killed by an Afghan police officer. Three New Zealand soldiers are killed in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan when the convoy in which they were traveling was hit by an improvised explosive device. (AP via Chron)(Christian Science Monitor) (New Zealand Herald)
- Pakistan: A U.S. drone missile attack kills at least seven presumed militants in two vehicles in the Mana area of North Waziristan in Pakistan. (AP via USA Today)
- Yemen: A suspected Al Qaeda suicide bomber kills the commander of a local pro-army militia and injures six people in the town of Mudiyah in the Abyan province of Yemen. (AFP via France 24)
North Caucasus insurgency:
- Seven policemen are killed and at least eight wounded in a suicide bombing attack in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia. (Reuters)
- At least eight people are wounded in shooting and bombing in a mosque in the town of Khasavyurt, Dagestan. (BBC)
Sonia Gandhi says stern action should happen against those responsible for the violence in Assam and the social media messages that drove 30,000 migrant workers out of their homes in South India. (IBN Live)

Arts and culture

British-born film director Tony Scott dies after leaping 200ft from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles. (The Telegraph) (BBC)

Disasters

32 people, among which Sudanese government officials, including Ghazi al-Sadiq, the head of the ministry of guidance and endowments, and two state ministers, are killed in a plane crash in Talodi. (BBC) (SUNA)
Four people are killed in a magnitude 6.6 earthquake near the city of Palu, Sulawesi in Indonesia. (CNN)
Typhoon Kai-tak hits southeast China, leaving at least two people dead and affecting 530,000. At least 27 people are reported dead in north Vietnam. (UPI) (BBC)

Environment and health

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake hits off the West coast of Washington state. (Reuters)
Scotland's Roman Catholic leader Cardinal Keith O'Brien suspends direct communication with the Scottish government on same-sex marriage. (BBC)
Radioactive contamination causes hereditary genetic mutations in life forms. This has been proven on butterfly generations. At stated times, the effect on humans remains unclear. (20 minutes, in German) (Philadelphia Inquirer)

International relations

Senkaku Islands dispute:
- At least 10 Japanese nationalist activists land on the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands, amid a dispute between China and Japan. (BBC)
- Anti-Japanese protests take place in more than a dozen cities across China. (Al Jazeera)
In the stand-off between Britain and Ecuador over Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gives a speech critical of the United States' policy against Wikileaks, "dragging us all in a dark, repressive world in which journalists live under fear of prosecution", from the balcony of Ecuador's London embassy. (Channel 4) (BBC) (Fox News)

Politics

It is reported that UK Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith's department has made a formal complaint to the BBC over claims of anti-Government bias, as Duncan Smith himself attacks the Corporation in a Mail on Sunday article for what he perceives to be its negative stance towards the coalition. (The Independent) (The Telegraph)

Sports

Japan wins the 2012 Women's Baseball World Cup for their 3rd straight title. (Toronto Sun)