Portal:Current events/2013 April 8

April 8, 2013 (Monday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Syrian civil war:
- A car bomb explodes in the center of the capital, Damascus, killing at least 15 people and wounding 53 others. (BBC)
War in Afghanistan (2001–2021):
- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai denounces the reported death of eleven children at the hands of NATO forces in Kunar Province and orders a government inquiry into the killings. (Al Jazeera)
- Taliban fighters are suspected of being responsible for a bus explosion that kills at least nine people and injures more than twenty others in Maidan Wardak Province, Afghanistan. (Al Jazeera)
South Yemen insurgency:
- 4 army deserters and 3 tribesmen are killed in clashes in Al Bayda Governorate, Yemen. (Reuters)
Sudanese nomadic conflicts:
- Tribal violence in Darfur, Sudan, kills at least 163 people and displaces 50,000 others. (AllAfrica.com) (Reuters)

Arts and culture

American actress Annette Funicello dies at the age of 70. (The New York Times)
Spanish actress and singer Sara Montiel dies in her Madrid residence at the age of 85. (Reuters via New York Daily News)

Business and economy

Chinese President Xi Jinping opens the Boao Forum for Asia in Boao, Hainan, by calling on entrepreneurs to form a united voice and vision for the common development of Asia. (Xinhua)
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, on a trip to Shanghai, China, announces that the Australian dollar is set to trade directly with the Chinese yuan, becoming the third currency to do so. (CNN)
Caribou Coffee announces plans to close all of its stores in the Chicago area. (Chicago Tribune)

International relations

2013 Korean crisis:
- A senior South Korean government official says that North Korea may be preparing for its fourth nuclear test, as increased activity is detected at its main test site. However, the South Korean Defence Ministry denied having clear signs that the test may be imminent. (AFP via Channel NewsAsia) (BBC)
- North Korea says it will withdraw all of its workers from the Kaesong Industrial Region, an industrial complex that is jointly run with South Korea, and consider shuttering the complex permanently. (BBC) (The Wall Street Journal)
- Russian President Vladimir Putin is "extremely concerned about the situation that may lead to a nuclear disaster worse than Chernobyl". (BBC)
Wikileaks announces the release of 1.7 million United States diplomatic and intelligence documents from 1973–1976 when Henry Kissinger was United States Secretary of State. (BBC) (Daily Mail)
United States Secretary of State John Kerry meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and urges him to restart peace talks, before holding talks with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Al Jazeera)

Law and crime

Egypt President Mohamed Morsi condemns sectarian violence and orders a probe after one person is killed in clashes at the Cairo headquarters of the Coptic Christian pope. (Al Jazeera)
A Dutch tourist, Richard de Wit, allegedly confesses to killing Sarah Groves, a British fitness instructor from Guernsey, who was found dead with multiple stab wounds on a houseboat in Jammu and Kashmir, India. (The Daily Telegraph)
Lindsay Sandiford loses her appeal against the death penalty in Indonesia for a charge of drug smuggling. (BBC)
The body of the Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda is exhumed to determine the cause of his death in 1973. (BBC)
Pakistan's former leader Pervez Musharraf is directed to appear before the country's Supreme Court on allegations of treason. (BBC)

Politics and elections

Sport