January 2006 - 23 January 2006 (Monday)

23 January 2006 (Monday)

• In the ongoing dispute between the United States and Venezuela, the US has tried to veto a sale of Embraer airplanes to Venezuela. Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim branded the US attempted veto as "indefensible nonsense". The US recently failed to block a large sale of Spanish military equipment to Venezuela. (El Universal), (Spain Herald).
• In the Canadian federal election, the Conservatives win a plurality of seats in the House of Commons to form a minority government. Stephen Harper is to become the next Prime Minister. (Globe and Mail)
• An archeological expedition from Johns Hopkins University uncovers a statue of Queen Tiye, wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaten, at the temple complex at Karnak. (Al-Jazeera)
• Kuwait emir Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah has agreed to abdicate his position. (Al-Jazeera)
• After its brakes fail, a train crashes near Bioče, a village nine miles northeast of Podgorica in Montenegro, killing at least 39 and injuring more than 130 people, in the country's worst train disaster. (BBC News)
• Another case of mad cow disease has been confirmed in Canada but officials do not expect international borders to close to Canadian beef as a result. (CBC)
• United Nations says eight Guatemalan special forces soldiers deployed as U.N. peacekeepers in eastern DR Congo were killed and five wounded in a battle with Ugandan LRA rebels. (Reuters)
• Ford Motor Company announces plans to close 14 plants and cut up to 30,000 jobs (25% of its workforce) by 2012. (Detroit News)
• A five-story building in Nairobi, Kenya, collapses and kills at least eight people, burying dozens more. Rescuers use their bare hands to dig through the rubble. (Sky News) (BBC) (CTV)
• Azerbaijan has started supplying Russian natural gas to Georgia, the Georgian gas company says, helping compensate for a fuel cutoff caused by explosions in southern Russian pipelines that brought a new energy crisis to the region this weekend. (International Herald Tribune) (CBC)
• The U.S. Supreme Court rejects an appeal from Research In Motion Ltd. which had asked it to reverse a lower-court ruling that found its BlackBerry wireless email device in violation of patents held by NTP, Inc., a Virginia patent-holding firm. The case now moves to a federal district court in Virginia, which will decide whether to reinstate an injunction against the U.S. sale of the popular BlackBerries. (MarketWatch)