February 2006 - 9 February 2006 (Thursday)

9 February 2006 (Thursday)

• I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, US Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff tells federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq. (AP)
• Early results indicate that René Préval has an overwhelming lead in the Haitian general election (BBC)
• The General Synod of the Church of England unanimously votes to apologise to descendants of the slaves on Barbados where, two hundred years ago, the church's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts that owned the Codrington Estates, used slaves for labour. (The Times) (BBC)
• U.S. forces are searching for the USS Cole attacker who escaped from prison last Friday. According to Interpol, an al-Qaida operative who had been sentenced to death for plotting the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 escaped with a group of convicts from their prison last week in Sanaá, Yemen. (BBC) This is not the first group to have escaped. Ten other chief suspects escaped from custody in Aden during April 2003 (BBC)
• Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities announces the discovery of an intact pharaonic tomb in the Valley of the Kings – the first to be discovered since King Tutankhamun's in 1922. (Scotsman)
• In Turkey, Istanbul's police chief said a bomb blast at an Internet cafe in the city had wounded 14 people. (ABC)
• A suicide bombing occurs during a Shiite Muslim procession in Hangu, Pakistan, resulting in riots during the Muslim branch's most important holiday, Ashura. At least 27 people were killed and dozens injured in the result violence. (ABC)
• A large-scale slaughter is planned at a Nigerian farm where thousands of chickens have died from bird flu. (BBC)
• The House of Keys, the lower house of the Isle of Man, a crown dependency of the United Kingdom, votes to lower the voting age to 16. (BBC)
• Mannheim, Germany—Ernst Zündel, a German white supremacist extradited from Canada on accusations he repeatedly denied the Holocaust, returned to court Thursday to face charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead. (ABC)
• Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy: administration at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, ordered a halt to the on-campus distribution of the student newspaper Cadre after the cartoons were re-printed in the newspaper. Campus authorities also attempted to seize all 2,000 copies of the edition containing the cartoons. (CBC)