Portal:Current events/2012 September 6

September 6, 2012 (Thursday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Syrian civil war:
- Vladimir Putin urges the Western and Arab world to review their position. He asks to end the violence first, then sit around the table and only then move on to "these practical steps about the internal organisation of the country itself". (Star Africa)^{[permanent dead link]}
- The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, an arid-zone agriculture research institute in northern Syria, is forced to relocate, mainly to Jordan and Lebanon. (Trust.org)
Colombian armed conflict (1964–present):
- The FARC want an armistice at the start of the peace talks starting October 8th in Oslo, Norway. The government doesn't want a truce. (EPE, RFR via Reformatorisch Dagblad)
- The government of Colombia names its negotiating team. The FARC announce two of their team and mention the name of a man currently in a U.S. prison. (Cubasi) (Montreal Gazette)

Disasters

61 people, illegal immigrants traveling below deck, die after a fishing boat capsizes fifty meters off the Izmir Province coast of Turkey, near the Greek Aegean islands. (BBC)

Law and crime

A toddler is found alive, hours after a shooting leaves four dead and another child heavily injured in a wood in Chevaline, Haute-Savoie near Lake Annecy, France. A car with a British licence plate is involved. British tourists, the male Iraqi-passport-holding driver and two women in the car, and a local inhabitant on a cycle, who was on paternity leave, are among the deaths. (CNN)
Human Rights Watch says it has evidence of more cases of waterboarding involving United States operatives. (Reuters)

International relations

After Sri Lanka, Liang Guanglie leaves India for Laos. It has been the first visit to India of a Chinese Minister of Defence in eight years. (Xinhua)
Admiral James Winnefeld, Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is in Israel. The Pentagon recently has scaled down a joint military exercise, planned for October. The drill should help blend both countries' missile defense capabilities. (Ma'an News) (Ynet News) (TIME)
The United States removes the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from their terror list, citing "a credible commitment to pursuing peace and reconciliation". In June, a group around party vice-president Mohan Baidya announced a split in the party. (AFP via Google News) (State Department) (Xinhua) (Telegraph Nepal) (Times of India)

Politics and elections

Religion and spirituality

A Christian lobbyist's kin defend him after he claims homosexuality reduces life expectancy more than smoking and should therefore be discouraged. He himself states he "was not comparing homosexuality with smoking at all." (Sydney Morning Herald) (SBS)