Portal:Current events/2006 November 21
November 21, 2006 (Tuesday)
- Same-sex marriage in Israel: The Supreme Court of Israel orders the Israeli government to recognize same-sex marriage performed abroad. (Wash Post) Archived 2012-10-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Police in Sweden announce that they may have found the weapon used in the unsolved murder of prime minister Olof Palme in 1986. (BBC News)
- A helicopter with 13 passengers and 4 crewmembers makes an emergency landing in the North Sea between Texel and Den Helder, The Netherlands. One passenger is taken to hospital with hypothermia. The passengers were being evacuated from an offshore oil rig after a power outage. (BBC News)
- Lebanese Minister of Industry and Maronite Christian Pierre Gemayel is assassinated by a gunman in Beirut. (CNN)
- President of the United States George W. Bush and the Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki announce plans to meet next week to discuss security issues in Iraq. (AP via Fox 31 Colorado)
- Twenty-three miners are killed in a gas explosion in the Halemba Coal Mine in Ruda Śląska, Poland, approximately 1,000 meters below the ground. (BBC News)
- Klaus Volkert, former chairman of the works council of Volkswagen, is arrested. He is suspected of attempting collusion and perfidy in the trial concerning Volkert's role in the corruption affair with the German car maker. (in German) (NDR)
- A collision between a passenger train and a freight train at Arnhem station in the Netherlands injures 31 people. The driver of the freight train, who is alleged to have ignored a red signal, is arrested by police. (in Dutch) (Nu.nl)
- American actor and comedian Michael Richards, best known for playing character Cosmo Kramer, apologizes on the nation's The Late Show this morning after referring to two African Americans as "niggers" at a Los Angeles area comedy club. (Newsday)
- A British mother facing the death penalty in Vietnam for heroin smuggling will not have a defence in court - because her lawyer has been put under house arrest by the Vietnamese Government. (The Times)
- An international consortium signs a deal formally launching ITER, a project to develop an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. (BBC News)
- Syria and Iraq restore diplomatic relations and agree to cooperate on security issues. (AFP via New Straits Times)
- Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, winner of five Olympic, eleven World Championship, and ten Commonwealth gold medals, announces his retirement at the age of twenty-four. (The Sydney Morning Herald)
- Part of the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo burns down during a gunfight, thereby suspending the Court's review of electoral fraud and irregularities alleged to have taken place during the contested second round of the 2006 presidential election. (IRIN)