Portal:Current events/2008 September 13

Current events of September 13, 2008 (2008-09-13) (Saturday)

The death toll from the 2008 Chatsworth train collision in Los Angeles rises to 24 with more fatalities expected. (Reuters) Five explosions rock various places in Delhi, killing at least 30 people. (India Times) Hurricane Ike: Hurricane Ike makes landfall in the United States at Galveston, Texas, as a Category 2 hurricane. (Bloomberg) Hurricane Ike weakens to a tropical storm over eastern Texas. (National Hurricane Center via Nola.com) President George W. Bush declares that Texas is a disaster zone. (BBC News) As many as one million Haitians become homeless due to hurricanes. (BBC) Abullah Wardak, the Governor of the Lowgar Province of Afghanistan, is assassinated in a car bomb. (AFP via Google News) A mudslide caused by an illegal mine in Shanxi province in China kills 254 people. (Xinhua News Agency) A bus crashes into a 100 m gorge in Sichuan, China, killing 51. (Zee News) The All Blacks defeat Australia (28–24) to win the 2008 Tri Nations Series at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia. (The Age) 2008 South Ossetia war: Russians troops leave west, but remain in Georgia. (AP via Google News) UNHCR: around 192,000 people were forced to flee their homes in South Ossetia and Georgia during the four-day war of Georgia with South Ossetia and Russia. Around 35 thousand of them left South Ossetia shortly before August, 8th for North Ossetia, Russia, others were forced to relocate during the conflict. (Press Trust of India) A US Defense Department team to arrive in Georgia. (Rustavi 2) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday that Abkhazia and South Ossetia cannot legally join the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) due to their status, local press reported. (Xinhua) Western countries are pledging substantial aid to Georgia – as much as 3.5-4 billion dollars in grants and loans. (RP) Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili has arrived in the village of Koda and to supervise rehabilitation works of ten blocks, owned by the Georgian Defense ministry, in which the IDPs from South Ossetia will be temporarily settled there. (Rustavi 2)