April 15, 2011 (Friday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- 2011 Libyan civil war: Human rights groups accuse pro-Gaddafi troops of using cluster bombs in Misrata. (Reuters)
- 2011 Syrian protests: Police use tear gas to disperse tens of thousands of protesters in the capital Damascus. (BBC)
- 2011 Jordanian protests: Islamists clash with monarchists in the town of Zarqa. (Al Jazeera)
- 2010-2011 Algerian protests: President Abdelaziz Bouteflika addresses the nation and pledges reforms amid weeks of protests. (Al Jazeera)
- Hamas finds the dead body of kidnapped Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza City. (AP via Yahoo! News)
- A bomb explodes in a mosque in the Indonesian city of Cirebon in West Java with at least one person dead and seventeen injured. (Jakarta Globe)
- Blaise Compaore, President of Burkina Faso, who took power in a coup 24 years ago, reportedly flees a mutiny of his military bodyguards. (Al Jazeera)
Arts and culture
- Australian artist Ben Quilty wins the Archibald Prize for his portrait of artist Margaret Olley. (The Canberra Times)[permanent dead link] (AAP via ABC News)
Business and economy
- The Chinese economy grew by 9.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2011 while inflation was 5.4%, the highest level in nearly three years. (Reuters)
- Two South Korean internet search engines accuse Google of antitrust violations. (Bernama)
- Credit rating agency Moody's downgrades Ireland's rating to Baa3, one step above junk bond status. (Dow Jones via Wall Street Journal)
- Nasdaq, in pursuit of its bid for control of NYSE Euronext, would be willing to sell one key NYSE Euronext property, the American Stock Exchange, in order to resolve antitrust issues, according to an unnamed source cited by Reuters. (Reuters)
Disasters
- The Tokyo Electric Power Company will pay a provisional 1 million yen to each household living within the exclusion zone near the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. (Kyodo)
- Two people in Oklahoma and seven in Arkansas are killed by a strong tornado outbreak. (CNN) (UPI) (NewsOK)(BBC)
- Wildfires in Texas, United States destroy dozens of homes and kill a firefighter. (Dallas Morning News) (AP)
Law and crime
- Former Australian water polo player Keli Lane is jailed for 18 years for murdering her baby daughter Tegan Lane in 1996. (AFP via Channel News Asia)
- Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption arrests 11 Deutsche Bank staff, including two senior officials, for alleged involvement in a fraudulent trading case. (AFP via France24)
- Croatian military leaders Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač were convicted of war crimes (BBC)
- The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan announces indictments in the case of United_States_v._Scheinberg, indicting the owners of the three largest online poker sites accepting U.S. players—PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker—on charges of bank fraud, gambling offenses, and money laundering. (ESPN)
- Karl Rodney, the organiser of controversial trips to the Caribbean by United States House of Representatives member Charles Rangel, is charged with lying to investigators about them. (New York Post)
- US actor Nicolas Cage is arrested in New Orleans for alleged domestic abuse battery, disturbing the peace and public drunkenness. (UPI)
- A Chinese student from Beijing studying at York University in Toronto is found dead after a male stalker entered her room to use a cell phone while she was chatting online via webcam to a friend in China; she was found undressed and her computer is missing. (AFP) (Montreal Gazette) (Global Post)
Politics
- The Australian Council of Trade Unions and Australian Workers' Union threatens to withdraw support for the Julia Gillard minority government's plans to introduce a carbon tax unless it can be guaranteed that no jobs will be lost. (Reuters)
- At a fundraiser, Barack Obama is caught on an open mic confronting Paul Ryan's record of creating the debt which he is now claiming to be trying to fix, among numerous other things. (ABC)
Science
- Researchers in Japan and Australia successfully teleport wave packets of light, the first transfer of quantum information from one point to another in a Schrödinger's cat experiment. (ABC News Australia)
Sport
- US health officials report that 21 players on 13 National Basketball Association teams were sickened with the norovirus stomach virus last fall including Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic. (ESPN)