March 27, 2013 (Wednesday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- South Thailand insurgency:
- The Thailand government prepares for peace talks with Muslim separatist groups with the hope of ending a decade-long insurgency. (The Guardian) (Al Jazeera)
- Northern Mali conflict:
- The Government of Mali announces that 63 of their soldiers have been killed fighting jihadists since the French led intervention Operation Serval in January 2013. (AFP via SBS)
- Terrorism in Greece:
- A bomb explodes outside the residence of a Greek shipowner near Acropolis in central Athens; no one is injured. (The Wall Street Journal)
Arts and culture
- The Rolling Stones are to headline Glastonbury Festival 2013 in Pilton, Somerset, England. (The Guardian) (The Daily Telegraph)
- Patricia McCarthy wins the 2013 National Poetry Competition. (The Guardian)
- Kate Tempest wins the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for innovation in poetry. (The Guardian)
Disasters and accidents
- 2013 Nantou earthquake: At least one person is killed and 19 others are injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes near Taipei, Taiwan, causing a fire and shaking buildings. (AFP via The Star Malaysia) (The Washington Post)
- A mini-tornado in the Philippines kills 12 people when a motorboat capsized. (AFP via The Star Malaysia)
International relations
- North Korea renews war threats against South Korea and the United States, saying conditions "for a simmering nuclear war" have been created on the Korean peninsula. The country also says it is cutting a military hotline, which facilitates the travel of South Korean workers to a joint industrial complex in Kaesong. (Al Jazeera) (BBC)
- Canada becomes the first country to withdraw from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. (CTV News)
Law and crime
- A German property developing firm removes parts of the East Side Gallery, a historic stretch of the Berlin Wall amid heavy police presence, despite a week of protests. (BBC)
- China sentences 20 men of the ethnic Uighur group to jail terms of up to life imprisonment on charges of terrorism and inciting secession in Xinjiang. (BBC)
- Oscar Pistorius's brother appears in court charged with murder over the death of motorcyclist's in a road accident in 2008. (BBC)
- Wildlife officials in Cameroon find over 40 elephant carcasses, clustered in Nki and Lobeke national parks, with a horseback-riding band of about 300 poachers from Sudan being the chief suspects. (CNN)
- A row between a spam-fighting group and the hosting firm CyberBunker sparks retaliatory attacks, flooding core infrastructure of the Internet, in what security experts are describing as the biggest cyberattack in history. (BBC)
- Police in Wales says they will call off the search for missing April Jones in about a month. (Sky News)
Sport
- In basketball, the Chicago Bulls defeated the Miami Heat 101-97, ending their winning streak at 27 games. The Heat had not lost a game since February 1st. This was also the game that featured Jimmy Butler dunking on Chris Bosh. (NBA)
- In ice hockey, Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames is traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins, with Calgary acquiring prospects Ben Hanowski and Kenneth Agostino, and also Pittsburgh's first-round pick in the 2013 NHL Draft. Iginla has played for the Flames since the 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs, and has served as Flames captain since 2003. (NHL)