December 10, 2004

• Israeli troops kill Rania Siam, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl, as she eats lunch in the kitchen of her home in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip. Earlier, three mortar shells are fired into the nearby Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim injuring four people, one of them a child. Hamas claims responsibility. Israeli troops fire in the general direction the source of mortar fire. The Israeli army says it will investigate Rania Siam's death. (NYT)
• A riot forms in Puerto Rico between members of the PIP, the FUPI, the Socialist party and members of the police in front of the federal court business, where PIP and PNP backers had shown two days before the outcome of the 2004 Puerto Rican elections are decided by a judge. Several people, including seven policemen, are severely injured. (El Vocero, in Spanish)
• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is acquitted of bribery thanks to the statute of limitations. The court's ruling implied that Berlusconi probably was guilty of bribing a judge in 1991, but said that too much time had passed for him to be punished. Financial Times Reuters
• The 2004 Nobel Prizes are handed out at twin ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm. (Canadian Press) (BBC)
• "Godfather of Soul" James Brown is diagnosed with prostate cancer and will undergo surgery next week. (BBC)
• A bomb explodes at a market in the Pakistani city of Quetta, leaving at least ten people dead. (BBC)
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights orders Guatemala to pay USD $7.9 million in compensation to 317 survivors of the 1982 Plan de Sánchez massacre in which soldiers and paramilitaries killed 268 villagers.