Armed conflicts and incidents

• The United States and South Korea begin showing off their navy and air force by maneuvering dozens of ships and planes and thousands of troops in the Sea of Japan with intent to "rattle" North Korea. (BBC)
• The Royal Air Force tests fighter jets with which it intends to use to shoot down any rogue passenger planes. (BBC)
• A mass grave containing at least 50 tortured and burned corpses is unearthed east of Monterrey, Nuevo León, in Mexico. (BBC)
• France states its joint effort with Mauritania to free a French hostage is over, but no word is released on the whereabouts of the hostage or if he is even still alive. (Aljazeera)

Arts, culture and society

• A massive stampede at the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg kills 21 people and injures dozens more people. (Deutsche Welle) (Der Spiegel) (Aljazeera) (The Age) (BBC News)
• Rallies occur in Berlin, London, New York City, Paris, Ottawa and elsewhere, calling for the release of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman facing execution for adultery in Iran. (Aljazeera) (BBC)
• Beginning of the 2010 European Go Championship in Tampere, Finland.
• Thousands of people across the globe film their daily lives for Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald and producer Ridley Scott's YouTube-based documentary Life in a Day. (Huffington Post)

Disasters

• More than half of Peru enters a state of emergency due to unusually cold weather. (BBC)
• Chinese floods:
  • Premier Wen Jiabao wades through water in Wuhan to warn of further devastation. (BBC)
  • The Yangtze River's Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river reaches 158 metres and is about to overflow. (Aljazeera)
• BP announces it is to start drilling for oil off Libya. (BBC) (France24) (The Sydney Morning Herald) (The Age)
• The Lake Delhi Dam fails along the Maquoketa River in the U.S. state of Iowa. (CBS News)

Law and crime

• Two Spanish activists and a journalist arrested in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla file charges against Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (BBC)
• An investigation reveals that several dozen staff and contractors of the United States Department of Defense, some with high-level security clearances, allegedly downloaded child pornography; an undisclosed number did so on government-owned computers. (The Boston Globe) (The Guardian)

Politics

• In the United States House of Representatives, Republicans introduce Resolution 1553, which expresses United States support for Israeli use of any necessary military force to eliminate any threat it believes Iran poses. (Press TV) (Res. 1553)
• Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin meets the Russian intelligence agents who were swapped with the United States. (BBC)
• 15th African Union summit in Kampala:
  • African heads of state meet. (BBC)
  • President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak opts not to attend, increasing concerns for his health. (BBC) (CTV) (The Jerusalem Post)
  • Gordon Brown returns to make an appearance. (The Guardian) (BBC)

Science

• Iran begins researching the development of an, as yet, non-existent nuclear fusion reactor. (BBC)

Sport

• Snooker's "first television superstar" and two-times world champion Alex Higgins dies at the age of 61. (BBC) (The Daily Telegraph) (The Guardian) (The New Zealand Herald) (RTÉ) (Hindustan Times)