• Seven Philippine police officers are killed by a New People's Army land mine in the municipality of Allacapan, Cagayan. (Philstar)
• At least 75 people are killed and over 200 injured in a wave of bombings in Shi'ite neighbourhoods across Baghdad as sectarian violence in Iraq continues to increase. (Reuters via News24)
• Syrian Civil War:
  • The European Union lifts its ban against arming Syrian rebels as full consensus among its 27 member states to extend the current embargo could not be reached. (CNN) (BBC)

• Romania unfurls the world's largest flag ever made, according to Guinness World Records. (Herald Sun) (Guardian)

• Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals announces it will purchase Bausch & Lomb for US$8.7 billion. (Washington Post)
• Digital currency Liberty Reserve is shut down and its founder arrested on money laundering charges in Costa Rica. (Salon)

• Seventeen people die during an H1N1 outbreak in Venezuela, and a further 250 are infected. (Reuters)

• Nurse Roger Dean pleads guilty to eleven counts of murder in relation to a fire at a nursing home in the Sydney suburb of Quakers Hill. (Sydney Morning Herald)

• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia upgrades the National Guard to a ministry position and appoints his son Mutaib bin Abdullah as the first minister. (The Nation)

• 400-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory. (BBC)(PNAS)
• Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History announces the discovery of nearly 5,000 cave paintings near Burgos, Tamaulipas. (io9)