Portal:Current events/2012 August 27

• Blockade of the Gaza Strip: A United Nations report finds that the Gaza Strip will not be "a liveable place" by 2020 as basic infrastructure in water, health, education and sanitation "is struggling to keep pace with a growing population". (BBC)
• Syrian civil war:
  • Heavy combat continues in Damascus and Aleppo. (Xinhua)
  • A Syrian army helicopter crashes in Damascus; rebels claim they downed it. (Reuters via ABC)
• War on Terror:
  • ISAF states that an Afghan National Army soldier opens fire on NATO troops, killing two, before being killed himself. (CNN)
  • Ten Afghan soldiers are killed by Taliban fighters in southern Helmand province. (The Wall Street Journal)
• Kenyan Islamic cleric Aboud Rogo Mohammed is shot dead by unnamed organised assailants in Mombasa, triggering protests. (BBC)

• Leslie Buckley, a close associate of Denis O'Brien, is elected chairman of Independent News & Media. (RTE) (The Irish Times)

• Typhoon Bolaven moves past the Japanese island of Okinawa en route to the Korean Peninsula. (BBC)
• A missing tourist in Iceland has been searching for herself, involved in her own rescue operation for hours. (Iceland Review)

• The Prime Minister of Pakistan Raja Pervez Ashraf appears in the Pakistani Supreme Court over his failure to reopen investigations of corruption against President Asif Ali Zardari. (AAP via Melbourne Herald-Sun)
• The Burmese President Thein Sein changes nine ministers in the cabinet, in an apparent bid to demonstrate that promised reforms are firmly on course. (BBC)
• The Leuven municipal council holds a minute of silence for a deceased deminer. (De Standaard)

• The 75-year-old official who got a javelin in the throat at a junior athletics meeting, on Sunday in Düsseldorf, dies. (Yahoo! Eurosports) (BBC)

• The Mars Rover Curiosity broadcasts the first audio recording of a human voice from the surface of another planet. The message from NASA administrator Charles Bolden is beamed to Earth along with new images of the Martian surface. (The Telegraph)