January 12, 2005 (Wednesday)
- Conflict in Iraq: Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister of Iraq has admitted parts of the country will not be voting in this month's election. (BBC)
- British Airways flight 175 from London to New York is turned back by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, who claim a passenger's name matches a suspected Moroccan terrorist. The passenger is questioned for two hours by British police and then released. The other 239 passengers resume their journeys nine hours late. (Sky News)
- Reports are emerging, from Channel 4 news and other sources, that Sir Mark Thatcher is to plead guilty over his part in an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. (BBC)
- United States intelligence officials confirm that its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended last month. The claim that Iraq had an active WMD program was the White House's key justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (CNN) (BBC) (Reuters)
- Camp X-Ray: Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for the release of the remaining inmates at Guantanamo Bay and terror suspects detained without trial in the UK referring to the detentions without trial as "unacceptable" and "distressing". (BBC)
- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israel has carried out a series of raids into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Two armed men were shot and killed in Ramallah, while four men were arrested in Gaza City. An Israeli civilian was also killed, and three Israeli soldiers were wounded following an Islamic Jihad attack on Morag, in the southern Gaza Strip. (BBC)
- In Côte d'Ivoire, former rebels warn that controversy over a disputed nationality law could restart the civil war (BBC). South African president Thabo Mbeki is in the country to mediate but ex-rebels refuse to meet him (SABC) (Reuters Alertnet)
- In Senegal, there is a growing opposition to a recent bill that grants amnesty to political crimes since 1983 (BBC)
- In Abkhazia, breakway province of Georgia, government re-runs disputed presidential election of last October. Sergei Bagapsh and Raul Khadzhimba run as a team. Most countries do not recognize Abkhazian independence. (ITAR-TASS) (Interfax) (BBC)
- In the US, Lithuanian-born Vladas Zajanckauskas is charged with killing Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. If sentenced, he may lose his US citizenship (Boston Herald)
- Deep Impact was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral at 1:47 p.m. EST (1847 UTC) by a Delta 2 rocket. (NASA)