Also: Mohamed Harkat gets his day in court
We tell you five things you need to know this morning.
1. 200 miners die in a Turkish coal mine explosion. The death toll in Soma, about 250 kilometres south of Istanbul, rises by the minute. The latest estimate is 232 dead after an explosion rocked a mine with 787 workers inside. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared three days of mourning. Many of the miners likely succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. Four hundred workers left the mine safely, while the fate of nearly 200 remains uncertain.
2. Mohamed Harkat gets his day in court. The Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of security certificates used to limit the movement of Harkat, an accused terrorist who was first arrested in 2002. The court ruled in 2008 that certificates violated certain constitutionally protected rights, and the government rewrote the rules surrounding the controversial documents. A federal court previously ruled in favour of the government’s case against Harkat, but today at 9:45 a.m., the Ottawa resident learns the fate of his final appeal. If he loses, he may be deported to his native Algeria.
3. Vietnamese burn Chinese-owned factories. A Chinese drilling rig in the South China Sea, waters claimed by Vietnam, had protesters in the country’s southern Binh Duong province burning factories with ties to China. “Nationalist sentiment of this intensity has not been seen in Vietnam for many years,” wrote the BBC’s Nga Pham. Nineteen thousand workers may have participated in the burning of up to 15 factories, and authorities arrested some of the protesters. Vietnamese and Chinese vessels continue to clash at sea, firing water cannons at each other’s ships
4. The NDP fights the House of Commons. You can sense that reporters, political opponents and even House of Commons staff are turning against New Democrats as the party insists on the legitimacy of its Montreal satellite office. Huffington Post Canada‘s Althia Raj publishes occasionally confusing conversations between the NDP and Commons staff about the location of the office. Employment forms suggest Ottawa, said staff; but the party says the staffers openly worked in Montreal. What seems like a gargantuan miscommunication could distract Ottawa for days.
5. A judge strikes down Idaho’s same-sex marriage ban. Courts are going after the red states that so forcefully passed constitutional bans on same-sex marriage earlier this decade. A few days ago, a judge nulled Arkansas’s ban; yesterday, U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale made a similar ruling in Idaho. The state’s Republican governor, Butch Otter, will appeal the ruling. He called Dale’s decision “disappointing,” and “a small setback in a long-term battle that will end at the U.S. Supreme Court.” Oklahoma and Utah are among the other staunchly red states whose bans were recently voided by judges.