March 30, 2006 (Thursday)
- Feleti Sevele is confirmed as the first non-noble Prime Minister of Tonga. (Matangi)
- Several large earthquakes rock western Iran, killing and injuring many people (BBC)(WikiNews)
- Portia Simpson Miller is sworn in as Prime Minister of Jamaica, becoming the first woman to lead the Commonwealth of Jamaica.
- Janjaweed militias cross over the Chad–Sudan border and attack Chadian villagers in the city of Moudeina, but are beaten back by the Chadian military. (Al Jazeera)
- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled her visit to a mosque after a protest group threatened to "invade the mosque" during scheduled prayers (see Condoleezza Rice visit to Blackburn and Liverpool). (BBC)
- Jill Carroll, a Christian Science Monitor journalist abducted in Iraq on January 7, is released. (CNN)
- NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency launch the thirteenth mission to the International Space Station when Expedition 13 takes off. On board is Marcos Pontes, the first Brazilian in space. (MSNBC)
- An outage of Optus B1 after realignment knocks out Sky TV's pay TV to an estimated 650,000 New Zealanders (NZ Herald)[permanent dead link]. Conflicting reports suggest the outage could be fixed within a few hours (Newswire)[permanent dead link] or could be permanent as the satellite may be missing (National Business Review).
- Al-Dana disaster: A passenger ferry sailing off Manama, Bahrain, capsizes in the Persian Gulf. At least 57 people drown. [1]
- U.S. Representative Jean Schmidt has been claiming a degree in secondary education from the University of Cincinnati she did not receive. Her spokesman said Schmidt earned the degree but did not complete the paperwork to be awarded it. (The Plain Dealer)