Portal:Current events/2018 April 20

April 20, 2018 (2018-04-20) (Friday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Syrian Civil War
  • ISIL agrees to hand over control of Yarmouk Camp in southern Damascus to the Syrian Army in return for safe passage to ISIL-held territory in the Syrian Desert, bringing the predominantly Palestinian refugee district under government control for the first time since 2012. (The Washington Post)
• International military intervention against ISIL
  • Iraq conducts a series of air strikes against an ISIL target in Syria. (Yahoo! News)
• 2018 Gaza border protests
  • Palestinians riot along the Israel-Gaza border fence, burning tyres and flying flaming kites across the border to set Israeli fields ablaze; Israel Defence Forces soldiers respond with tear gas and live fire, killing four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old, according to the Hamas run-health ministry. (Haaretz) (The Times of Israel)
  • One petrol bomb-carrying kite is flown over the border adorned with a Swastika. (The Times of Israel)
• First Liberian Civil War
  • Liberian warlord Mohammed "Jungle Jabbah" Jabbateh is sentenced to 30 years in prison in the United States for immigration offences. Jabbateh lied to authorities about his role in the Liberian Civil War. (BBC)
• Russian frigate Yaroslav Mudry passes through the English Channel, and is shadowed by Royal Navy coastal defence ship HMS St Albans. (The New York Post)

Arts and culture

• 2018 Gaza border protests
  • Actress Natalie Portman, who was born in Jerusalem, pulls out of the upcoming Genesis Prize (worth 1 million USD) ceremony in Israel over "recent events in Israel". The Genesis Prize Foundation says it is worried the event will become politicised. (CBS News)
• Expo 2020
  • Tajikistan announces that it will participate in the Expo 2020 in Dubai. (Trend)

Business and economy

• Economy of the United States
  • Wells Fargo bank is fined US$1 billion by the United States government for mishandling of mortgages and automobile loans. Wells Fargo is also ordered to reimburse customers who were overcharged. (CNN)
  • All Bon-Ton department stores are expected to close by August. At the time of announcement, the company operated 256 stores under its own name and the Bergner's, Boston Store, Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers nameplates. (Pymnts.com) (CNN)
• Swedish musician Avicii dies in Oman at the age of 28. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

• Around 40 people are injured after two passenger trains collide in Salzburg, Austria. (Reuters)
• Around 10,000 people are evacuated from central Berlin, Germany, while bomb disposal experts defuse a 500 kilograms (1,100 lb) World War II–era British bomb at a construction site. (BBC)
• Mount Iō in northern Japan erupts for the first time in 250 years, together with nearby Mount Kirishima (USA Today)(Click Lancashire)
• Southwest Airlines Flight 1380
  • The United States Federal Aviation Administration issues an emergency Airworthiness Directive for CFM56-7B jet engines. The EAD expands on previous orders requiring ultrasonic testing to search for metal fatigue in fan blades. It mandates testing on engines that have reached 30,000+ flights, believed to cover 352 US engines and 681 engines worldwide. (The Aviation Herald) (The Aviation Herald)

Health and environment

• A British man reported last month to be suffering what doctors called the "worst-ever" super-gonorrhoea is said by Public Health England to have been cured. (BBC)

International relations

• 2017–18 North Korea crisis
  • North Korea leader Kim Jong-un stated that North Korea will suspend its missile and nuclear tests and agreed to shut down its nuclear test sites. (Military) (Newschannel9)

Law and crime

• Offenders executed in the United States in 2018
  • Alabama executes 83-year-old Walter Moody via lethal injection, who assassinated United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit judge Robert Smith Vance on December 16, 1989. Moody is the oldest prisoner to be executed in the US since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. (BBC)
• Cybercrime
  • The Central Criminal Court in London jails Kane Gamble, 18, for two years for unlawfully accessing CIA, FBI and US Department of Justice databases and phone and email accounts of senior US intelligence officials. (BBC)
• Politics of Zimbabwe
  • The Parliament of Zimbabwe summons ex-President Robert Mugabe over an alleged theft of diamonds. (BBC)
• Basque conflict
  • The Basque separatist terrorist group ETA apologises to every victim. ETA killed more than 800 people in its 40-year history, committing terrorists attacks throughout Spain, putting at risk the transition to democracy. (BBC)
• Crime in Poland
  • A court in Radom, Poland hands a six-month suspended prison term and a 10,000 zloty fine to a Russian pilot who caused a security scare during Pope Francis's 2016 visit for World Youth Day. The Russian had flown from the Czech Republic to compete in an international aerobatics competition and unknowingly violated a no-fly zone imposed for the papal visit. After failing to contact the aircraft, local authorities scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to intercept it. (Radio Poland)
  • Polish Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro announces plans for a change to national self defence law to allow people to use more force than their attacks, and orders prosecutors to abandon proceedings against a businessman who shot at a getaway car containing fleeing robbers. (Radio Poland)
• The US Department of Justice announces it intends to appeal yesterday's ruling that an unnamed detained ISIS suspect in the custody of US troops in Iraq cannot be transferred to an unnamed foreign nation. The man has dual US-Saudi Arabian citizenship. (CNN)
• Inn Din massacre
  • A Myanmar police captain testifies in court that he and his colleagues were ordered by their superiors to entrap two Reuters journalists, who were arrested on 12 December 2017 for "possessing state secrets" under a colonial-era law. The journalists had been working on a report documenting the massacre at Inn Din. (Reuters) (Voice of America)

Politics and elections

• Democratic National Committee cyber attacks
  • The Democratic National Committee file a lawsuit against Russia, the Donald Trump administration, and WikiLeaks alleging that the former conspired to interfere in the 2016 United States elections. (The Washington Post)
• Brexit negotiations
  • The UK Audit Office rejects a Treasury estimate of the cost of leaving the European Union that was repeated by Prime Minister Theresa May. Rather than the official £35–39 billion estimate, the watchdog says that figure misleadingly included £7.2 billion earmarked directly for private hands and did not include up to £3 billion in budget contributions and £2.9 billion in European Development Fund payments. (fxstreet)
• 2018 United States gun violence protests
  • On the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, thousands of students across the United States walk out in protest against school shootings. (NBC News) (People.com)

Science and technology

• Discoveries of exoplanets
  • A study has been revealed that WASP-104b, a Hot Jupiter exoplanet, has been discovered as one of the darkest exoplanets ever seen. (New Scientist)

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