Portal:Current events/2014 December 14

• Syrian Civil War:
  • A battle between Bashar al-Assad loyalist forces and Islamist rebels in Aleppo Governorate leave 34 rebels dead and 3 loyalist fighters captured. (EFE via Fox News)

• Miss World 2014 crowns Rolene Strauss, Miss South Africa, in London. (CNN)
• Archaeologists reconstruct two giant statues of Amenhotep III, toppled by an earthquake at the Nile River in 1200 BC. The team's restoration project re-erected surviving fragments at the northern gate of the king's funerary temple. (AFP via Daily Mail)

• European private equity firm BC Partners agrees to buy American pet supplies retail chain PetSmart for $8.7 billion. (New York Times)

• Eleven Egyptian fishermen drown after their boat sinks in the Gulf of Suez. (AP)
• The death toll from a landslide in central Java in Indonesia rises to 24 with scores still missing. (Reuters via NBC News)
• The death toll of a capsized ferry MV Mutambala on December 12 in Lake Tanganyika, Democratic Republic of the Congo rises to 129 with authorities continuing to search for bodies or survivors. (BBC)

• Angalifu, a male of the critically endangered northern white rhinoceros, dies at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The remaining rhinoceroses are one female at the Zoo (Nola), three at a zoo in the Czech Republic, and one male at a Kenyan preserve (Sudan). (Huffington Post)

• The United Nations adopts a format for national pledges to tackle climate change after meetings extend into the weekend at the conference held in Lima, Peru. (BBC)

• Turkish police arrest 24 journalists, all of whom are supporters of Fethullah Gülen who is a rival of current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and is currently in self-imposed exile in the United States. (Voice of America)
• At least 18 are held hostage in a chocolate shop in Sydney, Australia. Police stormed the café the following day.

• Japanese general election, 2014
  • Japanese citizens vote in a general election. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner win 325 seats out of 475 and thus a new term. (BBC)
• Laurent Lamothe resigns as Prime Minister of Haiti along with several ministers following violent protests and a commission's call for him to step down. The protesters have been demanding the holding of early elections. (TownHall)

• In the NBA, Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers moves to third on the all-time point scorer list overtaking Michael Jordan. (AFP via SportsFan)