< Portal:Current events

Portal:Current events/2016 April 19

April 19, 2016 (2016-04-19) (Tuesday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
Disasters and accidents
  • 2016 Ecuador earthquake
    • The death toll from Saturday's earthquake has risen to at least 480 with 1,700 missing. Another 2,500 have been injured. President Rafael Correa states it is the worst disaster in Ecuador in seven decades, and the reconstruction will have a "huge economic impact" on the country. (BBC) (CBS News)
International relations
  • Sweden–United States relations
    • Swedish deputy prime minister Åsa Romson is criticized after referring to the September 11 attacks in New York as mere "accidents". Romson made the comments on public television while discussing the resignation of housing minister Mehmet Kaplan who had compared Israel's treatment of Arabs to the Nazis' treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. (Daily Mail) (The Local)
  • Cross-Strait relations
  • The European Union offers to help the fledgling new UN-backed Libyan unity government with assistance in its security sector, managing migration, border management and police capacity building. This comes after Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj appealed to foreign governments for help in fighting ISIL and aid to rebuild the country. (The Guardian)
  • India–United Kingdom relations
    • In response to an ongoing Supreme Court case regarding the ownership of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the government of India said it should not try to reclaim it from the United Kingdom. The government argues that the diamond was given to the British as a gift and was not stolen. However, the Supreme Court says it will continue with the case. (BBC)
Law and crime
  • Authorities in China sentence Huang Yu, a computer technician from Sichuan who worked for a government department which handled state secrets, to death for leaking more than 150,000 classified documents to an unidentified foreign power. The documents in question covered secrets ranging from the ruling Communist Party to military and financial issues. (The Guardian)
  • Lutz Bachmann, the leader of the German far-right and anti-Islam Pegida movement, goes on trial in Dresden on charges of hate speech. (BBC)
  • Transgender rights in the United States
    • An American federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, rules a transgender high school student who was banned from the boys' bathroom can proceed with the lawsuit against the school board. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
    • Yesterday, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a statement that North Carolina House Bill 2, a so-called bathroom bill, "...jeopardizes not only the dignity, but also the actual physical safety, of transgender people." (The Washington Post)
  • Kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir
    • A Jerusalem district court rejects an insanity plea and convicts Yosef Chaim Ben-David as the ringleader of the terrorist kidnapping and murder of the 16-year-old Palestinian. In November, the court convicted Ben-David's two accomplices, both minors, of murder. (Haaretz) (Al Bawaba)
  • While South Korea prepares for the 2018 Winter Olympics, the Associated Press reports the country has covered up widespread human rights violations, including rapes and murders, when it swept so-called vagrants off the streets in the years prior to the 1988 Games in Seoul. Thousands of victims have received no compensation, nor public recognition nor an apology. The AP says two early attempts to investigate were suppressed by senior officials and the current government refuses to revisit the case and is blocking a push by an opposition lawmaker. (AP)
  • Flint water crisis
    • According to government officials, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette tomorrow will announce criminal charges against two state regulators and a Flint employee in connection with the city's lead-tainted water crisis. (AP via Fox News)
Politics and elections
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