Portal:Current events/2020 February 12

• Syrian Civil War
  • United States Armed Forces open fire and kill a Syrian after a group of government supporters attempted to block a U.S. convoy in protest at a checkpoint near Qamishli, Al-Hasakah Governorate. (MSN) (BBC News)

• Pope Francis rules against ordaining married men as priests, a possible measure to counter the shortage of Catholic priests. He also ruled against allowing women to be ordained as deacons. (BBC News)
• The Ministry of Culture of Colombia designates the Spanish galleon San José as an asset of cultural interest, thus protecting it from commercial exploitation. (RCN)

• The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights publishes a list of 112 companies linked to activities related to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. (BBC News) (Al Jazeera)

• COVID-19 pandemic
  • The United States Postal Service suspends time guarantees for all shipments to China and Hong Kong. (South China Morning Post)
  • The GSM Association decides to cancel this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, amid coronavirus concerns. The event would have been held between February 24 and 27. This is the first time that the mobile communications trade show has been cancelled. (CNBC)
  • MS Westerdam, with more than two thousand people on board, is finally granted permission to disembark in Cambodia after several countries deny it permission. (USA Today)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Oceania
    • Tonga refuses entry to four cruise ships due to health warnings following the pandemic. (RNZ)

• Nissan begins a US$90 million lawsuit against its former chairman Carlos Ghosn. (The Guardian)
• More than half of Malta's traffic police officers, including its chief, are arrested for overtime fraud and misuse of public resources. (Reuters)
• Trial of Maesiah Thabane
  • Lesotho begins a murder investigation of First Lady Maesiah Thabane for the murder of former first lady Lipolelo Thabane and ex-wife of Prime Minister Tom Thabane. (CNN)
• The U.S. Department of Education launches an investigation into Harvard and Yale for allegedly accepting billions of dollars in undisclosed gifts from numerous foreign governments, including those from Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. (BBC News)

• 2020 U.S. Democratic Party presidential primaries
  • Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick suspends his presidential campaign. (ABC News)
  • Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price resigns for his handling of this year's Iowa caucuses. (CNN)
• The Italian Senate allows former Minister of the Interior and current senator Matteo Salvini to be tried in a criminal case for illegally detaining migrants last summer. (BBC News)

• Brazilian scientists announce the discovery of a new amoebic "Yaravirus" in Lake Pampulha. The strain was found to be significantly smaller than any known amoebic virus, and 90% of its genome appears to be genes that have never been seen before in any life-form. (The Independent) (bioRxiv) (Science magazine)
• WhatsApp hits two billion users, becoming the second largest social media platform in terms of userbase behind Facebook. (Reuters)