Portal:Current events/2015 May 18
< Portal:Current events
May 18, 2015 (Monday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
- The Saudi Arabia-led airstrikes against the Houthi rebels resume after a five-day ceasefire. (BBC)
- Simultaneous explosions occur at local offices of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party headquarters in the southern Turkish cities of Adana and Mersin. (RT)
- Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
- The Governor of Iraq's Anbar Governorate estimates that 500 people were killed and 8000 fled as ISIS captured the strategically important city of Ramadi. (Al Arabiya)
Business and economy
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 end at record levels. (CNBC)
Disasters and accidents
- Amtrak resumes train services between New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, following a fatal train derailment on May 12. (AP via HuffPost)
- At least 52 people die in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Colombian town of Salgar, Antioquia. (AFP via Yahoo! News)
International relations
- The United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, assures South Korea of "ironclad" American security commitments on a visit to Seoul while accusing North Korea of a litany of crimes. (AP)
- The Philippines says that it is willing to accept 3,000 Rohingya refugees after an accusation by a newspaper was made. Last week Indonesia turned away boats carrying over 1,000 Rohingya refugees. (Rappler)
Law and crime
- Scott Driscoll, a former member of the Legislative Assembly of the Australian state of Queensland, has been committed to stand trial on fraud charges. (Courier Mail)
- President of the United States Barack Obama bans the provision of some military-type equipment to local police departments and restricts access to other types of equipment following recent tensions between police and minority communities. (AP via Yahoo! News)
- Former Australian tennis player Bob Hewitt is jailed for six years in South Africa for raping underaged girls. (BBC)
- Victorino Chua, a nurse at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport, is found guilty for the murder of two patients following the 2011 Stepping Hill Hospital poisoning incident. (BBC News)
- The District Attorney for Manhattan says he intends to retry a murder case in the disappearance of Etan Patz which ended in a mistrial. (NBC News)
Politics
- 2015 Burundian unrest
- After a failed coup d'état the President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, fires three Ministers, including the Minister of Defence. (The Washington Times)
- 2015 Macedonian protests
- In the ongoing protests in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, tens of thousands of people rally in support of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. (BBC News)
Sports
- 2015 Indianapolis 500
- In practice runs for the annual auto race, driver James Hinchcliffe crashes, suffering severe blood loss after debris punctures his legs. He is in stable condition, but not expected to return to competition in 2015. (Sporting News)