Portal:Current events/2018 November 8
< Portal:Current events
November 8, 2018 (Thursday)
Business and economy
- French authorities impound a Ryanair jet, because of payments owed to the European Union for illegal subsidies, at the Bordeaux–Mérignac Airport just before 149 London-bound passengers boarded. (AP)
Disasters and accidents
- 2018 California wildfires
- Camp Fire
- Evacuations are prompted in Butte County, California, after the Camp Fire erupts. (CBS News)
- The Honey Run Covered Bridge that crosses Butte Creek is destroyed by the wildfire. It was said to be the last surviving three-span timber pratt-type covered bridge. (Chico Enterprise-Record) (SFGate)
- Camp Fire
- Royal Norwegian Navy frigate HNoMS Helge Ingstad collides with a Maltese oil tanker in the Heltefjord while returning from NATO military exercises, prompting the evacuation of all 137 crew members. Seven sailors were injured in the collision. (BBC)
Law and crime
- Police in Ethiopia say they have discovered a mass grave with 200 bodies near the border between the Somali and Oromia regions of the country. (BBC)
- The Mossos d'Esquadra announces that on September 19, 2018, they arrested a man planning to assassinate the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez. (BBC) (The New York Times)
- A riot at a high-security prison in Khujand, Tajikistan, known for holding convicted terrorists, including ISIL members, leaves at least 27 people dead. (Reuters)
- A federal judge in Montana orders a suspension of construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, citing an inadequate review of the potential environmental impact of the pipeline. (NPR) (Great Falls Tribune)
Politics and elections
- White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders receives widespread condemnation after tweeting an allegedly altered video from a press conference the day before. The video, which was allegedly doctored by the far-right conspiracy website InfoWars, is claimed to falsely depict CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta physically assaulting an intern. (Sky News) (HuffPost UK)
Science and technology
- 2018 in science
- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory confirms earlier observations by Indian Space Research Organisation's Astrosat space observatory of a rotating black hole in the binary star system 4U1630-47, which is spinning close to the speed of light, one of the fastest ever observed. (India Today) (Metro)
- A new study from Eötvös Loránd University confirms the existence of two Kordylewski clouds orbiting Earth. Kazimierz Kordylewski first observed the faint clouds of dust around the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in the 1960s. (India Times) (Inquisitr)
- Automated journalism
- China's Xinhua News Agency unveils the world's first AI news anchor. Xinhua says the AI presenters can work "24 hours a day", thus reducing news production costs. (BBC)