Portal:Current events/2024 May 21

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Israel–Hamas War
  • Humanitarian aid during the Israel–Hamas war
    • The UNRWA suspends food distribution in Rafah due to insecurity and a lack of supplies. (Reuters)
  • Israeli incursions in the West Bank during the Israel–Hamas war
    • The Israeli army launches a raid on the city of Jenin in the West Bank, with sources claiming that seven Palestinians were killed. (Reuters)
• 2024 Iran–Israel conflict, Israel–Hezbollah conflict
  • A high-ranking Lebanese army officer and three Hezbollah members assassinated in IDF airstrikes in Tyre, Lebanon, Beqaa Valley and Kfar Dajjal with three children injured in a school bus. The state department of Lebanon issues a formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council.(L'Orient le Jour)
• Nigerian bandit conflict
  • Gunmen kill 40 people in an attack on a village in Nigeria's Plateau State. (Reuters)

Arts and culture

• Jenny Erpenbeck wins the International Booker Prize for her novel Kairos, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann. (The Guardian)

Business and economy

• Pixar Animation Studios lays off 14% of its workforce, approximately 175 people. (Reuters)

Disasters and accidents

• Singapore Airlines Flight 321
  • A Singapore Airlines flight from London, England, to Singapore makes an emergency landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, after experiencing severe air turbulence over the Bay of Bengal, resulting in one death and 104 injuries. (BBC News)
• Eleven workers drown after a microbus falls off a ferry into the Nile River in Giza, Egypt. (Al-Ahram)
• At least five people are killed and 35 are injured as a strong tornado devastates the town of Greenfield, Iowa, United States. A Doppler on Wheels unit records a wind gust of between 250 mph (400 km/h) and 290 mph (470 km/h) over Greenfield, the strongest winds recorded inside a tornado by a mobile weather radar since the 2013 El Reno tornado, equivalent to EF5 intensity on the Enhanced Fujita scale. (AP) (University of Illinois)

International relations

• Argentina–Spain relations
  • Spain permanently recalls its ambassador from Argentina amid a diplomatic crisis over President of Argentina Javier Milei's comments about Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez's wife, Begoña Gómez. (CNN)
• Moldova–European Union relations
  • Moldova becomes the first non-European Union (EU) signatory country to sign a security and defense pact with the EU to receive assistance in strengthening and managing its borders, facilitating cooperation in cybersecurity, and combating disinformation. (Politico)
• A Swiss parliamentary committee rejects a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that alleged the country violated its citizens' human rights by not doing enough to prevent climate change. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• Censorship in Israel
  • The Israeli Ministry of Communications seizes broadcasting equipment from the Associated Press and suspends their live feed of Gaza, accusing them of breaking the new media law by supplying images to Al Jazeera. (AP)
• Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton is reported to be on life support after being physically attacked in a prison in Port-Cartier, Quebec. (Vancouver Sun)
• The European Union passes the Artificial Intelligence Act, to be applied in 2026. The act imposes strict transparency obligations on AI systems, restricts governments from using real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces, and bans social scoring, predictive policing, and untargeted scraping of facial images. (Reuters)
• A court in Saint Petersburg, Russia, sentences Anatoly Maslov, a 77-year-old hypersonic missiles expert, to 14 years in prison for state treason. (Reuters)
• The Netherlands moves to ban international adoptions. (Reuters)