Portal:Current events/2021 May 12

May 12, 2021 (2021-05-12) (Wednesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Israeli–Palestinian conflict
  • 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis
    • Thirty-three more Palestinian civilians are killed after other airstrikes are executed by Israel in Gaza, bringing the death toll to 65. Among the victims there are a five-year-old child and their parents who died as a residential building collapsed, while five more are farmers killed at their farm. At least a total of 335 others are injured. The number of children killed rise to sixteen. The main Palestinian headquarters and all the police stations in Gaza are destroyed by the strikes. Protests also erupt in the West Bank, resulting in the death of three protestors. (Al Jazeera)
    • Two more people are killed by Hamas' rockets in Lod, bringing the Israeli civilian death toll to 5, while an IDF soldier is killed as a military jeep outside Gaza is bombed. (BBC)
    • The Israel Defense Forces says it has conducted a "complex and first-of-its-kind operation" in the Gaza Strip, killing several senior members of Hamas. (AP) (Reuters)
    • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares a state of emergency in the city of Lod following rioting between Arabs and Jews. It is the first use of emergency powers over an Arab community in Israel since 1966. (Times of Israel)
    • U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announces that the Biden administration will send Hady Amr to help defuse tensions. Blinken also defends Israel’s right to exist and condemned Hamas for firing rockets. (Ynet)
• War in Afghanistan
  • 2021 Afghanistan attacks
    • Mullah Mannan Niazi, the deputy leader of a splinter group of Taliban led by Mullah Rasul, was wounded after attackers targeted the area where he lived in Herat Province. Mullah Niazi is in a coma and three of his men were killed and four others were wounded in the clash. (TOLO News)
  • Afghan officials confirm that Nirkh District, in Maidan Wardak Province, has fallen to the Taliban the previous day as the group seized the district building and torched it after days of intense siege. Attacks by the group have significantly increased as United States troops started to withdraw from the country with the final deadline of September 11. (DW)
• 2021 Colombian protests
  • President of Colombia Iván Duque Márquez announces that 65 officers have been given disciplinary actions for acts of brutality allegedly committed while repressing demonstrations. Of the actions, 8 were for homicide, 27 for abuse of authority, 11 for physical assault, and 19 for other (mis)behaviors. (MercoPress)

Business and economy

• Amazon wins a legal dispute against a European Union order to pay back taxes of 250 million Euros ($303 million). The setback renewed calls from EU lawmakers for a global corporate tax deal and for several to voice their support for the Biden administration's proposed 21% minimum tax rate on multinationals. (Reuters)

Health and environment

• COVID-19 pandemic
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Asia
    • COVID-19 pandemic in India, Lineage B.1.617
      • India reports 4,205 new deaths from COVID-19, the highest 24-hour death toll thus far. This number surpasses the previous record of 4,187 deaths reported on Friday. It also pushes the nationwide death toll to 254,197. (The Times of India)
      • The World Health Organization says the B.1.617 variant first found in India in October had been detected in more than 4,500 samples uploaded to an open-access database from 44 countries. (Khaleej Times)
      • A total of 52 bodies have been found floating in the Ganges in the Uttar Pradesh district with suspicions that villages may simply be disposing of pandemic deaths in the river. (The New Indian Express)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia
      • Malaysia reports a record 39 new deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 1,761. (Malay Mail)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand
      • Thailand reports a record 34 new deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 486. (Bangkok Post)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan
      • Taiwan reports a record 16 new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide total of confirmed cases to 1,231. (CNA)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Europe
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary
      • Hungary announces that hospitals are resuming elective surgeries, which had been suspended during the pandemic. However, due to the workload, altered circumstances, the vaccination campaign, and other factors, waiting list times have effectively doubled and now amount to 1-2 years for most patients. (Ex: 260 days for cataract surgery, 546 days for a hip replacement, and 674 days for a knee replacement) (Hungary Today)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Norway
      • Prime Minister Erna Solberg announces that Norway will remove Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine from its vaccination programme due to risk of rare blood clots. (Bloomberg)

• Climate change
  • A study published in Nature estimates that during the last glacial maximum low-to-mid latitude land surfaces at low elevation cooled on average by 5.8 ± 0.6 degrees C vs their present day temperatures. The study was based on an analysis of noble gases dissolved in groundwater rather than examinations of species abundances that have been used in the past. (phys.org)(Nature.com)

Law and crime

• COVID-19 pandemic in France
  • The French National Assembly approves the creation of a COVID-19 health pass to enables international travel and attend a large events. The MPs also agree to end the state of emergency on June 1 and replacing it with transitional period that lasts until the end of September, which allows prime minister to keep a 9:00 p.m. curfew until June 30. (Euronews) (The Connexion)
• Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom
  • Twenty-nine men are charged with the sexual exploitation and rape of a teenage girl over a seven-year period in Calderdale and Bradford between 2003 and 2010. (BBC)

Sports

• 2021 Singapore Open, Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports
  • The Badminton World Federation announces the cancellation of the 2021 Singapore Open, which will be scheduled from June 1 to 6, due to travel complications amid the pandemic. (Reuters)

Month

May 2021

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May 13