Portal:Current events/2015 October 15

Current events of October 15, 2015 (2015-10-15) (Thursday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
  • Taliban fighters are expelled from the provincial capital of Kunduz, which they conquered recently. (The News Hub)
  • President of the United States Barack Obama announces that he will keep 5,500 troops in Afghanistan. (RT)
• Internal conflict in Myanmar:
  • The government of Myanmar signs a peace treaty with eight ethnic armed groups, although some powerful groups stay away. (AP via Star Tribune)
• Yemeni Civil War (2015), Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
  • Yemen's Houthi forces fire a Scud missile at Saudi Arabia in retaliation to Saudi "war crimes". A spokesman for Yemen's military allied with Houthi militants said the missile hit a Saudi airbase and caused "widespread destruction". There was no immediate comment from the Saudi side. (Reuters)

Business and economy

• Volkswagen emissions scandal
  • The German automotive watchdog KBA orders Volkswagen to recall 2.4 million cars in that country after the emissions scandal becomes public knowledge. (Reuters via SBS Australia)

Law and crime

• 2015 Parramatta shooting
  • Rahan Alou and Talal Alameddine are charged with assisting Farhad Jabar to kill New South Wales Police Force accountant Curtis Cheng in Parramatta, Australia on 2 October 2015. (The Guardian), (ABC News Australia)
• 2015 U.S. drone strike leaks
  • A cache of classified intelligence documents published from The Infiltrator, released by an anonymous whistleblower, highlight details surrounding post-September 11 attacks United States drone strikes in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, alleging that the United States conducts these strikes under extremely unreliable information and faulty pretenses. (Al-Jazeera America) (U.S. News) (Vice News)
• Five individuals -- four men and a teenage boy -- are arrested in connection with the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl at a Sydney house party (CNN)

Politics and elections

• 2015 United Nations Security Council election
  • Egypt, Senegal, Uruguay, Japan, and Ukraine are elected to non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council for the 2016–17 period. (New York Tiimes)

Science

• Astronomers say they have observed bizarre light patterns using the Kepler Space Telescope from a star that appears old, but is shrouded in debris like a much younger star, roughly 1,500 light-years away. This has led to speculation that these are an "artificial extraterrestrial mega-structure", orbiting the star known as KIC 8462852 in the Cygnus constellation. KIC 8462852 lies just above the Milky Way between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. It first attracted the attention of astronomers in 2009 when the Kepler Space Telescope identified it as a candidate for having orbiting Earth-like planets. (Independent) (Discovery News)