Portal:Current events/2016 June 13

June 13, 2016 (Monday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Orlando nightclub shooting
- City officials in Orlando, Florida, continue to identify the bodies of the victims in yesterday's attack. So far, 33 of the reported 49 victims have been identified and their families notified. (City of Orlando)
Moro Conflict
- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government has "compelling reason to believe" that Robert Hall, who was held hostage in the Philippines, has been killed by his captors, presumably the same Abu Sayyaf militants who beheaded another Canadian, John Ridsdel, on 25 April 2016. (AP)
Kurdish–Turkish conflict
- A car bomb injures at least nine people, three in serious condition, in the mainly-Kurdish southeast region in Turkey's Tunceli Province. The explosion occurred close to housing for courthouse employees in the town of Ovacik. There is no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. (Al Jazeera) (AP)
June 2016 Magnanville stabbing
- A senior French police commander is killed by a knife-wielding 25-year-old man outside his home in Magnanville near Paris, France. The attacker, who retreated inside the house, is also killed when elite police commandos storm the residence after negotiations failed. The commander's partner, a female administrative police official, is found dead inside the home, while a young boy is rescued physically unharmed. The Islamic State, via its Amaq News Agency, claims responsibility for the attack. (BNO News) (Le Parisien) (HuffPost) (Reuters)

Arts and culture

Business and economics

International relations

European migrant crisis
- Police in northern Greece move more than 400 Syrians and Iraqis by bus from a makeshift camp near the Macedonian border to a shelter near the northern city of Thessaloniki. More than 50,000 migrants remain stranded in Greece following European border closures, and the European Union's agreement with Turkey. (AP)
Germany–Turkey relations
- Eleven Turkish-German members of Germany's Parliament, the Bundestag, who voted in support of declaring the Ottoman Turks slaughter of Armenians in 1915 a genocide, are under police protection. The legislators have faced heavy criticism from Turkish officials, as well as from Turkish Germans. (UPI) (UPI²)
The Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg says that the military alliance plans on sending four multinational battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to boost their defense. However, Stoltenberg said that the battalions will only be deployed on a rotational basis instead of being based permanently. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

International relations

Law and crime

A 22-year-old Dutch woman held in Qatar for nearly three months after telling police she had been raped is released following the court ruling of a one-year suspended prison sentence. The Associated Press reports it isn't clear "[...] what sentence was given to the man she accused of rape." (AP)
Trial of Oscar Pistorius
- South African Paralympic sprinting medalist Oscar Pistorius's sentencing hearing begins. He faces a minimum 15-year jail term since his original manslaughter charge for the 2013 killing of Reeva Steenkamp has been upgraded to murder. The hearing is set to last for five days. (Reuters) (Sky News)

Politics and elections

The United States Supreme Court strikes down a Puerto Rican law that would have allowed it to restructure the debts of its public utilities over the objections of creditors. Puerto Rico's agencies have a $2 billion debt payment due July 1 and has already defaulted on a $370 million debt payment for its Government Development Bank back on May 1. (Bloomberg)

Science and technology

An international team of scientists report in the journal Nature Communications the discovery of a material (SBMOF-1) that can clear nuclear waste gases, produced by reprocessing plants, more efficiently, cheaply, and safely than currently available methods. (R&D Magazine) (The Statesman)(Nature Communications)