Portal:Current events/2021 May 9

Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Afghanistan
  • 2021 Afghanistan attacks
    • 2021 Kabul school bombing
      • The death toll from yesterday's school bombing in Kabul increases to 68 people. (Reuters)
    • With multiple electricity pylons near Kabul being destroyed by bomb blasts, electricity supplier Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS) is reporting a shortage of 530 megawatts of power and announced that it will take 20 days to repair the destroyed pylons. Residents are accusing DABS of discrimination during these outages, as the capital's elite had 24-hour electricity. (TOLO News)
• Yemeni Civil War
  • The United States Navy announces that it has seized a shipment of thousands of weapons in a stateless dhow on the Arabian Sea believed to be en-route to Yemen. (Politico)
• 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis
  • The Israeli Supreme Court agrees to delay its ruling on whether Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood can be evicted to make way for Jewish settlers to later this month, following a series of violent clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters over this issue. (The Guardian)

Business and economy

• Colonial Pipeline cyberattack
  • U.S. President Joe Biden declares a state of emergency following Friday's ransomware cyberattack against Colonial Pipeline, the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S., which transports 2.5 million barrels a day – 45 percent of the U.S. East Coast's supply of diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. (BBC News)
• A day after appearing on Saturday Night Live and causing Dogecoin's value to drop by a third by calling the digital currency a "hustle", SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announces that his company will accept the cryptocurrency as payment for a DOGE-1 mission to the Moon. (Reuters) (CNBC)

Disasters and accidents

• A landslide at a clandestine gold mine in Siguiri, Guinea, kills at least fifteen miners. (BBC News)
• Rescue operations are underway in southwest London to help a small whale, believed to be a Minke, stranded in the River Thames, apparently stuck on the Richmond Lock's boat rollers. (BBC News)

Health and environment

• COVID-19 pandemic
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Europe
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
      • Germany lifts its curfew and some social restrictions, such as requiring a negative test result to enter certain venues, for those who have been vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID-19. These people are also no longer required to enter quarantine unless they have travelled to a high-risk country. (MedicalXpress)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland
      • Taoiseach Micheál Martin receives his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. (The Irish Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Spain
      • Spain lifts its state of emergency that had been imposed since October, allowing people to travel freely between regions for the first time in months. The country's curfew is also lifted. (France 24)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Asia
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Laos
      • Laos reports its first death from COVID-19. The patient is a 53-year-old woman who had been receiving treatment at a designated hospital in Vientiane since April 30. (Big News Network)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia
      • Malaysia reports a record 26 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, thereby bringing the nationwide death toll to 1,683. (New Straits Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka
      • Sri Lanka reports a record 2,672 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, thereby bringing the cumulative number of patients to 125,906. (Newsfirst)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Florida, Variants of SARS-CoV-2
      • Florida has reported more than 10,000 cases of the Lineage B.1.1.7, Lineage P.1, and Lineage B.1.351 variants since spring break. (ABC News)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Tunisia
    • Tunisia enters a seven-day strict lockdown during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which includes a curfew from 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. (Al Jazeera)

Law and crime

• 2021 Colorado Springs shooting
  • Six people are killed by a gunman in a mass shooting during a birthday party at a residence in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The gunman, who committed suicide at the scene, is believed to have been a boyfriend of one of the victims. (BBC News)
• Capital punishment in Egypt
  • Coptic monk Wael Saad Tawadros, better known as Brother Isaiah, is executed over the killing of bishop Anba Epiphanius, the abbot of the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Wadi El Natrun, in 2018. (Macau Business)

Politics and elections

• 2021 Colombian protests
  • Claudia Blum, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Colombia, resigns from her post amidst the ongoing anti-government protests that have killed at least 26 people. (Semana)

Science and technology

• Environmental issues in Kyrgyzstan
  • A court in Kyrgyzstan fines a company owned by Centerra Gold 261.7 billion soms for environmental pollution at the Kumtor Gold Mine. (Business Recorder)
• The China Manned Space Engineering Office says that remnants of the Chinese Long March-5B Y2 rocket made an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere into the Indian Ocean, just west of the Maldives. (CNN) (The New York Times)
• South Korea reports that it now holds the world's largest number of standard-essential patents followed by the United States, Finland, and Japan. Standard-essential patents refer to major technologies that are vital in producing standardized products and that must be verified by standards organizations. (Yonhap)