Portal:Current events/2017 February 21

February 21, 2017 (Tuesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

War in North-West Pakistan
- Multiple suicide bombers kill at least six people near a district court in Charsadda. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attack. (Al Jazeera)

Arts and culture

British journalist Milo Yiannopoulos resigns from his post as technology editor at Breitbart news, after controversy around his statements regarding underage sex. (BBC)

Business and economy

Verizon Communications agrees to buy the core business at Yahoo Inc. for $4.48 billion. Completion of this July 2016 deal had been delayed because of two data breaches Yahoo disclosed last year. (Reuters)
Restaurant Brands International
- The parent company of Burger King announces plans to purchase Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, operator of the Popeyes chicken restaurant chain in a US$1.8 billion deal. (USA Today)

Disasters and accidents

2017 Essendon Airport Beechcraft King Air crash
- A charter plane crashes into a Direct Factory Outlets shopping centre in Melbourne, Australia, shortly after taking off from Essendon Airport, killing the five people on board. (ABC News Australia)
Flooding occurs across parts of Indonesia, including the capital Jakarta, due to torrential downpours over the last few days. Thousands of homes have been flooded and schools were forced to close. However, there are no reports of injuries yet. (Al Jazeera)

Health

More than 4.9 million people in South Sudan are in need of aid due to a famine. (CNN)

International relations

France–Lebanon relations
- French National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen leaves before her scheduled meeting in Beirut with Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim religious leader, Grand Mufti Abdellatif Deryan, following her refusal to accept the offered headscarf to cover her hair. Le Pen's aides had been informed earlier about the traditional, religious need for a headscarf for this meeting. (Reuters) (Al Jazeera)

Law and crime

2017 Rinkeby riots
- After Swedish police arrest a suspect on drug-related charges, rioting occurs in Rinkeby, a suburb of the Swedish capital Stockholm. (AP via CNBC)
An Austrian court grants a United States request to extradite Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash. U.S. officials accuse Firtash of being involved in a scandal where he allegedly paid US$18.5 million in bribes for a permit to mine titanium in India, something Firtash denies. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Hebron shooting incident
- Following last month's manslaughter conviction, Israeli soldier Elor Azaria is sentenced to 18 months in prison by a military court for, during a violent incident, his deadly shooting of the wounded, unarmed, prone Palestinian Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who had stabbed a soldier last March in Hebron. (CBS News)
United States immigration ban
- The Trump administration releases a new memo that sets the policy for the deportation of undocumented migrants accused of any crime. (NBC News)

Politics and elections

Azerbaijani First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, who is widely considered to be in line to succeed her husband, is named vice president. (BNO News)
Nagorno-Karabakh constitutional referendum, 2017
- In a referendum held yesterday in the breakaway state of Nagorno-Karabakh (a region long claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia), 87.6% of voters approve changing the country's governance system from semi-presidential to full presidential, therefore abolishing the position of prime minister. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
Ecuadorian general election, 2017
- A runoff presidential election, between former vice-president Lenín Moreno and former bank president Guillermo Lasso, is scheduled for Sunday, April 2 since no candidate gained at least 40 percent of the vote in Sunday's poll. With 95.3 percent of votes counted, Moreno received 39.21 percent of valid votes and Lasso had 28.34 percent. (Reuters)

Science and technology

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