Portal:Current events/2021 April 23

April 23, 2021 (2021-04-23) (Friday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • More than 120 people are injured in clashes in Jerusalem between ultra-nationalist Jewish demonstrators (including Lehava extremists), Palestinian protestors, and Israel Police in response to a TikTok video showing Palestinians assaulting members of the Jerusalem ultra-Orthodox community. (BBC News)
• Rambouillet knife attack
  • A female police administrative officer is killed in a stabbing attack at a police station in Rambouillet, France. The attacker is then shot dead at the scene. It is being investigated as a terrorist attack. (BBC News)
• Greenfield University kidnapping
  • Three of the students kidnapped from Greenfield University in Kaduna, Nigeria, on Tuesday are found shot dead. (Al Jazeera)

Disasters and accidents

• COVID-19 pandemic in India
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Maharashtra
    • Virar hospital fire
      • A fire at a hospital in the city of Virar, within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, kills 13 COVID-19 patients. (Today Singapore)
• European migrant crisis
  • Ten people are confirmed dead and 130 others are feared dead after their boats capsize in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the humanitarian NGO SOS Méditerranée. (Reuters)

Health and environment

• COVID-19 pandemic
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Asia
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Cambodia
      • Cambodia reports a record 655 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, thereby bringing the nationwide total of confirmed cases to 8,848. (Khmer Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in India
      • India reports 332,730 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, which is a world record for the second consecutive day, thereby bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 16.26 million. The country also reports a record 2,263 deaths in the past 24 hours, thereby bringing the nationwide death toll to 186,920. (Hindustan Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Japan
      • Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declares a third state of emergency for Hyogo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, including new measures that would reduce the operation of public transportation, close establishments that serve alcohol as well as commercial facilities such as theme parks and department stores, and ban spectators at large sporting events. These measures will be in effect from April 25 until May 11. (AP) (The New York Times)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines
      • COVID-19 vaccination in the Philippines
        • Philippines Health Secretary Francisco Duque III receives his first dose of the CoronaVac vaccine. (The Philippine Star)
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand
      • Thailand reports a record 2,070 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, thereby bringing the nationwide total of confirmed cases to 50,183. (The Straits Times)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Canada
    • COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Lineage B.1.617
      • Ontario reports 36 cases of the Lineage B.1.617 variant first detected in India. (Global News)
    • COVID-19 vaccination in Canada
      • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau receive their first doses of the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine. (CTV News)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina
    • Argentina reports a record for the second consecutive day of 556 deaths, thereby bringing the nationwide death toll to 61,176. (Perfil)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Cyprus
    • Cyprus announces a two-week lockdown and extends a nighttime curfew to 9:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. from April 26 until May 9 in an attempt to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases. (Reuters)
  • COVID-19 pandemic in Malta
    • Malta reports four more cases of the 501.V2 variant that originated in South Africa. (Xinhua)
• Marshallese Foreign Minister Casten Nemra says that, despite growing threats to the Marshall Islands due to rising sea levels, the Marshallese government "has no intention to relocate". The comment comes amidst President David Kabua's participation in a United States-sponsored summit on climate change. Nemra says that relocating as "climate refugees" is not an acceptable option for the Marshallese. (RNZ)
• The University of Oxford announces a major breakthrough in the vaccination campaign against malaria. The R21/Matrix-M vaccine has been administered to over 450 children in Burkina Faso and proved to have a "high-level efficacy" of around 77%. Malaria currently kills an estimated 400,000 people per year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. (BBC News)

International relations

• Estonia–Russia relations, Latvia–Russia relations, Lithuania–Russia relations
  • Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announce that they will expel several Russian diplomats involved in espionage activities in solidarity with the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic had ordered most Russian diplomatic staff to leave Prague on Thursday and called on its European allies to do the same. (LRT)

Law and crime

• Russian opposition leader and activist Alexei Navalny announces that he will end his three-week-long hunger strike in order to seek medical care, four days after being moved to a hospital due to the damage that the strike had inflicted on his body. (NPR)

Science and technology

• International Space Station programme
  • SpaceX successfully launches astronauts Shane Kimbrough, K. Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide, and Thomas Pesquet onboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft into low Earth orbit. The capsule is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station on April 24. (The New York Times)

Sports

• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on association football, COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland, COVID-19 pandemic in Spain
  • UEFA Euro 2020
    • UEFA removes the Aviva Stadium in Dublin and the San Mamés in Bilbao as tournament hosts due to a lack of guarantees regarding the admission of spectators as a result of the pandemic. The organization decides to reallocate the matches planned to take place in Dublin to the Krestovsky Stadium in Saint Petersburg and Wembley Stadium in London, while those in Bilbao will be moved to La Cartuja in Seville. (ABC News)

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