Portal:Current events/2015 October 21

Current events of October 21, 2015 (2015-10-21) (Wednesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
  • The Taliban announced it overran Ghoryan in Herat province, the second district to fall in three days. (Long War Journal)
• Syrian Civil War
  • ISIL ordered males aged 15 and older in Raqqa, its de facto Syrian capital, to register with the police, an action seen as the first step toward forced conscriptions in this region. (Al Jazeera America)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015 Pacific typhoon season
  • The death toll from Tropical Storm Koppu that battered the Phillippines' main island this weekend climbed to at least 39. Koppu forced more than 100,000 villagers into emergency shelters and destroyed rice fields ready for harvest. (AP) (BBC)
• A U.S. F-18 fighter jet crashes into farmland near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk county, England, killing the pilot. (Sky News)

Health and medicine

• The American Academy of Pediatrics calls for pregnant women to abstain completely from alcohol during the entire three trimesters of the pregnancy, saying no amount of any type of alcohol should be considered safe since the risks, to the baby in particular (such as fetal alcohol syndrome, among many others), are too great. This puts the U.S. alongside other Western developed countries- except Italy and the United Kingdom, which still allow occasional small amounts- in urging complete abstinence. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the two other U.S. agencies that comment most about this issue, already recommend total alcohol abstinence. (CNN)

International relations

• Syrian Civil War
  • The President of Syria Bashar al-Assad visits Moscow for talks with the President of Russia Vladimir Putin in an unannounced visit. (BBC)
• Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approves the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, and orders it to be implemented subject to certain conditions. The letter states the United States and European Union should clearly announce the elimination of sanctions against Iran. The imposition of sanctions at any level and under any pretext from any of the negotiating countries would violate the JCPOA. (Reuters) (Mehr News Agency) (Daily Mail)
• The Vatican denies an Italian newspaper report that Pope Francis has a benign brain tumour, saying the 78-year-old pontiff is in good health, and denounces the article as utterly reprehensible. (Reuters) (AP via Philly.com)

Law and crime

• New York City police officer Randolph Holder, 33, has died from gunshot wounds sustained in the line of duty. An immigrant from Guyana, Holder was on the force for five years. He is the fourth NYPD officer to have been killed in less than a year. (New York Times)
• Two Chinese consulate staff are killed and a consul general injured after a gunman opened fire on a restaurant in the city of Cebu, the "second city" of the Philippines. Various reports named the gunman as Chinese national Li Qingliang. (The Telegraph)
• St. Louis' police chief announces officers are stepping up patrols following fires at six predominantly African-American churches this past fortnight. No one has been injured in any of the fires. The reward for information leading to an arrest is now $4,000; the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association will match the $2,000 reward being offered by the St. Louis Regional Crime Stoppers and the ATF. The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and the Anti-Defamation League suggest the fires may be arson sparked by racist motivations. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) (NBC News)
• Wikileaks claims to have released released some of the contents of Central Intelligence Agency director John O. Brennan's private e-mails. (BBC)

Politics and elections

• United States presidential election, 2016
  • The Vice President of the United States Joe Biden says that he will not be seeking the Democratic Party nomination. (Los Angeles Times blog) (Washington Post)