Portal:Current events/2018 January 11
January 11, 2018 (Thursday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Israeli–Palestinian conflict
- Two 16-year-old Palestinians are shot and killed in separate clashes with the Israeli army. (The Washington Post)
Arts and culture
- Bowing to pressure, French publisher Gallimard suspends plans to reprint a compendium of "violently antisemitic pamphlets" by novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline. (The Guardian)
Business and economy
- Walmart employee wages
- Walmart announces that it will increase the minimum wage for its U.S. employees to $11 per hour and close 50 Sam's Club stores. (USA Today)
- Legal status of cryptocurrency
- The South Korean Ministry of Justice announces that it is a preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through exchanges. (ABC News Australia)
Disasters and accidents
- 2018 Southern California mudflows
- The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office reports this afternoon that up to 43 people are still missing from Tuesday's mudslides as rescuers continue to search through Montecito’s massive debris field; this morning the report had been eight missing. The casualty numbers are expected to rise. (Los Angeles Times)
International relations
- Iran–United States relations
- The Trump administration through the U.S. Justice Department establishes the Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team to assist with the DEA's Project Cassandra investigation into groups supporting Hezbollah. (Reuters)
- United States–European Union relations
- The United Kingdom, France, and Germany call on U.S. President Donald Trump to endorse the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. (France 24)
Law and crime
- Media of the Philippines
- The Securities and Exchange Commission revokes the license of Rappler over its use of Philippine Depository Receipts (PDRs) issued to Omidyar Network. The commission ruled that the provisions of the PDRs issued by Rappler to Omidyar violates constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership and control of companies. Critics of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte condemned the move as an "attack on press freedom". (GMA News) (Reuters)
- Murder of Zainab Ansari
- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
- The United States House of Representatives passes a bill to reauthorize, for a period of six years, a key foreign intelligence collection program, permitted by Section 702. Changes to the program will require the FBI to get a probable cause warrant if it wants to view the contents of Americans' communications swept up in the process. (Time)
- WikiLeaks, Julian Assange political asylum and life at the Ecuadorian embassy
- It is revealed that Ecuador granted citizenship to Julian Assange. Ecuador granted him asylum in August 2012 and he has remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London avoiding extradition to Sweden on rape charges. Subsequently, Swedish authorities dropped the charges in May 2017. (The Guardian)
- Weinstein effect
- Twitter posts disseminate claims that actor Kirk Douglas (aged 101) had been accused in the past of having sexually assaulted actress Natalie Wood when she was 16 years old (c. 1954). (Mediaite.com)
- 1964 Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
- Former Ku Klux Klan organizer and convicted murderer Edgar Ray Killen dies in prison at the age of 92. (The New York Times)
Politics and elections
- Haiti–United States relations
- U.S. President Donald Trump refers to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as "shithole countries" in a private meeting. (CNN)
Sports
- The world's oldest professional football player, 51-year-old Kazuyoshi Miura ("King Kazu"), has extended his contract with Yokohama FC, to take him into his 33rd professional season. (CNN)