Portal:Current events/2019 February 12
February 12, 2019 (Tuesday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Four Pakistani police officers are shot dead by a Jamaat-ul-Ahrar splinter group. Three additional officers are injured. (Reuters)
Arts and culture
- King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden confirms the election of Finnish writer and poet Tua Forsström as a new member of the Swedish Academy, the body that formally decides the annual winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Swedish Academy)
Disasters and accidents
- Delhi hotel fire
- At least 17 people are killed in a fire at a hotel in Delhi, India. (BBC News)
International relations
- Greece–North Macedonia relations
- The Republic of Macedonia officially changes its name to North Macedonia, ending a long-standing naming dispute with neighbouring Greece. (The Guardian)
- 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, United States–Venezuela relations
- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in an interview with the BBC's Orla Guerin, accuses U.S. President Donald Trump of being openly a white supremacist who is "warmongering against Venezuela", saying that "the Ku Klux Klan is running the White House". (BBC News) (Evening Standard)
Law and crime
- A Swedish district court rejects the application of a European arrest warrant to extradite from Sweden to Poland a Stalinist-era judge, Stefan Michnik, suspected of issuing unlawful death sentences to underground fighters in the 1950s. (Radio Poland)
- Spanish constitutional crisis, 2017 Catalan independence referendum
- United States of America v. Joaquín Guzmán Loera
- At his trial in a Brooklyn federal court, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is found guilty on all 10 counts; the charges include engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to launder narcotics proceeds, international distribution of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and other drugs, and use of firearms during the commission of a felony. (CNN)
- All 78 inmates escape from a prison in Aquin, Haiti, amid ongoing unrest in the country that has left four people dead. (BBC News)
Politics and elections
- Retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly announces that he will run for the 2020 United States Senate special election in Arizona. (CNN)
- Jody Wilson-Raybould resigns as Canada's Minister of Veterans Affairs less than one month into her term amid allegations she had been pressured by the Prime Minister's Office to go easy on SNC-Lavalin while she was Minister of Justice. (Reuters)
Science and technology
- A wreck at the site of the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands is identified as the WWII-era U.S. Naval aircraft carrier USS Hornet. (CBS News)
Sports
- Rikako Ikee, 18-year-old Japanese swimmer who won six gold medals at 2018 Asian Games, announces that she has been diagnosed with leukemia. (CNN)
- North and South Korea announce they will launch a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics. (The Guardian)