Portal:Current events/2016 May 31

May 31, 2016 (2016-05-31) (Tuesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Syrian Civil War
  • At least 23 people are killed in overnight air strikes in Idlib, Syria. (CNN) (BBC)
• War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
  • Suspect Taliban militants kill nine and kidnap 170 in an attack on three passenger buses in Kunduz, Afghanistan. (Reuters) (CNN)

Business and economics

• In the United States, a Delaware court rules Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners underpriced their 2013 $24.9 billion buyout of Dell Inc. by about 22 percent, and may have to pay tens of millions to investors who opposed the deal. (Financial Times) [1]
  • The Wall Street Journal reports that administrative mistakes by asset manager T. Rowe Price led it to vote in favor of the deal, even though it had vocally opposed it in the runup to the vote. (Wall Street Journal) (Fortune)

Disasters and accidents

• At least 17 army personnel are killed in a fire in an ammunitions depot in the Indian town of Pulgaon, Maharashtra. (The New York Times) (NDTV) (AFP via ABC News Australia)
• A five-storey apartment block collapses in Russian city of Mezhdurechensk, killing one man and injuring three. (RT)

Law and crime

• The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules (12-3) a warrant is not required for police to obtain a person's cellphone location data from wireless carriers. (Reuters)

International relations

• In an interview with the German broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine, the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama says that Germany has taken too many refugees and "from a moral standpoint" refugees should "only be accommodated temporarily" — with the goal of them returning home to rebuild their countries. (NBC News)
• North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
  • North Korea attempts again to launch a BM25 Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of striking South Korea or Japan but is unsuccessful. (The Guardian)
• A recent Global Slavery Index report estimates the number of people born into servitude, trafficked for sex work, in debt bondage, or forced labour to be 45.8 million. India is reported to have the highest number at an estimated 18.4 million slaves, and North Korea the highest ratio, 4.4 percent of its population. (Reuters) (Bloomberg)

Politics and elections

• Iranian legislative election, 2016
  • Ali Larijani is reelected chairman of the Iranian Parliament for a one year term while Masoud Pezeshkian and Ali Motahari are elected deputy chairpersons. All three elected members were supported by List of Hope in the recent election. (Yahoo! news) (Xinhau net) (The New York Times)
• Papua conflict
  • Thousands of people take to the streets of Jayapura and other towns in Papua, Indonesia, in support of the Free Papua Movement and its effort to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group. Indonesia responded with a large police and military presence, with reports of police firing on demonstrators in Wamena and arresting dozens across the province. (Radio New Zealand)
• Mohamed Abdelaziz, the leader of the Polisario Front which fought for the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco, dies after leading the group since 1976. (Al Jazeera)
• 2016 United States presidential election
  • Conservative leaders seeking an alternative to the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump are urging Tennessee attorney and National Review writer David French to enter the 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate. (The Washington Post)

Sports

• Association football icon Pelé announces that he will sell 1,500 lots of his possessions via Julien's Auctions, which will include his medals, trophies, jerseys, and diplomatic gifts. (BBC)

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