Portal:Current events/2017 February 18

February 18, 2017 (Saturday)

Disasters and accidents

2017 Leuven derailment
- One person is killed and 20 are injured when a passenger train derails near Leuven, Belgium. (Sky News)
A bus traveling to Chile overturns in Argentina's Mendoza Province, killing at least 19 people. (Reuters)

International relations

China–North Korea relations, North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
- China's Ministry of Commerce suspends all coal imports from North Korea until the end of 2017, as part of international sanctions against North Korea over its ballistic missile program. (The Washington Post)
War in Donbass
- At the Munich Security Conference, a truce between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian army, per the Minsk Protocol, takes effect Monday. Pending a permanent political agreement, Russian President Vladimir Putin orders that civil registration documents issued in separatist-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine be temporarily recognized. Ukrainian authorities say this violates provisions in the Minsk agreement. This is the third such agreement because the previous two in 2014 and 2015 were violated. Low-level fighting and artillery fire never fully stopped. (Al Jazeera) (CNN)

Law and crime

According to the United Nations, as many as 96 families have been displaced by criminal gangs who are filling the vacuum left by FARC rebels in Colombia after the latter signed a peace deal with the government last year. (BBC)
Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, dies in his federal prison cell in Butner, North Carolina. (CNN)

Politics and elections

As many as fifty thousand people gather in Manila for a march organized by the Philippine Catholic Church to protest the Philippine Drug War. (International Business Times) (Fox News)
Adama Barrow is officially sworn in as the Gambia's new President. (BBC)

Science and technology

SpaceX CRS-10
- SpaceX delays the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida due to a technical issue. The Falcon 9 will resupply the International Space Station. (CNBC)

Sports