Portal:Current events/2018 March 27

March 27, 2018 (Tuesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Terrorism in the United Kingdom
- Old Bailey Justice Charles Haddon-Cave sentences convicted terrorist Umar Haque, who indoctrinated children he was teaching in London so that he could use them to commit attacks, to lifetime incarceration with parole eligibility only after 25 years. (The Evening Standard)
Islamophobic incidents in the United Kingdom
- Justice Michael Alexander Soole sentences Paul Moore to lifetime incarceration with a minimum imprisonment of 20 years for using his car to attack Muslims following a string of terror attacks in 2017 linked to Islamic extremism. (The Guardian)
War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
- NATO says the Afghan Air Force dropped its first laser-guided bomb on a Taliban compound on March 22. NATO have trained the Afghans in use of the equipment. (ABC)
Turkish involvement in the Syrian Civil War
- The government of Turkey states that eleven Kurdish militants have been killed near its Syrian border, and two soldiers were killed by an explosion in Syria. (US News)

Disasters and accidents

History of autonomous cars
- U.S. graphics processing unit producer Nvidia suspends all its tests of self-driving cars. (The Verge)
History of the electric vehicles
- The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launches a probe into a Tesla electric car crash and fire in California. The NTSB says it will investigate issues firefighters had trying to determine how to respond. (Bloomberg)
2018 Kemerovo fire
- President Vladimir Putin visits the scene and declares "criminal negligence" responsible for the high death toll. (BBC)
Maritime incidents in 2018
- Two ships collide in the Great Belt strait between Funen and Zealand, near Romsø, Denmark. One catches fire. (The Local)
- Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) expands the search area to 560 square nautical miles for nine crewmen missing since March 21 from a capsized sand dredger off the coast of Malaysia. MMEA requests for the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency to assist in the operation. (The Malay Mail)
2017–18 Volvo Ocean Race
- Chilean search and rescue authorities declare that a crewman who fell overboard from a competitor vessel is lost at sea. (The Telegraph)
2018 in aviation
- The South Korean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board issues its final report on the March 2016 near-collision between a China Southern Airbus A319 and a Korean Air Boeing 737-800 on a runway in Cheongju, South Korea. The Board reports the Airbus crew misunderstood the full meaning of the specific ground control runway instruction. (The Aviation Herald)

International relations

Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping's meeting
- North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un meets with China's paramount leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, on what is his first known travel outside North Korea since assuming office in 2011. (Reuters)
Reactions to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal
- NATO and the government of Australia expel Russian diplomats. (The Independent), (The Guardian)
Netherlands–Turkey relations
- The government of the Netherlands recalls a diplomat from Turkey after local newspapers accused him of spying. (Dutch News)

Law and crime

Aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing
- A United Kingdom panel, chaired by the former head of the Home civil service, Lord Bob Kerslake, issues a report which concludes that firefighters were prevented from attending the scene of the bombing for two hours. The report makes more than 50 recommendations. (BBC)
Censorship in Spain
- A Madrid court issues an order shutting down a website that uses extracts from Don Quixote to recreate the book Farina. Farina, an investigation of drug trafficking, is the subject of a freedom of speech debate after a court halted sales ahead of a libel case. (AP via The Washington Post), (The Telegraph)
Crime in the United States
- The FBI arrests Everett, Washington, 43-year-old Thanh Cong Phan on suspicion of charges of illegally shipping explosive materials by sending 12 package bombs to the CIA as well as multiple military and government facilities in the Washington, D.C. area. Those devices did not explode. (CBS News)
Kent County, Michigan special prosecutor Bill Forsyth charges William Strampel, the former dean of the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan in East Lansing, Michigan, with misconduct in office, fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, and two counts of willful neglect of duty in connection with the Larry Nassar scandal. (Detroit Free Press)
Law enforcement in the Netherlands
- A Dutch court rules police are liable for a mass shooting at a shopping centre that killed six and wounded sixteen because the gunman should not have been issued a firearms licence. (Sky News)

Politics and elections

Egyptian presidential election, 2018
- Voting enters the second day. (Reuters)

Science and technology

Discoveries of exoplanets
- Led overall by researchers at Aix-Marseille Université in France using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, Nature Astronomy publishes observations of what may be a new exoplanet named K2-229b, whose attributes may resemble the planet of Mercury (hot, metallic, and dense). (Health Thoroughfare), (Phys), (Nature Astronomy)