Current events: 2025-04-08

[Wikipedia Current Events]

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Russo-Ukrainian War
  • 2025 Belgorod Oblast incursion
    • Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirms the presence of Ukrainian troops active in Russia's Belgorod Oblast. (BBC News)

Disasters and accidents

• Jet Set nightclub roof collapse
  • At least 66 people, including former Major League Baseball players Tony Blanco and Octavio Dotel, are killed and 150 others are injured when the roof of a nightclub collapses during a performance by merengue singer Rubby Pérez, who is among the dead, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. (NBC News) (El País)
• The death toll from the heavy flooding in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, caused by overflow of the Ndjili River increases to 33 deaths. Hundreds of buildings are completely submerged and thousands of people are trapped in their homes. (NPR) (DW)
• About 50 hippos are killed by Anthrax poisoning at Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo, the oldest national park in the county. (CTV News)

Health and environment

• 2020–2025 H5N1 outbreak
  • Mexico reports its first human death from bird flu subtype H5N1 which caused multiple organ failure in a three-year-old girl in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico. (Reuters)

International relations

• China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China–Russia relations, China–Ukraine relations
  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reports that Ukrainian armed forces captured two Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian military in Donetsk, with Ukrainian intelligence reporting several more Chinese soldiers present. The report marks the first official allegation of direct Chinese government involvement in providing manpower for Russia against Ukraine. (BBC)

Law and crime

• 2024 Democratic Republic of the Congo coup attempt, Democratic Republic of the Congo–United States relations
  • Three U.S. citizens are commuted of their crime of attempting a coup against the Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi in 2024 and extradited back to the United States. They were previously sentenced to death along with 34 others for the failed attempt that killed six people, including the coup's leader Christian Malanga. (NPR)
• Mass shootings in the United States
  • Three people are killed and three others are injured in a mass shooting in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, United States. (Fox News)

Politics and elections

• Asylum in Germany
  • The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees orders a temporary halt to a United Nations refugee resettlement program which it has participated in since 2012, citing the change in government. The new coalition government is expected to restart the program when a new interior minister is announced. (DW)
• Associated Press v. Budowich, Second presidency of Donald Trump
  • U.S. district judge for the District Court of D.C. Trevor N. McFadden orders the White House to restore the Associated Press's full access to cover presidential events on First Amendment grounds, overruling the Trump administration's previous order to ban the news agency after it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America". (AP) (The Hill)

Continue reading...