Current events: 2026-05-21

[Wikipedia Current Events]

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Russo-Ukrainian war
  • Belarusian involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war
    • Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko says that his country will not join the current Russo-Ukrainian war, and says that he is ready to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (Kyiv Post)
• Sudanese civil war
  • Kordofan campaign
    • The Sudan Doctors Network reports that a drone strike by Rapid Support Forces and Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North in Dilling, South Kordofan, Sudan has injured six people. (AA)

Disasters and accidents

• Ten people are killed in a head-on collision between a minibus and a bus in Mpumalanga, South Africa. (Xinhua)
• At least nine people are killed and nine others are injured when a building collapses in Fez, Morocco. (Reuters)

Health and environment

• 2026 Ebola epidemic
  • The South Korean foreign ministry says that South Korea will raise its travel alert for Uganda and is planning to impose a level-4 travel ban for parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially the Ituri Province, due to the Ebola outbreak in both countries. (Yonhap)
  • An Ebola treatment center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is set ablaze by residents in outage over the handling of the public health crisis. (Journal Gazette)

International relations

• Greenland crisis
  • Protests against Donald Trump
    • Greenlanders gather to protest the opening of the new U.S. consulate in Nuuk in opposition of U.S president Donald Trump's efforts to purchase Greenland. (Reuters)
  • The United States inaugurates a new consulate in Nuuk, Greenland amidst the Trump administration's focus on the Arctic and tensions over efforts to purchase it. (Politico EU) (Democrata ES)
  • Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen says that he will not attend the opening ceremony of the new U.S. consulate in Nuuk. (AA)
  • U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Ken Howery says that Trump has ruled out the use of military force against Greenland. (Xinhua)

Law and crime

• Capital punishment in the United States
  • Capital punishment in Alabama
    • Hamm v. Smith
      • The U.S. Supreme Court dimisses an appeal by the state of Alabama challenging a lower court decision to block the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith, an intellectually disabled man convicted of a 1997 murder. The court says that executing Smith would violate his constitutional rights. (The Guardian)
• The Court of Appeal of Paris, France, convicts Airbus and Air France of manslaughter over the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed 228 people, and orders both companies to pay the maximum corporate fine and compensation to victims' families. (Al Jazeera) (The New York Times)

Politics and elections

• Constitutional crisis in Somalia, 2026 Somali presidential election
  • Controversies of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud
    • Government of Puntland Council of Ministers meeting in Puntland's capital, Garowe, calls for direct cooperation with the international community, stating federal executive and legislative mandates under the provisional constitution have ended. The move comes as federal institutions enter a transitional phase with unclear mandates. (Garowe Online) (Horseed Media)
• 2024 United States presidential election
  • Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin releases the full autopsy report into the Democratic Party's defeat in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. (Axios)

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