Portal:Current events/2017 December 18

• Twitter suspends the accounts of well-known white nationalists per recently implemented new offensive content rules. (AP via Time)
• Texas Rangers baseball pitcher Cole Hamels and his wife Heidi donate their mansion and 100 acres of land in southwestern Missouri, valued at nearly $10 million, to Camp Barnabas, a charity with camps in the Missouri Ozarks for children with special needs and chronic illnesses along with their siblings. (New York Post) (ESPN)

• 2017 Washington train derailment
  • At least three people are killed and 77 injured when an Amtrak passenger train derails on an Interstate 5 overpass in Pierce County, Washington. This train is part of a new Cascades service from Tacoma that launched the same morning. (CNN) (CBS News) (The Olympian)
• A Polish MiG-29 crash lands in a forest near Mińsk Mazowiecki. The pilot survived despite not ejecting. (TVN24)

• United States recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital
  • The United States vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for it to withdraw its declaration of a capital in Jerusalem, which was approved by the other 14 members. (Reuters)
• United States–North Korea relations
  • The United States and the United Kingdom claim North Korea is directly responsible for the WannaCry ransomware attack which occurred earlier this year. (BBC)

• Weinstein effect
  • U.S. radio preacher Brother Stair (host of The Overcomer Ministry) is arrested on seven charges of sexual assault and one county of burglary. (Walterboro Live) (The Post and Courier)
  • The show will discontinue its radio broadcasts on January 1, 2018 but will continue on satellite and its website. (The Overcomer Ministry)
• Aftermath of the Unite the Right rally
  • Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas announces his retirement. He was previously criticized for his poor handling of the rally and counterprotests. (NPR) (WTVR)

• Austrian legislative election, 2017
  • Sebastian Kurz becomes the new Chancellor of Austria and a new government is inaugurated. (Bloomberg)
• Politics of South Africa
  • Cyril Ramaphosa becomes president of the African National Congress (ANC), defeating Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma by 2,440 votes to 2,261. (News24)
• Politics of the United States
  • President of the United States Donald Trump presents a new National Security Strategy document that labels China and Russia as the primary threats to U.S. economic dominance. (BBC)

• Earliest known life forms
  • University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers report, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that microscopic fossils discovered in a nearly 3.5 billion-year-old piece of rock in Western Australia are the oldest fossils ever found and the earliest direct evidence of life on Earth. (Phys.org) (The Times)