Portal:Current events/2018 December 21

• Colombian conflict
  • Ecuadorian drug trafficker and FARC dissident Walter Arizala is killed in a joint police and military operation near Tumaco. Arízala was wanted for the murder of two Ecuadorian journalists earlier in the year. (BBC)

• Gatwick Airport drone incident
  • Two people are arrested by Sussex Police and charged with "criminal use of drones". (The Guardian)

• At least 23 people are killed and 14 injured in Dang Deukhuri District, Nepal, when a bus carrying students and their teachers returning from a botanical trip runs off a road and plunges 700 meters into a ravine. (BBC)
• At least 13 miners, eleven Poles and two Czechs, are killed and 10 injured in a methane explosion in a coal mine in Karvina, Czech Republic. (BBC)
• Five people are killed and dozens injured when a train slams into a bus carrying school students in Niš, Serbia. (BBC)

• Criminal justice reform in the United States
  • U.S. President Donald Trump signs the First Step Act, a bipartisan prison and sentencing reform bill, into law. (The Guardian)
• Carlos Ghosn, formerly the chairman of Nissan, is arrested again on suspicion of shifting personal losses to the company. (Wall Street Journal)
• A Canadian judge denies former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr's request for relaxed bail conditions and a Canadian passport. (Seattle Times) (CBC)

• 2019 United States federal budget
  • The U.S. Congress adjourns for the night before reaching a new budget agreement, starting a partial federal government shutdown that began the next day at 12:00 a.m. EST (05:00 UTC). (NBC News)
• A motion of no confidence is passed by the National Assembly of Guyana with a vote of 33–32, triggering early elections scheduled for 2019. (St. Lucia News Online)

• Largest known prime number
  • The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search announces the discovery of a new Mersenne prime, 2^82,589,933-1. It has 24,862,048 decimal digits, which surpasses the previous record by over 1.5 million digits. (NPR)