Portal:Current events/2016 September 8

• War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
  • Taliban militants storm the city of Tarinkot, the provincial capital of Afghanistan's Urozgan Province, with fighting reported on multiple fronts throughout the city. Local officials flee to the nearby Tarinkot Airport for shelter. (The Los Angeles Times)

• The Police Department of Everett, Washington, identifies and returns the American flag from the September 11 attacks to Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in New York City. (Fox News)
• Solly Msimanga, newly elected Democratic Alliance mayor of Tshwane, South Africa, rejects a fleet of luxury cars for himself and instead donates it to the city's police. (BBC)

• International banking company Wells Fargo agrees to pay $190 million, including $100 million to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (largest ever for the agency), to settle a case involving deceptive sales that pushed customers into fee-generating accounts they never requested. The bank fired 5,300 employees over "inappropriate sales conduct." The firings took place over a five-year period. (Reuters)

• German scientists confirm that the cause of the Great Plague of London from 1665–1666 was Yersinia pestis (cause of the Bubonic plague). (BBC)

• Philippine Drug War
  • Budi Waseso, head of Indonesia's National Narcotics Agency (BNN, Badan Narkotika Nasional [id]), says he plans on copying Rodrigo Duterte's hardline tactics against drug traffickers, which have killed almost 3,000 people in the Philippines. (AFP via ABC)
• 2016 Zimbabwe protests
  • The High Court of Zimbabwe overturns bans on protests in Harare. (Al Jazeera)
• A court in the Indian city of Mumbai convicts and sentences Ankur Panwar to the death penalty for a fatal acid-throwing attack. (BBC)
• A female student at Alpine High School in Texas, U.S., shoots herself dead in what appeared to be an "active shooter" event, resulting in a student and police officer being injured. (The Chicago Tribune)
• 2016 Turkish purges
  • Turkey suspends 11,500 teachers over alleged links to separatist terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) a week before the start of school. (CNN) (Reuters) (BBC)

• Burial of Ferdinand Marcos
  • The Philippine Supreme Court postpones the burial of former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos until at least October 18. (The Philippine Star)
• Hovik Abrahamyan resigns as Prime Minister of Armenia citing civil unrest and a sharp economic downturn. (The Guardian)
• A high court in the State of Palestine suspends upcoming municipal elections. (Bloomberg)
• Uzbekistan’s parliament appoints Shavkat Mirziyoyev as interim president after the death of President Islam Karimov. (Newsweek)
• Newly-revealed secret information, decoded from documents from the Mitrokhin Archive, a collection of handwritten notes by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, who smuggled his notes out of Russia in the 1990s when he defected to Britain, show that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was once a "spy" under the Russian agency the KGB using the codename "Mole". (The Washington Post)
• The Obama administration chooses retired United States Air Force Brigadier General Gregory Touhill the first federal CISO chief, who reports to the CIO of the U.S. Tony Scott. (Reuters)(White House)(Fortune)

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launches its meteorological satellite INSAT-3DR into a geostationary transfer orbit atop its GSLV Mk II launch vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. (The Times of India)
• New Frontiers program
  • The United Launch Alliance successfully launches NASA's OSIRIS-REx from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida. The mission is to study asteroid 101955 Bennu and in 2023 to return a sample to Earth for detailed analysis. If successful, OSIRIS-REx will be the first U.S. spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid. (CNN) (The Guardian)
• The Earth has lost a tenth of its wilderness in the last two decades. (The Washington Post)
• Genetic tests show that the genus giraffa, previously thought to contain one extant species, actually consists of four. (BBC)

• American swimmer Ryan Lochte agrees to a 10-month suspension while his other colleagues get four. (USA Today)