Portal:Current events/2019 August 14

• Syrian Civil War, 2019 Northwestern Syria offensive
  • A Syrian Air Force Sukhoi Su-22 jet is shot down by rebel forces near the town of Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib Governorate, Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadists say they have captured the pilot. (BBC News) (Al Masdar News)

• Economy of Germany
  • The Federal Statistical Office of Germany discloses that Germany's gross domestic product shrank by 0.1% in the second quarter. (The Guardian)
• The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a U.S.-based organization that aims to keep educational materials broadly accessible, has asked the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department to halt a planned merger between two large textbook companies, McGraw-Hill and Cengage, a merger it claims will cause students "irreparable harm". (Reuters)

• California regulators announce a ban on chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate nerve agent used as a pesticide. (Los Angeles Times)
• France bans electric pulse fishing. (AFP via Yahoo! News}

• August 2019 Philadelphia shooting
  • Six police officers are shot, sustaining non-life threatening injuries, by a gunman in Philadelphia; a seventh officer is injured in a related automobile accident nearby. (CNN) (NBC News)
• Nisour Square massacre
  • In a third trial, Nicholas Slatten is sentenced to life in prison. (AFP via VoA)

• Crisis in Venezuela
  • Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro creates a new government ministry, the Ministry of Tourism and Foreign Trade. (Venezuelanalysis)
  • Tarek William Saab strips the parliamentary immunity of the opposition politicians Juan Pablo García, Tomás Guanipa and José Guerra. (Venezuelanalysis)
  • A Norwegian delegation arrives in Venezuela to restart dialogues to end the presidential crisis. (Reuters)