April 22, 2017 (Saturday)
Arts and culture
- Pope Francis, while honoring Christians killed under Nazism, communism, dictatorships, and terrorism at Rome's Basilica of St. Bartholomew, adds to those named the wife of a Muslim he met in Lesbos, Greece, who was killed by terrorists because she wouldn't throw down her crucifix. Francis referred to the Lesbos camp as a 'concentration camp' noting, despite the good will of local communities, many refugee camps are overcrowded and little more than prisons. (Reuters) (Catholic News Service)
Business and economy
- American Airlines announces it is investigating a viral video of an incident on a San Francisco to Dallas flight which shows a male flight attendant upsetting a female passenger, who he had allegedly forcefully taken a baby buggy from, and threatening to fight a male passenger. The American Airlines employee has been suspended. (The Washington Post) (Reuters)
- Saudi Arabia's King Salman issues a number of royal decrees, one which restores financial allowances for civil servants and military personnel that had been cut seven months ago in response to the drop in oil prices. (Reuters) (Yahoo! Finance)[permanent dead link]
Law and crime
- Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven is found guilty of war crimes and arms trafficking for using his lumber business to sell weapons to Liberia's former president Charles Taylor during the country's civil war between 2000 and 2003 and is sentenced to 19 years in prison. (The Guardian)
Politics and elections
- 2017 French presidential election
- The campaign period officially ends. French citizens living overseas begin voting a day ahead of when the polls open in France. Final opinion polling gives Emmanuel Macron a slight lead over Marine Le Pen. François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon are close behind. (Deutsche Welle) (UPI)
- French voters are protected from a barrage of last minute campaign pushes, including those via tweets and/or other social media, by rules that prohibit such communications for 44 hours during elections, from Friday midnight until Sunday 8:00 p.m. CEST. (AP)
- Thousands of German riot police are deployed to control protesters opposing the Alternative for Germany at the party's conference in Cologne. (BBC)
- Venezuelan protests
- Dressed in white, the Venezuela opposition march, in silence, to the headquarters of the country's Catholic archdiocese to honor the more than a dozen people killed in three weeks of protests. For the first time, protesters were able to cross from the east to the western side of Caracas without being confronted by state security. (AP via U.S. News & World Report) (AFP via The Straits Times)
Science and technology
- March for Science
- People around the world gather during Earth Day to bring awareness to science. (The Guardian)
- The United Kingdom, on Friday, did not derive energy from any coal-fired source, the first continuous 24-hour, coal-free period for the UK since use of the fossil fuel began. Coal accounted for just 9 percent of the electricity generated last year. (Sky News)