Portal:Current events/2015 January 6

• Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
  • Clashes with ISIL in Anbar province kill twenty-three Iraqi Army soldiers and allied Sunni fighters. (AP via The Hindu)
  • The Combined Joint Task Force combating ISIL conducts ten airstrikes in Syria, eight of them targeting the contested city of Kobani, with the airstrikes destroying fourteen ISIL fighting positions and a building. (Reuters)
• A suicide bomber kills herself and a policeman in an attack on a police station in a popular tourist district in the Turkish city of Istanbul. (New York Times)

• Officials in the American state of Massachusetts open a time capsule left behind by founding fathers Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. (Reuters via Yahoo! News)

• American luxury fashion company Coach, Inc. agrees to purchase shoe brand Stuart Weitzman for $574 million. (Wall Street Journal)
• The price of crude oil drops to $48 per barrel, the lowest since April of 2009. (KGO)

• A military truck collides with a bus carrying members of the National Guard of Ukraine in Ukraine, killing 12 soldiers and injuring 20 others. (BBC)
• Two commuter trains collide at Mesquita, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, injuring 158 people. (AFP via News24)

• Scientists at Oxford University begin a new Ebola vaccine trial on 72 healthy volunteers. (BBC)
• 43 US states report an epidemic of influenza, with 21 confirmed deaths. (NBC News)

• Cuba–United States relations
  • Cuba starts releasing political prisoners as part of an historic agreement with the United States announced last month. (The Guardian)

• Thai police arrest Gurmeet Singh convicted of involvement in a bombing in Chandigarh that killed 18 people in 1996, including Beant Singh who was then chief minister of Punjab. (Reuters)
• Various California state district attorneys fine Safeway a total of $10 million for the illegal dumping of electronics and pharmaceuticals into landfills. (KPIX)
• A man claiming to be the Lord's Resistance Army top commander Ugandan Dominic Ongwen turns himself in to United States forces in the Central African Republic. (AP)
• A U.S. District Judge sentences former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to two years in prison for corruption. (AP via FOX News)
• A gunman shoots a doctor at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, and then kills himself. (Daily Mail)
• An improvised device explodes outside of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP with no injuries. (ABC News)

• The 114th United States Congress begins. (ABC News)
• The US Congress re-elects John Boehner to his third term as Speaker. (USA Today)

• NASA's Kepler space observatory announces the discovery of three new planets in the Goldilocks zone capable of supporting life. (News Limited)

• Major League Baseball
  • A proposal to change the demolition of Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California from a gradual process to implosion has been met with opposition from the city's residents, citing health risks from the dispersal of concrete dust. (KGO)
  • The Baseball Hall of Fame announces the results of balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) for the Hall's induction class of 2015. The BBWAA elects Randy Johnson, Pedro Martínez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio; this marks the first time since 1955 that the group has elected four players. (Boston Herald)