Portal:Current events/2014 June 4

• 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine:
  • Separatists capture two Ukrainian Military bases in Luhansk Oblast as fighting continues near the rebel-held town of Sloviansk. (BBC News)
• A suicide car bomber detonates his vehicle at the residence of Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi, Libya, killing four of his guards and injuring another three. (Washington Post)
• A suicide bomber detonates his explosives near a military vehicle in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing five people. (Voice of America)
• Iraqi Civil War begins.

• The master stylist John Banville wins this year's Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, announced in Oviedo, Spain. (Euronews) (The Irish Times)
• Eimear McBride wins the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction with A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, beating the American Donna Tartt's 771-page opus The Goldfinch. (The Guardian)

• Japanese life insurance company Dai-ichi Life purchases financial service holding company Protective Life for $5.7 billion. (Bloomberg)
• American multinational private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts purchases American new media company Internet Brands for $1.1 billion. (Los Angeles Times)

• Mexico passes a law that increases the minimal sentence for kidnappers from 20 to 40, and the maximum from 50 to 140. (InSight Crime)
• Authorities in China crack down on dissidents on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Human Rights Watch)
• Thirty-five people, including Giorgio Orsoni, the Mayor of Venice, are arrested in Italy on corruption charges in connection with the MOSE Project. (BBC News)
• The Attorney General of Germany, Harald Range, opens an investigation into the alleged NSA surveillance of Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. (BBC News)
• The International Court of Arbitration in The Hague urges China to respond to Philippines v. China, the case filed by the Philippines regarding the Nine-dotted line. (Voice of America)
• Moncton shooting
  • In the city of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, an armed gunman shoots five RCMP officers, killing three. (CBC)

• In basketball, the attorney for banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling tells ESPN that Sterling will drop his lawsuit against the NBA and will allow the sale of the team to Steve Ballmer to go through. (ESPN)