May 14, 2013 (Tuesday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- War in Afghanistan (2001–2021):
- The Taliban kills four US soldiers in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. (BBC)
- Nigerian Sharia conflict:
- The President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, declares a state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe to fight an Islamist insurgency. (AP via Houston Chronicle)
Arts and culture
- American actress Angelina Jolie announces that she underwent an elective double mastectomy due to her family history of lethal cases of breast cancer. (USA Today)
Business and economy
- Greek civil servants hold a 24-hour strike after the government proposes to use emergency powers to stop striking teachers from disrupting university exams. (AP via ABC)
Disasters and accidents
- Due to dehydration and exhaustion, Beyoncé cancels night one of what was to be two consecutive nights performing in Antwerp, Belgium, on the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour; reschedules it to May 31, 2013.
- A tunnel collapses at Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia's Papua province trapping approximately thirty workers. (AFP via Inquirer)
- Several boats carrying over 100 Rohingya Muslims away from an oncoming cyclone capsize off the coast of Myanmar leaving only 42 survivors. (Wall Street Journal)
Law and crime
- An alleged CIA agent is arrested in Moscow for trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer. (BBC), (Sky News)
- The United States fines the Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Laboratories US$500 million after they are found guilty of selling adulterated drugs to the United States. (AFP via Google News)
- Convicted murderer, abortion physician Kermit Gosnell, in a plea bargain, trades away his appeals in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole. (CNN)
- The U.S. Internal Revenue Service admits that it targeted certain classes of conservative groups (mainly those who had the words "Tea Party", "Patriot", and other related words in their titles) for special scrutiny. (FOX News)
Politics and elections
- Voters in Canada's British Columbia Province go to the polls to select members to the province's Legislative Assembly. (CTV News)
- Former President of the Philippines Joseph Estrada is declared as the winner of the mayoral election in the capital Manila. (AP via Brooklyn News 12)[permanent dead link]
- The British Conservative Party publishes a draft European Union (Referendum) Bill aimed at holding a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union by 2017. (BBC)
- Kenyan protestors release dozens of pigs in front of parliament to protest perceived greed. (AFP via Google News)
- Brazil becomes the fifteenth country to legalise same-sex marriage. (Huffington Post)
Science and technology
- A Soyuz capsule carrying astronauts Chris Hadfield of Canada, Thomas Marshburn of the United States and Roman Romanenko of Russia of Expedition 35 back from the International Space Station lands safely in Kazakhstan. (Herald-Sun)
- Chinese mathematician Yitang Zhang proves that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by 70 million or less. This proof is a breakthrough in proving that there are infinitely many twin primes, one of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics. (Scientific American)