December 20, 2014 (Saturday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- War in North-West Pakistan
- The Pakistan Armed Forces attacks two Pakistani Taliban positions near Peshawar, killing 5 militants. (BBC)
- Israeli–Palestinian conflict
- Israel launches an airstrike against an alleged Hamas base near Khan Yunis in retaliation for a rocket attack. (Euronews)(The Jerusalem Post)
- A bomb detonates in Bani Jamra, Bahrain, injuring 3 police officers. (AP via Wall Street Journal)
- Sony Pictures Entertainment hack
- The North Korean government denies the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations's (FBI) accusation of involvement in hacking Sony's computers, asking the U.S. for a joint investigation and threatening "serious consequences" if the United States refuses the offer of cooperation. (Bloomberg)
- The United States rejects the offer from North Korea and then seeks help from China instead. (LA Times)
- Hackers send the FBI an email linking to a YouTube video of "You are an idiot!" (The Daily Beast)(ITV)
Law and crime
- Turkey issues an arrest warrant for Fethullah Gülen, who currently lives in self-imposed exile in the United States. (New York Times)
- Cairns child killings
- Queensland police arrest an Australian mother for murder in the stabbing deaths of eight children. (FOX News)
- 2014 NYPD officer killings
- After shooting and wounding his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore, Ismaaiyl Brinsley shoots and kills two policemen execution style in Brooklyn, New York, supposedly in revenge for the deaths of two black men in the U.S. reportedly caused by police officers during the summer of 2014, Eric Garner and Michael Brown. The gunman is later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the subway. (CNN)(AP via CBS)
- Hundreds of people from the group Black Lives Matter Minneapolis protest at the Mall of America, leading to its partial shutdown and 25 arrests. (USA Today)
Science and technology
- In preparation for a government-proposed transportation tunnel, anthropologists discover 6,000-year-old charcoal at a site near Stonehenge suggesting an encampment existed much earlier than previously theorized. (Huffington Post)(The Telegraph)(University of Buckingham)