April 25, 2019 (Thursday)
Arts and culture
- The parliament of Ukraine passes a language law in a vote of 278 to 38 that will secure the use of Ukrainian as the country's only official language. (RFE/RL)
Disasters and accidents
- Tornadoes of 2019
- Tornadoes spawned by severe weather in Texas and Louisiana cause at least five deaths and over 17,000 power outages. (USA Today) (CBS News)
- An ammonia leak in a Chicago suburb hospitalizes 37 people. (Time)
- A Texas semi truck driver with no criminal record is arrested and faces 4 counts of vehicular homicide after he told police his brakes were failing on I-70 as it descended from the mountains in Colorado and caused a 28 vehicle crash. (CBS Denver)
International relations
- War in Donbass, Russian military intervention in Ukraine
- Russia announces it will fast-track citizenship applications from people living in conflict areas in eastern Ukraine. The European Union calls the move an attack on Ukraine's sovereignty that would undermine any peace agreement. (Reuters)
- The Washington Post reports that in June 2017 President Donald Trump secured the release of Otto Warmbier, a dying prisoner of North Korea, by agreeing to pay the regime in that country $2 million, described as a payment for hospital bills. (The Washington Post)
Law and crime
- Abortion in the United States by state
- A federal district court in Washington State issues a preliminary injunction against enforcement of an initiative by the Donald Trump administration ("gag order") that would have restricted doctor-patient communications about abortion in family planning clinics that receive U.S. taxpayer funding. (Reuters)
Politics and elections
- 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries
- Former Senator and Vice President Joe Biden announces he is running for the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. (The New York Times)
Science and technology
- List of gravitational wave observations
- LIGO detects a second neutron star merger using its gravitational wave signal after the first such detection in August 2017. (Syracuse University)