Armed conflicts and attacks

• Israel–Hamas war
  • Rafah offensive
    • The Israeli military advances into northern and southern Gaza. (Reuters)
    • A staff member of the United Nations Department of Safety and Security is killed and another is injured in Rafah. (United Nations)
  • Israel–Hamas war hostage crisis
    • Hamas says that it has "lost contact" with the militants holding four Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. (Reuters)
  • At least 14 Palestinians are killed when an Israeli air strike hits a three-story house in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Most victims were women and children. (Middle East Eye)
• Russian invasion of Ukraine
  • 2024 Kharkiv offensive
    • Russia claims that its troops have entered the town of Vovchansk, {{conv|74|km|mi}} from Kharkiv. (BBC News)

Arts and culture

• Judge Judy Sheindlin sues A360media, the parent company of the National Enquirer and In Touch Weekly, for defamation in the Menendez brothers case. (AP)

Business and economy

• GameStop short squeeze
  • Three years after the previous GameStop stock squeeze, Redditors return to artificially inflate GameStop's share price by 75%, reaching an 18-month high. The share price of AMC Theatres also increases by more than 70%. (Reuters) (CNBC)
• Russia–United States relations
  • U.S. President Joe Biden signs a bill banning imports of uranium from Russia. (Reuters) (The Washington Post)

Disasters and accidents

• 2024 Rio Grande do Sul floods
  • The death toll from the ongoing heavy flooding in southern Brazil increases to 147 people, with 127 people still missing. (Reuters)
• Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse
  • The final remains of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, are demolished with explosives. (East Bay Times)
• The death toll from the flash flood and lahar in West Sumatra, Indonesia, increases to 43, with 15 others still missing. (Reuters)
• At least four people are killed, 61 are injured, and more than 40 are trapped after a billboard collapses during heavy rains in Mumbai, India. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• The Airlines for America trade association and several major American airlines file a lawsuit against the United States Department of Transportation over a rule requiring upfront disclosure of airline fees. (Reuters)
• Indonesian police conducts a major drug raid on a lab hidden in a villa in Bali, Indonesia. They arrested one Indonesian, two Ukrainians, and one Russian. (AP)

Politics and elections

• 2024 Lithuanian constitutional referendum
  • A referendum to allow dual citizenship in Lithuania fails to pass. (LRT)
• 2024 Lithuanian presidential election
  • Gitanas Nausėda and Ingrida Šimonytė advance to the run-off election, which will be held on 26 May. (The Guardian)
• An administrative court in Münster, Germany, rules that the Alternative for Germany political party could threaten democracy and can be spied on. (The Washington Post)
• The High Commissioner of New Caledonia imposes a curfew and mobilizes security forces after a general strike and violent protests over proposed constitutional changes in the capital city Noumea. (Al Jazeera)

Science and technology

• OpenAI announces a new model of their generative pretrained transformer (GPT) named GPT-4o, capable of visual and video speech recognition and translation. (Reuters)

May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias (Catholicism); Independence Day in Israel (2024)

• 1264 – Second Barons' War: King Henry III was defeated at the Battle of Lewes (monument pictured) and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
• 1857 – Mindon Min was crowned as King of Burma.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Union troops captured Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.
• 1931 – Five people were killed in Ådalen, Sweden, as soldiers opened fire on an unarmed trade union demonstration.
• 1948 – David Ben-Gurion publicly read the Israeli Declaration of Independence at Independence Hall in Tel Aviv.