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Worldwide current events
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Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro (pictured) is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms.
In the United States, 59 people are killed and 489 others are injured in a mass shooting at a concert near Las Vegas.
Amidst a constitutional crisis, an independence referendum takes place in Catalonia, Spain.
In Saudi Arabia, a decree by King Salman effectively removes a longstanding ban on women driving in the country.

October 9, 2017 (Monday)

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Business and economy

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- The Nobel Prize committee awards American Richard Thaler the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for his contributions to behavioral economics." His work focuses on the psychology of the human conflict of what we plan for the financial present versus what we plan for the future. (Nobel Prize.org)

Law and crime

Former Bosnian military officer Naser Orić is acquitted of the charge of killing three Bosnian Serb prisoners of war during the Bosnian War. (Reuters)

October 8, 2017 (Sunday)

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Disasters and accidents

Rohingya persecution in Myanmar (2016–present)
- A refugee boat en route to Bangladesh from Myanmar capsizes, resulting in at least 12 deaths. (Reuters)
2017 Atlantic hurricane season
- Hurricane Nate
  - Hurricane Nate weakens to a tropical storm, and causes flooding and power outages in Mississippi and Alabama. (ABC News)

International relations

Turkey–United States relations
- The U.S Mission in Turkey suspends all non-immigration visa services in the country citing security concerns. (Reuters)
- In a tit-for-tat move, Turkish mission in the USA suspends all non-immigration visa services in the country, via an reversed copy of the US statement. (Reuters)
- The Turkish lira (TRY) falls 3.2% intraday on worries for Tourism in Turkey. (Reuters, Bloomberg, Bloomberg)

Politics and elections

2017 Spanish constitutional crisis
- At least 350,000 people attend a rally in Barcelona to oppose Catalan independence. (BBC)

October 7, 2017 (Saturday)

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Armed attacks and conflicts

A Saudi national opens fire at the Al-Salam Royal Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing two guards and injuring three others. Security guards shoot and kill the gunman. (Arab News), (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

2017 Atlantic hurricane season
- Hurricane Nate
  - Hurricane Nate makes landfall near the mouth of Mississippi River and near Biloxi, Mississippi, as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour (137 km/h). (WJLA)
- Aftermath of Hurricane Maria
  - The Federal Communications Commission approves Google's plan to restore some cell phone service in hurricane-hit Puerto Rico with Project Loon balloons. (The Telegraph)
An explosion at a liquefied natural gas depot leads to a second explosion at a gas station in Legon, a suburb of the Ghanaian capital Accra, killing at least seven people and injuring sixty-eight more. (AP via Fox News),(StarrFM)
2017 Madagascar plague outbreak
- Another round of pneumonic plague spreads in Madagascar, killing at least 33 people. (The Washington Post)

Law and crime

South Kensington crash
- A car mounts the pedestrian sidewalk near the Natural History Museum on Exhibition Road, and injures 11 people. London police believe the incident is not terror related. They arrested the driver but later released him. (BBC)

Politics and elections

2017 Russian protests
- Russian police arrest 290 protesters calling on President Vladimir Putin to resign. (Reuters), (CNN)

October 6, 2017 (Friday)

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Armed conflicts and attacks

Syrian Civil War
- According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Russian airstrikes kill at least 14 civilians, including three children, as they cross the Euphrates river near the ISIL-held city of Mayadin in eastern Syria while fleeing the village of Mahkan. (TRT World)
- Jaysh al-Islam Islamist rebels launch a successful counter-attack in the East Ghouta region of rural Damascus, targeting the points they lost to the Syrian government over the course of seven days near the town of Hawsh Dawahra, and recovering all of the lost territories. (Al Masdar News)

Arts and culture

U.S. film producer Harvey Weinstein (including Pulp Fiction, Clerks, The Crying Game, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape) answers allegations made by the New York Times that he had settled eight sexual harassment claims made over three decades. Multiple Democratic recipients of Weinstein's political donations give the funds to women's charities. (Reuters)

Business and economy

AIM (software)
- AIM's owner, Oath Inc., announces it will discontinue AOL Instant Messenger service on December 15, 2017. (USA Today)
2017 Spanish constitutional crisis
- Spain's third largest bank, CaixaBank, announces it is moving its legal base out of Catalonia to Valencia. This follows a similar move yesterday by Catalan banking group Banco Sabadell who announced they are moving their headquarters to Alicante in response to growing political insecurity in Catalonia. (The Guardian)

Disasters and accidents

A train hits a bus on a crossing in Vladimir, Russia, killing at least 19 people on the bus. No train passengers were injured. (BBC)
An Indian Air Force Mi-17 helicopter ferrying military officials crashes in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, a remote mountain region near the border with China, killing all seven personnel on board. (Reuters)
2017 Atlantic hurricane season
- Tropical Storm Nate
  - Tropical Storm Nate heads for the Gulf Coast of the United States after causing dozens of deaths in Central America and severe flooding in the Nicaraguan town of Rivas. (News Limited)
A Mexican military Bell 412 model helicopter crashes northeast of the town of El Salto in the mountainous state of Durango, seriously injuring one military member aboard and likely killing seven others. (Reuters)

International relations

Nobel Peace Prize
- The Nobel Committee awards the global civil society coalition of The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons the Nobel Peace Prize "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons". (Nobel Prize.org),(BBC)

Politics and elections

Unnamed White House officials believe White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly's personal cellphone was hacked, possibly since December 2016. Kelly was Secretary of Homeland Security from January 20 to July 31, 2017, when he moved to his current position. (Politico),(Reuters)

Birth control in the United States
- A Trump administration executive order reverses an Obamacare policy which mandated that employers and insurers provide their employees with birth control, regardless of one's "religious beliefs" or "moral convictions". (BBC)

October 5, 2017 (Thursday)

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Armed conflicts and attacks

Iraqi Civil War (2014–present), Battle of Hawija
- The Iraqi Army fully retakes the city of Hawija in the Kirkuk Governorate from ISIL. Fighting continues to the north and east of the city as Iraqi troops continue anti-ISIL operations in the Hawija District. (The Guardian)

Arts and culture

Nobel Prize in Literature
- The Nobel Committee awards Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro the Nobel Prize in Literature for his "novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." (Nobelprize.org)

Business and economy

Energy infrastructure firm TransCanada abandons two Canadian pipeline projects. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

2017 Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Nate
- In Nicaragua, flooding from Tropical Storm Nate, kills at least fifteen people. In Costa Rica, the storm kills at least seven people with fifteen missing. (AP via ABC News)
- Oil and gas companies evacuate production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declares a state of emergency in anticipation of Tropical Storm Nate. He says southeast Louisiana should prepare for a "direct hit" this weekend. (AP via ABC News),(NOLA),(CBS News)
- Florida Governor Rick Scott declares a state of emergency for North Florida. (Orlando Sentinel via MSN)

International relations

Russia–Saudi Arabia relations
- King Salman of Saudi Arabia visits Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Moscow Kremlin. They discuss oil prices and the Syrian Civil War. (Reuters)

Law and crime

In the town of Janaúba, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, a recently dismissed security guard set fire to a childcare center killing at least four children and a teacher and leaving 25 others, mostly children aged four and five, injured. (BBC)
Cybercrime
- Alleged Russian government-backed hackers stole highly classified U.S. cyber secrets in 2015 from the National Security Agency after a contractor put information on his home computer. The entrance to the computer was speculated to have possibly been through an installed Kaspersky Lab antivirus. U.S. rules governing federal computers now ban installation of Kaspersky Lab software. (Reuters)

Politics and elections

LGBT employment discrimination in the United States
- The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, reverses an Obama-era policy which used Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to protect transgender employees from discrimination. (CBS News)
Governor Jerry Brown signs legislation to make California a sanctuary state. Next January, this law will prevent police from inquiring about immigration status during routine interactions, and will reduce law enforcement cooperation with U.S. immigration officers. (Reuters)

October 4, 2017 (Wednesday)

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Armed conflicts and attacks

Iraqi Civil War (2014–present), Battle of Hawija
- The Iraqi Army and allied paramilitary fighters storm the ISIL-held city of Hawija in the Kirkuk Governorate. Hawija is one of the last remaining ISIL strongholds in Iraq. (BBC)
Insurgency in the Maghreb
- An apparent ambush in Niger near the Malian border leaves three U.S. Special Forces soldiers and five Nigerien soldiers dead during a joint patrol. (Reuters), (NBC)
Syrian Civil War
- Suspected Russian military jets target makeshift rubber dinghies and boats carrying dozens of families fleeing the town of al-Ashara along the western banks of the Euphrates that lies south of Deir Ezzor city, killing at least 60 civilians. (Middle East Eye)
- According to the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, ISIL has undertaken several attacks on Syrian positions from U.S.-controlled areas, implying that the recent well-coordinated actions of the terrorists indicate that they somehow possess intelligence data that could only be obtained as a result of air reconnaissance. (CNBC)
- The human rights group, Physicians for Human Rights, accuses Russia and the Syrian government of mounting the "worst string of attacks" on hospitals in Syria since April despite an agreement on "de-escalation" zones, saying it believes either Russian or Syrian government jets were behind at least five air raids on three hospitals in September in rebel-held Idlib province. (Al Jazeera)

Law and crime

Brazilian police detain fugitive Italian former left-wing guerrilla and convicted murderer Cesare Battisti, as he was attempting to flee across the border into Bolivia to avoid extradition back to Italy and facing his life sentence prison term for four murders in the 1970s. (Reuters)
Cybercrime
- U.S. fast-food chain operator Sonic Drive-In may have had a malware attack at some of its drive-in outlets and may have allowed hackers to access customers’ debit and credit card information. (Reuters)