Portal:Current events/2013 November 17
November 17, 2013 (Sunday)
Armed conflicts and attacks
- Post-civil war violence in Libya:
- Libya's deputy intelligence chief Mustafa Noah is kidnapped outside Tripoli airport. (Reuters)
Arts and culture
- British author Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, dies at the age of 94. (The Independent)
Business and economy
- Sony announces they sold one million PlayStation 4 units in the first day. (Joystiq)
Disasters and accidents
- Typhoon Haiyan:
- The number of people displaced reaches 1.9 million people. Numbers vary between 1,000-20,000 for estimates about missing people. (NPR) (Voice of America)
- Flooding in Vietnam has killed at least 28 people with nine more missing and nearly 80,000 displaced. (Reuters)
- Fifty people are killed after a passenger Boeing 737 crash lands in the city of Kazan in central Russia. (RT)
- Following the issuance of a rare High Risk for severe weather (only the fifth documented such case in November and also extending to areas further north than any previous known high risk issued in the November through February timeframe), several midwestern states in the United States are placed under multiple tornado watches, with multiple tornadoes touching down, causing at least four deaths and up to 50 injured in the area; one leveled parts of a suburb of Peoria, Illinois. Around six dozen tornadoes occur in total with activity most concentrated in Illinois and Indiana but extending from Tennessee to Michigan. (Peoria Journal Star) (CNN) (NBC News)
Politics and elections
- Abdulla Yameen is sworn in as the President of the Maldives following yesterday's election victory. (ABC News Australia)
- Giorgi Margvelashvili is sworn in as the President of Georgia following the victory in the October election. (Civil Georgia)
- Voters in Chile go to the polls for a general election of president, senators, deputies, and regional advisers. The presidential election looks likely to go to a runoff between former President Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei of the ruling Coalition. (BBC) (Reuters)
Sports
- In motorsport:
- Sebastian Vettel wins an eighth consecutive Formula One race at the 2013 United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas breaking the record previously held by Michael Schumacher. (AFP via Sydney Morning Herald)
- Jimmie Johnson wins his sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup championship title, one title short of the all-time record of seven held by both Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty. (USA Today)