Portal:Current events/2017 October 4

October 4, 2017 (Wednesday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017)
- Hawija offensive (2017)
  - 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
- 2017 Tongo Tongo ambush
  - 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 News)
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

Crime in Brazil
- 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)
Aftermath of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting
- Monday, October 2, the day following the shooting, is now the saddest officially recorded day on Twitter, according to the Hedonometer, which has been measuring happiness since 2008. The increased use of negative words such as "shooting" and "gun" after the shooting resulted in a score of 5.77 on the 9-point scale, where one indicates pure sadness and nine indicates pure happiness. (Vox)

Politics and elections

Science and technology