Portal:Current events/2017 October 6

October 6, 2017 (Friday)

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

Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct allegations
- American film producer Harvey Weinstein (including Pulp Fiction, Clerks, The Crying Game, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape) answers allegations made by a report in 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, List of executive actions by Donald Trump
- 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)