A car bomb at a Mogadishu restaurant near the Jilaow detention center kills four people and injures another five. Al-Shabaab claims responsibility for the attack. (CNN), (Reuters)
A Somalian regional government demands an explanation from the United States after an airstrike kills 22 civilians and other soldiers instead of the targeted Al-Shabaab militants in Galmudug. (BBC)
Volkswagen agrees to pay its U.S. dealers up to US$1.2 billion to compensate them for their losses resulting from the company's emissions cheating scandal. (The Los Angeles Times)
Hurricane Matthew, at Category 4 strength with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/h), temporarily stalls as it heads towards Jamaica and Haiti. Weather forecasters expect tropical storm conditions today with landfall tomorrow. Further, they expect rainfall of 20 inches, with up to 40 inches in some parts of southern Haiti. (BBC), (NBC News), (The National Hurricane Center)
Voters in Hungary go to the polls for a referendum on whether to accept mandatory European Union quotas on relocating migrants. While an overwhelming majority of voters reject the EU's migrant quotas, turnout was too low to make the poll valid. (BBC), (Reuters)
Typhoon Chaba, now a super typhoon with winds of 145 knots (165 mph), heads for Japan's southern islands with storm warnings of torrential rain followed by mudslides and flooding. (AAP via SBS), (Weather.com)
The Obama administration through the U.S. State Department announces the suspension of bilateral talks with Russia about the cessation of hostilities in Syria, as Russia and the Syrian government continue to pursue a military course despite the ceasefire accord. (CNN), (UPI)
An apparent sectarian attack by two motorcyclists who open fire on a bus traveling to Hazara Town, Quetta, Pakistan, kills four women from Pakistan's ShiaHazara and injures two other people. (The Daily Mail), (Dawn), (Firstpost)
Turkish authorities suspend nearly 12,800 police officers from duty over their suspected links with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. (Reuters)
Turkish security forces raid the headquarters of IMC TV in Istanbul, cutting its transmissions while it was live on air, for allegedly broadcasting "terror propaganda". (Gulf News)
Mexicantequila producer Jose Cuervo will delay its IPO until after the U.S. presidential election due to concern over potential market volatility. (Reuters)
An Israeli Air ForceF-16 crashes while attempting to land at Ramon Airbase in southern Israel, killing the pilot. A navigator who was also in the aircraft successfully ejects and escapes the incident unharmed. (Haaretz)
Pakistan's government removes a loophole allowing those behind so-called honor killings to go free with the new legislation instead requiring a mandatory life sentence. (BBC)
The pound sterling sustains a flash crash, dropping from an exchange rate of $1.23 per pound to $1.13 in a few minutes of trading today, then gaining much of it back. Observers blame this development on algorithmic trading. (MIT Technology Review)
The Obama administration lifts U.S. sanctions on Myanmar by terminating an emergency order that deemed the policies of the former military government a threat to U.S. national security. (Reuters)
Mylan pays US$465 million to settle its underpayment to U.S. government healthcare programs by misclassifying its epinephrine autoinjector emergency allergy treatment. (Reuters)
Saudi-led coalition jets launch airstrikes on civilians at the funeral of the father of the Houthi government's Interior Minister in Sana'a, killing at least 140 people, and injuring over 500 more. One of the dead is the mayor of Sana'a, Abdul-Qader Hilal. (The Independent), (BBC), (Reuters)
A shooting takes place in Jerusalem that kills two people, including a police officer, injuring six others. The attack was carried out by a Palestinian gunman who opened fire from a vehicle on people waiting at a train station and then the nearby police headquarters in Jerusalem. Israeli police kill the gunman. (BBC)
The United States Navy's destroyerUSS Mason comes under missile attack in the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen. The two missiles, fired from Yemeni territory controlled by Iranian-backed Houthis, impacted the water well before reaching the ship, according to Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis. (Reuters)
Samsung recalls and suspends production of its reformulated-version of Galaxy Note 7 smartphone due to the same persistent problem with battery fires and explosions. (The Japan Times)
Matthew's death toll in Haiti rises to at least one thousand, with victims being buried in mass graves. An unknown number of people remain missing and authorities report that cholera is spreading in the hardest hit-areas in the country's southwest. (AP/Reuters via ABC News Australia)
A gunman, reportedly wearing an Afghan police uniform, kills at least 14 people and wounds dozens more in the Shiite Karte Sakhi shrine in Kabul on the beginning of Ashura. Police kill the attacker. (UPI), (Reuters)
Jordanian student pilot Feras Freitekh kills himself and attempts to kill his flight instructor, when their small Piper PA-34 Seneca airplane crashes in East Hartford Connecticut. Investigators conclude the crash was an intentional act motivated by suicide based on the surviving instructor who said there was an argument and struggle for control. The FBI investigates. Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a patent dispute between Apple Inc. and Samsung concerning both company's smart phone designs (Samsung Electronics v. Apple (15-777)). (Reuters)
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Oklahoma City reports that an unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, shot dead on September 16, by a white police officer, Betty Jo Shelby, had acute PCP intoxication. Authorities charged her with first-degree manslaughter. (AP via Fox News)
A bomb explosion among crowds of Shiite Muslims gathered to mark Ashura, one of their holiest commemorations, kills at least 12 people and wounds 28 others. Also, authorities revise the death toll to 17 from yesterday's attack on a Kabul Shiite shrine. (The Washington Post)
The U.S. firm Concentrix, which is used by the British government to cut tax credit payments, suffers a data protection breach where some claimants have had their personal information such as bank statements, self assessment details, and National Insurance numbers sent to other claimants. (BBC)
Negotiations between the Nigerian president's administration and Islamist militants free 21 of the 270 schoolgirls kidnapped in 2014 by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria (leaving 218 victims still unaccounted for). (BBC)
The death toll in North Carolina rises to 22 as flood waters continue to rise. GovernorPat McCrory says places that had a foot of water in the morning, were under 12 feet of water. (Reuters)
A bus crashes and catches fire carrying tourists returning from a China tour on the Gyeongbu Expressway near Ulsan, South Korea, leaving ten people killed and nine injured. (AP)
A London-based trader who traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Navinder Singh Sarao, accused of contributing to the 2010 Wall Street "flash crash" by placing bogus orders to spoof the market, fails in his legal bid to stop extradition and will now be sent to the United States to face trial where he is wanted by U.S. authorities on 22 criminal counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud, and market manipulation. A judge initially approved his extradition in March, and today his bid to launch an appeal against that decision was rejected, ending his 18-month legal fight. He will now be extradited within 28 days. (Reuters)
A retrial court finds Welsh footballer Ched Evans not guilty. He had previously been sentenced to five years imprisonment for rape in 2012. (BBC)
Turkish-backed rebels advance on the symbolic ISIL-controlled town of Dabiq, in northern Syria. ISIL believes Dabiq is the location where an apocalyptic battle will take place shortly before the end of the world. (BBC)
The United States Navy's USS Mason is fired on for the third time in a week from territory controlled by Houthi forces in Yemen, while in international waters of the Red Sea. The ship deployed countermeasures and was not struck, according to U.S. officials. (NBC News)
A pickup truck hurls off San Diego, California's Coronado Bridge, plummets some 60 feet, and crashes onto a park where hundreds of people had gathered for a motorcycle rally, killing four people in a vendor's booth and injuring eight others. (Reuters)
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin sign several agreements including a $12.9 billion defense and energy deal. Russian state oil major Rosneft pays for a controlling stake in both India's Essar Oil and port facilities that it already owns. (Reuters)
Law and crime
A gun battle that started when three armed men returned to a restaurant in Los Angeles, leaves 3 people dead and 12 others wounded. Police set up a dragnet for the suspects. (The Los Angeles Times)
Police in China detain 75 people in connection with a service that determined the female gender of unborn babies for the purpose of abortion. Authorities say that at least 300 people were involved in the illegal service in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. Expectant parents wanting male children smuggled fetal blood samples to Hong Kong for gender testing. China ended its one-child policy last year. (BBC)
A suicide bomber kills three police officers and wounds at least nine people in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep during a police raid on a suspected ISIL safehouse. (Reuters)
With over 95 percent of votes counted, Prime MinisterMilo Đukanović's Democratic Party of Socialists receives the most votes in this quadrennial election, but, by five seats, fails to gain an absolute majority. Djukanovic says he will seek a coalition with parties of national minorities. (Reuters)
Floods in Central Vietnam, triggered by Typhoon Sarika's heavy rains, kill at least 24 people with 4 others missing. Sarika has killed at least two people and displaced more than 150,000 in the Philippines. (AP)
An explosion and fire in Ludwigshafen, at the largest production site of BASF in Germany, kills at least two people and injures six more with two people still missing. BASF is the world's biggest chemical producer. (Reuters)
The European Union condemns Russia's air campaign in Syria, saying it may be guilty of war crimes, and it vowed to impose more sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad's government. The bloc's 28 foreign ministers sought to show their anger at the Russian-backed campaign, which has killed several hundred people including dozens of children since the collapse of a truce brokered by Russia and the United States. (Reuters)
Americanconservativeundercover video producer James O'Keefe releases a series of videos allegedly showing conversations with, among others, Scott Foval, the former national field director of Americans United for Change, speaking about his hiring of people to sabotage rallies for Donald Trump by staging fights in them in a process Foval called "bird dogging". (Salon)
Somali police say at least seven are dead after clashes as Somali and African Union troops pushed back al-Shabab extremists from Afgooye, a town near Mogadishu. (AP)
Czech police announce the arrest of a man at a Prague hotel two weeks ago who they claim is a Russian hacker suspected of targeting the U.S. (CBS News)
Brazilian prosecutors file homicide charges against 21 people employed by the companies Samarco, Vale, and BHP Billiton for the November 2015 iron ore mine dam burst in the state of Minas Gerais that killed 19 people and polluted waterways. (BBC)
Following his October 5 arrest, U.S. federal prosecutors in Baltimore charge Harold T. Martin III, a former National Security Agency contractor, for violating the Espionage Act, specifically, with felony theft of government property. Prosecutors state that, over a 20-year time period, Martin stole at least 50 terabytes of data and "six full bankers boxes" of classified and other documents. The prosecutors state that Martin had an “arsenal” of weapons in his home. (The Washington Post)
After two years on the run, Mexican officials arrest the former police chief of a Mexican city, Felipe Flores, capturing him in Iguala in the southern state of Guerrero. The city is where 43 students disappeared in September 2014. The police arrested the students and then handed them over to a drug cartel who killed them and incinerated their bodies. (BBC)
Two explosions in a park in the Japanese city of Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, kill at least one person and injure three others. Local media report that a 72-year-old ex-military officer is responsible for the blasts. A fire the same day destroyed the suspect's house. (The Guardian), (BBC)
A twin-prop Fairchild Metroliner Mark III light aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Malta International Airport, killing all five French nationals on board. Malta officials say that the aircraft was part of a French customs surveillance operation tracing routes of illicit trafficking, of humans and drugs on Libyan coasts, and that the flight was heading for the Libyan city of Misrata. (The Independent), (The Guardian)
Wendy Demchick-Alloy, a Montgomery County court judge in Norristown, sentences former PennsylvaniaAttorney GeneralKathleen Kane to serve 10 to 23 months in county jail for leaking confidential grand jury information and then lying about it to investigators. Specifically, she was convicted on August 15 on charges of perjury, false swearing, obstruction of justice, official oppression, and conspiracy. (Reuters)
Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba claims responsibility for the attack on the Uri military camp in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. (The Times of India)
The Catholic Church announces that cremated remains must be kept in consecrated land, rather than scattered about or kept at home. The Church first permitted cremation in 1963, but still strongly favours burial. (BBC)
Disasters and accidents
Illegally stored explosives cause an explosion in a house in northwestern China that kills at least 14 people and injures 147 others in the town of Xinmin in Shaanxi province. (Reuters)
A fire breaks out in the ICU ward and Maternity ward of Hospital Sultanah Aminah, Johor, Malaysia, killing six patients and injured two others. All of the patients killed were dependent on ventilators in the ICU ward. (Mediacorp News Group)
Rockfall inside the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel causes an indefinite closure of the tunnel, closing the only road access to and from Whittier, Alaska, and halting freight train service between Whittier and interior Alaska. (KTUU-TV)
Law and crime
Ontario Provincial Police charge a former Canadian nurse, Elizabeth Tracy Mae Wettlaufer, in Woodstock, Ontario, with killing eight elderly patients between August 2007 and August 2014 at two Caressant Care Nursing and Retirement Homes facilities. (CBC)
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco approves German automaker Volkswagen$14.7 billion settlement with federal and California regulators and the owners of the 475,000 polluting diesel vehicles over diesel emissions cheating scandal. Volkswagen still faces billions of dollars more in fines and litigation. (Reuters)
Suspected Syrian or Russian warplanes conduct airstrikes on a residential area and a school in Haas village in rebel-held Idlib Governorate, killing at least 26 civilians, most of them children. (Reuters)
A research team led by an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona publishes a paper in Nature on the genetic history of HIV proving that Gaëtan Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant who had been identified for years as "Patient Zero" of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., did not spread the virus to the country. The study indicates that HIV first spread to the U.S. from the Caribbean around 1970. (BBC)(The New York Times)
Russia withdraws a request to refuel three of its warships, including the flagship of the Russian Navy, Admiral Kuznetsov, en route to Syria, at the Spanish port of Ceuta following NATO pressure on the Spanish government to not allow the warships to dock. (BBC)
An unknown gunman shoots a Venezuelan police officer dead. Two other officers sustain injuries during protests against the Government of Venezuela. Approximately 120 Opposition supporters also sustain injuries during the protests. (Reuters)
United States Republican Party vice presidential candidate Mike Pence's campaign plane skids off the runway at LaGuardia Airport with no injuries reported. The runway is said to have sustained damage causing the closure of the airport; a planned fundraiser was also canceled. (Reuters)(CNN)(ABC)
Belgian politicians, including those from the dissident Wallonia region, agree on Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement language that addresses Walloon concerns. This ends the deadlock on CETA, though the revised text must again be approved by the other 27 EU member states. (Reuters)
Seven members of the militia who occupied the wildlife refuge, including the leader Ammon Bundy, was acquitted of all federal charges related to the takeover. (New York Times)(BBC)
Science and technology
NASA announces the return of the final piece of data collected during New Horizons' flyby of Pluto in July 2015. The data, taking about five hours at light speed to travel across 5.5 billion kilometers (3.4 billion miles), arrived at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on the morning of October 25. (NASA)
More than 15 civilians are reported killed and another 100 injured as Syria's Army of Conquest and other jihadist rebels launch an offensive to break the government-led siege on eastern Aleppo. (Reuters)(ARA News)
Irving Picard, a court-appointed trustee liquidating the Madoff asset management firm, says that he has reached a settlement with the family of the late Stanley Chais, in connection with monies that had been funneled from California investors, through Chais, into Madoff's Ponzi scheme. (Reuters)
James Comey informs Congress that "the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation." He says the FBI has not yet assessed the importance or significance of these emails. (CNN)
Representatives in the Trump and Clinton campaigns call for Comey to reveal more information about this new investigation. (Observer)
With about 25 percent of the votes counted, the Independence Party is receiving about 30 percent of the ballots cast. The Pirate Party, which led in most of this month's polls, is getting about 13 percent. (AP)
The United States orders all civilian staff family members to leave its consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, due to increasing threats from terrorist organizations. (CNN)
Turkey dismisses another 10,000 civil servants and closes 15 more media outlets for alleged ties to terrorist organizations and cleric Fethullah Gülen. (Reuters)
Voters in Moldova go to the polls for a presidential election. A run off election will be held on November 13 between Igor Dodon and Maia Sandu after no candidate achieved a majority of votes. (AP via Fox News)
Icelandic voters elect 30 women to parliament, the most ever for the island nation. Voter turnout was under 80 percent, the lowest ever. (NPR)(New York)
The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians 3 runs to 2 at Illinois' Wrigley Field in Game 5 of the 2016 World Series to avoid elimination and force a Game 6 with the series standing at 3 games to 2 in favor of the Cleveland Indians. It is the Cubs' first-ever win of a World Series game at the stadium since October 1945. (MLB)
At least 13 people are killed and 20 others are missing following a gas explosion in a coal mine in western China's Chongqing region. (AP)
One person is killed and at least five others injured following an explosion and fire along one of Colonial Pipeline's conduits in rural Alabama (US), the second incident on this section of the line in less than two months. One pipeline reopened this evening while a second is expected to working by Saturday. (AP/NBC News)(WSB-TV)
Kurt Eichenwald claims that Donald Trump and his businesses have been destroying documents, even in ongoing court cases and under subpoena, during the last decades. (Newsweek), (MSNBC)
