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Hurricane Melissa leaves more than 40 people dead across the Caribbean.
- Hurricane Melissa was an extremely powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that made landfall in Jamaica and Cuba in October 2025. The thirteenth named storm, fifth hurricane, fourth major hurricane, and third Category 5 hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, Melissa is currently the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide in 2025, and is tied with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane as the most intense landfalling Atlantic hurricane and third-most-intense Atlantic hurricane overall by central pressure.
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Catherine Connolly is elected President of Ireland.
- Catherine Martina Ann Connolly (born 12 July 1957) is an Irish politician who is the president-elect of Ireland, following her election in 2025. She will be inaugurated as president on 11 November 2025, becoming the third woman to hold that office. She served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Galway West constituency from 2016 until her election as president.
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- The 2025 Irish presidential election took place on Friday, 24 October 2025, to elect a new president of Ireland. The incumbent president, Michael D. Higgins, was term-limited, having served the maximum two seven-year terms permitted under the Constitution of Ireland. The nominated candidates were Catherine Connolly (Independent), Jim Gavin (Fianna Fáil) and Heather Humphreys (Fine Gael). All three were nominated by members of the Oireachtas, rather than by county or city councils. The 1990 presidential election had been the last to feature only three candidates, and also the last to feature no candidates nominated by councils.
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Timor-Leste joins ASEAN as its 11th member.
- Timor-Leste became a member state of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on 26 October 2025 during the 47th ASEAN Summit, finishing a two-decade accession process.
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More than 120 people are killed in a police operation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- Operation Containment (Portuguese: Operação Contenção) was a large-scale law-enforcement operation launched on 28 October 2025 by the Rio de Janeiro state government against the Comando Vermelho criminal organization. Approximately 2,500 police agents participated and executed hundreds of police warrants to arrest gang leaders in 26 communities in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, mainly in the Penha and Alemão neighborhoods.
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In the Sudanese civil war, at least 2,500 people are killed in massacres after Al-Fashir is captured by the Rapid Support Forces.
- The al-Fashir massacre (Arabic: مجزرة الفاشر, romanized: Majzarat al-Fāshir) is an ongoing massacre in the city of Al-Fashir, in western Sudan, since 26 October 2025, during which an estimated 2,500 or more civilians have been executed or murdered. The massacre has been carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), after they captured the city, which was the last stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Darfur.
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- The siege of al-Fashir was a series of battles for control of the city of al-Fashir, North Darfur between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) as part of the Sudanese civil war. The first battle for the city took place between 13 and 20 April 2023, and resulted in a ceasefire that held until 12 May. Clashes broke out again between 12 and 29 May, and ended with a more stable ceasefire that lasted until August. By September, the city had become a haven for refugees across the region, without enough food and water.
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In baseball, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks defeat the Hanshin Tigers to win the Japan Series .
- The 2025 Japan Series (日本シリーズ, Nippon Shiriizu; branded as the SMBC Nippon Series 2025 for sponsorship reasons) was the championship series of Nippon Professional Baseball's (NPB) 2025 season. The 76th edition of the Japan Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff series played between the Central League (CL) Climax Series champion Hanshin Tigers and the Pacific League (PL) Climax Series champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. The Hawks defeated the Tigers in five games.
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Tufan Erhürman is elected President of Northern Cyprus, defeating incumbent Ersin Tatar.
- Presidential elections were held in Northern Cyprus on 19 October 2025. Incumbent president Ersin Tatar was defeated by Tufan Erhürman of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP), who received 63% of the vote.
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The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is awarded to political prisoners and journalists Belarusian Andrzej Poczobut and Georgian Mzia Amaglobeli.
- Andrzej Poczobut (Belarusian: Андрэй (Анджэй) Пачобут, romanized: Andrej (Andžej) Pačobut, born 16 April 1973) is a Polish and Belarusian journalist, opposition figure, activist of the Polish minority in Belarus and political prisoner who received a Sakharov Prize in 2025 for opposing the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
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- Mzia Amaglobeli (Georgian: მზია ამაღლობელი; born 12 May 1975) is a Georgian journalist who is the co-founder and director of the online media outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti. She has been imprisoned by the Georgian Dream regime since early 2025.
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genocide (ongoing)
- The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. The genocidal acts include mass killings, starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and preventing births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites. The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.
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Russo-Ukrainian war (ongoing)
- On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The resultant conflict is the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, and a major escalation of the war between the two countries that began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. As of 2025, Russian troops occupy about 20% of Ukraine. From a population of 41 million, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II.
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Sudanese civil war (ongoing)
- A civil war began on 15 April 2023 between two rival factions of the military government of Sudan. The conflict involves the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, who also leads the broader Janjaweed coalition. Several smaller armed groups have also taken part. Fighting has been concentrated in the capital, Khartoum, where the conflict began with large-scale battles, and in the Darfur region. Many civilians in Darfur have been reported dead as part of the Masalit massacres, which have been described as ethnic cleansing or genocide. Sudan has been described as facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis; nearly 25 million people are experiencing extreme hunger. On 7 January 2025, the United States said it had determined that the RSF and allied militias committed genocide.
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