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The comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is visible in the western sky after sunset.
- C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) (or Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS or simply Comet A3) is a comet from the Oort cloud discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China on 9 January 2023 and independently found by ATLAS South Africa on 22 February 2023. The comet passed perihelion at a distance of 0.39 AU (58 million km; 36 million mi) on 27 September 2024, when it became visible to the naked eye. Tsuchinshan-Atlas peaked its brightest magnitude shortly after passing the Sun at 9 October, with a magnitude of −4.9 per reported observations at the Comet Observation Database (COBS).
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Yahya Sinwar , the leader of Hamas, is killed in a firefight with Israeli forces in Gaza.
- On 16 October 2024, as part of their operations in the Israel–Hamas war, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. His killing was the result of a routine patrol and a chance encounter in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. He had been one of Israel's most wanted men after the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.
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The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson for their comparative studies of prosperity between nations.
- Kamer Daron Acemoğlu (Turkish: [daˈɾon aˈdʒemoːɫu]; born September 3, 1967) is a Turkish-American economist of Armenian descent who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993, where he is currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, and was named an Institute Professor at MIT in 2019. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, and the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024.
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- Simon H. Johnson (born January 16, 1963) is a British-American economist who has served as the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 2004. He also served as a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 2008 to 2019. Before moving to MIT, he taught at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business from 1991 to 1997. From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, he served as Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund.
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- James Alan Robinson (born 1960) is a British-American economist and political scientist. He is the Rev. Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and a University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. At Harris, he also directs The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts. Robinson previously taught at Harvard University from 2004 to 2015.
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The Europa Clipper spacecraft is launched to investigate Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.
- Europa Clipper (previously known as Europa Multiple Flyby Mission) is a space probe developed by NASA to study Europa, a Galilean moon of Jupiter. It was launched on October 14, 2024, and is expected to arrive in the Jupiter system in 2030. The spacecraft will then perform a series of flybys of Europa while in orbit around Jupiter. The spacecraft is larger than any other used for previous NASA planetary missions.
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Kenyan Ruth Chepng'etich breaks the women's marathon world record at the Chicago Marathon.
- Ruth Chepng'etich (often spelled Ruth Chepngetich, born 8 August 1994) is a Kenyan road runner who is the current women's world record holder (pending ratification) in the marathon, with a time of 2:09:56 set at the 2024 Chicago Marathon. Chepng'etich is the 2019 world champion in the marathon, and is a three time winner of the Chicago Marathon, having won in 2021, 2022 and 2024, where she set the world record. She is the first woman to break the 2:11 and 2:10 barriers in the marathon, and also holds the third-fastest mark of all time for the half marathon, at 1 hour 4 minutes and 2 seconds.
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The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the Japanese atomic bomb survivors group Nihon Hidankyo.
- The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (日本原水爆被害者団体協議会, Nihon gensuibaku higaisha dantai kyōgi-kai), often shortened to Nihon Hidankyō (日本被団協, Nihon Hidankyō), is a group that represents survivors (known as hibakusha) of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was formed in 1956.
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Israel–Hamas war (ongoing)
- An armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups has been taking place in the Gaza Strip and Israel since 7 October 2023. It is the fifth war of the Gaza–Israel conflict since 2008, and the most significant military engagement in the region since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. It is the deadliest war for Palestinians in the history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
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Israel–Hezbollah conflict (ongoing)
- Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have exchanged fire along the Israel–Lebanon border and in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights since 8 October 2023. Israel has also carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah throughout Lebanon and in Syria. The conflict is part of the spillover of the Israel–Hamas war and is the largest escalation of the Hezbollah–Israel conflict since the 2006 Lebanon War.
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Russian invasion of Ukraine (ongoing)
- On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which started in 2014. The invasion, the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. As of 2024, 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 between two major rival factions of the military government of Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its allies (collectively the Janjaweed coalition) under the Janjaweed leader Hemedti, began during Ramadan on 15 April 2023. Three minor (neutral) factions have participated in the fighting: Darfur Joint Protection Force, SLM (al-Nur) under Abdul Wahid al-Nur, and SPLM-N under Abdelaziz al-Hilu. Fighting has been concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum (largest and initial battle of the war) and the Darfur region. As of 8 September 2024, at least 20,000 people had been killed and 33,000 others were injured. As of 5 July 2024, over 7.7 million were internally displaced and more than 2.1 million others had fled the country as refugees, and many civilians in Darfur have been reported dead as part of the Masalit massacres.
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