RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/October 2023

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October 2023[edit]

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-12Ireland Former head of Wikimedia Foundation and Signal Katherine Maher has become CEO of Web Summit replacing Paddy Cosgrove, after he resigned for posting inflammatory comments on the current Hamas-Israeli conflict on Twitter.
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22IsraelPalestine Israel just bombed the largest and most densely-packed refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. We don't know the exact number, but we know a lot have died.
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28United StatesNorth Korea The FBI has reported that thousands of IT workers have, for years, secretly sent their wages to North Korea, totalling to millions of dollars given.
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17Palestine Hamas has a hoard of supplies, can potentially sustain fighting for three to four months without any resupply.
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12New ZealandTrans flag.svg Trans woman Eli Rubashkyn, who threw tomato juice at transphobe Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull at the Let Women Speak rally in Auckland back in March, has been charged and faces court for assault.
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18United StatesMaine. Lewiston, ME mass shooting suspect found to have committed suicide.
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30Israel Half of Israelis say "it would be better to wait" to invade Gaza. 29% percent say invade immediately. 22% were undecided. (It is not apparent that the poll had any "do not invade" option.) Just last week, a full 65% wanted an invasion. It goes to show just how quickly support for a war can erode.
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-2United Kingdom The United Kingdom Online Safety Act becomes law, despite containing an unenforceable provision that outlaws encryption
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20United States Forty-one states are suing Meta, alleging that Instagram and Facebook are harmful and addictive for children.
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25United StatesFlorida. Ron DeSantis has banned a pro-Palestine student group, Students for Justice in Palestine, from Florida campuses.
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17United Statesthe District of Columbia. Rep. Jamaal Bowman has been criminally charged for pulling the fire alarm in the Capitol a few weeks back.
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16United StatesIdaho. Trans flag.svg The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has, at least temporarily, blocked Idaho's trans bathroom ban.
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21United Statesthe World Sure it is not a cult: Musk has told all employees in 𝕏 to switch all their financial accounts from their normal banking to his platform by the end of 2024.
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17United States A Gallup poll found that Biden's approval rating among Democrats has dropped to a record-low of 75%, and that Democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time in the survey's two-decade history.
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28United StatesTexas. Texas GOP scandalized after links to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and his community, which were kept secret, are revealed. The leader of Defend Texas Liberty, a major PAC in the state that gives millions to top candidates, hosted Fuentes for a seven hour meeting. The PAC has since replaced their leader. Now, it's revealed the leader of Texans for Strong Borders is a prominent Fuentes fan through his online pseudonym.
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10United StatesMaine. What we know about the Lewiston, ME mass shooting suspect.
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19the WorldRoosters might recognize themselves in the mirror.
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31United StatesVirginia. Good riddance: Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue, the one that spawned the Unite the Right rally in 2017, has met its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace.
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19United Kingdom A currently unnamed "leading Conservative MP" has been arrested over suspicion of rape and possession of drugs. Update: The MP identified himself as Crispin BluntWikipedia, and denies wrongdoing.
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19United StatesMaine. A shooting takes place in a bowling alley and a restaurant in Lewiston, Maine. There could be as many as 22 deaths. A manhunt is underway for the shooter, who is still at large but has been identified.
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43United StatesMississippi. A mother reported her son missing in March. Police kept the truth from her for months: A Mississippi mother spent 172 days searching for her adult son, only to learn that he was dead all along. An off-duty officer ran him over less than an hour after he left the house. Authorities buried him without notifying his family.
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-22United States Far-right Rep. Mike Johnson is voted in as the new Speaker of the House.
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16United States Amazon trials "humanoid" robots in warehouses.
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19IsraelUnited Nations Israel demands that the secretary general of the U.N. resign over comments about Israel not being completely in the right. They will now refuse visas to U.N. officials.
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11United StatesQatarPalestineIsrael U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has asked Qatar, Al Jazeera's funder, to make Al Jazeera "tone down" their rhetoric relating to Israel-Palestine happenings.
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46JapanTrans flag.svg Japan's Supreme Court has ruled—unanimously, no less—that the law that required surgery to change your legal gender was unconstitutional. A large health hurdle for Japanese trans people has now been demolished.
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20Spain The government in Spain is thinking about a French-style short internal flight ban on routes that can be done by rail in less than three-and-half hours, such as from Madrid to Barcelona or Valencia.
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15United States Jenna Ellis is the fourth Trump co-defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia RICO case.
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14United States Mark Meadows tells Jack Smith and his legal team that he doesn't believe the 2020 election was stolen, despite writing a book about it.
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27United StatesTexas. Rural Texas counties ban women from driving on highways to obtain abortions. Does this violate the Commerce Clause? Probably! How do they intend to get around that? By labeling abortions as "abortion trafficking", as in human trafficking. Will that actually work? Probably not.
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23Poland The Catholic bishop of the city of Sosnowiec in Poland Grzegorz Kaszak has resigned, after a scandal involving a “sex party” in the bishop's flat which included a group of priests with a male prostitute came to light.
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18PalestineIsrael Hamas has released 4 hostages.
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19United KingdomChina The Royal Navy is ending its century-old racist tradition of having Chinese servants on warships amid a Yellow Peril hysteria
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14Germany New party prepared to form in German parliament. Sahra Wagenknecht, a leader in The Left, will likely form a splinter party that is economically socialist and socially right-wing; they are also against sending Ukraine military aid. The Bündnis Sahra WagenknechtWikipedia apparently has ten MPs.
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15United States Federal prosecutors won't prosecute Border Patrol agent who fatally shot the unarmed Raymond Mattia just steps outside his home, a Tohono O’odham man, sparking outrage from the Tohono O’odham people.
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26TurkeySwedenNATO Erdoğan has done a surprising U-turn and has granted presidential authority to Sweden's NATO application. The vote is heading to the Turkish parliament for authorisation. It would mean that Hungary would be the last one out.
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16IsraelPalestine War could last "months", and will be "the last war in Gaza, for the simple reason that there will be no more Hamas", Israel's defense minister claims.
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14IsraelSweden Israel's education ministry decides it's time to unperson climate activist Greta Thunberg. Although the article claims she "supported Hamas", her post didn't mention Hamas (or their early-October incursion) at all, which was actually a signature complaint towards her by Israel supporters.
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24Ireland Transphobe-in-chief Graham Linehan's new book Tough Crowd is looking like a flop, after its fails to reach to the top 1000 of Amazon's bestseller list. Gossip site Popbitch and BookScanWikipedia data both claim that only 390 copies were actually sold. Tough crowd indeed...
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26Greece Ratings agency Standard and Poor's has raised Greece's economic rating from BB+ (low) to BBB-/A-3 (stable) citing improvements in the country's economy, a rating it hasn't seen since 2010.
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21United States GOP's temporary Speaker of the House threatens to quit. Also Jim Jordan lost a third vote, but that's to be expected.
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20United States Kenneth Chesebro is the second Trump lawyer to plead guilty in the RICO case.
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14United StatesIllinois. Six year old Palestinian boy stabbed to death in Chicago for being Muslim
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-25IsraelIrelandNetherlands U2 – a group that constantly preaches about peace and nonviolence – is now tangled up with a bank profiting from Israel’s violations of international law.
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15RussiaUnited States US conducts "a high-explosive experiment at a nuclear test site in Nevada just hours after Russia revoked a ban on atomic-weapons testing". It is not clear that this was a nuclear test, despite the headlines on the event.
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20Ukraine Ukraine set to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over alleged links to Russia. The church, a division of Eastern Orthodoxy, claims to have cut ties to Moscow. [Please note this is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow PatriarchateWikipedia, not the Orthodox Church of UkraineWikipedia]
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16BelgiumSweden Two Swedes shot dead in Brussels and a third wounded on the 16th by ISIS terrorist who had previously been in prison in Sweden. Belgian police later shot him dead.
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36United States Alex Jones must pay $1.1 billion in defamation damages to Sandy Hook families despite declaring bankruptcy.
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22United States A bill that would have prevented US humanitarian aid to Gaza has been blocked by none other than Bernie Sanders.
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28United StatesVenezuela US sanctions on Venezuelan oil, gas, and gold have been eased in exchange for freer elections and the release of political prisoners. Venezuela is given until the end of November to begin compliance with the deal, though it seems they already have begun, since five opposition leaders were released nigh immediately.
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13United StatesYemenIsraelSyria US Navy warship shoots down missiles and drones from Yemen that were heading "potentially towards Israel". An American garrison in southern Syria were also targeted by drones the day before.
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24Italy The late Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi left a mostly worthless, massive collection of paintings to his heirs. The collection costs €800,000/year to maintain: tackiness from beyond the grave.
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26United States Sidney Powell pleaded guilty in the RICO case in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors.
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16United Kingdom When asked about the Conservative Party’s Tamworth candidate suggesting that unemployed parents struggling to feed their children should “fuck off”, Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson says the comments show that “unlike Labour we are a party that believes in work”. Ladies and gentlemen of the UK, your elected representatives.
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20the World European Union According to Business Insider, Musk is considering removing the ability of Europeans to use Twitter/X, because of disinformation requirements demanded under the Digital Service Act.
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9Germany Molotov cocktails thrown at Berlin synagogue in early-morning attack.
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19United States Jim Jordan loses second vote for House Speaker, this time with 22 Republicans voting against him.
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22Russia Russia withdraws a thousand ruble bill after Orthodox priests complain that a depiction of the Kazan Kremlin printed on it shows an Orthodox church, the Cathedral of the Annunciation, without a cross and a mosque, the Kul Sharif, with an Islamic crescent... even though that's what the Kazan Kremlin looks like.
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22Poland A senior member of the Polish state broadcaster TVP Marcin Wolski, has admitted that the broadcaster made "worse propaganda than [under communism] in the 1970s”. He says that this distrust contributed to the fall of PiS in last Sunday's election.
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10the World United Kingdom The international alliance of centre-right parties, the International Democracy Union, which includes the GOP, the Liberals and both Conservative parties has appointed former British PM Boris Johnson as a member of its Honorary Advisory Board. No joke!
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8United States You're probably wondering right now: "Can we finally get George W. Bush elected as Speaker of the House?" Well, no, you probably weren't wondering that at all, actually. But one House Democrat from California apparently was.
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36United States Wingnut Jim Jordan fails vote for House Speaker with 20 Republicans voting against him.
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26IsraelPalestine'At least 500' dead in strike on Gaza hospital complex, health officials say. It's unclear if it's from an IDF strike, a misfired Palestinian rocket, or something else. President Biden appears to believe it was a misfired rocket.
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10United Kingdom The UK's Adam Smith Institute, which is partly funded by American climate denial and tobacco interests, plans to "expand its network" into the Labour Party. The right-wing think tank even plans to announce that it now has a Labour peer as a patron.
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31Netherlands The Dutch main centre-left coalition GroenLinks/PvdA has voted to include a party platform of making the Netherlands a parliamentary republic.
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13IsraelPalestine Dozens of refugees fleeing Gaza's destruction killed as Israel conducts ground raids
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27United StatesPennsylvania. Obscure 1861 law in Pennsylvania banning fortune-telling apparently still enforced. A witchcraft shop received a police chief visit due to tarot readings.
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22United StatesFrance Jewish and Palestinian diaspora attacked in scattered violent incidents. Many of these have been linked by authorities to the Israel-Palestine war. Examples include three attacks in New York City and a stabbing spree in France. Unfortunately, more examples are likely to come.
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35JapanTrans flag.svg Japanese court grants a trans man that he is not required to undergo sterilization to change his legal gender. It sparks hope that a Supreme Court case could soon question the law requiring this altogether.
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23UgandaGay Pride Flag.svg Uganda's constitutional court to hear challenges against homophobic law
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4Australia The indigenous Voice to Parliament proposal has failed in Australia with a majority no vote, in a national constitutional referendum.
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3New Zealand New Zealand Labour prime minister Chris Hipkins has lost in the election to National leader & evangelical Christopher Luxon.
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20United States Sen. Bob Menendez has been charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent of Egypt in a new indictment.
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29Japan Japan asks its courts to revoke the legal status of the Japanese branch of the Unification Church, commonly known as the "Moonies". The government alleges that the Church has committed financial abuses against its members; one member's son was the gunman who assassinated former PM Shinzō Abe.
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21United States After going on strike earlier this month, Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers have won 21% in wage increases over the next four years and a baseline wage of $23 per hour (and $25 in California).
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16IsraelUnited Kingdom BBC journalists were assaulted by Israeli police.
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15United States The FBI is questioning Muslims and Palestinians, echoing post-9/11 surveillance. This comes after Joe Biden's pledge for a national law enforcement focus on "domestic threats."
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14United NationsLebanonIsraelPalestine Latest escalations. Israelis struck a Lebanese army post (though, skirmishes there are still limited). Lebanese soldiers and UN peacekeepers gather near the border with Israel. Israel beginning ground assaults on Gaza using infantry and tanks in "localized raids".
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3France France has banned pro-Palestine protests.
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17SyriaIsrael Syria says that Israel has hit two of its airports with rockets, likely to prevent Iran’s foreign minister from arriving. Update: These were two of Syria's main airports, and they are now out of service.
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17IsraelPalestine Israel has told roughly 1 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to evacuate within 24 hours before an expected invasion by the IDF. The U.N. has stated this would be impossible.
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15IsraelPalestineLebanon It's been confirmed that Israel has used white phosphorus in the Gaza Strip (Palestine) and Lebanon.
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19Czechia Czech researchers are warning that climate change is making hops yields smaller and changing the footprint of where they grow. This means that the taste of certain beers could change, as the terroir of the hops affects the flavour of the beer.
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13United States Conservative groups (such as the libertarian Cato Institute) launch another effort to block student loan debt relief, this time potentially impacting 804,000 people.
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13United Kingdom Keir Starmer has said he is a "YIMBY", and would support the government overruling local authorities planning decisions on building on the "grey belt", that is under-used urban land in the green belt.
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16United Kingdom Former editor of the Daily Telegraph, and Johnson's former boss Max Hastings has said in an interview he's going to be voting Labour in the next election. He says that the Conservatives have "been taken over by cynics and fantasists".
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22Finland Estonia Russia The main gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia, the Balticconnector has been suspiciously damaged, limiting gas deliveries between the two countries. Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports that a Russian freighter was near the pipeline over the weekend.
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19European UnionUnited States European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton has called for Elon Musk to deal with the large amount of misinformation on X in relation to the Israel-Hamas violence, saying it breaks the Digital Service Act.
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14United StatesNorth Carolina. GOP supermajorities in North Carolina's legislature have overridden the Democratic governor's vetoes to enact laws that eliminate the governor's power to appoint the State Board of Elections (transferring it to the legislature), and end the three-day grace period to receive and count absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day.
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27United StatesNew York. GOP congressman George Santos hit with ten additional federal charges, including: credit card fraud, identity theft, wire fraud, conspiracy, etc. George Santos now faces a total of 23 federal charges, which also include money laundering and lying to Congress.
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31PalestineIsraelEgypt Israel has begun a "complete siege" of Gaza City, with all "electricity, food, water and fuel" withheld. Egypt states they will provide some aid regardless, though the sole Egypt-Gaza border crossing was briefly disrupted by air raids.
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-17United StatesCalifornia. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoes a bill that would've banned caste-based discrimination in the state. He's vetoed some other bills recently, including one to limit insulin prices.
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19Australia Part of an anti-Israel rally in Sydney, Australia broke into chants of "gas the Jews" and "fuck the Jews", now the incident is under investigation by the police.
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16Israel Israel's major parties discuss an emergency unity government. Benny Gantz appears more amiable to a deal with Netanyahu, but Yair Lapid & co. don't want to be involved if the far-right (the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir) are part of the coalition. Update: A unity government was formed with Gantz.
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19European UnionPalestine The European Union has announced that it's suspending hundreds of millions of euros in aid for Palestine. ETA: or maybe not..... - not everyone was on board with the decision.
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11Afghanistan Over 2,000 people killed by an earthquake in Afghanistan, the latest of several devastating the country this year.
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16PalestineIsrael Hamas militants opened fire on a music festival in Israel, slaughtering an estimated 260 people and taking an unknown number of hostages. American and British citizens were present in the crowd.
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29GermanyPalestine Germany has frozen its aid to Palestine. Note: this follows reports that at least one German-Israeli woman was killed and paraded around as a naked corpse by Hamas, though Germany's foreign ministry implied that there have probably been other German civilians killed.
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24IsraelLebanon Artillery and missile fire exchanged between Israel and Lebanon. There were no reported casualties. However, Hezbollah has claimed responsibility, possibly now involving themselves in the war. Yet to be seen how involved they will really be. Update: October 9 reports that Hezbollah fired on north Israel again.
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21Germany The current head of the German far-right party AfD, Tino Chrupalla, was hospitalized on 4 October with rather mild symptoms. A medical report claimed he had been attacked with a syringe, but apparently this was only based on his own reports. Eyewitnesses were not able to recall any physical attack and no poisonous substances were found.
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47IsraelPalestine Hamas soldiers mass-fired rockets at Israel, stormed the border, caught the IDF off-guard, killed soldiers and civilians, including Ofir Libstein, the mayor of Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev region. They've taken Israeli civilians hostage, and there is currently a war going on in the streets. Israel is firing rockets back at the Gaza Strip. This is the largest military action by Hamas in recent memory.
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26Philippines Climate change and a rising population are causing Manila, the Philippines' capital city of 13 million people, to run low on water. The government is building a dam to solve this issue, but indigenous activists say it will destroy their ancestral lands. Officials project Manila will experience a severe water shortage by 2027.
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18United Kingdom Man convicted of planning to kill the (late) Queen was seemingly encouraged by an LLM chatbot.
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36Iran Norway زن، زندگی، آزادی (Woman, Life, Freedom). Iranian women's right activist Narges MohammadiWikipedia has won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, for her fight against the oppression of women and the death penalty in Iran.
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17RussiaFlag of the Republic of Abkhazia.svgGeorgia With the Kremlin's hold on Crimea starting to look rather dubious, Russia has reportedly made a deal with Abkhazia to build a naval base in Ochamchire. Georgia, which Abkhazia is de jure part of, is naturally not pleased.
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12United States Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers are striking across states. About 75,000 people are expected to strike.
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32the WorldUnited States Reuters is reporting that 𝕏 is in financial trouble after experts have valued the company at just $8 billion, approximately ¾ less of the $41 billion that was paid for the company a year ago. Also, it is less than the $13 billion that Musk borrowed from various banks including Morgan Stanley to purchase the company.
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8United StatesNebraska. Trans flag.svg Nebraska to force five months of "non-affirming therapy" on transgender children, among other abuses.
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29the World September 2023 was the world's hottest September on record.
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38MauritiusGay Pride Flag.svg Mauritius Supreme Court legalises homosexuality.
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24United Kingdom Laurence Fox has been sacked from GB News. Update: He has now been arrested by police for "conspiring to commit criminal damage" over enticing people to damage revenue cameras.
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20Vatican CityGay Pride Flag.svg Pope Francis has said in a response to questions from conservative cardinals that while he is against same-sex marriages, he would support the blessings of same-sex couples in Catholic churches.
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38Armenia Armenia's parliament has voted to ratify the Rome Statute, which recognises the International Criminal Court, defying opposition from Russia. Russian opposition to this is because if Putin visits, Armenia is obliged to sanction the outstanding ICC arrest warrant on him.
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30United States Major drugmaker companies will negotiate with Medicare to lower prices on selected medications. In Canada, similar programs have seen apparent success.
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36United States Kevin McCarthy has been voted out as speaker of the House, making him the first speaker ever removed by such a vote.
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-11United KingdomTrans flag.svg British health secretary Steve Barclay announces plan to ban transgender hospital patients from male-only and female-only wards.
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20United StatesNorth Carolina. North Carolina's Republican legislature expands investigative powers for its "Gov Ops" committee. Democrats compare it to a secret police force with its power to enter homes and buildings, seizing property, all without warrants and in secret.
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15United States United Kingdom The BBC's investigative programme Panorama has reported that the former CEO of clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Mike Jefferies and his partner Matthew Smith, sexually abused male staff during his time as head of the company and used NDAs to cover it up.
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23United States There may soon be an attempt by the GOP's congressional far-right to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House after he supported a stopgap measure to keep the government funded for a month and a half. Matt Gaetz says he will spearhead it. Update: Gaetz filed the motion. Whether he has any allies in this is yet to be seen. Update: The Democrats have united to oust McCarthy for his support for "MAGA extremism."