LastWeek.news

October 22-28, 2023

In the United States, 18 people are killed in a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.

On October 25, 2023, a gunman killed 18 people and injured 13 others at two locations in Lewiston, Maine, United States. The first mass shooting was at a bowling alley during a youth league event and the second occurred minutes later at a restaurant.

Hurricane Otis makes landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, leaving at least 39 people dead.

Hurricane Otis was a compact yet devastating tropical cyclone which made landfall in October 2023 near Acapulco as a Category 5 hurricane. Otis was the first Pacific hurricane to make landfall at Category 5 intensity and surpassed Hurricane Patricia as the strongest landfalling Pacific hurricane on record. The fifteenth tropical storm, tenth hurricane, eighth major hurricane, and second Category 5 hurricane of the 2023 Pacific hurricane season, Otis originated from a disturbance several hundred miles south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Initially forecast to only be a weak tropical storm at peak intensity, Otis instead underwent explosive intensification to reach peak winds of 165 mph (270 km/h) and made landfall at peak intensity. Once inland, the hurricane rapidly weakened, before dissipating the following day.

Parties opposing the incumbent Law and Justice party win a combined majority of seats in the Polish general election.

The 2023 Polish parliamentary election took place on Sunday, 15 October 2023, as per the Polish Constitution. Seats in both the Sejm and Senate were contested. Alongside the elections, a referendum containing four questions concerning economic and immigration policy of the government was held.

The Sakharov Prize is awarded to Mahsa Amini and the Iranian Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Mahsa Jina Amini (Persian: مهسا امینی; Kurdish: ژینا ئەمینی; 21 September 1999 – 16 September 2022) was an Iranian woman whose arrest in Tehran for opposing mandatory hijab and subsequent death in police custody sparked a wave of protests throughout Iran. People and governments around the world reacted widely to her death. Her death sparked widespread protest in Iranian society, resulting in major protests in various cities in Iran and acts of solidarity around the world. Amini's death ignited the global Woman, Life, Freedom movement. She and the movement were selected as candidates for the Sakharov Prize in 2023 by European Parliament for defending freedom and human rights.

Israel–Hamas war (ongoing)

The ongoing armed conflict between Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups and Israel military forces began on 7 October 2023, 50 years after the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Hamas's coordinated surprise offensive, codenamed "Al-Aqsa Flood", began in the morning with a barrage of at least 5,000 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip against Israel, while some 2,500 Palestinian militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, massacred and set fire to civilian communities, and attacked Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military bases near the Gaza Strip. Over 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed, including 260 people at a music festival in Re'im. Over 200 people, unarmed civilian hostages and captured Israeli soldiers, were taken to the Gaza Strip. Israel military forces began conducting retaliatory strikes before the Israeli government formally declared war on Hamas a day later.

Russian invasion of Ukraine (ongoing)

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014. The invasion was the biggest attack on a European country since World War II. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. By June 2022, Russian troops occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory. 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. Extensive environmental damage caused by the war, widely described as an ecocide, contributed to food crises worldwide.