News Watch

US-backed rebel Syrian forces captured the city of Raqqa, Syria, from the Islamist militant group Daesh on Oct. 17. Raqqa was the largest city still held by Daesh and was its de facto capital in Syria. It had been held by Daesh since 2014.

Since rebel forces began their assault on Raqqa in June 2017, it is estimated that at least 3,250 people were killed in the city, including at least 1,130 civilians.

Tropical Storm Nate made landfall in the Central American countries of Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica on Oct. 5, killing at least 30 people in the region. Nate was then upgraded to a hurricane and briefly made landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula before moving across the Gulf of Mexico to the US coast.

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In Portugal and western Spain, more than 145 wildfires started over Oct. 14 and 15, killing at least 33 people and injuring more than 50. Conditions were hot and dry, but the causes of the fires were unknown as of press time.

A large forest fire in Portugal in June killed more than 60 people before being controlled. 

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A rare Northeast Atlantic hurricane hit Ireland on Oct. 15 with winds of up to 110 miles per hour. Hurricane Ophelia killed at least three people and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes across the island. Ophelia was downgraded from a hurricane before it hit Scotland, Wales and England, but it still caused some minor damage and flooding.

As ITN went to press, the State Department had travel warnings on 42 destinations: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Israel/West Bank/Gaza, Jordan, Kenya, North Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Republic of South Sudan, Sudan, Syria,...

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The month of September saw a series of devastating hurricanes hitting the Caribbean, killing at least 47 people and reducing a number of islands to rubble. The hurricanes caused damage of some sort on nearly every Caribbean island.

Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, made landfall on Sept. 6 in the Eastern Caribbean. Worst hit was the island of Barbuda, the smaller, northernmost island of the nation Antigua & Barbuda. Irma’s 180-mile-per-hour winds destroyed at least 90% of...

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On Sept. 9, a magnitude-8.1 earthquake struck southern Mexico off the Pacific coast of the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, killing 90 people in Mexico and one in Guatemala. It was the largest earthquake in Mexico in more than a century. 

On Sept. 19, a 7.1-magnitude quake struck central Mexico, 75 miles south of Mexico City, collapsing a number of buildings in the capital. As of press time, at least 305 people had been declared dead, with many still missing. 

The Sept....

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Two suicide bombers struck the southern-Iraq city of Nasiriya on Sept. 14, killing at least 50 people and injuring more than 80 others. 

The first bomber targeted a restaurant, detonating his suicide vest inside the establishment. He was dressed as a member of Hashd al-Shaabi, a militant Shia group that is allied with the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamist militant group Daesh (ISIL). Shortly afterward, a car bomber targeted a nearby military checkpoint. Daesh...

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