Top News Stories –

Nasa predicts near-miss with asteroid on Halloween –
An asteroid is due to pass by Earth on Halloween and miss us by a whisker, according to Nasa. Well, if whiskers were 499,000km long, at any rate. The asteroid was spotted by Nasa a fortnight ago and is set to fly past the Earth on Halloween at over 78,000mph. It will cross by Earth at the closest it’s been since 2006. The space agency explained why they spotted it at such short notice, despite constantly monitoring the size. They said: “The asteroid is on an extremely eccentric and a high inclination orbit.” We won’t be able to see the asteroid with the naked eye, but anyone with access to a telescope will be able to see it as it passes by. “This is the closest approach by a known object this large until 1999 AN10 approaches within 1 lunar distance in August 2027,” said Nasa. [Daily Telegraph]

Q Awards 2015: Foals beat Ed Sheeran and Blur to win Best Act In the World Today –
The Oxford band Foals confirmed their elevation to music’s biggest stages after being voted Best Act In the World Today at the Q magazine awards. Foals, who combine indie rock with electronic beats and African-inspired rhythms, beat Blur, Noel Gallagher and Ed Sheeran to the award, previously won by the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. Ed Sheeran beat Kanye West, Taylor Swift and Sam Smith to the Solo Artist award, capping a year in which the strummer sold out three nights at Wembley Stadium, performing with just his guitar and a loops pedal. However Sheeran lost out to the Brighton drums and bass rock duo Royal Blood for the Best Live Act prize. [The Independent] See List of the Day
The Foals

Hundreds Of Apps Banned From App Store For Accessing Users’ Personal Information –
Hundreds of iOS applications have been pulled out of the App Store, following a report from analytics service SourceDNA, which uncovered a group of applications that were extracting users’ personally identifiable information, including email addresses associated with their Apple IDs, devices and peripheral serial numbers, as well as a list of apps installed on their phone. The applications in question had been using an SDK from a Chinese advertising company called Youmi which was accessing this information by way of private APIs, the report found. Nearly all of the developers were located in China so, for now, this appears to be an isolated incident. However, the larger concern here has to do with how long this activity had been taking place – and what that means in terms of Apple’s App Store review process, given that it hadn’t caught this suspect activity until being alerted to it by a third party. [Tech Crunch]

Video of the Day –

DRIVING from Nate Theis on Vimeo.

List of the Day –

The Q Awards 2015 Winners

Q Best New Act 

James Bay

Best Track 

The Libertines – Gunga Din (Winner)

Q Best Album

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Chasing Yesterday 

Q Best Video

Florence + The Machine – Ship To Wreck

Q Hero

Mark Ronson

Q Best Live Act 

Royal Blood

Q Classic Album

Soul II Soul – Club Classics Vol. One

Q Best Solo Artist 

Ed Sheeran

Q Innovation in Sound 

Gary Numan

Q Best Act In The World 

Foals

Gibson Les Paul Award

Tony Iommi

Q Outstanding Contribution to Music

New Order

Q Classic Single

Queen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ 

Q Icon

Duran Duran

Top Twitter Trends –

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Israeli–Palestinian conflict (2015)
  • 19-year-old soldier Omri Levy was killed and nearly a dozen injured in a shooting and stabbing attack in the central bus station in the southern city of Beersheba carried out by an Israeli Bedouin Arab, 21-year old Mohind al-Okbi, who was killed after a gun battle. (Washington Post) (NBC News)
  • Israeli hospital officials announce an Eritrean migrant, Haptom Zerhom, mistakenly shot by an Israeli security guard and then attacked by bystanders who thought he was involved in the Beersheva bus station attack, has died of his wounds. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahsho said this latest incident seemed to capture the current climate of ratcheted-up tensions. Police are looking to identify and locate members of the crowd who beat and fatally wounded the man; the security officer whose shot incapacitated the victim will not be investigated. (AP) (Yediot Ahronot – Ynet)
• War in Afghanistan (2015–present): Kunduz hospital airstrike
  • Afghanistan’s acting defense minister has stated that the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz bombed on 3 October by U.S. forces was being used as a safe haven by insurgents. MSF has repeatedly denied the allegation, stating “Every staff member in Kunduz working for MSF has repeatedly reported to us that there were no armed people in the hospital at the time of the bombing”. (AP)

Business and economics

• China’s economy expanded 6.9% in third quarter over last year’s growth, just slightly better than forecast. (New York Times)
• Shareholders from both companies overwhelmingly approve Aetna’s acquisition of Humana for $37 billion. (Louisville Courier-Journal) (Reuters)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015 Pacific typhoon season
  • Rising floodwaters are causing problems in the northern Philippines as Typhoon Koppu (Lando in the Philippines) is set to linger over the island of Luzon until Wednesday. Eleven people have died so far. (BBC) (AP via Fox News)
• Seven hikers are killed by a raging forest fire while climbing Indonesia‘s Mount Lawu. (The Telegraph)

International relations

• The United States Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force held a triennial fleet review off Tokyo Bay. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first sitting Japanese leader to board a U.S. aircraft carrier when he visited the USS Ronald Reagan.(USA Today) (Japan Times)
• Pope Francis encourages bishops from around the world to sign an appeal to world leaders, meeting in Paris next month, for crucial climate change talks. In a major teaching document in June, the encyclical Laudato Si’ (Latin: Praised be), Francis denounced what he called the “structurally perverse” fossil fuel-based world economy that exploits the poor and destroys the habitability of the Earth for humans. (AP via Washington Post)
• European migrant crisis
  • Croatia reopens its border with Serbia allowing thousands of refugees to cross. (Irish Times)
• Elements from the maritime forces of India, Japan, and the United States engage in joint military exercises in the Bay of Bengal. (Military Times)
• South Ossetian President Leonid Tibilov announces South Ossetia intends on holding a referendum on joining the Russian Federation. Tibilov said reuniting with Russia “is a century-long dream of the South Ossetian people”. (Radio Free Europe)

Law and crime

• Spencer Stone, primarily responsible for thwarting an August terrorist attack on a train en route to Paris from Amsterdam and later stabbed in downtown Sacramento has undergone open heart surgery. The wounds from the most recent altercation were more serious than previously reported. (Air Force Times)
• South African athlete Oscar Pistorius is released from prison to serve the rest of his sentence for culpable homicide of Reeva Steenkamp under house arrest. (The Guardian)
• Following 21 days of deliberation the deadlocked jury in Manhattan declared a mistrial in the case against three former senior attorneys from the “once large and prominent law firm” Dewey & LeBoeuf. The three had been charged with “plotting to manipulate financial records in an attempt to defraud bank lenders and insurance companies during the financial crisis.” (New York Times)

Politics and elections

• Canadian federal election, 2015
  • Voters in Canada go to the polls, to elect the 42nd Canadian Parliament. (CBC) (AP) In the United States, C-SPAN 2 aired complete CBC coverage of the event. [1]
  • The Liberal Party of Canada performs very strongly in Atlantic Canada achieving over 60% of the vote and leading in all of the 33 seats. (The Guardian)
  • Projections show that the Liberal Party of Canada led by Justin Trudeau is poised to form a majority government. (The Star)
  • The Canadian Liberal party has won the federal election with 184 seats. (CBC)
• The Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Benefits, Allison Hickey, at the beleaguered United States Department of Veterans Affairs resigned. She held the post since June 2011. (Military Times)
• U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced that all unmanned aircraft, i.e. drones, will be required to be registered with the government just as manned aircraft are. DOT is forming a task force of government leaders and diverse stakeholderswho will determine the specifics of which drones will be covered and how the registration process will work. (Forbes) (Reuters) (NBC News) (DOT)
• War in Donbass
  • Portraits of former dictator Joseph Stalin go up in the city of Donetsk as the Donetsk People’s Republic adopts more Soviet era policies. (The Guardian)
• Eric Chu, KMT party chairman, has replaced Hung Hsiu-chu as Taiwan’s ruling party candidate just months ahead of elections. (The Diplomat)

Science and technology

• Apple pulls hundreds of iOS mobile applications from its App Store which, the company discovered, includes software that was secretly sending users’ personal information to an advertising firm in China. (NBC News) (TechCrunch)

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