Year of Variants: Stubborn virus marks momentous 2021 (October)

ANKARA (AA) – An independent inquiry finding church sexual abuse of children in France between 1950 and 2020, the Turkish parliament's ratifying the Paris climate accord, and the Nobel Prize announcements marked the top news stories globally in October.

OCTOBER

Oct. 1

- Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is detained following his return to the country after eight years.

Oct. 2

- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announces his retirement from politics when his term ends.

Oct. 3

- Algeria closes its airspace to French military aircraft.

Oct. 4

- Fumio Kishida, the president of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is elected the country's 100th prime minister in an extraordinary session of the House of Representatives.

- Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali takes office for another five-year term.

- Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp services go down in what marks an apparent worldwide outage for many users.

Oct. 5

- Russia launches Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft carrying a filmmaking crew to the International Space Station to make the first movie ever shot in space.

- In a stunning revelation, an independent commission says there were 216,000 cases of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in France between 1950 and 2020.

Oct. 6

- Two scientists jointly win the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of "asymmetric organocatalysis."

- The Turkish parliament ratifies the Paris Agreement to contribute to the global efforts against climate change.

Oct. 7

- Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate" coverage of elects of colonialism.

- Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov receive the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their "courageous fight for freedom of expression" in the Philippines and Russia.

- The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to three scientists, Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe, German scientist Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi from Italy, for "groundbreaking" discoveries concerning Earth's climate.

- American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian win the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch."

Oct. 8

- Sebastian Kurz steps down as Austrian chancellor in the wake of corruption allegations.

Oct. 11

- Three US-based economists jointly win the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics for their contributions to labor economics and analysis of causal relationships.

Oct. 13

- William Shatner, who spent a career playing the high-flying space adventurer Captain Kirk on the Star Trek television series, goes to space, becoming the oldest person taking that trip.

Oct.14

- Cautious calm descends over Beirut after nearly four hours of violence in the Lebanese capital leaves at least six people dead and more than 30 wounded.

Oct. 18

- Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell dies due to complications from COVID-19.

Oct. 20

- Barbados elects its first-ever president, Governor-General Dame Sandra Mason, ending 396 years of British rule.

Oct. 21

- Famous US actor and producer Alec Baldwin, 68, fatally shoots a cinematographer and injures a film director with a prop gun on a movie set.

Oct. 25

- Sudan's military head Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan declares a state of emergency and dissolves transitional sovereign council and government, following the arrest of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and ministers in the civilian government.

Oct. 27

- Amnesty International says 1 million people at risk of starvation in Madagascar because of drought, urging the international community to provide humanitarian assistance to combat the effects of drought in the East African country.

Oct. 28

- Facebook renames itself to Meta as it faces a growing litany of controversy. Meta unites Facebook's apps and technologies, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and its Oculus virtual reality division in what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes as a "metaverse."

- Around 1,300 French nursing students resign due to fatigue and exhaustion amid the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to staff shortages at hospitals.

Oct. 29

- Saudi Arabia bans all imports from Lebanon until further notice after Lebanese Information Minister George Kurdahi criticized the Saudi-led war in Yemen against armed Houthi rebels.​​​​​​​