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Nagorno-Karabakh, Caucasus: the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has reignited, and in an unexpectedly bloody way.

Tehran, Iran. Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammed al-Masri is killed, along with his daughter, by two men on a motorcycle. His daughter, Miriam, is the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza. The initial report in the Iranian official press named a Lebanese history professor and

Mali. France announced that Abdelmalek Droukdel, leader of Al-Qaeda in North Africa, was killed in May by French forces, and a senior leader of the Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS), Mohamed Mrabat, was captured.

Northwest Libya: GNA government forces control the city of Tarhuna and the entire southern part of Tripoli: Haftar’s LNA forces withdraw.

Northwest Libya: GNA government forces manage to regain full control of Tripoli airport.

Northwest Libya: Hundreds of Russian mercenaries with much of their equipment leave the area on airstrikes, headed for the rear of central Libya controlled by Haftar (LNA). Turkish drones supporting Al-Sarraj (GNA) do not attack the retreating Russians.

Northwest Libya: Turkish-supplied UAVs and GNA government forces destroyed or captured seven Russian-made Pantsir-S1 self-propelled anti-aircraft weapons systems in just 48 hours. These self-propelled anti-aircraft weapons cost approximately $14 million each and were supplied to General Haftar’s LNA forces by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Northwest Libya: The gigantic and strategic al-Watiyah air base is captured by Al-Sarraj’s government forces (GNA), who then pursue Haftar’s (LNA) men in retreat.

N’Djamena, Chad. Forty-four prisoners of Boko Haram, an Islamic State affiliate, were found poisoned in their cells. They were among a group of 58 arrested in a raid after Boko Haram killed one hundred Chadian soldiers.

Cairo, Egypt. Egyptian security forces killed seven jihadists with suspected links to ISIS during a raid, followed by a violent four-hour urban battle, in Cairo’s Al-Amireya neighborhood. The extremists were planning attacks on Coptic churches ahead of Sunday’s Orthodox Easter. An Egyptian police officer was

Libya. Forces of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) of al-Sarraj, based in Tripoli, recapture the coastal towns of Sabratha, Surman, al-Ajaylat, Regdalin, al-Jumayl, Zelten, and al-Essa, thus regaining continuous territorial control along Libya’s entire western coast. Turkish air support is crucial. The forces

Yemen. Al Qaeda of the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) leader Qasim al-Raymi was killed by a US drone strike. He had taken over AQAP leadership in 2015, when his predecessor was similarly killed. AQAP was founded in 2009 and has been active in the Arabian Peninsula,

Libya. The city of Sirte, previously under the control of Tripoli’s UN-recognized government, Al-Sarraj, falls to Benghazi-based General Haftar. Just a few days earlier, a ceasefire had been agreed upon in Berlin between the two sides, with European mediation.

Tehran, Iran. A Ukrainian airliner carrying dozens of Canadians, Iranians, Ukrainians, and other nationalities (176) was mistakenly shot down by two Iranian anti-aircraft missiles. The incident was initially attributed to a malfunction, then vehemently denied by the Iranian authorities, and finally admitted on January 11

Iraq. Sixteen Iranian missiles hit the American bases in Erbil and Al-Asad. No one was injured or killed. There are 2,000 American soldiers at the Al-Asad base, and its landing strip is enormous: more than 5 kilometers long. In Erbil, in addition to the Americans,

Tripoli, Libya. The first Turkish troops arrive.

Tripoli, Libya. The military academy is hit by a bombing while recruits are training. Thirty-one people are killed and 33 are injured.

Baghdad, Iraq. Following the killing of General Suleimani, a new US raid in Iraq killed six people, including the commander of the pro-Iranian Hashed Al-Shaabi brigades.

Baghdad, Iraq. An American drone strike kills Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, along with three other Iranians and five Iraqis. Soleimani was the leader of Iranian covert operations, particularly the Qods Brigades, and a key figure in the Ayatollah regime. The order to strike came directly

Turkey: Parliament approves a military deployment of thousands of troops to the Libyan civil war, to support the Tripoli government (recognized by the UN and supported by Turkey and Pakistan) against the Benghazi government (supported by Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and

Moscow. Terrorist attack on the headquarters of the secret service (formerly the KGB) that lasted over an hour, carried out by one or more individuals armed with Kalashnikovs (initially reported as three, later corrected to one). One officer was killed and five were injured.

Northeast Syria. American troops (approximately 900 soldiers) are returning to patrol some areas of northeastern Syria, near the Iraqi border crossing and oil fields.

Barisha, northwestern Syria, near the Turkish border. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, is killed in a US special forces operation. The area is controlled by Sunni militias, including Al-Qaeda, a rival of ISIS. Al-Baghdadi’s location is known thanks to intelligence gathered in

Syria. US President Trump declares the ceasefire in northeastern Syria permanent and lifts sanctions against Turkey for it.

Syria. U.S. Vice President Pence, along with Turkish President Erdogan, announced an agreement for a temporary ceasefire in the Turkish assault on the Kurds in northeastern Syria. On the ground, the Turks have only occupied a small portion of the border corridor, which they intended

Georgia. Massive cyberattack on 2,000 government websites. In February of the following year, following an investigation, Georgia, Great Britain, and the United States identified the source as the Russian intelligence services (GRU). Similar attacks had also been carried out in Ukraine in 2015, 2016, and

Syria. Women’s rights activist Hevrin Khalaf, secretary general of the Kurdish Future Party, is stoned and killed by pro-Turkish militias.

Syria. Turkish troops enter Kurdish-held Syria in force.

US President Donald Trump announces the withdrawal of American forces from northeastern Syria, effectively paving the way for Turkish military intervention.

Saudi Arabia. The kingdom’s main oil hub, near the eastern coast on the Persian Gulf, is attacked with drones and missiles. The immediate claim of responsibility lies with the Yemeni Houthi rebels, backed by Tehran, but subsequent investigations point the finger directly at Iran, due

Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down a US RQ-4A Global Hawk drone. The Iranians claim it was in Iranian territorial waters, while the Americans claim it was in international waters.

Sri Lanka. Easter Sunday for Catholics. Several coordinated terrorist attacks in churches in several cities across the country kill 321 people praying in Catholic churches to celebrate Easter. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.

Baghus Fawqani, Syria. Even the last fierce resistance of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) along the left bank of the Euphrates was defeated by the Kurdish SDF with American support from the USAF.

Milan. The driver of a bus carrying 51 middle school students, Ousseynou Sy, a 46-year-old Senegalese man working for the Crema Autoguidovie (Autoguidovie) company, threatened the kids and poured gasoline: “Let’s go to Linate, no one’s leaving here alive today.” One of the students, Adam

Christianchurch, New Zealand. Twenty-eight-year-old Brenton Tarrant Harrison, with no criminal record but obsessed with the idea that Muslims are invading the world, enters a mosque and kills 49 people and injures dozens more, including children.

Baghus Fawqani, Syria. The Kurds, with the support of the US-led coalition, have conquered the last territory still occupied by the Islamic State (or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant no longer holds any territory after more than

First Trump for the United States and then Putin for Russia withdraw from the INF Treaty (treaty to abolish intermediate-range nuclear missiles, signed in 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev to remove the SS-20 and the Pershing 2 and Cruise missiles from the European theater)

Yemen. The lead bomber of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors, was killed in a targeted USAF airstrike.

Syria. Kurdish forces, backed by the Americans, completely liberate the former Islamic State capital, Raqqa.

Granada, Andalusia, Spain. Jose Ortix and his team discover that Haumea, a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) comparable in size to Pluto but ellipsoidal in shape, indeed has rings.

Italy’s Virgo is making headlines. For the first time, gravitational waves and light emissions from the same event have been directly observed, and for the first time, this event is the merger of two neutron stars, an event that involves the release of enormous amounts

Orsay, France. Hideki Tanimura and his team of astrophysicists have proven that at least 50% of the missing matter (so-called dark matter) is present in the form of enormous filaments of hot gas that connect galaxies.

Nobel Prize in Physics to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Barry Barish for the discovery of gravitational waves, completing the verification of Einstein’s General Relativity.

Catalonia. The independence referendum, considered illegal and opposed by Madrid, even with force, received a 91% yes vote, with over 2.3 million voters out of 5.3 million registered.

The discovery of gravitational waves emitted by a fourth black hole collision is announced. This time, the Virgo Observatory in Pisa also witnessed it. Through triangulation with two American observatories in Louisiana and Washington state, the location was also identified. The resulting new body has

Syria. The anti-ISIS coalitions have made significant, albeit slow, progress: Syrian troops (SAA), supported by Russia and Iran, have reconquered much of the desert expanses in the country’s east and are firmly targeting Deir Ezzor, where other Syrian troops have been besieged by the jihadists

Iraq. The Iraqi army, with American support, reconquers the entire Tal Afar area, a previously ISIS-held pocket east of Mosul.

LIGO in the United States and Virgo in Pisa, Italy, received and detected the gravitational wave caused by the collision of two neutron stars. This is the first gravitational wave not caused by the merger of two black holes. It is located 130 million light-years

Barcelona. Double attack involving vans and cars rammed into a crowd. One hundred injured and 14 dead. Five attackers are killed in a firefight with police.

Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli launches aboard the Soyuz R-7 rocket to the ISS. This is his second mission, after 17 years, and he is now 60 years old.

Mosul, Iraq. Even the last pockets held by ISIS until the last moment, in the intricate labyrinth of tunnels and alleys of the old city on the west bank of the Tigris, are being taken by the regular Iraqi army, with the support of the

Raqqa, Syria. The city is completely under siege by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

Raqqa, Syria. An American F-18 downs a Syrian Su-22 bomber after it completed a strike against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The scientific paper “Attention Is All You Need” by Google Brain and Google Research researchers Ashish Vaswani, Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Lion Jones, Aidan N. Gomez, Lukasz Kaiser, and Illia Polosukhin is published. This paper lays the foundation for the “Transformers” technique, which

Tehran, Iran. An ISIS terrorist attack strikes the Iranian parliament, resulting in a shooting and several casualties, and the Khomeini Mausoleum, where a woman blows herself up. The death toll is 22, including the five terrorists, and 43 are injured.

London Bridge, London. Three terrorists of Middle Eastern origin (one with an Italian passport) ran over people and then stabbed people in the crowd. Seven people died and 48 were injured.

Kabul. The day after the killing of Senator Salim Ezadyar’s son, three consecutive explosions during a funeral procession killed 20 people and injured 87.

Kabul. An ISIS suicide attack kills 150 people and wounds 463. The target was the German Embassy.

Menyiah, Egypt. A group of terrorists opened fire on a bus full of Christian pilgrims. Thirty-five people died.

The USAF X-37B military spacecraft returns to Earth after 718 days in orbit. This is the fourth X-37B mission.

Emmanuel Macron becomes president of France. Just three years earlier, he hadn’t been involved in politics. His En Marche! movement was just born. A centrist, pro-European, he defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who nevertheless won 35% of the vote.

Sinpo, North Korea. A North Korean missile launch fails: the missile explodes seconds after launch. The incident occurs at the height of tensions, with North Korea threatening the United States with all-out war, and with the US Third Fleet, led by the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft

Idlib, Syria. In the city defended by rebels backed by Al Qaeda, the Moscow-backed Syrian Air Force used nerve gas weapons. At least 86 people were killed, including 30 children.

Quebec City, Canada. Two men enter a mosque and open fire with AK-47s. Six people are killed and eight are injured. Police intervene, and after a chase, the killer is arrested.

Women can vote in 193 of the world’s 195 nations. There was only one nation in 1893 (New Zealand).

There are 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. There were 64,000 in 1986.

Leaded gasoline is permitted in only three countries worldwide. There were 193 in 1986.

Worldwide, smartphones are sold at nearly 1.5 billion, while cell phones excluding smartphones are 450 million.

The study, published by Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth, and Stephen Wagner, finds that 88-95% of all plastic waste in the oceans originating from rivers comes from just 10 countries, 8 in Asia and 2 in Africa. The United States, which accounts for 25% of the

Harvard, Boston, Massachusetts. Ranga Dias and Isaac Silvera compressed hydrogen between two diamonds at 495 GPa at -268°C, claiming to have created metallic hydrogen. Metallic hydrogen is thought to be superfluid and superconductive, and five times more efficient than liquid hydrogen as a propellant. The

The ALPHA experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva recorded the spectrum of an antihydrogen atom for the first time. The spectrum was confirmed to be identical to that of hydrogen, as predicted by the CPT (Charge, Parity, Spin, Time) inversion theory.

Berlin. A truck carrying a Tunisian man crashes into crowds at the Christmas market. The Polish driver, killed by the Tunisian, is found inside. Twelve people die on the road, and 48 are injured.

Türkiye. Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov is assassinated live on TV by a former policeman crying vengeance for Aleppo.

Syria. Aleppo is completely conquered by government forces supported by Russian forces.

peculiar supermoon (perigee full moon). The diameter of the full Moon is 14% larger than average, the largest of the 21st century, and the satellite is 30% brighter, thanks to the coincidence of its perigee with the full Moon. The next similar event is November

Republican Donald Trump surprisingly won the American elections, with 290 electoral votes against Hillary Clinton’s 232.

Iraq. Mosul is under siege by regular Iraqi troops supported by the Americans.

Barack Obama, still president of the United States, is the editor of a special issue of Wired magazine, a Silicon Valley icon, dedicated to science fiction, which he is an avid reader. In the editorial, he writes: “The next time you’re bombarded with exaggerated claims

Two earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 6.1 on the Richter scale hit the same region of Amatrice as in August. This time, there were no casualties.

AT&T buys Time Warner for $85 billion.