Iskanderiyah, Iraq. ISIS claimed responsibility for a bomb explosion last night in the small Iraqi town of Iskanderiyah, near the capital Baghdad. The blast killed 41 people during a soccer match, 16 of them between the ages of 10 and 16.

Brussels. Suicide bombing by four ISIS members, some of whom were involved in the previous Paris attacks. Thirty-one people die and 210 are injured. The attacks take place on the subway and at the airport.

Colombia. Peace agreement between the Marxist FARC forces and the Colombian government, after decades of guerrilla warfare.

Ankara. A suicide car bomb explodes again at a bus station, not far from the site of the February 17 attack. Twenty-seven people are killed and 75 are injured.

Ben Guerdane, Tunisia, on the Libyan border. A group of jihadists from Libya clashed with Tunisian border forces. Twenty-eight jihadists, five Tunisian soldiers, and five civilians were killed, while six wounded jihadists were captured. The fighting began at 4:00 a.m. and continued for hours.

Sabrata, Libya. Two Italian hostages have been freed from jihadist groups. They will be returned to Italy within two days. Until two days earlier, they were with their two colleagues who died shortly afterward in the intervention of government militias.

Sabratha, Libya. Salvatore Failla and Fausto Piano, employees of Bonatti, Parma, which works on ENI’s facilities in Libya, are killed in an attack by government militias.

Libya. The first post-Gaddafi national unity government seeks a vote of confidence.

Ankara. A powerful explosion in the center of the Turkish capital, caused by a car bomb that exploded as a convoy of buses carrying Turkish soldiers passed by. Twenty-nine people were killed and 60 injured.

Sabratha, Libya. The USAF strikes a farm used by ISIS as a training center, killing dozens. Noureddine Chouchane, a terrorist considered the mastermind behind numerous attacks in Tunisia, and two Serbian hostages are also killed.

Ouagadougou, Brunei Faso. At least 27 people were killed and 33 injured, approximately 150 hostages of 18 different nationalities were freed after a lengthy firefight, and four terrorists were killed. A group of armed men stormed the Splendid Hotel and the “Le Cappuccino” café-restaurant, frequented by Westerners and particularly UN personnel. The attack, triggered by two car bombs, was claimed by AQIM (al-Qaeda Islamic Maghreb). Some terrorists reportedly checked into the hotel by posing as ordinary guests. After hours of armed confrontation, the army managed to free hundreds of hostages and kill some members of the commando, probably not all. Witnesses described “a young woman with dreadlocks and others of Arab appearance” who entered the café shouting “Allah akhbar” (Allah is great), where 10 people were killed. In addition to Burkinabe military units, around thirty French special forces men and American intelligence agents are also taking part in the operations (the US has several military bases in the country engaged in the fight against jihadist terrorism in the Sahel).

New York. David Bowie dies.

There are more telephone subscriptions in the world than there are people on the planet.

A modern SUV or pickup truck from the early 2000s consumes 99% less fuel than a typical 1970s small car, in terms of emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. In practice, a modern car driven at full speed consumes less fuel than a 1970s car left idle, parked, and turned off, but still polluting due to leaks.

North Korea tested its fourth nuclear device at Sungjibaegam, Punggye-ri, in North Hamgyong Province, in the northeastern part of the country. The government claims the test was a “miniaturized H-bomb.” There are doubts that it was a hydrogen bomb, however, and the explosion is thought to have been on the order of ten ktons, likely due to fission, perhaps followed by a “boosted explosion,” where tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) undergoes partial fusion.

University of North Carolina. The molecular “killer” that destroys movement neurons in many patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) has been unmasked: it is an extremely unstable and reactive protein aggregate that “poisons” the central nervous system, leading to paralysis. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences (PNAS), paves the way for new targeted drugs against ALS and sheds new light on other neurodegenerative diseases that share the presence of abnormal protein aggregates in the brain, such as Alzheimer’s.

Syria. Just east of Damascus. Zahar Alloush, leader of the anti-Assad and anti-ISIS movement Jaysh al-Islam, is killed in a Russian airstrike. The rebel group immediately appoints a successor: Essam al-Buwaydhani, aka Abu Hamman.

The Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator is powered up for the first time in Germany. Initially, it will run on helium. It is a prototype nuclear fusion reactor with a design that is innovative compared to the traditional tokamak. The project has a budget of 1.06 billion euros.

Worldwide, 90% of girls attend primary school. It was 65% in 1970.

Worldwide, 88% of people have running, drinkable water at home. This figure was 58% in 1980.

In the world, 6,210,002 songs are released on the market every year. Ten years ago, there were only a tenth of them.

Venezuela. The right-wing party wins two-thirds of the parliamentary seat in the elections, defeating Chávez’s party, which has been in power for 16 years. The country faces 200% inflation and a crumbling economy, partly due to oil prices at $40 a barrel, the lowest in six years.

Regional elections in France: Marine Le Pen’s far-right populist Front National is the largest party in France.

In 2015, statistics show that 56% of American teenagers talk on the phone while driving. 2,715 of them died in 2015, and 221,313 were injured in car accidents, half of which involved a single vehicle. By contrast, in 2015, self-driving cars (without drinking, distractions, and having many more “eyes”) caused only one accident since they began hitting public roads (3.5 million kilometers traveled by Google’s Waymo cars alone). The only accident was a swipe against the side of a bus at 3 km/h. The accident rate per kilometer calculated over nine years is 40 times lower than that of drivers aged 16 to 19, and 10 times lower than that of drivers aged 50 to 59. And these are just the first prototypes…

Akatsuki, the Japanese mission to Venus, was launched in 2010. At the crucial moment of entering Venusian orbit, it went into safe mode, and missed the opportunity. But the Japanese team did not lose heart: they developed a rescue plan and on December 7, 2015, fired its thrusters and, against all odds, managed to enter Venusian orbit, subsequently taking fantastic photographs.

San Bernardino, California. Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook enter a center for the disabled, where the man worked, and armed with automatic weapons, carry out a massacre: 14 deaths. The two then flee and are killed by police a few hours later. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack, and it will later be discovered that the woman had pledged allegiance to ISIS a few hours earlier.

The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is born: an organization founded and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, with a 99% investment of the couple’s lifetime wealth from their Facebook shares. It will invest $3 billion to prevent, cure, or manage any disease by the end of the 21st century.

Turkey’s southern border with Syria. A Turkish F-16 fighter jet shoots down a Russian Sukhoi-24 strategic bomber. According to the Turks, the plane had repeatedly crossed the border and had received ten warnings in the previous five minutes. The two pilots parachuted out, one killed by anti-Assad Turkmen rebels, who were targeted by Russian bombers. A Russian rescue helicopter was also destroyed by the rebels, killing a Russian marine.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins launches and recovers the New Shepard rocket. The rocket reaches 100 kilometers in the air, releases the capsule, and then re-enters and lands vertically in a controlled manner.

Bamako, Mali. A group of 13 terrorists, believed to be led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, entered the Radisson Hotel, a popular Western destination, shouting “Allahu Akhbar.” They blocked the exits, held more than 100 people hostage, released those who could recite verses from the Quran, and killed the rest. American and French special forces intervened. Twenty-seven people died.

Syria. The Russian Air Force is intensifying its operations against ISIS after intelligence agencies confirmed the ISIS origins of the in-flight explosion of a Russian plane. They are carrying out 127 strikes on 206 targets, with flights from bases near Latakia in Syria, but also directly from Russia for the first time with strategic bombers. The operations are coordinated with the French and, for the first time, with the Americans.

Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, mastermind of the Paris attacks, is killed during a raid by French special forces. His cousin Hasna blows herself up with the explosive belt she was wearing.

Sinjar, northwestern Iraq, on the border with Syria. The city, previously held by ISIS, is captured by the Kurdish Peshmerga, supported by American airstrikes. The fighting lasts for 48 hours.

The IAAF, the governing body of global athletics, has suspended Russia after being found guilty of tampering with thousands of its athletes’ test tubes in past competitions. In a report by WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency), a repentant inspector from RUSADA (the state anti-doping agency, which the Agency has requested be suspended) confessed the anguish he endured from the moment he took the athlete’s urine (or blood) sample to the moment it was delivered to the Moscow laboratory. FSB (formerly KGB) operatives followed him every step of the way, demanding to know the test tube codes: they kept the technicians informed as they prepared to tamper with them. WADA has highlighted the regular transfers from athletes seeking to cover up their positive results. Rodchenko consistently falsified the tests and, in 2014, ordered the immediate destruction of 1,417 urine samples that WADA had requested to be re-examined. Astonished, the inspectors discovered the existence, in Moscow, of a “parallel” state laboratory, better equipped than the official one, directed by the scientist Bezhanishvili.

At the Atlas computing center of the Max Planck Institute in Hannover, shortly before 12:00 p.m., Italian physicist Marco Drago (a young postdoc), responsible for studying some of the data arriving from the two large LIGO antennas in the United States, designed to detect gravitational waves—”vibrations” in space-time—receives an “alert” email from the American LIGO detectors in Louisiana and Washington state, which have just been turned on. It’s the first direct observation of gravitational waves. Immediately calling a colleague, Drago realizes that what they’re observing is a binary black hole system, but they’re under no illusions. They’re convinced it’s just a fake, that is, data intentionally inserted into the system to verify that all the alert systems are functioning properly. And yet, there it is: simply marvelous. Beautiful, clean, a dream. The certainty of the discovery came only a month later. “As soon as we heard about the confirmation, we uncorked a bottle we had prepared in the office,” Drago added, “but before we could publicly announce it, we had to wait months. Now we’re going to have a big party.” Confirmation will arrive in February 2016, with a confidence level of 5.1 sigma. The merger of two black holes with masses 36 and 29 times that of the Sun occurred a billion years ago. Three solar masses were converted into energy. With this final piece of the puzzle, the experimental detection of all the effects of General and Special Relativity is complete.

Mosul, Iraq. ISIS’s number two (al-Baghdadi’s deputy) was killed in a US raid while he was in his car. He was Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, known as Haji Mutaz.

Emilio Bianchi, the last of the fantastic six of the Decima Mas (X Mas), the underwater raiders of the Italian Royal Navy who on the night of 18 December 1941 sank two English battleships (the Queen Elisabeth and the Valliant) and an auxiliary oil tanker (Sagona) with their “pig” mini-submarines, has passed away at the age of 103.

Yemen. United Arab Emirates troops land in the country and occupy Aden, displacing the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels.

Pakistan. The Taliban admit the death of their leader, Mullah Omar, which Afghan intelligence reports occurred in 2013.

1:49:59 PM Italian time. The American probe New Horizons (aka Pluto Express) passes, as scheduled, 12,000 km away from Pluto, at a speed of 13.78 km/s.

Vienna. After nearly two years of negotiations, the Iranian nuclear deal is confirmed.

Hadramaut, Yemen. The leader of the Yemeni al-Qaeda faction, Nasir Abdel Karim al-Wuhayshi, is killed by an American drone strike.

Great Britain. David Cameron’s Conservative Party wins the election and an overall majority of seats.