World roundup: October 4 2023

Stories from Libya, Ukraine, Bolivia, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

October 4, 1957: The Soviet Union successfully launches Sputnik 1, putting the first artificial satellite in orbit and terrifying a whole bunch of people in Washington DC.

October 4, 1993: The two-day Battle of Mogadishu, later memorialized in the book/film Black Hawk Down, ends. The battle began with a calamitous US/UN mission to capture a couple of aides to self-declared Somali President Mohamed Farrah Aidid, which went south very quickly when Somali fighters shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter (they later shot down a second). In the end 21 international soldiers were killed (19 of them US) and one captured, while at least 200 Somalis (both civilians and militants) were also killed.

INTERNATIONAL

The hole in the Earth’s ozone layer that forms every year over Antarctica has reached possibly its largest size ever, some 26 million square kilometers. This is apparently not an indication that the ozone problem is getting worse, and scientists still believe that thanks to changes made as part of the 1989 Montreal Protocol the ozone layer should be fully replenished in a few decades. That doesn’t explain why this year’s hole was so big, and I’m not sure anybody has a solid explanation for that. The ABC News piece linked above offers one possibility, that the eruption of the undersea Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano in January 2022 created atmospheric conditions that enabled this year’s hole to form early and grow larger than in typical years. Whatever the cause, buy some extra sunscreen.