• Syrian Civil War
  • Three suicide bombers attack a police command center in Damascus, killing two people and injuring six others. (Reuters)
  • The Sun reports that the CIA informed UK intelligence agencies that British-born ISIL activist and recruiter Sally Jones was killed in a U.S. drone strike in June along with her 12-year-old son while they were fleeing Raqqa in Syria. (The Guardian)

• Boy Scouts of America membership policies
  • The Boy Scouts of America announces that girls may join as full members of the Cub Scouts beginning in 2018. Young women may join as full members of the Boy Scouts and earn the highest rank of Eagle Scout beginning in 2019. (AP)

• October 2017 Northern California wildfires
  • The death toll grows to 23 people with 285 people still missing. (BBC) (Los Angeles Times)
  • The property destruction now includes more than 3500 homes and businesses. (Reuters)
• Mount Kirishima
  • Shinmoedake volcano erupts for the first time in six years. (The Japan Times)

• Cybercrime
  • Last year a hacker stole non-classified information about Australia’s Joint Strike Fighter program and other military hardware after breaching the network of a defense contractor. (Reuters)
• Kidnapping of Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman
  • Pakistani troops rescue Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman, who have been held captive since 2012, and their three children from the Taliban. (The Guardian)

• Politics of Peru
  • The Peruvian Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Administration, through the Ministry of Justice, appoints a new head to the Direction of Presidential Graces, which is believed to be a first step towards granting a pardon to 79-year-old former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), although President Kuczynski has denied it. In April 2009, a three-judge panel had sentenced Fujimori for acts of corruption, human rights violations, and various others crimes. Fujimori, who has been in jail since 2007 and whose health has deteriorated, including alleged tongue cancer, has applied for a pardon unsuccessfully on two occasions. (RPP Noticias) (El Comercio) (Diario Correo)

• Discovery and exploration of the Solar System
  • Nature publishes research from The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia at the Glorieta de la Astronomía of Granada, Spain, describing the discovery that a ring system orbits the trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea. (The Verge) (Nature)
• 2017 in spaceflight
  • SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to supersynchronous orbit an Airbus-built communications satellite SES-11 for Luxembourg-based SES, and EchoStar 105 for U.S.-headquartered EchoStar. It's the third time when a Falcon 9 first stage is re-used. (Space Flight Now)