The 10 Most Important Things In The World Right Now

DINA SPECTOR

 OCT. 8, 2014

REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani after a war plane carried out an air strike, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province October 7, 2014.

Good morning. Here’s what you need to know for Wednesday. 

1. Kurds in Turkey are lashing over the Turkish governments seeming inaction to prevent the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from falling to Islamic State militants. 

2. After more than a week of demonstrations, student groups leading the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong will meet with government officials on Friday. 

3. The World Health Organization’s European directors told Reuters that more cases of the Ebola in Europe are “unavoidable,” following news that a nurse contracted the virus while treating patients in Spain. 

4. Staff at the Madrid hospital where the nurse was infected with Ebola say that the protective gear they were provided did not meet WHO standards, The Guardian reports. 

4. Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook will meet with government officials on Wednesday in a “private” dinner to discuss “ways to tackle online extremism,” the BBC reports. 

5. Super Typhoon Vongfong is now barreling toward Japan with wind speeds of up to 155 miles per hour. “It’s safe to say Vongfong is the strongest storm on earth since Haiyan last year,” The Weather Channel’s Michael Lowry said. 

6. 

7. The Nobel Prize in chemistry will be announced on Wednesday at 5:45 a.m. ET. Three Japanese scientists won the physics prize on Tuesday for their invention of the blue light-emitting diode and on Monday, the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded jointly to John O’Keefe and husband-and-wife team Edvard and May-Britt Moser for “their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.”

8. The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that the eurozone could slip back into a recession, noting three major risks faced by the global economy. 

9. IBM will open the global headquarters for its artificial intelligence system known as Watson in New York’s Silicon Alley on Wednesday morning. Watson is famous for winning Jeopardy. 

10. Don’t miss Wednesday morning’s “blood moon.” The moon will glow red during a total lunar eclipse as the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon. 

And finally …

The Eiffel Tower has a new $38 million glass floor that visitors can look down through.