The 10 Most Important Things In The World Right Now

DINA SPECTOR

OCT. 9, 2014

REUTERS/Jim Young

A worker in a hazardous material suit seals up a barrel at the apartment unit where a man diagnosed with the Ebola virus was staying in Dallas October 5, 2014. Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, was fighting for his life at a Dallas hospital on Sunday and appeared not to be receiving any of the experimental medicines for the virus, a top U.S. medical official said.

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

1. World Bank chief Jim Kim said on Wednesday that global leaders had “failed miserably” to respond to the Ebola outbreak, which has now killed nearly 3,900 people in West Africa. Kim told the Guardian: “We should have done so many things. Healthcare systems should have been built. There should have been monitoring when the first cases were reported. There should have been an organized response.”

2. Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who flew from Liberia to the US at the end of September, died on Wednesday morning at a Dallas hospital. 

3. The presidents of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — the three West African countries most affected by the Ebola virus — will meet with leaders of important international organizations on Thursday, The Financial Times said. 

4. US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that preventing the fall of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani to Islamic State militants was not a “strategic US objective,” The Independent reports. 

5. Fidelity was one of 13 financial institutions attacked by hackers who are believed to have been responsible for the JP Morgan hack, the Financial Times reports. 

6. The media will be watching to see if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears at an event on Friday to mark the 69th anniversary of the founding of the North Korea Workers’ party. “Should he fail to appear, it will fuel speculation that the young North Korean leader has fallen on hard times of one kind or another,” Curtis Melvin, a researcher at Washington’s Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told Reuters. 

7. Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk said Wednesday night that another surprise announcement, in addition to the “Tesla D,” will come on Thursday. 

8. The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced at 8 a.m. ET (1 p.m. local time in Sweden). 

9. Lego has ended its multimillion deal with Shell after a Greenpeace video against Arctic drilling went viral.

10. Apple said it’s surprised that GT Advanced Technologies, the maker of the super-hard sapphire glass material that had been rumored to be used in the new iPhone 6 screens, filed for bankruptcy on Friday, according to Reuters. 

And finally …

An expert explains what happened to the 35,000 walruses that gathered in one spot off the Alaskan coast last week.