Ten years ago: A day after his first debate with Mitt Romney, which had been widely seen as a victory for Romney, President Barack Obama suggested that his Republican rival hadn’t been candid about his policy positions during the faceoff. The Nielsen Co. said an estimated 67.2 million people had watched the debate; it was the biggest TV audience for a presidential debate since 1992.
Five years ago: Four U.S. soldiers were killed in the African country of Niger (nee-ZHEHR’) when a joint patrol of U.S. and Niger forces was ambushed by militants who were believed linked to the Islamic State group. President Donald Trump visited hospital bedsides and a police base in Las Vegas in the aftermath of the shooting rampage three nights earlier that left 58 people dead.
One year ago: A massive global outage knocked Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms offline for hours due to what Facebook called a “faulty configuration change”; there were no signs that malicious activity was involved. The Biden administration reversed a Trump-era ban on abortion referrals by federally-funded family planning clinics. Supreme Court justices returned to the courtroom for the start of a new term after a nearly 19-month absence because of the coronavirus pandemic. China flew 56 fighter planes toward Taiwan, continuing three days of military harassment against the self-ruled island. A federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Michael Garbo, was shot and killed while questioning a passenger on an Amtrak train in Tucson, Arizona; the passenger who opened fire was then killed in a gunfight with other officers.
