April 2017 Events Covered in the News as of 30 April 2017:
The targets for this project are the most newsworthy events of the month, as determined by the rules of the project and the table below that contains a pool of potential targets. (See also this Overview video.) These are news events that are major headline items occurring in the month. In most cells, there are two numerical entries separated by a slash (/). The first is the number of news cycle days in which the event was featured on the main page of the news outlets. This number estimates the longevity of the story, implying that stories that last longer on the main page of a news outlet relate to more important events. The second number (following the slash) is the cumulative number of links on the main headline page for the news outlets that connect stories related to each event. This second number estimates the breadth of the new coverage for each event, implying that events that spawn more stories and links on the main page is are more important events. When only one number is included in a cell, that number is the total number of links only.
| Event Reporting Date | Events | CNN US | CNN International | New York Times | BBC | Total Links |
| All of April 2017 | Middle East wars. (There appears to be a dramatic increase in the Middle East wars that is being kept off the headline news pages in our featured news outlets. Evidence of this begins in late March 2017 and is continuing into April: Washington Post 1, Washington Post 2, New York Times, ) | 3/5 | 4/12 | 1/5 | 6/21 | 43 |
| 1 April 2017 | Protesters set Paraguay's Congress on fire, objecting to bill allowing President to run for re-election | 1/1 | 1/3 | 4 | ||
| 1 April 2017 | South American Water Event Continues. Hundreds dead, mudslides, landslides, floods, states of emergency, bridges collapse. Primary countries affected: Peru, Ecuador, Columbia. (Veja.com, ) | 1/2 | 3/5 | 1/1 | 4/13 | 21 |
| 3 April 2017 | St. Petersburg, Russia subway train hit by deadly blast as a train car travels between stations (NBC, RT, | 1/3 | 2/11 | 1/2 | 2/7 | 23 |
| 4 April 2017 | St. Louis boiler explosion blows roof off building, sending materials over 500 feet away, 3 dead, 4 injured (CNN1, ABC, CBS, St. Post Dispatch) | 0 | ||||
| 4 April 2017 | Chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province, Syria. Scores dead, hundreds injured | 3/17 | 1/4 | 2/9 | 4/12 | 42 |
| 5 April 2017 | North Korea fires ballistic missile (Sputnik News) | 1/2 | 2/11 | 2/6 | 19 | |
| 5 April 2017 | White House shakeup: Steve Bannon ejected from National Security Council | 1/1 | 1/1 | 1/2 | 1/3 | 7 |
| 6 April 2017 | U.S. attacks Syria, in response to gas attack, 59 cruise missiles hit airfield | 2/18 | 4/31 | 3/29 | 3/21 | 99 |
| 6 April 2017 | Cyclone Debbie drenches New Zealand (ABC) | 0 | ||||
| 7 April 2017 | Terrorist attack in Stockholm, Sweden as hi-jacked truck rams into people and then crashes. Four killed. | 3/3 | 4/9 | 1/2 | 2/4 | 18 |
| 8 April 2017 | Anti-government protests rock Venezuela | 1/1 | 5/7 | 2/2 | 8/16 | 26 |
| 9 April 2017 | Terrorist attack on two Coptic Christian churches in Egypt | 2/5 | 1/4 | 1/2 | 1/6 | 17 |
| 10 April 2017 | Two killed in an elementary school shooting in San Bernadino, California | 1/5 | 5 | |||
| 11 April 2017 | Bomb terror attack on the bus carrying the Borussia Dortmund football team | 1/2 | 2/7 | 9 | ||
| 12 Aril 2017 | Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam found dead in the Hudson River. First African American woman to serve on highest court in New York State | 2/2 | 3/4 | 1/1 | 7 | |
| 12-14 April 2017 | Cyclone Cook smashes New Zealand (Newshub1, Newshub2, Skynews, The Guardian) | 0 | ||||
| 13 April 2017 | US drops largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan (Mother of All Bombs - MOAB) | 1/7 | 2/7 | 2/3 | 3/7 | 24 |
| 15+ April 2017 | North Korea missile launch stories relating to actual events (varried) | 3/15 | 2/11 | 2/4 | 2/11 | 41 |
| 20 April 2017 | Terrorist shoots and kills a police officer on Champs-Elysees in Paris, France | 1/2 | 1/6 | 3/10 | 1/6 | 24 |
| 20 April 2017 | Korean military escallation, including U.S., Chinese, and Russian involvement | 1/6 | 3/8 | 14 | ||
| 22 April 2017 | Scientists protest President Trump worldwide | 1/6 | 1/6 | 1/3 | 2/6 | 21 |
| 23 April 2017 | Le Pen and Macron win first round of French presidential voting, both non-establishment | 1/7 | 1/7 | 1/5 | 1/6 | 25 |
| 29 April 2017 | Protesters march in Washington, D.C. against President Trump's climate policies | 1/1 | 1/1 | 1/2 | 4 | |
| 30 April 2017 | Severe storms and tornadoes rip through several U.S. southern states. Numerous dead and injured. Flooding. | 1/4 | 1/2 | 6 | ||
| 30 April 2017 | Sebastian Gorka is announced to be leaving White House job as a national security aid. | 1/1 | 1 | |||
NOTE 1: The wars in Syria and Iraq will be combined when counting total links in the final analysis since they are both in the same region and focused on fighting ISIS.
NOTE 2: The numbers in the above table are subject to ongoing audits throughout the month. At the end of the month, a final audit is performed based on screen shots of the web pages for all four news outlets. Errors in the table are corrected both during the month and as a result of the final audit.
To be listed in the above table, the events must have the following characteristics.
- The target events should involve significant physical activity by objects and subjects.
- The target events should involve something unexpected or unscheduled.
- The target events will typically be a leading headline news story that is featured on prominent web sites, such as CNN (U.S. and International), The New York Times, and the BBC. Other stories covered in other news outlets are linked in the news analysis table for each month. That means that the story appears somewhere on the main news page of the news outlet, usually in the top section of the web page where headline stories are posted. (Stories for most major events change daily. Some links to more dated events remain unchanged in content and format on the web site for longer periods, and such links are often located further down the web page. These are called "residual links" and are not considered headline news stories unless the linked articles/stories are updated.)
- The target events should involve more than one daily news cycle for the month, preferably with numerous and related stories.
- The target events must be of significant public interest.
- The target events will typically be of international interest, as evidenced by being covered as a headline event on both the U.S. and International editions of CNN.
- If a significant event occurs near the end of the month, then the counting of news cycles and cumulative links can extend into the next month until the event fades from the headline pages so as to fully evaluate the importance of the event. Rarely does a news story remain on the main page of a news outlet for more than a week.
- If two or more events of a similar nature and/or cause occur on different dates of the month, then a given target would be the combination of the two events. For example (obviously fictional in this case), if the Moon disappears into another dimension on two different dates during the same month, then the target would be the general or combined disappearance of the Moon during that month. Examples of types of events that would be combined within the same month are (a) scattered fires that are part of a larger area that is aflame, such as scattered statewide California wildfires, (b) terror events caused or inspired by the same group in a larger campaign, (c) wartime events from a larger military engagement, such as various elements of the Normandy Invasion of World War II, (d) multiple large political gatherings (including demonstrations) with similar characteristics, (e) weather related events that are the result of the same general weather condition.
Here are some useful web sites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017
https://www.mapsofworld.com/calendar-events/