Syrian government troops moved into towns and villages in northern Syria, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces advancing in the area as long-standing alliances in the region begin to shift or crumble following the pullback of U.S. forces. The Syrian military's deployment near the Turkish border came after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a deal with President Bashar Assad's government to help them fend off Turkey's invasion.

The fast-deteriorating situation was set in motion last week, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered American troops in northern Syria to step aside, clearing the way for an attack by Turkey, which regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. The Turkish offensive displaced 200,000 people in its first week, according to the UN. As Dhaka Courier went to press this week, news was breaking that the US is imposing sanctions against Turkey.

More than 110,000 people took part in search and rescue operations after Typhoon Hagibis struck Japan. The typhoon - the worst storm to hit the country in decades - left at least 56 dead. Typhoon Hagibis also caused the cancellation of three Rugby World Cup matches but a key match between Japan and Scotland went ahead. Japan won 28-21 to reach the quarter-finals for the first time.

Afterwards, national team coach Jamie Joseph paid tribute to those affected. "Everyone who is suffering with the typhoon, this game was all for you guys. The crowd was massive for us, and today was more than just a game," he said.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Duflo is only the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics after Elinor Ostrom got it in 2009. She is also the youngest ever to receive the economics award.

The committee said that the research conducted by three laureates "considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research." Indian-born Banerjee and Duflo, born in France, work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Kremer is based at Harvard University.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to James Peebles, Michel Mayor, and Didier Queloz. They won for helping us to gain a "new understanding of the universe's structure and history, and the first discovery of a planet orbiting a solar-type star outside our solar system." The Prize for Chemistry was won by Stanley Whittingham, John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino. They won the award for the development of the lithium-ion battery.

This 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature was won by Austrian author Peter Handke. The award for 2018 was also revealed this year to be Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, for her "narrative imagination". Handke won the award for his influential work which explores "the periphery and the specificity of human experience". This year's Nobel Peace Prize was won by the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. He won the award for promoting peace and ending a 20-year conflict with neighbouring African country, Eritrea.