The American Mathematical Society organized the Special Session on Current Events at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta in 2005. Posted here are the talks presented at the session. The papers include, The Green-Tao Theorem on Primes in Arithmetic Progression: A Dynamical Point of View, by Bryna Kra; Achieving the Shannon Limit: A Progress Report, by Robert McEliece; Floer Theory and Low Dimensional Topology, by Dusa McDuff; New Methods in Celestial Mechanics and Mission Design, by Jerrold E. Marsden (with Shane D. Ross); and Graph Minors and the Proof of Wagner's Conjecture, by László Lovász.