The news here is the results of the investigation, showing the probable origin of the contamination after weather analysis.
http://www.irsn.fr/FR/Actualites_presse/Actualites/Pages/201...
No, for all those outside USA the date of the article is 4/10/17, ie 4 October 2017.
I never realised how obscure the US date format is [1]. Nobody should be using that on the internet except for specially local sites. It makes no sense to just about anybody. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
If I have to write down the date on paper, I always use "10 NOV 2017." It's not terribly international, but it is unambiguous for many European languages.
I have also seen "10 XI 2017" (using the Roman numeral for the month) when dealing with NATO and European Union documents (especially meeting notices.) I think it's a little fiddly because it doesn't appear to be in great use, but it also works.