Top News Stories –

Lindsay Lohan set to turn on Christmas Lights in Kettering… after her furious tweet about Northamptonshire town went viral during EU referendum vote –
She took the internet by storm when her impassioned tweets about the EU referendum went viral. And Lindsay Lohan – who was staunchly in the Remain camp – appears to have made amends with the people of Kettering after angering MP Philip Hollobone with her comments during the results night when the town voted Leave by a margin of 61 to 39 per cent. But despite disagreeing with the Brexit result, the 29-year-old actress has now pledged her support to the Northamptonshire town by accepting to turning on their Christmas lights. A furious backbench Tory slammed the US star for criticising his home town of Kettering in a series of tweets Miss Lohan sent on the night of the referendum. Philip Hollobone demanded that the actress should visit the Midlands town – while a Cabinet Minister suggested that a trip to Kettering could boost the career of the troubled A-lister. [Daily Mail]
Lindsay Lohan

Battle of the Somme: Royals at Somme centenary commemoration –
Thousands of people, including members of the Royal Family, have attended a ceremony in France to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry were at the Thiepval Memorial for the event. Earlier, a UK-wide two-minute silence at 07:28 BST marked the start of the World War One battle on 1 July 1916.
More than a million men were killed or wounded on all sides at the Somme. The Battle of the Somme, one of WW1’s bloodiest, was fought in northern France and lasted five months, with the British suffering almost 60,000 casualties on the first day alone. The British and French armies fought the Germans in a brutal battle of attrition on a 15-mile front. [BBC]

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• 2016 Gulshan attack
  • Gunmen storm a restaurant, exchange fire with security, and take at least twenty hostages in the Gulshan neighborhood of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Two policemen are killed. The Islamic State claims responsibility. (ABC News) (CNN) (USA Today)
• War in Somalia
  • At least six people are shot and killed and several people wounded by suspected Al-Shabaab militants who ambushed two buses in Mandera, Kenya, near the Somalian border. (Al Jazeera) (AP)
• Israeli–Palestinian conflict
  • A Palestinian woman, in what was construed to be an attempt to stab Israeli Border Police officers at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, is shot and later dies. (PNN)(The Times of Israel)
  • In response to violence in the Hebron area, including the killing yesterday of a 13-year-old Jewish girl asleep in her home in the Kiryat Arba settlement by a Palestinian assailant, the Israel Defense Forcesplaces a closure on Hebron, brings additional troops to the area and announces a cut to tax funds it collects for the Palestinian Authority, saying it would deduct the amount the Palestinian leadership pays to the families of militants. (Al Jazeera) (The Times of Israel)
  • A 63 year old Palestinian man dies during a clash at the Qalandiya checkpoint; Palestinian sources claim his death was due to tear gas inhalation while Israeli sources say the man suffered a fatal heart attack. (Ma’an) (The Times of Israel)
  • Rabbi Michael Mark is murdered and his two children badly injured when terrorists shoot at his car on the highway south of Hebron.(The Jerusalem Post) (The Times of Israel)
  • Palestinian militants fire two rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip; one explodes outside a preschool in the town of Sderot, causing damage to property but no injuries, and the second rocket exploded in an open area in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. (The Times of Israel)

Arts and culture

• British–American Academy Award–winning film actress Olivia de Havilland, one of the last leading movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, celebrates her 100th birthday. (CNN)
• Thousands of people attend a ceremony at the Thiepval Memorial in Picardy, France, to mark the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

• Four Hungarian Defence Force soldiers are killed and one is injured following an explosion at a military firing range in eastern Hungary. (Reuters)

International relations

• Taiwan‘s navy mistakenly launches a supersonic Hsiung Feng III missile towards China, killing one person and injuring three in a Taiwanese fishing boat. (BBC) (The Guardian)
• Russia–European Union relations, Ukrainian crisis
  • The European Union extends economic sanctions on Russia until 31 January 2017 over Moscow’s continued support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. (Reuters)
• Canada announces that it will deploy 1,000 soldiers of the Canadian Armed Forces to Latvia to bolster one of the four NATO battalions stationed there. (The Guardian)
• Israel-Palestine relations
  • The report of the diplomatic Quartet to the Security Council — the United Nations, Russia, the United States, and the European Union — calls on Israel to end settlement construction and expansion policy, and calls on Palestinians to act decisively to stop incitement to violence and to clearly condemn terrorist acts. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov tells the UNSC, “The main objective of this report is not about assigning blame … (rather) it focuses on the major threats to achieving a negotiated peace.” (AP) (UN News Centre) (The Times of Israel)
• Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special human rights envoy to overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, says more than 100,000 of the Muslim Rohingya minority remain in squalid camps they were forced to four years ago by violence. The government does not recognize most of these people as citizens, and has treated even long-term residents as illegal immigrants. Lee is encouraged by last March’s peaceful transition to a democratically elected and civilian-led government. (AP)
• Finland–Russia relations
  • Following his meeting at Finnish President Sauli Niinistö’s residence, Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Russia would respect Finland’s choice whether to join NATO, though as part of NATO’s military infrastructure, Finnish Defence Forces would overnight be at the borders of the Russian Federation. Putin and Niinistö call for improved security in Baltic airspace where Russian and Westernaircraft have had close encounters in recent months. (Oneindia) (Reuters)

Law and crime

• Crime in the Philippines; Philippine Drug War
  • Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte urges Filipino citizens to murder people suspected of using illegal drugs. (The Guardian)
• U Gambira, a former Burmese monk and one of the most visible leaders during Myanmar’s 2007 Saffron Revolution, is released from prison after having the charges against him dropped. (BBC)

Politics and elections

• Austrian presidential election, 2016
  • Austria’s highest court orders a repeat of the presidential elections narrowly lost in May by right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria candidate Norbert Hofer. The margin of votes was less than 1%.(The Telegraph)
• Causeway Bay Books disappearances
  • Thousands of people take to the streets of Hong Kong, demanding answers over China’s alleged abduction of five booksellers in late 2015 and that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying resign from office.(The Guardian)
• The new Belarusian ruble replaces the old Belarusian ruble during redenomination. (Belarus segodnya) (in Russian) (Construction.RU)
• Paris, France, implements a pollution-reduction program that bans residents from driving cars built before 1997, and motorcycles built before 2000, on weekdays inside the city limits between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.(NPR)

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