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Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez announce divorce after two years of marriage –
Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry and her French actor husband, Olivier Martinez, said on Tuesday they are divorcing after two years of marriage. It is the third divorce for Berry, 49, who has a two-year-old son with Martinez. The couple cited irreconcilable differences, according to celebrity website TMZ.com. Berry in 2002 became the only black actress to win an Academy Award for a lead role, clinching the Oscar for her performance in Monster’s Ball. [Daily Telegraph]
Halle Berry

Darth Vader supporter Chewbacca arrested in Ukraine –
It’s a sentence we never thought we’d write, but here goes: Chewbacca has been arrested in Ukraine after police say they caught him campaigning for Darth Vader. A candidate, using the identity of the Star Wars Sith Lord has been running in local elections in the city of Odessa. It’s claimed the man dressed as Chewbacca had broken election day rules by campaigning on voting day. It’s being reported Chewbacca was fined the equivalent of a fiver. He’d arrived at a polling station along with the candidate when police stepped in. [BBC]

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
  • A Yemeni hospital in Saada run by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is destroyed by several Saudi-led coalition airstrikes overnight. The director of the hospital, Ali Mughli, reported “The air raids resulted in the destruction of the entire hospital with all that was inside – devices and medical supplies – and the moderate wounding of several people”. Another airstrike hit a nearby girls school and damaged several civilian homes according to local media. UNICEF said the Saada hospital was the 39th health center hit in Yemen since March. The Saudi-led coalition denies that its planes had hit the hospital. (Reuters)
• Syrian Civil War, Destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports the Islamic State, on Sunday, executed three detainees in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra by strapping them to pillars and blowing them up with the antiquities. ISIL has yet to tell locals the identities of the three individuals or say why they had been killed. (BBC) (USA Today)
• American-led intervention in Iraq (2014–present), American-led intervention in Syria
  • United States Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says the U.S. will begin “direct action on the ground” against the ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against the militants remains elusive. The U.S. has done some special operations raids in Syria, e.g., last week’s rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages held by ISIL. Carter also said the U.S. would intensify the air campaign against ISIL with heavier airstrikes and will focus on Raqqa, the group’s declared capital in Syria. (NBC News) (Al Jazeera) (AP via Boston Globe)
• Libyan Civil War (2014–present)
  • A Libyan helicopter carrying cash for a local bank on the way out and returning to Tripoli with passengers is shot down near the coastal Almaya area west of the capital city, killing at least 14 of its 23 passengers including senior officers Hosein Bodaya and Duhain Al-Rammah, officials with Libya’s Dawn militias. (AP via ABC News) (BBC) (UPI)
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict (2015)
  • Three Palestinians are shot dead after attacking Israeli soldiers with knives in the occupied West Bank. Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital reports that 76-year old American-Israeli Richard Lakin, who was critically injured in a bus attack on October 13, 2015, died of his injuries. (Reuters) (Israel Hayom)
• War in North-West Pakistan
  • Pakistan says seven of its soldiers have been killed in the South Waziristan tribal region by fire from across the border with Afghanistan. The soldiers belonged to the Frontier Corps; the attack targeted a checkpoint northeast of the border village ofAngoor Adda. (UPI) (BBC)

Business and economics

• In a plea bargain with U.S. federal prosecutors, Rohit Bansal, a former Goldman Sachs banker accused of using private information leaked by source inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has agreed to plead guilty. The leaked information was said to have given Goldman an undue advantage regarding client advisement. Goldman also faces fines from the New York State’s Department of Financial Services. (New York Times)
• Walgreens Boots Alliance agrees to buy Rite Aid for US$9.4 billion in a move which will create a retail pharmaceutical giant with 13,000 stores. (Dow Jones via Fox Business)
• Northrop Grumman, the developer of the Air Force’s current bomber, the B-2, beats out the Boeing–Lockheed Martin team and is awarded the Pentagon contract to build a fleet of stealthy planes known as the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B).(Washington Post) (CNN)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake
  • Rescuers continue a search for survivors of the earthquake in Afghanistan and Pakistan including in areas controlled by the Taliban. The death toll from the earthquake is 339 with many thousands injured. (AFP via ABC News) (Himalayan Times)
  • The Taliban, which effectively controls some of the worst-affected areas across multiple provinces, urged charity organizations not to hold back in delivering aid to Afghan victims of the quake, saying militants in the affected areas were ordered to provide “complete help.” (Reuters) (Daily Star)
• 2015 Southeast Asian haze
  • Raging Indonesian forest fires have advanced into dense forest on Borneo and now threaten one third of the world’s remaining wild orangutans, say conservationists. (South China Morning Post) (ABC news)

International relations

• Territorial disputes in the South China Sea, China–United States relations
  • A United States Navy ship, the USS Lassen, sails near the Spratly Islands, challenging Beijing‘s claim that the islands are Chinese territory. China‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the actions of the United States in the South China Sea, saying “China will firmly react to this deliberate provocation”. (Wall Street Journal) (NPR) (The New York Times)
  • Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui summons US ambassador Max Baucus to protest a US naval patrol close to Beijing’s man-made islands in the South China Sea. Zhang called the US patrol “extremely irresponsible” and urged Washington to cease actions that harm China’s sovereignty and security. (Hong Kong Standard) (The Guardian)
  • Greg Poling, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says the U.S. operation was aimed at testing control of the seas, not sovereignty over the disputed islands, to force a clarification of China’s claims. Undermaritime law, artificial islands were not usually afforded the 12-mile territorial zone, and that the U.S. Navy deliberately chose to send the destroyer near Subi Reef for this reason. (CNN)
• Humanitarian International Services Group, an NGO founded by evangelical Christian Kay Miramine, was part of a secret Pentagon program devised by Lt. Gen. William Boykin used to spy on North Korea, according to an investigation by the online publication The Intercept. The program, which started in 2004, was shut down in 2012 by now-retired Admiral William McRaven, concerned with pushback if this became public. Some current and former American NGO staff with experience in North Korea have expressed doubts about key claims in the report. (The Intercept) (Christian Post) (NK News)
• Syrian Civil War
  • Iran is invited to attend the next round of talks over Syria’s future, along with the representatives from the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Britain, France, Germany, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Nations mediator forSyria, Staffan de Mistura. The next round of the “Vienna II” meeting is expected to start tomorrow and continue Friday in Vienna, Austria. (Irish Examiner) (Reuters) (Sputnik News) (New York Times)
  • United Nations humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien tells the Security Council the worsening conflict in Syria has left 13.5 million people in need of aid and some form of protection, including more than six million children. (AP) (Arab News)
• The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemns the U.S. embargo of Cuba in its first vote on the matter since the start of normalization of relations between the two countries. The largely symbolic tally on the unenforceable resolution was 191 to 2 (U.S., Israel). (UPI) (AP via ABC News)

Law and crime

• Guatemala arrests 11 in a public hospital, medicine-buying kickback scheme. Two others remain at large, including Gustavo Alejos Cambara, the former private secretary to ex-President Álvaro Colom. A U.N. commission set up to tackle criminal networks in Guatemala participated in the investigation. (AP)

Politics and elections

• Britain is reviewing the powers of the House of Lords after the unelected peers stalled legislation yesterday that would have eliminated some tax allowances for the nation’s poor. Senior Conservatives say the upper chamber of Parliament stepped out of their usual roles as technical overseers of legislation. However, Conservative MP David Davis warned that such a move was “bully politics” that would “disgust” the public. (BBC) (AP via Washington Post)
• Ivorian presidential election, 2015
  • Partial results from Sunday’s election give Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara an overwhelming lead (83.18 percent) on the way to a second five-year term. This weekend’s vote was judged to be peaceful and transparent by observers, making it the first in Côte d’Ivoire’s history not to be marred by serious rights violations or irregularities. (Reuters) (Financial Times) (Abidjan.net)

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