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Italian town welcomes first baby for 28 years –
A small town in northern Italy is celebrating the arrival of its first baby since the 1980s. The mayor of Ostana, which lies in the mountains of the Piedmont region, says the new arrival is a “dream come true” for the tiny community, which has seen its population plummet over the past 100 years. Baby Pablo, who was born in a Turin hospital last week, takes the number of inhabitants to 85, although only about half live there permanently, La Stampa newspaper reports. Mayor Giacomo Lombardo says that while 1,000 people called Ostana home in the early 1900s, a steady drop in the birth rate began after World War Two. “The real decline started in 1975, with 17 babies between 1976 and 1987, when the last boy was born – until little Pablo,” he says. [BBC]

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• Terrorism in Saudi Arabia
  • At least 3 people are killed and 7 wounded in an attack on a Shia mosque in Saudi Arabia‘s Eastern Province. (The News Hub)
• Iraqi Civil War (2014–present)
  • A pipeline used to generate around half the electricity in Iraqi Kurdistan is blown up, knocking out power across the region. (Reuters)

Business and economy

• Mexico launches a wholesale telecoms network tender today. (Reuters via Yahoo! Finance)
• The Bank of Japan adopts a negative interest rate policy to support the economy. (Bloomberg)
• U.S. corporation Xerox announces it will split into two companies, separating its business process outsourcing line from its legacy business, document technology. (Reuters)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015–16 Australian region cyclone season
  • Tropical Cyclone Stan gathers strength as it heads towards the Pilbara and Kimberley regions of Western Australia. (ABC News Australia)
• 2015–16 UK and Ireland windstorm season
  • Storm Gertrude impacts the British Isles with 90mph winds knocking out power lines and causing travel disruption. (The Telegraph)
• An avalanche near McBride in the Canadian province of British Columbia kills five people. (CBC)

International relations

• Japan–North Korea relations
  • Japan places its military on alert over a possible North Korean ballistic-missile launch after detecting “increased activity” at a North Korean missile site. Japan’s Minister of Defense, Gen Nakatani, has ordered Kongō-class destroyers stationed in the Sea of Japan, equipped with Aegis combat systems to target any North Korean projectiles heading for Japan. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• Human rights in China
  • Human rights activists claim that three pro-democracy advocates have been sentenced up to five years imprisonment on charges of attempting to overthrow the Communist Party government inGuangzhou. (AP via Star Tribune)
• Hillary Clinton email controversy
  • The Government of the United States rules that 22 emails on Hillary Clinton‘s home server contained closely guarded information rated as “Top Secret”. (AP)

Science

• Scientists from the University of California conclude that study of the geology of the Earth and Moon indicate that both consist of a mixture of rocks from the original Earth and a hypothesized planetary-mass object called Theia after a collision. (The Telegraph)

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