Top News Stories –

Adele’s album 25 breaks US record previously held by *NSYNC –
It’s not that much of a surprise, it was widely predicted, but Adele’s new album is doing quite well (understatement.) It’s broken the record for first week album sales in the US, selling 2.4 million copies since Friday.
The record was previously held by boy band *NSYNC and their second album, No Strings Attached, from 2000. Adele won’t be making the album available on music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music for now.
It takes a powerful artist to still do well despite not being on the big streaming services. Taylor Swift did it last year, withdrawing her material from Spotify. [BBC Newsbeat]
Adele

The condom challenge is the latest bizarre trend sweeping the internet –
It’s been at least a few weeks since the last ridiculous internet trend, so let us introduce the condom challenge. In apparent homage to the long-forgotten Ice Bucket Challenge, the new trend involves people filling up condoms with water and dropping it on the head of a friend, significant other or loved one. Videos of people dropping condoms full of water have been flooding social media feeds in recent weeks. [Daily Telegraph]
Condom Challenge

Queen asks judges to decide if DNA evidence can ‘uncover affair’ in Scottish hereditary title dispute –
Accountant Murray Pringle, 74, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Simon Pringle, 56, a businessman who lives near Hastings, East Sussex, both lay claim to the baronetcy of Pringle of Stichill. The Queen has asked senior judges to make a decision on the dispute under a piece of legislation dating back more than 150 years. The men are both members of a Scottish family fighting over the rights to the baronetcy. Seven judges are now analysing evidence at a hearing of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The hearing was expected to finish on Wednesday but judges, who are all Supreme Court justices, are not expected to publish a ruling until next year. [Daily Telegraph]

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir
  • Insurgents attack an Indian Army base in northern Kashmir. At least three attackers are killed. (NDTV) (Reuters)
• Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War
  • Russian Defense Minister, Sergey Shoigu, says Russia will deploy its S-400 defense missile system at the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria‘s Latakia Governorate. (RT)
  • Several trucks are left burning at a rebel-run border crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border after a Russian airstrike hit what was reported to be an aid convoy in the town of Azaz. At least seven people are reportedly killed. (Reuters) (Daily Sabah)
• Balochistan conflict
  • Unidentified gunmen abduct 22 passengers from a coach in Kandasool near the city of Pasni. (Daily Times)
• Insurgency in the Maghreb (2002–present)
  • The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claim responsibility for yesterday’s attack on Tunisia‘s presidential guard in Tunis that killed 14 people. (AP)
• Germany will deploy up to 650 troops to Mali as part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA). (The Daily Star)
• Yemeni Civil War (2015)
  • The United Arab Emirates has recruited several hundred Central and South American mercenaries to fight the Houthis in Yemen. (New York Times)
• November 2015 Paris attacks
  • The French Senate votes 325-0 to extend the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. (AP)
• War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
  • Several American personnel are suspended after an official report finds that human error was to blame for an airstrike on a Doctors without Borders hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz in October that killed 30 people. No criminal charges were filed.(CNN)

Arts and culture

• An 18th-century pink Indian diamond worth at least $5 million and a Cartier diamond tiara are discovered in the jewelry recovered from Imelda Marcos. (The Guardian)
• The Gambia bans female genital mutilation with President Yahya Jammeh saying it is not required in Islam. (BBC)

Business and economics

• The new 20 euro note, the third in the Europa series, enters into circulation today. The European Central Bank says the banknote has a “refreshed look and more vibrant colours,” and includes a new kind of security feature: a “portrait window” near the top of the hologram stripe which becomes transparent when seen against the light. (Sofia Globe)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015–16 Australian bushfire season
  • A bushfire burns out of control near the South Australian town of Wasleys with authorities warning of significant risk to lives and property. Two deaths have been confirmed with another person feared dead, (ABC News Australia), (ABC News)

Health and medicine

• Pope Francis’ 2015 visit to North America
  • A one-year old baby girl with an apparently incurable illness, who was kissed by Pope Francis during his visit to Philadelphia in September, gets MRI results showing her brain tumor has shrunk significantly. Some friends and family call it the “Miracle onMarket Street.” (NBC News) (Philadephia Daily News

International relations

• Russia–Ukraine gas disputes
  • Russia‘s Gazprom halts gas supplies to Ukraine until the Ukrainian government pays in advance for future supplies to replenish the current supplies of gas that it has used up; Ukraine says it has stopped buying from Gazprom because it can get cheaper gas from Europe. Roughly 15% of the gas used in Europe travels through Ukraine, and a previous cut-off of gas supplies in 2009 caused serious disruptions in shipments to EU countries at the height of winter. (Sky News) (BBC)
• Ukraine bans all Russian planes from using its airspace. (BBC)
• Pope Francis’ 2015 visit to Africa
  • Pope Francis makes his first official visit to Africa. (Reuters)
  • Francis encourages Kenyans to work for peace and forgiveness amid a wave of extremist violence on the continent which has threatened to disrupt his trip. His six-day pilgrimage will also take him to Uganda and the Central African Republic. (AP via The Salt Lake Tribune)
• The Associated Press reports that Russia’s crackdown on Muslims is fueling their exodus to ISIS. For example, Russia’s southernmost republic of Dagestan keeps devout Muslims under surveillance, routinely raids their homes, and hauls them to police stations to give DNA samples and fingerprints. Regional police say nearly a third of the estimated 3,000 Russians who are believed to have gone to fight alongside IS militants in Syria are from Dagestan. The AP added, “Few efforts are made by Russian authorities to stop young men from leaving.” (AP)
• The U.S. Treasury Department sanctions Syrian businessman George Haswani who “serves as a middleman” for oil purchases by the Syrian government from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. His company, an engineering and construction firm, is also sanctioned. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• Former world cruiserweight boxing champion O’Neil Bell is shot to death in a robbery in the American city of Atlanta, Georgia. (Daily Mail)
• Sergey Mironov, leader of the Russian opposition party, A Just Russia, submits a bill to the State Duma on holding to account anyone who denies that the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces was a “genocide”. (Reuters)
• General Motors ignition switch scandal
  • U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman rules General Motors Co., and its outside law firm King & Spalding, do not have to turn over lawyer-client documents from previously settled ignition switch lawsuits to plaintiffs’ lawyers in pending cases. (The Detriot News)

Sports

• Ukrainian marathon runner Tetyana Hamera-Shmyrko is given a four-year ban for a doping offence. (AP)
• Former U.S National Football League star, Frank Gifford, who died last August at age 84, suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease linked to head injuries commonly found in football, Gifford’s family announced. (CNN)(New York Times)

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