Israeli aircraft carry out a strike near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia targeting Russian-made S-125 air defense missiles allegedly intended for use by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. (BBC)
Tunisiangovernment and opposition leaders are deadlocked during talks over the determination of a new PM tasked with steering the country out of a months-long political crisis. (Gulf News)
Ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi's trial starts in Cairo's police academy. He faces charges of inciting violence and murder in connection with clashes at the presidential palace in Cairo in December 2012. (Reuters)(RTE)
Religion
The Apostolic Vicariate of Brunei is one of the youngest and smallest Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdictions in southeast Asia. About 10 percent of the population is atheist, 13 percent Buddhist, and a small number have indigenous beliefs. Christians, half of whom are Catholic, constitute 10 percent of Brunei's population. (Catholic News Agency)
Colonel Abdul Jabbar Akaidi, top rebel leader and chief recipient of U.S. aid, quits his position blaming recent losses on rebel infighting. (Washington Post)
A truck carrying four people hits a land mine on a road leading to Menaka in Mali, killing all of the occupants. (AP via Miami Herald)
Chicago chef Charlie Trotter, who operated his namesake restaurant in Chicago (from 1987 until its closure in 2012), is found dead by his son at his Lincoln Park home. (Chicago Tribune)
Sports journalist Alberto Angulo Gerardo is killed in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. His death add ups to the death toll of more than 100 media workers killed in Mexico since the year 2000. (GlobalPost)
TorontoMayorRob Ford admits that a year-old video does indeed show him smoking crack cocaine, a charge he had previously denied. Ford refused to resign from office and vowed to pursue re-election efforts. (CBC)
A bomb explodes in the center of the capital, Damascus, killing at least 8 people and injuring more than 50 others. (BBC)
A suicide bomber kills 8 people and injures 41 others in an attack against an intelligence building in the southern city of As-Suwayda. Among those killed is a Syrian Air Force major. (Reuters)
A Mexican federal court overturns a state court ruling that allowed the drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero to be released from prison earlier this year. This court response follows a decision by the U.S. Department of State to place a $5 million bounty against him. (Fox News)
Saudi police crackdowns on foreigners working illegally in the kingdom widen with more than 16,000 arrests. (ABC News)
A shooting at a barbershop in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. kills 2 people and injures 7 others. (CNN)
Vietnam: The government mobilizes over 453,000 soldiers and militia members, and thousands of means of transport to cope with Typhoon Haiyan that is forecast to hit central region early Sunday. Roughly 20,000 people are evacuated from Da Nang. (The New York Times)(Tuoi Tre News)
International relations
British foreign secretary William Hague urged negotiatiors to "seize the moment" on talks about Iran's nuclear program. (BBC)
At least four people are killed and eight injured as a seven story building catches fire in Vikhroli, a suburb of the Indian city of Mumbai. (Zee News)
At least 100 people are killed in a tropical cyclone in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region. (Reuters)
U.S. stock exchanges jointly announce a plan to improve the technical functioning of their markets, in the face of recent high-profile glitches such as the trading halt in Nasdaq in August. (Reuters)
Disasters and accidents
The Philippines faces a health crisis in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan with the official death toll at 1,774 and expected to rise quickly. (CNN)
WWF releases a photo, taken by a camera trap in a forest in central Vietnam in September, of one of Earth's rarest mammals, the saola, which hadn’t been seen in 15 years. (The Washington Post)
Canadian police reveal that 348 people have been arrested internationally and 386 children rescued as a result of a three-year child pornography investigation called "Project Spade". (RT)(BBC)
Politics and elections
Following the heightened scrutiny from the April 2012 controversy, two U.S. Secret Service agents are relieved of duty from Barack Obama's security detail after charges of sexual harassment towards a female subordinate. (TIME)
The United Nations tallies the death toll to around 4,400. The Red Cross estimates that around 20,000 are still missing, many of whom are feared dead. This is contrary to a previous estimate by Benigno Aquino III, who put the death toll to a low 2,000. (NBC News)
Police in Ethiopia arrest dozens of people outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in the capital Addis Ababa who were protesting against attacks on Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia. (Al Jazeera)
The BrazilianSupreme Federal Court issues a long-time awaited order to arrest for bribery 12 former top officials who had served under ex-president Lula, in one of the nation's biggest corruption cases. (Bloomberg)
A San Diego, California family of four, who disappeared in 2010, is found buried in the desert; local authorities are now treating the case as multiple homicides. (CBS News)
The number of people displaced reaches 1.9 million people. Numbers vary between 1,000-20,000 for estimates about missing people. (NPR)(Voice of America)
Flooding in Vietnam has killed at least 28 people with nine more missing and nearly 80,000 displaced. (Reuters)
Fifty people are killed after a passenger Boeing 737 crash lands in the city of Kazan in central Russia. (RT)
Following the issuance of a rare High Risk for severe weather (only the fifth documented such case in November and also extending to areas further north than any previous known high risk issued in the November through February timeframe), several midwestern states in the United States are placed under multiple tornado watches, with multiple tornadoes touching down, causing at least four deaths and up to 50 injured in the area; one leveled parts of a suburb of Peoria, Illinois. Around six dozen tornadoes occur in total with activity most concentrated in Illinois and Indiana but extending from Tennessee to Michigan. (Peoria Journal Star)(CNN)(NBC News)
Belgium ruled itself out as a candidate to host the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile and said it would prefer the arsenal to be eradicated close to Syria itself. (AP)
Bombardier Aerospace, a Canadian manufacturer, signs a letter of intent to sell Iraq's national carrier five CSeries jets with options for 11 more. (Reuters)
Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds was stabbed multiple times at his home by his son Austin "Gus" Deeds. His son, Gus was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the home. (ABC News)
George Zimmerman is accused of felony aggravated assault and other charges for interactions with his current girlfriend. (BBC)
In the largest-ever settlement with the U.S. government, banking giant JPMorgan Chase agrees to pay US$13 billion and admits to making serious misrepresentations over mortgage-backed securities. (FOX Business)
U.S. Representative Trey Radel (R–FL) pleads guilty on all charges of cocaine possession following his arrest yesterday and faces 1 year supervised probation. (The Washington Post)
Pope Francis venerates the purported remains of his first ever predecessor, as the Vatican gives a public display for what some claim are St Peter's remains. (Guardian)
A cargo train laden with corn derails in São José do Rio Preto in southeastern Brazil, smashing into houses and killing at least eight and injuring another six. (AP via News24)
The official intermediate report on the shooting is released online, totaling 48 pages, and detailing no clear motive for the shooting. It states that perpetrator Adam Lanza had had an obsession with shootings like Columbine, had a strained and non-communicative relationship with his murdered mother Nancy, and had planned the shooting and the details in advance. It does say he had mental health issues, but does not indicate they were causative factors. (CNN)(News 12 Connecticut)[permanent dead link]
A Parsons, Kansas manhunt begins in the U.S. for David Cornell Bennett, Jr. who is alleged to have stalked and killed a mother and her three young children. (FOX News)(FOX News)
An archaeological site is discovered in Nepal dating to 550 BC which is claimed to be a Buddhist shrine. If true, the birthday of the Buddha would be pushed back. However, not all experts agree on the significance of the site. (National Geographic)
Chinese police detain nine people for alleged negligence in relation to the November 22 Sinopec oil pipeline explosions in the eastern port city of Qingdao which killed at least 55 people. (Reuters)
The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear certain major religious freedom cases that will decide whether a company that is for-profit (including family-run ones)- and other entities who are not themselves churches- can refuse to provide contraceptive coverage that would otherwise be required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; lower courts are split. (NBC)
In Canada, the National Hockey League (NHL) and Rogers Communications announce a 12-year, $5.2 billion deal that grants national television rights of the NHL to the Rogers-owned Sportsnet. The agreement includes a provision that allows CBC to continue airing Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights; however, Rogers will have creative and financial control of the program. TSN, which has held some national broadcast rights to the NHL since 2002, is shut out of the deal. [2]
In China, some second-tier cities such as Wuhan and Shenyang begin to enhance local housing price controlling policy, following all first-tier cities' controlling policy enhancement in the country. (ifeng.com)
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane, who is overseeing the case of the bankruptcy reorganization of American Airlines, gives his required approval to the American Airlines–US Airways merger, dismissing the objection of a passenger's group, clearing the way for it to go forward in December 2013 unless there is an appeal. (CNN Money)
The price of one Bitcoin breaks above $1,000 for the first time, and marks a rise of over 7,600 percent so far this year. (CNBC)
Three girls (two of whom eventually fled to a neighbor's house to escape their knife-wielding stepfather and notified police) held captive for several months or more in extremely dirty conditions (possibly up to two years), subjected to long barrages of loud music or static, fed only once a day and having gone up to four months without a bath, are rescued in Tucson, Arizona. (CNN)
Tens of thousands of Tunisians demonstrate over the economic crisis in three cities calling for greater investment in their impoverished regions. Clashes broke out in the town of Siliana between the police and protesters following general strikes. (ABC News)(Ahram Online)
A Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party official, Shireen Mazari, in connection with a police murder investigation into unnamed persons after a recent drone strike that killed five, reportedly outs the names of two CIA officials, Director John Brennan and the Pakistan Station Chief (U.S. and CIA officials have not yet given official confirmation). (CNN)
Science and Technology
Japan's self-driving Nissan Leaf car finishes the very first public road test on a highway in Japan. (Engadget)
In the United States the holidays of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah occur on the same day. The event, dubbed Thanksgivukkah, last happened in 1888, and will not occur again for another 70,000+ years. (TIME)(BBC)
Several opposition parties including the Civil Movement for Democracy hold a protest march on the headquarters of Thailand's ruling Puea Thai party in Bangkok. (Reuters)(IBN Live)
Six people are killed in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli on Saturday in exchanges of fire between neighborhoods which support rival sides in Syria's civil war. (Reuters)
