Shorter Question Everything

Koreas
North and South Korean naval forces exchanged fire in disputed waters off their west coast Tuesday, the first such incident in seven years. No South Korean casualties were reported, but the North Korean ship was badly damaged during the skirmish. Each navy is blaming the other for the incident, which analysts believe will heighten tensions between the two Koreas in the runup to US President Barack Obama’s visit to the region, scheduled for mid-November.

Colombia
Nine Colombian soldiers and dozens of leftist guerrillas have been killed in pre-dawn clashes in southwestern Colombia, a military spokesman says. The Tuesday clashes also left four other soldiers wounded while an unknown number of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels were killed, the spokesman told AFP. The soldiers stopped the guerrillas from capturing the town of Corintio, in Cauca department, he added. The Colombian news media said that some 30 guerrillas were killed when a force of 200 rebels tried to take over the town. Corintio Mayor Gilberto Munoz said in a radio interview that no civilian had been killed in the clashes. The FARC, founded in 1964, is active mainly in southern and eastern Colombia. It is currently believed to have between 6,000 and 10,000 guerrillas.

Israel, Palestine and US
House Blocks Access To Goldstone Report: On November 4, the House of Representatives voted 344-36 (22 voted present) in favor of a resolution condemning the Goldstone Report, which chronicled the war crimes committed during last year’s Gaza war. Not only that, in a break with normal procedure, the House refused to agree to Rep. Keith Ellison’s (D-MN) request to publish the Goldstone Report in the Congressional Record. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) objected to publication and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman (D-CA) agreed with her. Bottom line: the American people will not be able to access the Goldstone Report on a US government website (which was surely Ros-Lehtinen’s intention). Note: the Congressional Record routinely publishes what it called “extraneous material. In this case the Goldstone report was the subject of the vote which made it especially important that it be published in the record of the House.

US
*Police in South Carolina say they are looking for a drive-by shooter who killed three people, including a 20-month-old girl, and wounded five more.

*A gunman opened fire Tuesday in an Oregon laboratory [Legacy Medical Laboratories], killing a female worker before fatally shooting himself in the third gun rampage in the United States in less than a week, police said. Police in the Portland suburb of Tualatin confirmed to AFP that the suspected shooter was one of two fatalities in the incident, which occurred shortly before noon.

*On Friday one person was killed and five wounded after a mass shooting at an office building in Orlando, Florida blamed by police on a disgruntled ex-worker who was later arrested.