News You May Have Missed - 12/3/15

• The Kremlin plans to adopt additional sanctions on Turkey as punishment for the country’s downing of a Russian bomber last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual state of the nation speech. • Russia has halted negotiations with Turkey over the TurkStream natural gas pipeline, Russian Energy Minister Aleksander Novak confirmed. • Putin oversaw the launch of the first leg of a transmission line ensuring direct supplies of electricity from the Russian mainland to power-starved Crimea. • British bombers made their first airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria, hours after the British Parliament approved the operations. • The Syrian government and rebel forces agreed to a conditional truce in a district of Homs, breaking a three-year siege of the devastated Waer neighborhood. • Powerful Iraqi Shiite groups and militias said they would fight any U.S. forces sent to Iraq to fight the Islamic State. • China began construction on a $6 billion rail segment spanning Laos, a key part of a Chinese-backed infrastructure network that may eventually connect southern China with Southeast Asian ports as far away as Singapore. • Japan intends to continue intensive negotiations with Russia aimed at signing a peace treaty and resolving the territorial dispute over the Kuril Island, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. • Vietnam and the European Union signed a free trade deal that removes nearly all tariffs on good traded between the two — a key part of Hanoi's South China Sea strategy. • The president of Brazil's lower house of parliament, Eduardo Cunha, accepted an impeachment motion against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. • At least three people are dead after two suspected members of the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram detonated suicide bombs in an overnight attack in northern Cameroon. • Earlier, Cameroon announced that more than 100 members of Boko Haram were killed in an operation launched in November by the army and a regional task force that freed around 900 hostages.