Netanyahu gives pope book by father

TODAY’S NEWS BRIEFING

1: Same-sex weddings a reality in Hawaii

HONOLULU — Gay marriages began Monday in Hawaii with six couples at a Waikiki resort exchanging vows side by side in front of a few hundred guests while more same-sex couples watched and waited their turn.

Elsewhere in Honolulu, an openly gay Unitarian minister wed his partner of 15 years in a ceremony attended by clergy who pushed for the new marriage law and Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who called last month’s special legislative session that produced the change.

2:

VATICAN CITY — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday gave Pope Francis a book about the Inquisition in Spain written by his late father, an expert on the Catholic Church’s forced conversion and expulsion of Jews in the15th century.

Netanyahu presented a Spanish translation of the 1995 book, “The Origins of the Inquisition,” to Francis during their 25-minute private audience. He also gave the pope a large silver menorah.

Netanyahu’s father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, was an Israeli historian who died last year.

3: UN to fly drones over eastern Congo

KINSHASA, Congo — A new fleet of drones will make their maiden voyage this week in Congo’s troubled east, where one rebel group was recently disarmed, but many more continue to occupy the area’s thick jungles.

United Nations peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said the five drones will be “an essential tool” in the peacekeeping mission’s military plan. Now that the M23 rebel group has been defeated, he said the U.N. needs to turn its attention to other militias operating in eastern Congo. Among them are the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, started by extremist Hutus from Rwanda who took part in that country’s 1994 genocide, then fled across the border into Congo.

4: China launches its first moon rover

BEIJING — China launched its first rover mission to the moon Monday, sending a robotic craft named Jade Rabbit to trundle across the lunar landscape, examine its geology and beam images back to Earth.

A rocket carrying the rover aboard an unmanned Chang’e 3 spaceship successfully blasted off early Monday from a launch center in southwestern China and was scheduled to arrive on the moon in mid-December, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

If the Chang’e 3 successfully softlands on the moon, China will become the third country to do so, after the United States and the former Soviet Union. A soft landing does not damage the craft and the equipment it carries.