What's Going On Around The World Today

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The U.K. will decide today whether to bomb ISIS targets in Syria.

Members of parliament in the House of Commons will debate for roughly 10 hours, resulting in a vote on whether or not the U.K. will join the U.S., France, Russia, and other countries in their bombing campaigns in Syria, BBC News writes.

British Prime Minister David Cameron — a staunch supporter of airstrikes — is “desperate to make sure he wins enough support in the House of Commons to send Royal Air Force jets to fight ISIS in Syria,” BuzzFeed News’ Emily Ashton writes. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the U.K.’s opposition left-wing Labour party, opposes the airstrikes but his party is divided on the issue.

In the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, in which terrorists killed 130 people and injured hundreds more, Cameron said it’s morally unacceptable not to join Britain’s allies in the strikes, The Guardian writes.

There have been almost 3,000 airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria since September 2014.

And a little extra.

Airstrikes alone won’t stop ISIS. “The war against the militants won’t be won in the air — they can be rolled back only by local forces willing to face them,” BuzzFeed News’ Mike Giglio writes from Syria.

The U.S. has placed hope in a new group of fighters in Syria, who are engaged in a grueling struggle against jihadis on the edges of Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS’s self-styled caliphate, often with dated weapons, taking regular casualties as they work to slowly eat away at ISIS territory, Giglio writes.

“The war is difficult, and it’s painful,” Ahmed Sarhat, a Syrian fighter, said. “The enemy we have here is not just the enemy of this nation; it is the enemy of all nations. When you understand that they are against humanity, then you force yourself to fight them.”

If you want the latest news and continued updates about the vote, download the BuzzFeed News app for iOS and Android.

WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON

Chicago’s police chief Garry McCarthy has resigned after backlash from the police shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

The announcement by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, comes after a week of criticism about how the city of Chicago handled the release of a dashcam video that showed a white police officer fatally shooting the teen 16 times.

Jason Van Dyke, the officer charged with first-degree murder in McDonald’s death, was released from jail on Monday after posting 10% of bail.

Mayor Emanuel also announced a new “police accountability task force” which will review the department, BuzzFeed News reports.

What’s next?

The new task force will have four months to make recommendations for changes in the police department. And a few hours after McCarthy’s resignation, the Illinois Attorney General asked the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to investigate the Chicago Police Department.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

The New American Slavery: Invited to the U.S., foreign workers find a nightmare.

The H-2 visa program invites foreign workers to perform some of the most menial labor in America. Thousands of these workers have been abused, deprived of their fair pay, imprisoned, starved, beaten, raped, and threatened with deportation if they complain, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. The U.S. government says it can do little to help and employers rarely face any significant consequences.

Over the last five years, the number of H-2 visas issued has grown by more than 50%. The H-2 program — unlike the better known H-1B visa program, which brings skilled workers into America’s high-tech industries — is designed to make it easier for employers to fill temporary, unskilled positions. Proponents argue that it offers foreigners a chance to work in the U.S. legally, send home much-needed dollars, and return to their families when the job’s done.

The program — which brought 150,000 legal foreign workers to America last year — isn’t supposed to deprive any American of a job, BuzzFeed News reports. Many businesses, however, go to extraordinary lengths to deny jobs to U.S. workers so they can hire foreigners instead.

48 hours on the first trans-centric set in the heart of Hollywood.

Jill Soloway, the creator of Transparent — an acclaimed Amazon Studios series that follows Maura Pfefferman (played by Jeffrey Tambor), the transgender patriarch turned matriarch of an upper-middle-class Jewish family — has hired an unprecedented number of transgender professionals for the show’s second season.

“Previously, there have been few major accomplishments in mainstream media for transgender representation,” BuzzFeed News’ Diana Tourjee writes. BuzzFeed News visited the set to see what it means to have a marginalized community represented both in front of and behind the camera.

The new season’s first episode began streaming for Amazon Prime users on Nov. 30. The entirety of Season 2 of Transparent debuts on Dec. 11.

Quick things to know:

• Severe flooding has overwhelmed the Indian city of Chennai. Some 188 people have died in rain-related incidents in Tamil Nadu state in the last month. (BuzzFeed News)

• NATO has invited Balkan state Montenegro to become the alliance’s 29th member. It’s the organization’s first expansion in six years. Full membership could take up to two years. (BuzzFeed News)

• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — now the dad of a baby girl — said he’ll give away 99% of his Facebook shares (worth $45 billion today) over his lifetime, but will retain control of Facebook. (BuzzFeed News) But not all of that money will go to charity. (BuzzFeed News)

• Gun sellers hope high school shooting sports will create new gun enthusiasts. (BuzzFeed News)

• Starbucks has been hit with an E. coli scare. The coffee chain recalled turkey sandwiches that used the same celery recalled after an E. coli outbreak linked to Costco. (BuzzFeed News)

• Starting tomorrow, you can browse the web in virtual reality. And it looks difficult. (BuzzFeed News)

• A 17-year-old boy is the 15th teenager who has been stabbed to death in London so far this year. (BuzzFeed News)

• Hitler’s Mein Kampf will be re-released to the public for the first time since 1945 by a group of German historians. (BuzzFeed News)

• A transgender woman has been found dead in her cell at an all-male prison in the U.K., the second death of a trans inmate in three weeks. (BuzzFeed News)

• A Turkish court needs a “Gollum” expert to decide whether to jail someone for a meme comparing Turkey’s president to the Lord of the Rings figure. (BuzzFeed News)

Happy Wednesday

We’ve got five great books for you to read this December, all thanks to the BuzzFeed Books newsletter. If you’re looking for an inspiring read, try Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person. And if you’ve been eagerly awaiting the fourth and final book of the fairytale-inspired dystopian series, The Lunar Chronicles: it’s here and it’s just as addictive and captivating as its predecessors. Now, just sit back and relax.

This letter was edited and brought to you by Claire Moses and Brianne O’Brien. You can always reach us here.