BBC news with Jerry Smit.

The American film star Carrie Fisher who played princess Leia in the Star Wars film has died aged at 60 days after suffering a heart attack on a transatlantic flight. Fellow passengers on the plane from London to California said she stopped breathing for several minutes and she'd been in intensive care in a Los Angeles hospital since then.

The former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchnerhas been indicted in a corruption case involving a private company that was granted lucrative contracts from the government. A judge has also frozen more than 600 million dollars of her personal assets. She left office a year ago.

Shinzo Abe is about to become the first Japanese leader to pray at Pearl Harbor for the more than 2000 US sailors and marines killed in a surprised Japanese attack on the US naval base 75 years ago. Mr. Abe is expected to talk about the value of reconciliation. But the prime minister is unlikely to offer a formal apology.

The leading US Republican senator John McCain has sought to reassure the Baltic states that Washington will continue to back them under president Trump. Mr. McCain said he was confident that America would maintain its commitment to a strong NATO in the face of what he called "increasingly aggressive Russian behavior" in the region.

Reports from Saudi Arabia say that a man has been jailed for one year for urging an end to the guardianship system that traditionally gives Saudi men extensive control over women. The man is quoted as saying he wanted to help female relatives ill-treated by their families.

And scientists in Canada say they have direct evidence that North American Indians cultivated swamp potatoes almost 4000 years ago. The researchers say they have discovered hundreds of partly preserved tubers in the submerged garden in the ancestral lands of the Katzie tribe in British Columbia.BBC news.