Senior Israeli officials and their counterparts from Abraham Accords countries attended a two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi this week to prepare for the upcoming Negev Forum summit in Morocco later this year, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. High-level delegations from Egypt and America, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, also participated in the meeting.
Ignoring Western condemnation of its actions, Iran’s judiciary has sentenced three more anti-government protesters to death on charges of “waging war on God,” Reuters reports. Iran’s Islamic extremist regime has already executed four people involved in nationwide protests triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who had been arrested for not wearing her hijab correctly in September last year.
Brazil’s former president and conservative rightwing leader Jair Bolsonaro has condemned supporters who invaded and ransacked the government’s top institutions on Sunday.
Atheist pro-life advocates are pushing back against lawsuits alleging that state abortion bans and restrictions violate religious freedom and promote a Christian definition of life, saying that the right to practice one’s faith does not justify “human rights violations.”
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Monday on the rules that will govern it for the next two years, in a first test of newly elected Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ability to wrangle his caucus.
The House is set to vote on a bill Monday night that would slash billions from the IRS, fulfilling newly elected GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s pledge to cut the agency’s funding in an effort to prevent audits on Americans.
Last week, the United Nations Security Council met in an emergency session following the visit of a prominent minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Israeli leaders claim the emergency meeting was another attempt launched by Palestinians to blame Israel for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A remote region in Australia’s outback has been hit by “one-in-100-year” floods which have forced military aircraft to evacuate residents.
The U.S. State Department has admitted that the Biden administration maintains several backdoor methods of communication with the Iranian regime on multiple issues between the two countries, although it denies that a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is at the top of the agenda.
A New York pro-life pregnancy center is launching its own private investigation to find the group of arsonists who firebombed their facility last June.
A pastor in Iran who is serving a six-year prison sentence on account of his religious activity was suddenly re-arrested on December 26 while on officially approved leave from his jail, Article 18 reports.
A pastor in western Uganda is still fighting for his life in hospital, weeks after he and a couple he had recently led to Christ were poisoned by local Islamic extremists, Morning Star News (MSN) reports. Violent attacks by radicalized Islamists against Christians in Uganda are being increasingly reported, although Muslims are a minority group in the country, and Christianity is legal.
A new report shows that, while religious identity among US adults has remained “mostly stable” since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of Americans who regularly attend worship services has declined significantly, the Washington Times reports. The report was published by the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions rose further Monday after Israel’s new National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, instructed police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces.
The US has approved a further $3.075bn military aid package for Ukraine to continue to resist the Russian invasion, Army-Technology reports. This latest assistance package is the largest America has designated for Ukraine to date.
Brazilian police began regaining control in the capital of Brasília Monday, where thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro attacked government buildings, including Congress, the presidential palace, and the Supreme Court.
The gridlock that paralyzed House Republicans over the past week in their quest to elect a new Speaker could be a foretaste of more to come, with party moderates and conservatives set to tangle in the months to come over raising the debt ceiling and reining in reckless government spending.
The Idaho Supreme Court on Friday upheld the state’s abortion ban, which restricts access to the procedure except in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother.
The Labor Department said Friday the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in December – the lowest monthly increase in two years.
The American and Israeli air forces on Thursday wrapped up a drill simulating joint flights and target strikes.