Lead story

• Church leaders condemn violence by Trump supporters on Capitol Hill. The unprecedented scenes of mayhem and violence at Washington’s Capitol on Wednesday evening, leaving several individuals dead, has brought considerable condemnation from church leaders in America and across the world, including from many of Donald Trump’s most staunch supporters (such as the President’s spiritual adviser, Paula White and evangelist, Franklin Graham). Church leaders like Rick Warren, John Hagee and the Archbishop of Canterbury, all took to Twitter to share their deep concern at events that unfolded.

Society and Politics

• Thousands of retired NHS workers refused jobs to help with Covid. With many NHS hospitals currently overwhelmed with the influx of patients suffering from Covid-19, and reports of Nightingale hospitals not being able to operate due to lack of nurses and doctors to work in them, it has emerged that thousands of retired NHS workers were prevented from returning to the front line to help the fight against Covid in the year because of red tape and excessive bureaucracy. More than 40,000 doctors and nurses applied to return to the NHS to help with the pandemic, but only 5,000 had been given jobs by July 2020. The retired medics had to submit up to 21 documents, including proof they weren’t terrorists. Read more here and here.
• Just 1 in 50 suspected extremists still monitored by de-radicalisation scheme. Just two per cent of all suspected terrorists flagged with security services last year are still being monitored by the Government's controversial anti-radicalisation programme Prevent. Of a list of 6,287 terrorist suspects handed to security services in 2019, only 147 are still part of the Government programme. Covid restrictions were largely blamed for the deficiency. As a result, “many will be using the internet to radicalise others”, noted National Counter Terrorism Security Office Chris Phillips. “We are in for a difficult time ahead with a high likelihood of further attacks”. Read more here.
• Liz Truss, International Trade Secretary. (photo Pink News)"2021 will see Global Britain take flight” says Trade Secretary. On top of Britain’s unique trade agreement with the EU, as many as 63 UK trade deals with countries all over the world - negotiated behind the scenes over the past two years - are now in operation from the 1st of January. The deals cover trading relationships worth over £885 billion. Trade Secretary, Liz Truss insisted that the Government was also working towards "gold-standard" deals with the US and Australia in the coming year. Just in the last week, successful trade deals have been signed between Britain and Cameroon (worth over £200 million a year) and Turkey (£18 million). Read more here.
• Prominent lesbian criticises same-sex marriage. Natalie Drew, founder of Britain’s first fertility clinic for same-sex couples, has criticised the 2014 introduction of same-sex marriage, saying it has led to a soaring divorce rate among lesbians. Through her fertility clinic, Ms Drew discovered that about a third of the 586 lesbian couples she helped to have babies between 2011 and 2015 had split up. “The legalisation of gay marriage has done more damage than good”, she said. “It hasn’t done lesbians any favours.” She put it down to differences between lesbian and male-female couples that mean marriage doesn’t work for them. “There’s an expectation you’ll fit into these traditional roles because you’ve done the norm, you’ve done what everyone else has done and got married. But we are not the norm.” Official figures show that divorces among lesbian couples last year were about three times higher than those among gay men. Read more here.

World News

• Christmas slaughter in two Nigerian states. On Christmas Eve, armed militants, thought to belong to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), an off-shoot of Boko Haram, raided the predominantly Christian village of Pemi in Borno State, on trucks and motorcycles, firing on villagers, killing eleven people, and setting fire to buildings. In a second attack on the same day, this time in Adamawa State, jihadists abducted at least 20 Christians in the region and singled out five to be lined up and shot. The militants referred to the murders as a “Christmas present”.
• Nigeria’s Christians trapped between Covid and terrorism. The combination of Covd-19 and the rise in terrorist activity in Nigeria has left Christians in that country in peril, it is being claimed. Nigeria’s government has advised Christians to stay in their homes to avoid Covid. But if they remain locked down at home, they cannot escape when groups of terrorists attack them. The government has largely failed to respond to these attacks, which have increased in frequency across Nigeria. In 2020, human rights groups estimated that over 2,200 Christians were murdered by radical Islamist militants. Read more here.
• Disquiet over ‘Amen and a woman’ prayer. When a US Democrat pastor from Missouri was asked to pray at the opening of the 117th US Congress on Sunday, he decided to make a gender-neutral address. But Emanuel Cleaver provoked derision by closing his prayer with the words 'amen and a woman'. A video of his prayer went viral, with many pointing out Cleaver’s ignorance for not realising that the word, ‘amen’ has no reference to gender. Rather it is Latin for 'so be it'. Cleaver's phrase was seen as part of a move towards ‘diversity and inclusion’ by Democrats in the House of Representatives, which aims to remove gender-biased words such as ‘chairman’, ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘uncle’, ‘aunt’, and many more. Read more here and here. Franklin Graham claims that removal of 'gendered' language from the House is equivalent to "shaking one’s fist' in God's face". Cleaver later claimed that his remark was intended as a light-hearted joke.

Israel and Middle East

• Arabs from Jerusalem, Lebanon and Syria seek to join IDF. It may surprise many to know that every year the Israeli army enlists significant numbers of Israeli-Arabs, who voluntarily apply to serve in the IDF. In 2020, that number swelled to over 1,000, out of a staggering 4,000 + Israeli-Arab applications. Additionally, about 700 would-be volunteers applied to join the IDF from Arab countries such as Lebanon and Syria (though many of these had to be turned down for security reasons). Growing numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews have also joined the IDF in recent months. Read more here.
• Israel ahead of the game in vaccine roll-out. In Britain a row developed over who should get the vaccine first, and there have been problems with supply and distribution. Across the Channel, the situation has been considerably more chaotic. EU bureaucracy has led to delays, in-fighting, and national self-interest, which have crippled the EU’s vaccine efforts, and may prove fatal to many thousands of citizens. Israel, by contrast, seems to have taken the lead in the vaccine roll-out. With a health system regarded as one of the most efficient in the world, nearly 146,000 people received the jab on Monday alone - more than some Western countries including Italy, Spain and Canada had distributed in total. However, new lockdown measures have now been imposed in Israel, as the new strain of Covid spreads rapidly. It is also feared supplies of the vaccine are beginning to run low. Read more here and here.