Leah MarieAnn Klett – The Christian Post; christianpost.com
Chinese Communist Party officials have ordered primary school teachers to sign a form requiring them to teach a Marxist religious view, strengthen atheism education, and actively promote socialism, according to a persecution watchdog group.
China Aid, a U.S.-based nonprofit that monitors religious persecution in China, reports that CCP officials recently distributed a “Teacher’s Promise to Not Believe in Any Faith” form to Longwan District School in Wenzhou in China’s Zhejiang province.
The form, which requires each teacher’s signature, includes directives under four “publicly announced commitments.” Teachers are required to: Firmly establish a Marxist religious view; strengthen atheism education, and refrain from believing in any religion or participating in any religious activities.
By: Raphael Ahren – The Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com
Wine from the Golan, olive oil from the West Bank — despite the political sensitivities, companies in UAE and Bahrain appear unfazed about where their trading partners are located
In November 2015, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates dedicated a long editorial to the European Union’s newly issued guidelines about special labels for products from Israeli settlements.
“The decision by the 28-nation bloc has come after months of procrastination, but evidently underscores the bloc’s anger over Israel’s continued expansion of settlements on territory that Palestinians seek for their future state,” Gulf Today wrote at the time, calling for sanctions against the Jewish state. “Inaction on the part of the world community would be deemed by Israel as support for its oppressive actions.”
Populating the Kinneret with mullets usually takes place once a year. It’s done in order to preserve the lake’s quality of water by maintaining a balanced population of algae.
Some 50,000 flathead grey mullet fish found a new home in the Kinneret on Wednesday, as part of an effort to preserve the ecosystem of Israel’s most important lake, the Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry announced.
Populating the Kinneret with mullets usually takes place once a year. It’s done in order to preserve the lake’s ecological system and quality of water by maintaining a balanced population of algae.
By: Steve Postal – The American Spectator; spectator.org
Many details remain unclear, but it likely destabilizes the region.
This weekend marked at least the fifth assassination of arch-terrorists in Iran in 2020 when Muslim Shahdan, a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed while driving weapons across the Iraq–Syria border. This follows Friday’s assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist (and, less noted by the press, also a brigadier general of the IRGC) Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. There are at least three theories circulating as to the exact nature of the operation, be it an assassination involving remote-operated weapons, a small hit squad, or a larger hit squad. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United States have declared the IRGC a terrorist organization.
U.S.–Israel operation. In January, the United States assassinated IRGC major general and commander of the Quds force Qasem Soleimani, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and believed to be responsible for the 2019–20 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The Fakhrizadeh assassination has prompted heavy-handed armchair quarterbacking from the usual suspects. Former CIA Director John Brennan called the assassination “a criminal act & highly reckless” on Twitter, implored Iranian leadership to exercise restraint, and called the assassination, in the event it was carried out by a foreign government (Brennan said he did not know if it was) “an act of state-sponsored terrorism.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) supported Brennan’s tweet. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called the assassination “reckless, provocative, and illegal” as well as “murder,” while Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, Matt Duss, accused Israel of “terrorism” and suggested that former Vice President Joe Biden, once in office as president, should re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to teach Israel the lesson that “terrorism doesn’t work.”
JERUSALEM, Israel – Israel’s parliament on Wednesday passed a preliminary measure to dissolve the dysfunctional government coalition between Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu, setting the stage for Israel’s fourth election in two years.
The Knesset’s vote passed 61 to 54 with Gantz’s Blue in White Party voting in favor of the proposal and Netanyahu’s Likud Party voting against it.
Speaking at a prime-time television address on Tuesday, Gantz called Netanyahu a “serial breaker of promises” and said his Blue and White party would vote in favor of the no-confidence measure. A formal vote to dissolve the government could come as early as next week. Gantz’s decision is a warning that he has lost patience with Netanyahu but leaves the door open for emergency negotiations.
By: Amanda Borschel-Dan – The Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com
To fight the worst Desert Locust threat in 70 years, Start-Up Nation delegation flies in with innovative techniques, utilizing drones and nighttime spraying
At the request of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a crack team of Israelis swooped into the war-, storm-, and famine-struck country earlier this month to aid in its fight against a further plague — desert locusts.
Currently on the ground in the country’s eastern Somali region, the Israeli delegation is testing out an innovative technique of using drone surveillance and targeted night-time spraying, which will reduce the amount of pesticides.
As the country faces civil war in the north and massive flooding from Cyclone Gati, the locust swarms have invaded the country and are affecting over 70,000 households.
By: Anna Ahronheim – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com
Underground barrier almost complete; new “smart border” concept deployed along northern section of Gaza Strip.
The Hamas tunnel that stretched several meters into Israel and was discovered by the IDF last month near Kissufim forest was the deepest tunnel ever dug.
\While the military is not certain as to what its purpose was, it believes that it was intended to test the underground barrier or to be used for a cross-border raid by the terror group though not necessarily to abduct Israeli troops or civilians.
It was only dug recently and was not one of 20 terror tunnels used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and destroyed by the IDF since the end of the last war between Israel and Gaza in 2014.
The CARES Act, which went into effect this spring, established a new above-the-line deduction for charitable giving.
You can write off up to $300 in cash donations on your 2020 income tax return, which you’ll be filing next spring.
Normally, you’d have to itemize deductions to write off charitable giving when you file your taxes. About 14.8 million households took a tax break for donating to charity in 2018, according to the IRS.
Giving a few bucks to your favorite charity in time for the holidays? You can finally collect a tax break for it.
The CARES Act, which was signed into law this spring, included a “partial above the line deduction” for charitable contributions.
This allows people who take the standard deduction — which is $12,400 for single filers and $24,800 for married-filing-jointly in 2020 — to claim a deduction of up to $300 in donations.
You’d claim this tax break when you file your 2020 return next spring.
By: Raphael Ahren – The Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com
Speaking in Jerusalem, US secretary of state vows Washington to immediately take steps against anti-Israel boycott activists; Netanyahu hails move as ‘simply wonderful’
The United States government will formally designate the anti-Israel boycott movement “anti-Semitic” and immediately start cracking down on groups affiliated with it, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Thursday during a visit to Israel, calling BDS a “cancer.”
“Today I want to make one announcement with respect to a decision by the State Department that we will regard the global anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” he said, standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint statement to the press.
Ex-IAF fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe to join International Space Station for 20 months of experiments as part of partnership between Ramon Foundation and State of Israel; Rivlin urges Stibbe to ‘continue and fulfil legacy’ of Ramon family
Israel will send its second astronaut into space at the end of 2021, with former IAF fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe set to join a scientific mission to the International Space Station.
The announcement of the mission was made jointly by President Reuven Rivlin, the Ramon Foundation and the Ministry of Science and Technology on Monday at the president’s Jerusalem residence.
Stibbe is due to start his mission at the end of 2021, as part of a partnership between the Ramon Foundation and the State of Israel, making him a pioneer in the global private space industry.
The Ramon Foundation is a non-governmental organization for young people named for Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died during the Columbia space shuttle disaster in February 2003, his late son Assaf Ramon, who died in a 2009 training flight accident, and his wife Rona Ramon, who lost her battle with cancer in 2018.
The former pilot is set to spend 200 hours onboard the ISS, conducting an unprecedented range of experiments using Israeli technology and scientific developments, President Rivlin’s office said in a statement.