Construction workers on the U.S.-Mexico border were notified to stop all border wall projects by the end of Tuesday, according to a congressman whose district sits on the international boundary.
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Monday that US efforts to isolate China may trigger a “new Cold War,” the Washington Times (WT) reports. President Xi made his remarks during a video speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned Tuesday after former PM Matteo Renzi pulled his Italia Viva party out of a deeply divided governing coalition, Sky News reports. Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella has asked Mr. Conte to stay on in a caretaker capacity while he begins consultations with the leaders of the other parties on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden has issued an executive order that reverses the Trump administration’s ban on transgender people joining the US military, Voice of America reports. Transgender citizens had been allowed to serve in the military and receive transitioning treatment under former President Barack Obama, but new transgender recruits were subsequently banned under former President Donald Trump.
Ethiopia is in the midst of a full-blown humanitarian crisis as refugees flee to the border with Sudan and up to two million people face starvation while the government wars against a separatist group in the country’s Tigray region, CBN News reports. Among daily reports of mass killings on both sides is the reported massacre of over 700 Orthodox Christians outside their church in Tigray’s city of Aksum earlier this month.
Israel on Monday night shuttered Ben Gurion Airport to nearly all flights until the end of January, amid fears over fast-spreading or vaccine-resistant coronavirus variants entering the country.
Supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have called for new protests after thousands were detained in the largest rallies against Russian President Vladimir Putin in years.
The Netherlands was edging closer to near civil war Monday as police clashed with protestors defying the nation’s first curfew since World War Two.
Donald J. Trump’s political fate was in the hands of Republican senators Monday as the House sent an article of impeachment against the former U.S. President.
The deputy vice-chancellor of the Christian Anchor University in Lagos state, Nigeria has reportedly been released after being kidnapped by suspected Muslim Fulani herdsmen on Jan. 18, Morning Star News (MSN) reports. John Fatokun is understood to have been released on Wednesday, Jan. 20. Nevertheless, Nigeria ranks number one on the 2021 World Watch List for countries in which Christians are killed for their faith.
President Biden will sign an executive order Monday to increase government purchases from United States manufacturers.
The international Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) human rights organization has called for the immediate release of a pastor who is in custody in Cuba on what the group says are “trumped-up charges.” Cuban pastor Karel Parra Rosabal was arrested in Las Tunas on January 12 apparently because of his involvement with the Apostolic Movement, a network of independent churches that the Cuban government refuses to register, rendering them effectively illegal.
The FBI is investigating a bomb blast that broke windows at a California Baptist church that has been subject to protests for what has been described as extremist, hateful messaging against the LGBT community, Religion News reports. El Monte police said the city’s First Works Baptist church building was attacked at 1 am Saturday when an “improvised explosive device” was thrown at it. No one was in the building at the time and no injuries have been reported.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a Nevada church protesting Gov. Steve Sisolak’s coronavirus worship restrictions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday said that governments worldwide must do more to work together and put the global economy back on track.
A Christian advocacy group has said one of President Joe Biden’s first executive orders is an “assault on biological reality” that negatively targets people of faith and faith-based organizations that provide social services, Christian Today reports. The Family Research Council (FRC) said the president’s Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation may result in Christians having to violate their consciences and even lose government contracts for failure to comply.
A group of right-wing militia members arrived in Washington bent on breaching the U.S. Capitol and booked a room for two in a motel in Arlington, Virginia, for at least six fellow Oath Keepers.
For the past year, defenders of the FBI have consistently downplayed the significance of an FBI staff lawyer falsifying evidence in the government’s investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia. They argue Kevin Clinesmith’s crime of altering a CIA document to obscure the fact that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page worked for U.S., not Russian, intelligence was a rare lapse in judgment by an overworked bureaucrat. It was not, his apologists say, part of any broader conspiracy to conceal exculpatory information from surveillance court judges, who never learned of Page’s history with the CIA before approving FBI warrants to wiretap him as a suspected Russian agent.
Chances that former U.S. President Donald J. Trump would be convicted in an impeachment trial diminished Sunday as a growing number of Republican Senators rallied behind him.
Thousands of National Guard members will remain in Washington D.C. through March, according to the National Guard Bureau.