TURKEY - Ankara withdrew its envoy to Israel in 2018 over deadly attacks on the Palestinians in besieged Gaza. The move to appoint Ufuk Ulutas, 40, as the new Turkish ambassador is part of an attempt to improve ties with incoming President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, a report by Al Monitor quoting “well-placed sources” revealed last week. Ulutas, described as “very polished”, “very clever” and “very pro-Palestinian” by sources quoted in the report, studied Hebrew and Middle Eastern politics in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is also an expert on Israel’s regional rival, Iran, but is not a career diplomat.

USA - The President’s son-in-law was widely mocked in the US but made historic breakthroughs in the Middle East, with four Arab countries recognizing the Jewish state within months. The United Arab Emirates is getting top-of-the-line fighter jets. Morocco is winning recognition for decades-old territorial claims. And Sudan is coming off the US terrorism blacklist.

UK - Matt Hancock told the Commons today that Tier 3 rules will come into effect in London just after midnight on Wednesday morning. He said areas of Hertfordshire and Essex will also go into the highest restrictions after seeing 'sharp and exponential' growth. But in another bombshell announcement Mr Hancock said that scientists had identified a 'new variant' of the virus that appeared to be influencing the spread in the south of England. He said initial evidence was that the strain, named VUI – 202012/01, appears to spread more quickly but does not appear to be any more deadly or able to resist a vaccine. ‘We've currently identified over 1,000 cases with this variant, predominantly in the south of England, although cases have been identified in nearly 60 different local authority areas, and numbers are increasing rapidly,' he said. Mr Hancock said the strain had also been identified in other countries and the World Health Organization had been notified, with tests still being carried out at the government's Porton Down lab.

GERMANY - Germany’s Angela Merkel has rejected Boris Johnson’s pleas for face-to-face talks to help secure an 11th-hour Brexit deal, with a source saying she is “determined to make Britain crawl across broken glass” for an agreement. With December 13th becoming the latest “final” deadline for the talks to be pushed back yesterday — the first was in the summer — Boris Johnson has been trying desperately for a breakthrough, flying to Brussels to talk directly to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and offering to do the same for high-profile national leaders such as Chancellor Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron. He has gotten nowhere, however, with the Brussels talks producing nothing and Merkel and Macron both declining to meet with him.

USA - The Supreme Court justices who rejected Texas' bid to overturn the election results in four key states "hid behind procedure" instead of reviewing the "facts of the case" that "still stand," White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told "Hannity" Friday. “There is no way to say it other than they dodged,” McEnany told host Sean Hannity. “They dodged, they hid behind procedure and they refused to use their authority to enforce the Constitution," she continued. "You know, we’ve gone state by state, Sean, outlining the egregious equal protection violations, the due process claims that were entirely ignored." The press secretary noted that “none of the judges” on the Supreme Court “gave a view on the facts of the case” adding that the matter "was dismissed on standing.”

USA - Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West is floating the idea of secession after the Supreme Court betrayed the people and dismissed a lawsuit against battleground states that engaged in grotesque fraud. “The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 congressman, have decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law,” West said in a statement. “Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic,” he continued.

VATICAN - The Vatican uncovered its 2020 manger scene in Saint Peter’s Square Friday, leaving onlookers scattered, scandalized, and scornful. Observers shoveled abuse upon the unfortunate spectacle, rivaling each other to come up with the most appropriate epithets to describe the appalling scene. “Mummified Mary,” “Weeble Jesus” (after the ovate children’s toys launched by Hasbro in the 1970s), “Martians,” “toilet paper rolls,” and “astronauts” were some of the comparisons made to the cylindrical figures meant to represent the Holy Family, the Magi, and the shepherds at Bethlehem.

MOROCCO - Jewish history and culture in Morocco will soon be part of the school curriculum — a “first” in the region and in the North African country, where Islam is the state religion. The decision “has the impact of a tsunami,” said Serge Berdugo, secretary-general of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco. It “is a first in the Arab world,” he told AFP from Casablanca. For years, although the kingdom had no official relationship with Israel, thousands of Jews of Moroccan origin visited the land of their ancestors, to celebrate religious holidays or make pilgrimages, including from Israel. But Morocco this week became the fourth Arab nation since August to announce a US-brokered deal to normalize relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.

UNITED NATIONS - Every world leader must immediately declare a “state of climate emergency” or face “catastrophic” results, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned Saturday. Speaking at the opening of the Climate Ambition summit, held online to mark five years since the Paris Agreement, the Portuguese socialist warned nations’ current commitments were “far from enough” and were plainly unacceptable to the globalist body. Around 70 heads of state and government took part in the meeting, which was organised by the UK, UN and France. They outlined broad new pledges and commitments to curb carbon but gave very little – if any – detail as to how that would be achieved. “If we don’t change course, we may be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than 3.0 degrees this century,” Guterres said. “...the time has come for us to repent and mend our ways through a great climate and economic reset.

USA - The Electoral College has met to confirm Joe Biden as the president-elect. Despite President Trump's lawsuits challenging the results of the November 3 election against Biden, 538 electors from all 50 states and Washington, DC, convened Monday, and by Monday evening, they had given Biden the 270 votes he needed to claim the White House. Biden was expected to end the meeting with 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232, reflecting the popular votes from each of the jurisdictions.

USA - President Donald Trump blasted the Supreme Court as having 'no wisdom, no courage' on Friday night after it dismissed a case filed by the attorney general of Texas which asked them to intervene and overturn the election in four states which Joe Biden won. The SCOTUS decision to not even hear the case dealt a crippling legal blow to Trump's legal strategy, adding to the long list of failed lawsuits his campaign has filed in an effort to change the election results as the president still refuses to concede and continues with unfounded claims of voter fraud.

USA - Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, said Friday on Newsmax TV’s “Stinchfield” that the president’s legal team will continue filing lawsuits even after the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by Texas, which was backed by 17 other states and 126 House Republicans, to overturn the election results in four swing states. Giuliani said, “The case wasn’t rejected on the merits, the case was rejected on standing. So the answer to that is to bring the case now to the district court by the president, by some of the electors, alleging some of the same facts where there would be standing and therefore get a hearing.” He added, “We’re not finished. Believe me.”

EUROPE - The EU is the sick man of Europe with a crippling cash crisis, bankrupt bureaucracy and infighting - despite leaders insisting it's Britain that will be left behind after Brexit. For weeks now, the focus on both sides of the Channel has been on what a deal or no deal would mean for Britain. The assumption is that, whatever the outcome, the EU will maintain its progress and prosperity without us. According to this myopic narrative, we are the ones facing a storm as we strike out alone, while the EU, united and purposeful, sails on serenely. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth.

GERMANY - United States President-Elect Joe Biden has long had strong ties to Germany and those are likely to continue once he is in the White House. But German and American interests diverge strongly on a number of foreign policy issues ranging from China to Russia. "The return of the US to the international stage will change a lot of things, because together we stand for a cooperative approach," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Der Spiegel in an interview last week. "Whether we like it or not, the world doesn't organize itself," is something that Antony Blinken, Biden's nominee for secretary of state, has said repeatedly. That sentence holds out the promise that the US is once again ready to lead the West. But is the country still even capable of doing so? And do the Europeans want to be led?

USA - American billionaires made so much money during the Covid-19 pandemic that their profits since March are enough to give every US resident a $3,000 check without cutting into their pre-virus wealth, a new report shows. Over the last nine months, the 651 billionaires who call the US home have increased their wealth by a whopping $1.06 trillion, according to a report published Tuesday by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies. Far from being negatively impacted by the pandemic-related economic shutdowns, the country’s super-rich seem to have thrived amid the policies that have plunged so many ordinary Americans into poverty. The billionaires’ wealth grew so much that they could cut “every man, woman and child in the country” a $3,000 stimulus check and “still be richer than they were nine months ago,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a Tuesday press release.