AUSTRALIA - A storm of controversy is brewing in Australia after lobbying from Satanists got the pentagram listed as a symbol of faith alongside emblems of the world’s major religions. Satanists in Queensland are toasting a “small but important win for religious freedom” after the Sunshine Coast University Hospital added Satanism to the list of recognized religions in its multi-faith center. The pentagram is now displayed alongside a host of religious symbols including the Christian cross, Islam’s Star and Crescent, Hindu’s Om and Buddhism’s dharma wheel. Not content with recognition alone, the Noosa Temple of Satan is pushing to have Christian symbols removed from the center, labelling them “an affront to the religious freedoms of other people.”

USA - Covid concerns, razor wire and no Trump: An inauguration like no other. With war-zone-like security, no crowds and coronavirus distancing for guests, Joe Biden's swearing-in as the 46th US president will be a muted affair unlike any previous inauguration. Where Washington is normally packed with hundreds of thousands of supporters, celebrities, socialites and lobbyists, the US capital is eerily quiet ahead of Biden's big day, which promises to be a mostly televised celebration of democracy. Coronavirus concerns were always going to dampen Wednesday's inauguration, but since departing President Donald Trump's supporters launched an insurrection in his name, Washington has ordered a security lockdown unseen since the September 11, 2001 attacks. That has forced Biden's inauguration team to urge supporters to stay home, auguring a ceremony at the Capitol like recent sports matches, with no fans in the seats.

USA - Without offering any evidence whatsoever, Representative Steve Cohen (Democrat for Tennessee) suggested white male service members may be seditionist conspirators. Cohen made the remarks on Monday during an appearance on CNN in response to reports the FBI is vetting 25,000 National Guard troops over fears of an ‘insider attack.’ According to NBC, US defense officials are worried about an inside attack or threat from guard members chosen to secure Biden’s sham inauguration. Cohen suggested white males who voted for Trump should be profiled because they may be seditionist conspirators. “The [National] Guard is 90 some-odd percent male; and only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden … there are probably not more than 25% of the people there protecting us that voted for Biden,” Cohen said.

UK - The Sunday Times is facing a social media backlash for pushing Covid-19 vaccination passports as “freedom certificates” with many noting that the idea was considered a crazy conspiracy theory only a few months ago. An article published in the UK newspaper on Sunday makes the case for “immunity passports,” which would allow vaccine recipients to be exempt from lockdown restrictions. The piece, titled ‘Covid passports: a freedom certificate that may get the world travelling again’, argues that several countries will start to introduce the documents, in some shape or form, and pressure will mount on British authorities to follow suit. “Whether or not the moral, political and medical questions of favouring the vaccinated are resolved, demand from the jabbed hordes for the necessary paperwork to travel this summer is likely to prove irresistible,” the article argues.

USA - The Biden unity train leaves on Wednesday at noon. The theme is unity and coming together. Unfortunately, the Biden team is planning to bring us together by tearing us apart.

GUATEMALA - A group of US-bound Central American migrants has been met with truncheons and tear gas in Guatemala, where security forces blocked their path. Thousands of people were intercepted on a road near the border with Honduras on Sunday. The government said it would not accept "illegal mass movements". An estimated 7,000 migrants, mostly from Honduras, have entered in recent days, fleeing poverty and violence. They hope to travel on to Mexico, and then the US border. Every year, tens of thousands of Central American migrants attempt this perilous journey to try and reach the US, often on foot, in groups known as "caravans". President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, has vowed to end the strict immigration policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump, a Republican. But the Biden administration, which will take office on Wednesday, has warned migrants not to make the journey, as immigration policies will not change overnight.

USA - For years I have been warning that Christian persecution was rising all over the globe, but we have never seen anything like the past year. Christians are being slaughtered all across Africa, they are being taken to concentration camps in North Korea, thousands of churches have been brutally shut down under a new wave of persecution in China, and millions of believers throughout the Middle East must live knowing that each new day may be their last. Of course most Americans have never heard about any of this because the mainstream media won’t cover it. Thankfully, there are organizations that do keep track of what is happening to Christians around the globe, and one of them is Open Doors USA. According to the group, the number of Christians that were killed for their faith was 60 percent higher in 2020 than it was in 2019… A 6 percent rise in a single year would be bad. A 60 percent increase is a nightmare.

INDONESIA - At least 42 people have been killed and more than 600 injured after a magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck and toppled buildings in Indonesia’s Sulawesi island in the early hours of Friday. The epicentre of the quake was six kilometres (3.73 miles) northeast of the city of Majene, at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles). At least 15,000 people have been displaced following the quake. North of Majene, more than a dozen patients and staff are trapped beneath the rubble of a hospital that was flattened by the quake. Some roads and bridges were also damaged slowing down the rescue operation. Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from Jakarta, said the situation was still developing in the area. “There is potential for a tsunami from subsequent aftershocks … Don’t wait for a tsunami first because they can happen very quickly,” she added. Hours earlier, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck in the same district, damaging several houses.

USA - The Pentagon is putting 20,000 National Guard on the streets of DC in the wake of the assault on the US Capitol to support Metropolitan Police Department and the US Capitol Police for the inauguration on January 20 of President-elect Joe Biden. That is in addition to the more than 6,000 officers who are part of the US Capitol Police and who are officers with the DC Metropolitan Police Department. The more than 25,000 members of law enforcement personnel that are being deployed is five times the number of United States military deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Security measures in the capital include dozens of roads and other closures, including the National Mall, until the day after the inauguration.

GERMANY - Germany's Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Saturday elected Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany's most populous state) as its new leader. He'll replace former chair Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who had succeeded Merkel in 2018 only to resign following a lack of success in February 2020. Laschet is considered a centrist and a close Merkel ally, though he reportedly angered her last spring by advocating for loosening the country's COVID-19 restrictions. To secure leadership, he defeated one of her intra-party rivals, Friedrich Merz, whom The Guardian describes as a "conservative hardliner," by a count of 521 to 466 votes. Per BBC, Laschet is in good position to emerge as the party's candidate for chancellor when Merkel steps down in September, but there's no guarantee he'll be the choice, as there are a few other popular options within the party.

ISRAEL - The Israeli Defense Force is drawing up plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel Hayom daily reported Thursday in a front-page article. The newspaper said that IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has asked for three alternate proposals to derail Tehran’s program, without elaborating on them. It only indicated one of the proposals is a military strike, noting that such a plan would require a significant budgetary boost for the Israeli military. Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent last week, well in excess of the threshold set out in its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and a short technical jump from the 90% level of enrichment needed to produce weapons. “If the United States government rejoins the nuclear deal — and that seems to be the stated policy as of now — the practical result will be that Israel will again be alone against Iran, which by the end of the deal will have received a green light from the world, including the United States, to continue with its nuclear weapons program”...

USA - Foreign leaders are now condemning US Regime for brutal censorship of American citizens.

EUROPE - Dutch government resigns over child benefits scandal. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the government would continue to lead the country’s COVID-19 response team until elections already scheduled for March. Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government stepped down on Friday after it emerged that officials had wrongly pursued thousands of people over welfare fraud.

USA - Thousands of migrants from Central America are on their way to the United States, and a migrant activist group representing the caravan is calling for the Biden administration to honor its "commitment." The migrants are fleeing political corruption, violence, and extreme poverty in Honduras, which was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and two devastating Category 4 hurricanes that battered the country within a two-week span in November. "We have nothing to feed to our children, and thousands of us were left sleeping on the streets," mother-of-four Maria Jesus Paz, who lost her home in the hurricanes, said. "This is why we make this decision, even though we know that the journey could cost us our lives." The mass migration by Hondurans is happening a week before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. The migrants are expecting that Biden will have a much more welcoming immigration policy compared to President Donald Trump.

RUSSIA - "The city on the hill has lost its shine," said Konstantin Kosachev at Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia). The political system that is supposedly the envy of the world was stripped of "its sacredness" last week when a mob of Trump supporters assaulted the US Capitol, killing a police officer and endangering lawmakers as they certified Joe Biden's election win. American politicians and pundits decried the violent protest as a horror, even though they routinely praise such displays in other countries as valid outpourings of anger against undemocratic regimes. Now US voters are crying fraud and injustice and besieging government buildings.