USA - The new Congress that was sworn in Thursday afternoon is significantly more religious and Christian than the nation it represents, according to an analysis of religions claimed by House and Senate members. Protestants and Catholics are tops, and the 116th Congress includes the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the House. According to Pew, Christians are “overrepresented in Congress,” at 88.2 percent. Overall, 71 percent of all US adults are Christian. There are 34 of the Jewish faith in the House and Senate, or 6.4 percent. In the US, just 2 percent are Jewish.

USA - Long thought to be divorced from the brain, the immune system turns out to be intimately involved in its functioning. For decades anatomy textbooks taught that the two most complicated systems in the body - the brain and the immune system - existed in almost complete isolation from each other. By all accounts, the brain focused on the business of operating the body, and the immune system focused on defending it. In healthy individuals, the twain never met. Only in certain cases of disease or trauma did cells from the immune system enter the brain, and when they did so, it was to attack.

UK - Prime Minister Theresa May’s “worst deal in history” with the European Union has suffered another blow as polling reveals her party membership would prefer to leave the bloc with no deal at all. The deal Mrs May has negotiated with the EU, which would involve a lengthy “transition” period in which Britain would essentially become a non-voting member-state, possibly followed by a “backstop” relationship in which the EU would be allowed to effectively control its customs and external trade arrangements, regulatory rulebook, and more, has found little favour in Parliament, which must ratify it for it to take effect.

USA - Just after reclaiming the gavel in the House, Nancy Pelosi (Democrat for California) has stoked anti-Russian sentiment and so-far unvindicated claims of collusion, calling the US president's contacts with Russian leader Vladimir Putin "dangerous." "I think that the president's relationship with thugs all over the world is appalling," Pelosi responded, receiving a thunderous round of applause from the audience that muffled her next words. “Vladimir Putin, really? Really? I think it's dangerous.” Democrats and even some hardline Republicans picked on Trump for cozying up to Putin, calling his behavior "nothing short of treasonous." Mainstream media, incensed over the fact that neither Putin nor Trump attacked each other during the final press conference, branded the US leader's performance "disgraceful" and "a political victory for the Kremlin."

USA - For four decades, Germany has sent pilots to the United States for training. On May 1, 1996, this bilateral military cooperation took an important step forward when Defense Secretary Perry and German Defense Minister Rühe activated the German Air Force Tactical Training Center (TTC) at Holloman Air Force Base (AFB) in New Mexico. There are several important reasons for Germany's decision to invest in the TTC.

GERMANY - German army admits most of its newly acquired military hardware is faulty and unfit for service. Germany’s Armed Forces are most likely to stay underequipped for the next decade or so, the German Defense Chief has admitted. Meanwhile, the units are stuck with sharing gear and vehicles. At least nine brigades in the German Armed Forces, known as Bundeswehr, lack the necessary equipment and arms, the military Inspector General Eberhard Zorn said, adding that they are expected to be “fully equipped” no sooner than in 13 years – by 2031. The lack of spare parts for the military equipment also remains one of the major concerns. At the same time, he was pretty confident that Germany would be able to maintain its status of one of the NATO leading military forces through all these years by redistributing the existing equipment between its units.

GERMANY - The German government has mounted an aggressive campaign to encourage illegal migrants to leave - bribing them with free rent for a year in their home countries. "Your country. Your future. Now!” read billboards in seven languages, plastered in nearly 2,500 locations across 80 German cities, reports the National Post. As rejected asylum claims pile up - and arrivals have normalized since a flood of 700,000 migrants three years ago, the billboard campaign is aimed at the roughly 235,000 people who are still required to leave the country according to the interior ministry. Of more than 20,000 scheduled airport repatriations in 2018, just half of them appeared to take flights back home.

GERMANY - The US, Germany’s closest strategic ally, came surprisingly close to the ‘bogeyman’ Russia in the list of countries that the Germans fear the most, leaving North Korea and others lag behind, a new poll revealed. Incredibly, as many as 55 percent of Germans believe the US is almost an equal threat to their country as Russia, which scored 56 percent in the latest study by Forsa pollster, Bild reports. Other countries that usually dominate mainstream airwaves trail far behind. Germans have generally become less supportive of the US, as previous surveys show.

USA - It’s not just Congress that’s seeing more and more female faces as of late. Women have taken control of the US’ multibillion dollar military-industrial complex too. Who said that war is only a man’s business? Politico celebrated this “watershed” moment on Wednesday, announcing that as of January 1, the CEOs of four of the nation’s top five defense contractors – Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Boeing’s defense wing – are now women. The latest appointment was of Kathy Warden as CEO and president of Northrop Grumman. In government, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, the State Department’s weapons seller, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons chief, and the secretary of the Air Force are all women.

USA - Researchers in 2018 achieved a new kind of chimeric first, producing sheep-human hybrid embryos that could one day represent the future of organ donation – by using body parts grown inside unnatural, engineered animals. With that end goal in mind, scientists created the first interspecies sheep-human chimera in February, introducing human stem cells into sheep embryos, resulting in a hybrid creature that's more than 99 percent sheep – but also a tiny, little bit like you and me. Admittedly, the human portion of the embryos created in the experiment – before they were destroyed after 28 days – is exceedingly small, but the fact they existed at all is what generates considerable controversy in this field of research.

GERMANY - German eurosceptics could push for the country to quit the EU by 2024 unless the bloc is “completely changed” after the upcoming European Parliament elections. The new EU politicians would be nominated by “national parliaments proportional to the fractional strength”, which would also spell the end of European elections.

GERMANY - It is wrong that an incident is called “a ‘hate-fueled hunt’ only when it comes to crimes committed by some far-right extremists,” Rainer Wendt, the head of the German police union, told Bild daily as he called on the German government to take a clear stand on a recent incident. On December 29, several migrant youths attacked passers-by at random on the streets of the southern German town of Amberg. While police are still investigating the case and providing no details on the suspects’ motives, Wendt was apparently eager to share his own thoughts on the issue. “I will name you the motive: it is deep contempt for our state and for the people who live with us,” he told Bild.

GERMANY - Far-right vigilantes have been patrolling the streets of a German town after a series of violent attacks by a gang of migrants, the mayor has warned. Michael Cerny, mayor of Bavarian city Amberg, revealed groups from the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) have taken to the streets after four migrants left 12 people aged 13 to 42 injured in a series of unprovoked assaults last weekend. But Mr Cerny, the mayor of Amberg, said he feared patrols by the NPD could escalate the situation. He told told local newspaper Mittelbayerischen Zeitung: “I can understand the uncertainty that I see in the reactions of some local people, but this hatred and the threats of violence coming from all over the country are going too far.”

UK - Since the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union, Brits have been combing their family trees for traces of European ancestry that might grant them a new passport. In 2017, a record number — 7,493 — were granted German nationality, according to Germany's Federal Statistics Office. And with the future of Brexit Britain looking increasingly uncertain, the number of Brits applying for alternate passports is only likely to grow.

GERMANY - Sahra Wagenknecht, who set up Aufstehen (Get Up) in September, said the French demonstrations encouraged her to believe it was possible to effect change without being a political party. She cited growing inequality in Germany and frustration over the government’s failure to adequately tackle it as a powerful motivating force for a protest movement.