Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists, especially in its unruly Western region of Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in violence in the past few years. The law has attracted deep concern in Western capitals, not only because of worries it could violate human rights such as freedom of speech, but because of the cyber provisions. US President Barack Obama has said that he had raised concerns about the law directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Speaking after China's largely rubber-stamp parliament passed the law, Li Shouwei, deputy head of the parliament's criminal law division under the legislative affairs committee, said China was simply doing what other Western nations already do in asking technology firms to help fight terror. "This rule accords with the actual work need of fighting terrorism and is basically the same as what other major countries in the world do," Li told reporters.

If passed, the bill, proposed by MK Bezalal Smotrich (Jewish Home), would hold that Israel’s guarantee of freedom of religion must include access and ability to worship at every holy site in the country. The law would apply not just to Jews but to people of all religions, and would, of course, include the most highly contested holy site in the country – the Temple Mount.

As the law stands today, the right to freedom of religion in Israel is hampered by a “lacuna”, a situation in which a specific law or provision is lacking, which “does not protect, specifically, freedom of worship and freedom of access.” The bill proposes to add a clause to the existing law “protecting the holy places, [allowing] freedom of worship for all religions with free and fixed access, so that this fundamental right will be defined by law and will result in freedom of worship anywhere and to anyone.”

An explanatory note accompanying the bill stated that “freedom of worship and freedom of access of all religions to the holy places is a basic right in a democracy” and pointed out that there have been multiple cases brought before the Supreme Court in which the right to freedom of worship has been upheld.

In the name of stability and progress, Republican leaders have agreed with Democrats to put big government on autopilot — with no change in the programmed destination, full-blown socialism. On December 18, at Speaker Representative Paul Ryan's urging, 150 House Republicans voted to double down on the politics of surrender.

Yesterday, we thought we had two parties, Republicans and Democrats, but now we see that we have only one, the Repubocrat Party, the party of No Shame. Tancredo, like most conservatives, feels betrayed after helping elect the largest number of Republicans to Congress – as well as state legislatures and governorships – since the Civil War; they were sent there to oppose Democrats and the Obama agenda, not support and even expand it. Yet that's what they've done, at virtually every turn.

In the latest, astonishing act of draconian political correctness, the NYC Commission on Human Rights have updated a law on “Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression” to threaten staggering financial penalties against property owners who “misgender” employees or tenants.

Incidents that are deemed “wilful and malicious” will see property owners face up to $250,000 in fines, while standard violations of the law will result in a $125,000 fine. For small business owners, these sums are crippling. It’s not as simple as referring to transmen “he” or transwomen as “she,” either. The legislation makes it clear that if an individual desires, property owners will have to make use of “zhe,” “hir” and any other preferred pronoun.

This is the latest in what Spiked Online editor-in-chief Brendan O’Neill calls “The Crisis of Character” in the west, in which identities become grounded in subjective interpretation rather than objective reality. The state is now forcing society to recognise the subjective identities of individuals, regardless of how absurd or surreal they may seem. In New York City, recognising someone’s identity is no longer a matter of case-by-case common sense and courtesy. It’s zir way or the highway.

In some cases children as young as four are already in the process of “transitioning” to another sex, according to Susie Green, chair of Mermaids, a charity which provides support for families of children and teenagers with gender identity issues. Meanwhile some schools are seeing signs of a cluster effect, with a number of pupils coming forward to seek support towards a possible change after one takes the first step, she said.

Her comments came as it emerged that a primary school in the North West of England is involved in a stand-off over the issue after refusing to accept a request from an eight-year-old born as a girl to be treated as a boy. “We are working with them, we are trying to resolve that but [the school] are very reluctant,” said Mrs Green, who is backing the parents’ request. She said such stand-offs are now “very common” and added that a legal challenge over the issue could not be ruled out in the near future.

The country’s cabinet has approved the allocation of 5.05 trillion yen ($42.1 billion) on fortifying the country’s spying capabilities and endorsing proposals to buy US hardware to monitor Chinese territorial claims over the East China Sea islands, where Japan has a territorial dispute with its neighbor. The approval by the cabinet now needs the parliament’s consent.

Japanese defense ministry plans to buy three Global Hawk surveillance drones, six F-35 stealth fighters, 17 SH-60K naval patrol helicopters and four V-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft. “We believe the budget includes items that would contribute to enhancing Japan-US cooperation in the area of ISR (information, surveillance and reconnaissance),” Defense Ministry official Tomoki Matsuo said. The proposal is part of a 96.7 trillion yen ($800 billion) national budget plan for the year beginning April 2016.

Reacting to the approval of Japan’s military spending, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei urged Tokyo to “draw lessons from history, adhere to the path of peaceful development, and play a constructive role in safeguarding regional peace and stability.” The Chinese defense policy is “defensive in nature,” he reiterated, and its military spending of some $130 billion is kept at “a reasonable level.”

The Prize is named for Charlemagne, the Franconian king revered by his contemporaries as the “Father of Europe”. A communiqué by the Prize Committee said that Pope Francis has sent “a message of hope and encouragement" at a time in which "many citizens in Europe are seeking orientation.” The Pope – it continues – is a witness for a community based on values which include a sense of humanity, the protection of resources and dialogue between cultures and religions at a European level.

The Committee explains that in "recent years Europe has experienced great weaknesses, crises and setbacks" that have seriously pushed back "all the achievements of the European process of integration.” To all this – it says - Francis opposes a message of hope.

Quoting from his discourse to the European Parliament in November 2014, the communiqué says the Pope’s message is a wake-up call for Europe: “The time has come for us to abandon the idea of a Europe which is fearful and self-absorbed." And again: "The time has come to work together in building a Europe which revolves not around the economy, but around the sacredness of the human person, around inalienable values."

This methane disaster is worse than can be sufficiently described in words, because while it’s estimated well over 100,000 pounds of methane spew into the atmosphere every hour, the leak can’t be halted, at least until spring. Even then, that stoppage depends entirely on the efficacy of a proposed fix — which remains a dubiously open question.

“The enormity of the Aliso Canyon gas leak cannot be overstated. Gas is escaping through a ruptured pipe more than 8,000 feet underground, and it shows no signs of stopping. As the pressure from the weight on top of the pipe causes the gas to diffuse, it only continues to dissipate across a wider and wider area,” explained Erin Brockovich, who spent time in nearby Porter Ranch investigating the leak.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Unified School District board members voted unanimously to close two Porter Ranch schools and relocate their 1,900 students and staff to different locations for the foreseeable future. A local emergency has been declared by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Beginning December 4th, SoCalGas crews began drilling a relief well to intercept the fissured pipe. Cement will then be poured into both to seal the wells permanently. Of course, for this to work, crews must locate that original pipe, which is a mere seven inches in diameter, thousands of feet underground — without accidentally creating any sparks, whatsoever. Work near the leak site, therefore, has been prohibited after nightfall, when lighting equipment could potentially cause such a spark; though drilling for the relief well is situated far enough away to continue nonstop.

The results of the nitric oxide tests carried out by environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) and German state broadcaster ZDF - who broadcast it on December 15 - appeared to show similar discrepancies between "test mode" and road conditions to those found in Volkswagen cars earlier this year, revelations that triggered one of the biggest scandals in German automobile history.

In response to the report, a law firm representing Daimler, which owns Mercedes, sent a letter to the DUH that read, "Should you in any way present the accusation that my client manipulated its emissions data, we will act against you with all necessary sustainability and hold you responsible for any economic damage that my client suffers as a result." The law firm, called Schertz, also warned the DUH against publishing the letter itself, but the group defied this and posted the letter in full on its website.

"We have been massively threatened two more times, demanding that we take down the letter - we have told them we won't," DUH chairman Jürgen Resch told DW on Wednesday. "For me it's a very serious issue, because in 34 years of full-time work in environmental protection, and dealing with businesses, I have never experienced a business using media law to try and keep a communication - and a threatening letter at that - secret.”

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic. This tech-forward country, home to the music streaming service Spotify and the maker of the Candy Crush mobile games, has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country’s banks no longer accept or dispense cash. At the Abba Museum, “we don’t want to be behind the times by taking cash while cash is dying out,” said Bjorn Ulvaeus, a former Abba member who has leveraged the band’s legacy into a sprawling business empire, including the museum.

Not everyone is cheering. Sweden’s embrace of electronic payments has alarmed consumer organizations and critics who warn of a rising threat to privacy and increased vulnerability to sophisticated Internet crimes. Last year, the number of electronic fraud cases surged to 140,000, more than double the amount a decade ago, according to Sweden’s Ministry of Justice

Despite the convenience, even some who stand to gain from a cashless society see drawbacks. “Sweden has always been at the forefront of technology, so it’s easy to embrace this,” said Jacob de Geer, a founder of iZettle, which makes a mobile-powered card reader. “But Big Brother can watch exactly what you’re doing if you purchase things only electronically,” he said.

For those not familiar with the parlance, gene editing refers to the ability to alter the DNA of an embryo in a manner which affects the germline. The germline is defined as follows; “In biology and genetics, the germline in a multicellular organism is that population of its bodily cells that are so differentiated or segregated that in the usual processes of reproduction they may pass on their genetic material to the progeny.”

In other words, what happens to the germline will affect the offspring and subsequent generations. The possibilities inherent in such manipulation are staggering. Not only could genetic diseases be removed from the developing embryo, but new and better attributes could be factored in. Mankind could face the possibility that crippling genetic diseases, such as Tay-Sachs or Huntington’s disease could be forever banished, while a brave new crop of humans, with enhanced intellectual abilities or enhanced musculature, for example, could be harvested.

The symposium was convened with some urgency after the disclosure that researchers in China had reported this past April that they had launched the first attempt to edit the DNA of human embryos. The Chinese project was undertaken to correct a rare and often fatal blood disorder, called beta thalassemia. China’s effort was followed by an application, made in September, by a British research group to edit human embryos for research purposes.