1/7/21

 * Congress certifies Biden as president, Trump pledges orderly transition after protesters riot on Capitol Hill Congress early Thursday, Jan. 7, certified enough electoral votes to guarantee Joe Biden as 46th US president, in the face of a rampage through Capitol Hill by pro-Trump protesters bent on overturning the process.

* Netanyahu calls ‘rampage’ in DC ‘disgraceful,’ lauds Trump as Mideast peacemaker After lengthy delay, PM denounces assault on Capitol without naming president or specifying circumstances, says US democracy will prevail; then thanks Trump for peace breakthroughs.

* Three Months After the Abraham Accords, the Palestinians Have Lost the Arab Street The relative complacency with which the “Arab street” received the Abraham Accords, which might have seemed an aberration at the time of signing, has now faded.

* Iran’s Rouhani Sneers at Western Democracy: ‘Fragile, Vulnerable’ Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Thursday that the chaos unleashed on the US Capitol by US counterpart Donald Trump’s supporters exposed the fragility of Western democracy.

* Will US-Israel relations go down in flames with the Trump presidency? Israel now has to reckon with Trump’s legacy and his massive footprint in the Middle East.

* PA warns: Israel planning to build a Holy Temple Adviser to Abbas claims "settlers" are calling for the Dome of the Rock to be demolished and replaced by a Holy Temple.

* Scoop: Embassies are "natural next step," Moroccan king tells Netanyahu Morocco went most of the way to normalizing relations with Israel last month, but only committed to opening liaison offices, rather than embassies.

* Why Revive a Nightmare? For years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been running around like a headless chicken clucking about the glories of Ottoman Empire and the benefits, to Islam, of its revival.

* Israel can expect a major earthquake of 6.5 on the Richter scale in the coming years A first-of-its-kind study conducted under the bed of the Dead Sea reveals that a devastating earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale is expected to hit the region in the coming years.

* The China Threat is Real - and Upon Us So what’s all this concern about Communist China? Well, let’s start with a little history lesson. From 1966 until 1976 the great ‘Cultural Revolution’ took place in Communist China.

* Farage: European Union’s Greed Is Helping Communist China ‘Take Over the World’ In response to the mass arrests of pro-democracy activists and politicians in Hong Kong, British politicians called on the European Union to abandon the investment pact it struck with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including Brexit leader Nigel Farage who said that “Brussels’ greed is helping the regime to take over the world.”