The new omicron coronavirus mutant speeding around the world may bring another wave of chaos, threatening to further stretch hospital workers already struggling with a surge of delta cases and upend holiday plans for the second year in a row.

The White House on Wednesday insisted there is no need for a lockdown because vaccines are widely available and appear to offer protection against the worst consequences of the virus. But even if omicron proves milder on the whole than delta, it may disarm some of the life-saving tools available and put immune-compromised and elderly people at particular risk as it begins a rapid assault on the United States.

“Our delta surge is ongoing and, in fact, accelerating. And on top of that, we’re going to add an omicron surge,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, who monitors variants for a research collaboration led by Harvard Medical School.

“That’s alarming, because our hospitals are already filling up. Staff are fatigued,” leaving limited capacity for a potential crush of COVID-19 cases “from an omicron wave superimposed on a delta surge.”

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The new omicron coronavirus mutant speeding around the world may bring another wave of chaos, threatening to further stretch hospital workers already struggling with a surge of delta cases and upend holiday plans for the second year in a row. https://t.co/j31tS6buLJ

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 15, 2021

In other notes, the state auditor took aim at France’s school system saying that despite a raft of reforms and spending above the OCDE average, results remained “mediocre” and “are tending to get worse”, particularly among pupils from underprivileged backgrounds.

It suggested providing school heads with more “managerial” powers to pick their teachers, merit-based bonuses, and evaluation of schools’ performance – highly sensitive issues in France.

Perhaps the most damning note of all was reserved for the French culture ministry.

Once the pride of the nation for fostering France’s sacrosanct “cultural exception” in the face of Anglo-Saxon hegemony, the auditor said the ministry had over the past 40 years effectively morphed into a glorified “ticket office” for state handouts from its €3bn annual budget to a plethora of cultural players all defending their “acquired rights”.

The ministry should “refocus on a limited number of missions and exercise these in a more strategic way,” it said.

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The Church of England is setting up a new group to support local churches resettling refugees in partnership with the Home Office.
Gareth Jones and Domenica Pecoraro are shown in two different photos put together next to one another. Gareth is smiling with glasses and Domenica is also smiling on the right hand side.
Domenica Pecoraro and Canon Gareth Jones have been appointed as the Church’s first National Representatives for Community Sponsorship.

They will work with a steering group chaired by the Bishop of Bradwell, Dr John Perumbalath, who also chairs the inter-denominational Churches’ Refugee Network, and supported by staff from Church of England’s national Mission and Public Affairs team.

This initiative will build on the positive work since the 2015 General Synod which agreed a motion urging “parishes and dioceses to work closely with local authorities and other community partners, to provide practical and sustainable resources and structures for the resettlement of vulnerable refugees and to pray for all those seeking to address the causes as well as the symptoms of this crisis”.

Since then dozens of parishes have taken part in community sponsorship and welcoming families from Syria with at least 20 serving as lead sponsor.

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This is brilliant news! 👏

Congratulations to Domenica Pecoraro and Canon Gareth Jones who have been appointed as the Church of England's first National Representatives for #CommunitySponsorship.

Good luck with your new roles! 🧡https://t.co/8DxF9mdHic

— Reset Communities and Refugees 🧡 (@ResetUKorg) December 15, 2021

It’s almost a mantra in climate science: The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. But that figure, found in scientific studies, advocacy reports, the popular press, and even the 2021 U.N. climate assessment, is incorrect, obscuring the true toll of global warming on the north, a team of climate scientists reports this week. In fact, the researchers say, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average.

“Everybody knows [the Arctic] is a canary when it comes to climate change,” says Peter Jacobs, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who presented the work on 13 December at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “Yet we’re misreporting it by a factor of two. Which is just bananas.”

Researchers have long known the world warms faster in the far north, because of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. The drivers of amplification include increased solar heating, as dark ocean water replaces reflective sea ice, along with occasional intrusions of tropical heat, carried to the Arctic by “atmospheric rivers,” narrow parades of dense clouds that drag water vapor northward.

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Researchers say the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average—twice as fast as previously thought. https://t.co/WWv3sg1HaE

— News from Science (@NewsfromScience) December 14, 2021

In the past seven years tens of thousands of Yazidis kept as sex slaves by Isis fighters, girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Rohingya women dragged from their huts and gang-raped by Burmese soldiers, have courageously come forward and told their stories, yet there has only been a single prosecution.

No one is better qualified to write about the situation than this astonishingly brave Congolese gynaecological surgeon. His Panzi hospital in eastern Congo has treated more than 60,000 raped women and girls over the past 20 years. Some arrive so damaged that he has carried out multiple operations to try to reconstruct them.

One of the most heroic men I have ever met, Mukwege literally risks his life to save women. After a series of threats and assassination attempts, he lives almost as a prisoner on the hospital site, guarded by UN peacekeepers.

Far from being supported by the Congolese state, he does all of this in the face of a government so craven it tried to fine him $20,000 for collecting rainwater on the hospital roof, insisting that rain belongs to the state.

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@DenisMukwege: From the detention centres in Belarus to the Uighur internment camps in China to the Tigray women in Ethiopia, there is an epidemic of sexual violence in conflict.https://t.co/hsO71QBJat

— Civil Courage Prize (@TrainFoundation) December 13, 2021

Creator God, whose hands holdeth the storehouses of the snow and the gates of the sea, and from whose Word springeth forth all that is: We bless thy holy Name for the intrepid witness of thy missionary John Horden, who followed thy call to serve the Cree and Inuit nations of the North. In all the places we travel, may we, like him, proclaim thy Good News and draw all into communion with thee through thy Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Today in the Church's calendar, we celebrate the life and work of Bishop John Horden.https://t.co/ct4ZxeyZoy pic.twitter.com/742CFlroJM

— Holy Trinity VCR (@htvancouver) January 12, 2020

O eternal and glorious Trinity, deeper than the deepest sea, and the abyss of love for whom we thirst and long; let us forever desire your light, forever seek your face and forever wrap ourselves in the robe of your glory; world without end. Amen.

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, window 15
‘Sledges’#RonaldLampitt pic.twitter.com/XJZPm0Uqkb

— Helen Day (@LBFlyawayhome) December 15, 2021

After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up hither, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Round the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments, with golden crowns upon their heads. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

–Revelation 4:1-8

" Crystal smile of the time …"
Good Morning …💙🤍💎🤍💙 pic.twitter.com/zgsYZALfWU

— Krystyna Christina White (@Krystyn31197823) December 15, 2021