Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad called upon Palestinians on Saturday to boycott Israeli products, as a response to the Netanyahu government’s decision not to transfer to the PA the taxes and customs duties it is due to receive.

The official Facebook page of Israel’s embassy to Ireland this morning posted, and then abruptly deleted, a provocative message arguing that “hostile Palestinians” would “lynch” Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary, if they lived in today’s Bethlehem... The Facebook message, which begins “A thought for Christmas,” included an image of Jesus and Mary. It was live for about two hours before being deleted.

The open Internet, available to people around the world without the permission of any government, was a great liberation. It was also too good to last. Authoritarian governments this month won the first battle to close off parts of the Internet.

Last weekend I partied in Romania. I had been invited there by a game developer, eRepublik, to attend an event celebrating the fifth anniversary of their game (also called eRepublik). eRepublik is one of my favourite consulting clients, so I was happy to be invited to participate in the festivities in downtown Bucharest and see what they had been up to.

The goal of the author of Citizen Ambassadors of Nigeria is to bring to the forefront a theory called track two diplomacy by which non-officials like businessmen, academics, retired civil and military officials, public figures, and social activists engage in ambassadorial works targeted at improving the image of a country.

Shasta County Board of Supervisors started its day in Redding (California, USA) with Hindu prayers on December four for the first time since its 1850 creation, containing verses from world’s oldest existing scripture.

This past Thanksgiving break, Ben Hubley ’15 traveled to China to compete in the 5th Chinese Bridge Competition, a Chinese proficiency contest for foreign high school students, held in Kunming City. Out of 104 contestants from 45 countries between the ages of 15 and 20, Hubley placed third in the individual competition after a student from Singapore placed first and a student from Russia placed second.

The India-China “battle for Buddha” has now reached Myanmar, with New Delhi sponsoring an International Conference on Buddhist Cultural Heritage in Yangon over the weekend, while Beijing has since last year been trying to leverage the legacy of “Shakya Muni” to connect with the religious majority in its south-western neighbour.