Beijing today lodged a formal protest with the U.S. because President-elect Donald Trump, bypassing established diplomatic channels, spoke to Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen yesterday by telephone. [...] “During the discussion, they noted the close economic, political, and security ties exists between Taiwan and the United States,” notes the readout of the Trump transition team of the historic conversation. 

[W]hen Cohen returned to Israel, he set to work. He met for coffee with a couple of other IDF officers, Yair Atias, 27, and Boaz Malkieli, 27, and they discussed the idea of using the thousands of Israelis going to Third World countries each year to show the world the IDF soldiers they don’t necessarily see on their television screens “live, from Gaza.” “The idea was to use the backpackers as the infrastructure for people to do ‘blue-and-white’ humanitarian work to show the real Israel to the world,” he said.