Berlin says it'd raise a "completely unacceptable" issue with Ankara after reports emerged that teachers at elite gymnasium in Istanbul, co-funded by the German government, were ordered to stop telling students anything about Christmas rites. The school denies the accusation.

"It is a great pity that the good tradition of the intercultural exchange in the pre-Christmas period was suspended at a school with a long history of German-Turkish tradition," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday, referring to the claims by German teachers in the prestigious Lisesi High School, which is supported by the German government. The teachers said that they were reprimanded by the school's Turkish administration for bringing up Christmas-related topics in class.

The email, sent by the German staff of the school, who are subordinate to the Turkish administration, was seen by DPA news agency. It says that "it ensues from the notice of the Turkish administration, that from now on nothing should be told, worked on as well as sung, about the Christmas traditions and the Christian festival in the classroom."

The email was sent by the German administration to teachers, employed at the school at the expense of the German authorities, upon a meeting called on by their Turkish superiors. At the meeting the teachers were warned against disseminating "the rumors" among the students with their unauthorized Christmas-themed teaching.

Shortly after the memo was leaked to the media, the incident threatened to spiral into a full-fledged diplomatic row as the school's conduct caused a stir in the German media and provoked sharp criticism from an array of high-ranking officials.

Militant atheists at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) are threatening to sue St. Bernard, Ohio, over the city's Nativity scene — a Christmas display depicting the scene of Jesus's birth in Bethlehem in the Holy Land. If FFRF follows through and files in federal court, that case could result in a historic restoration of religious liberty nationwide.

St. Bernard is a suburb of Cincinnati. For many years, the city has displayed a crèche — i.e., a Nativity scene — during the Christmas season. It is accompanied by non-biblical seasonal holiday displays as well, making this outdoor crèche similar to the one the Supreme Court upheld in its 1984 case Lynch v. Donnelly.

However, in 1989, the Supreme Court moved to the left on this issue, holding by a narrow 5-4 vote in County of Allegheny v. ACLU Greater Pittsburgh Chapter that a crèche erected on the grand staircase of a Pittsburgh courthouse violated the Constitution's Establishment Clause (which provides that Congress cannot establish a religion, a rule the Court in 1947 extended to state and local governments). In Allegheny, the justices voted 6-3 to allow a menorah and Christmas tree in the park outside the courthouse.

That case was strongly denounced by originalists and conservatives because it invented a brand new standard called the "endorsement test" for the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Under this new rule, any government action involving faith or religion is unconstitutional if some "reasonable observer" would believe the government was endorsing religion.

Video footage has emerged of NYPD Sgt. Eliezer Pabon suddenly shoving a handcuffed 14-year-old boy against a plate glass window, which shattered and almost killed him. Javier Payne had to undergo 4 hours of surgery to remove shards of glass from his lung and near his heart.

After finding Sgt. Pabon guilty of excessive use of force, Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Trials Nancy Ryan docked the Bronx cop a mere five days of vacation. The punishment was far less than the 30 days lost vacation the NYPD suggested when it filed administrative charges against Pabon.

The lame excuse for discipline is even more outrageous when compared to a punishment handed down to another Bronx officer, Joseph Spina, who was docked eight vacation days for saying he wouldn't have voted for mayor Bill de Blasio. That incident was caught on film when Spina gave a driver a summons.

With the two punishments, New York City's police accountability system is showing just how flawed and subjective it can be.

Syria was the deadliest country for journalists in 2016, according to a report. At least 14 journalists were killed there in the line of duty this year alone, bringing the total number of war reporters who have died since the conflict broke out to at least 107.

According to the report by international press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), deaths in combat or crossfire reached their highest number since 2013, as conflicts in the Middle East showed no sign of ending.

Journalists sent into the thick of the action appear to be at high risk of not only losing their lives, but of being kidnapped and executed by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and other terrorist groups.

"Islamic State is responsible for the disappearance of at least 11 journalists since 2013. They are feared dead, but do not appear in CPJ's data on killed journalists because their fate cannot be confirmed," the report said. It added that the two professions that proved to be the most dangerous in 2016 were those of photographer and cameraman.

In the past few days, the weather in Aleppo has been cold but sunny, temperatures hitting highs of 12° Celsius and lows of 7° over the weekend. In the daytime, the temperature in the city's ruined buildings is lower than in its streets. Schools have yet to be rebuilt, and the streets are filled with children. The arrival of a news correspondent generates interest, and the children enthusiastically answered questions from a Sputnik Arabic correspondent.

Fatima, a resident of the al-Shiar district, formerly controlled by militants, told Sputnik that more than anything, she wished "for the suffering to end." Before the city was engulfed in battle, Fatima attended school with her friends, and dreamt of the future. But with the arrival of the terrorists, her dreams collapsed, her school turned into a pile of rubble.

Fatima, her family, and the entire district faced a shortage of food and medicine throughout the years of occupation. Any actions to resist the occupying militants were punished mercilessly, she said.

Sputnik met Mahmud, a frail boy with hungry eyes, in another part of the city.

Together with his younger brothers, the boy is looking for any part time work he can find to contribute to the household budget. His father lost his job, a loaf of bread costs 800 Syrian pounds (about $4 US), and a small cylinder of gas 25,000 pounds (about $110).

Many of the city's children have been put to work in dangerous occupations - in quarries, bakeries, and the shoe industry, to try to support their families, putting their health at risk and becoming vulnerable to exploitation. But they have had little choice; Aleppo's children have grown up fast.

Despite a media blitz portraying fake news sites as having a real impact in national politics — and even capable of affecting the outcome of a presidential election — fake news sites struggle to reach any sort of real audience.

Fake news site DenverGuardian.com, subject of coverage from the New York Times and the Washington Post, is ranked 91,688 in web traffic in the U.S., according to web analytics firm Alexa. To put that number in perspective: the site supposedly impacting the national political scene is more than 84,000 slots behind the website for a Virginia community college.

On Sunday, the New York Times devoted front-page coverage to a site called the "Patriot News Agency." The Times' story emphasized the fact that "operators of Patriot News had an explicitly partisan motivation: getting Mr. Trump elected."

But "Patriot News Agency" is even less popular than the "Denver Guardian," ranking in at 184,898 in the country, according to Alexa. The site's Facebook page has 113 total likes at this time.

Celebrities rushed to social media this week to condemn the carnage Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has inflicted on his own people in Aleppo — and some in Hollywood also attacked President-elect Donald Trump over the tragedy.

Leading the charge to tie Trump to Assad's atrocities in Syria, Spotlight actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted a Huffington Post article: "As He Slaughters Civilians In Aleppo, Bashar Assad Prepares To Make Nice With Donald Trump."

Russia provided generous support to Syrian citizens at a time when they needed it most, Elizabeth Hoff, the World Health Organization representative in Damascus said on Monday.

"I was impressed with the generosity and support provided by Russia at a time when [Syrian citizens] needed it most," Hoff told RIA Novosti.

The representative noted that several thousand people in East Aleppo still need to be evacuated which could take a few days.

Quivering with quiet rage, Shirin holds a photo of his teenage brother-in-law, who now lives as the plaything of policemen, just one victim of a hidden epidemic of kidnappings of young boys for institutionalized sexual slavery in Afghanistan.

Shirin is among 13 families AFP traced and interviewed across three Afghan provinces who said their children were taken for the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi", or pedophilic exploitation, in Western-backed security forces.

Their testimonies shine a rare spotlight on the anguished, solitary struggles to free sons, nephews and cousins from a tradition of culturally-sanctioned enslavement and rape.

"Jesus is too much for us. The church's later treatment of the gospels is one long effort to rescue Jesus from 'extremism.'"—author Gary Wills, What Jesus Meant

Jesus was good. He was caring. He had powerful, profound things to say—things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. He went around helping the poor. And when confronted by those in authority, he did not shy away from speaking truth to power.

Jesus was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state.

But what if Jesus, the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet, had been born 2,000 years later? How would Jesus' life have been different had he be born and raised in the American police state?

Consider the following if you will.

The Christmas narrative of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable, where Mary gave birth to a baby boy. That boy, Jesus, would grow up to undermine the political and religious establishment of his day and was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

However, had Jesus been born in the year 2016...

Rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus' parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby's parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents' knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

Then again, had his parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they would have been turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria's Secret. There's quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.