It would be a lie to say I wasn't deeply moved when the 947 bus pulled into Jerusalem as dusk descended on the golden city on Christmas Day. Who wouldn't be stirred by the dramatic ascent into a town bathed in limestone. It's always been this way for me. And though I'm no longer a Zionist, I remember most strongly what it feels like to be one at that moment I cross the threshold into the city.

Earlier that day, I spent Christmas morning with participants from Taglit Birthright, the free trip to Israel for Jews under age 32, who were attending one of the new study abroad Birthright trips, Israeli Multiculturalism, from December 24 to January 6. I met them at Kibbutz Afik, a collective community in the southern Golan Heights. Afik was established in 1972 by Israelis who did their military service in the Golan Heights and helped Israel occupy the land from Syria in 1967. Today about 250 people live in the kibbutz.

Last year Birthright began offering academic study abroad programs to U.S. college students. Now, in addition to getting a free trip, students can earn three college credits. Birthright also partners with several different organizations like Sachlav, Hillel International, Mayanot, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Hinam, Center for Social Tolerance-an encounter program that "promotes acquaintance" between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel through principles like "colorblindness" and a "positive attitude," according to their About Us page.

The academic-themed courses Birthright offers are: Eco-Israel: Sustainability and Conservation; Food and Wine of Israel; Archeology: Uncovering the Hidden Past; Conflict Management & Counter-Terrorism; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Diplomacy in the New Middle East; and Israeli Multiculturalism. At the end of the program, students have two weeks to write a 7 to 9 page paper that is graded by a professor contracted with Birthright. For just $250, the three credits can be transferred to the student's college. Given that three-credit courses at colleges can cost students thousands of dollars, the Birthright Israel Study Abroad program is a heck of a deal.

I was able to get hold of the Birthright course outline from one of the chaperones. According to the syllabus, the course focuses on five groups that contribute to Israel's multicultural society: the LGBTQ community, the Ethiopian community, members of the settlement movement, the Ultra-Orthodox community, and the Arab community.

Two women have been charged with assaulting a 29-year-old transgender person in a bathroom at a popular Glenwood South bar last month.

According to investigators, the victim was inside the women's bathroom at Milk Bar on Dec. 9 when she was sexually assaulted by two other women. Authorities said the assault continued at the bar, where a bartender saw what was happening and repeatedly told the two women to stop.

Amber Harrell, 38, and Jessica Fowler, 31, are both charged with second-degree kidnapping and sexual battery in connection with the incident.

Harrell, who was arrested over the weekend, was out of jail Tuesday on a $50,000 bond. Fowler was released on a $30,000 bond.

Fowler turned herself in at the Wake County Detention Center on Tuesday afternoon.

Can you imagine how scary it would be to live in a world where your livelihood depended on having the 'correct' politics? It's the sort of thing you might expect of totalitarian regimes - Baathist Iraq under Saddam Hussain; everywhere that has ever tried communism; increasingly, Xi's panopticon China - but definitely not of any liberal democracy in the 21st century.

That dystopian future, though, may be much closer than you think. I only properly appreciated this recently when the podcast I've been doing for the last few years was mysteriously dropped by my regular employer, forcing me to seek funding sources from elsewhere.

If I were impeccably 'progressive', this would be a doddle. I could monetize my content through ads on YouTube, I could crowdfund donations through Patreon, I could promote my work with regular appearances on CNN. But if you're snarky and irreverent and you won't play the virtue-signaling game than your options are much more limited. Any deviation from the path of 'woke' righteousness - even just a misjudged joke or a remark taken out of context - can get you branded a 'far right' extremist and your audience won't be allowed to pay you even if they want to.

I was involved in the internal decisions involving James Damore's memo, and it's terrible what we did to him.

First of all, we knew about the memo a month before it went viral. HR sent it up the reporting chain when he gave it as internal feedback, but we did nothing. There wasn't anything we could do, except admit to wrongdoing and lying to our employees. We just hoped that no one else would see his document.

Unfortunately, the memo started spreading within the company. The floodgates opened and previously silent employees started talking. To quell dissent, we: told executives to write to their employees condemning the memo; manipulated our internal Memegen to bias the ratings towards anti-Damore posts (the head of Memegen is an "ally" to the diversity cause); and gave every manager talking points on what to tell their reports about the memo. In all our communications, we concentrated on how hurt employees purportedly were and diverted attention from Google's discriminatory employment practices and political hegemony, never mind the science.

In late 2017, I found myself at the centre of a controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University, where I was an M.A. student and teaching assistant (TA) in the Communication Studies department. In the class for which I was serving as TA, I played part of a panel discussion that had aired on Ontario public television. As many readers will know, this material featured University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson making the argument against alternative gender pronoun usage, as well as Sexual Diversity educator Nicholas Matte's arguments encouraging their use.

Because I chose not to disavow Peterson's views before airing the clip, I was brought into a subsequent disciplinary meeting. The supervisor for the course in question, Nathan Rambukkana, as well as the coordinator for my M.A. program, Herbert Pimlott (also known, at times, as "Hillary X Plimsoll"), and Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention manager Adria Joel accused me of breaking the law by airing a clip of Peterson in a classroom, as well as threatening and targeting trans people, thereby creating a toxic environment. All of this is well-known because I taped the whole meeting.

Apparently, "one or more" students had complained about the class in question - though that claim later turned out to be false. Both Rambukkana and Wilfrid Laurier University President Deborah MacLatchy apologized to me, and I was cleared of any wrongdoing after a neutral third-party fact-finding investigation concluded I hadn't done anything wrong. The investigator also determined that "basic guidelines and best practices on how to appropriately execute the roles and responsibilities of staff and faculty were ignored or not understood."

The partial government shutdown, which began Dec. 22, has now stretched well into the new year. President Donald Trump said Friday that it would continue for "months or even years" until he receives the requested $5 billion in funding for a border wall.

The shutdown has left approximately 800,000 federal workers in financial limbo. Around 420,000 "essential" employees are working without pay, while another 380,000 have been ordered to stay home, according to calculations provided to CNBC by Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

In some cases, the furloughs have forced government employees to tap into their savings, rely on credit cards or crowdsource funds to make ends meet.

Government workers are far from alone in feeling stressed about not getting paid. Nearly 80 percent of American workers (78 percent) say they're living paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2017 report by employment website CareerBuilder. Women are particularly vulnerable: 81 percent of them report living paycheck to paycheck, compared with 75 percent of men.

She beat 16 other women to be crowned Miss Algeria, but Khadija Ben Hamou's win has been subjected to a torrent of racist abuse.

Khadija made history when she became the first black woman to take the crown at the annual beauty pageant on Saturday, but her win has since been tainted by online trolls who flooded Facebook and Twitter with comments about her appearance.

When other social media users began to call out those spouting racist abuse, some Twitter users maintained it had nothing to do with race. "She just wasn't that pretty," one person wrote.

The Russian war correspondent Aleksandr Sladkov walked along the streets of Donetsk with a captured UAF serviceman, who then shared his impressions about what he saw.

"I started to see clearly. In Ukraine it is said that everything in Donetsk was destroyed. Here everybody is walking around, I saw a Christmas tree... Here there is only one thing to do: make peace. Here we are all the same, both you and I. Whether you speak Russian or Ukrainian, it is the same. I understand you, and you understand me," said the former Ukrainian serviceman.

Whilst walking around Sladkov showed the Ukrainian soldier inscriptions in the Ukrainian language and monuments to famous Ukrainians in the center of Donetsk to show him that Donetsk residents have no hatred towards the ordinary citizens of Ukraine.

Twin brother of Paul Whelan - the American detained in Moscow on espionage charges - firmly denies accusations against his sibling, maintaining that a person with the social media and travel activity of his simply cannot be a spy.

"I think it's ridiculous. I don't think there's any way that my brother Paul is a spy," David Whelan told RT's Ruptly news video agency in Toronto.

Paul Whelan was detained late in December, with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), stating he was caught right during "the act of spying." The man reportedly received a flash drive with a list of Russian intelligence operatives.

A French fighter jet carrying two pilots disappeared from radar screens Wednesday near the Swiss border in a snowstorm, prompting an extensive search across the rugged, mountainous area.

The Mirage 2000D was last detected between the Doubs and Jura regions while on a low-altitude training flight, according to a French air force spokeswoman. It took off soon after 11 a.m. from the Nancy-Ochey air base in northeast France.

A search was immediately launched for signs of the plane and the crew, said the spokeswoman, who wasn't authorized to be publicly named.

Mountain rescuers, firefighters, police, military units and local residents joined the search effort, according to the regional administrations of Doubs and Jura. Visibility was extremely low, with heavy fog and snow.