A Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's government will not allow rebel-controlled air and sea ports to reopen until a better system is created to prevent weapons being smuggled from Iran. The coalition tightened its two-year blockade after a ballistic missile was fired at Riyadh airport. Iran denied arming Houthi rebels, and said the missile launch was ‘an independent action’ in response to coalition ‘aggression’. 2,000+ have died since April from cholera, and 3,500 cases are being treated daily. The blockade will undo efforts to curtail its spread. 27,000 children a month are treated for severe and acute malnutrition. With no aid deliveries, nutrition supplies will run out within two months, affecting the treatment of 400,000 children over the coming year. The children will bear the scars of this conflict long into the future. Civilians are the only people paying the price for political wrangling.

A mysterious radioactive cloud that passed over 28 European countries recently was first detected over Italy. France’s radioprotection institute has now detailed its findings, saying the origins of the cloud came from ‘somewhere in South Russia’. The area in question has nuclear facilities, including one that converted nuclear fuel into weapons during the Cold War. Even after the location was identified, it is unclear how the radioactive cloud appeared, as there was no apparent accident at any of the nuclear facilities and it was not an ‘authorised release’. Meanwhile, on 16 November, Russia and the USA failed to resolve a dispute over extending the mandate of a UN-backed investigative team which blamed Syrian forces for a chemical weapons attack in April that killed over 80 people. See

For many years intercessors have prayed that Christian persecution would be replaced by interfaith tolerance. Recently the king of Bahrain took unprecedented action in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region and issued a declaration of interfaith tolerance that he believes will promote similar action in other MENA nations. Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars reviewed the king’s declaration and hope it will gain sign-offs globally from leaders of all faiths. Individual religious freedom is specified as one of the five points in the declaration. Terrorism, suicide bombing, sexual slavery, inciting extremism, and the abuse of women and children are specifically disowned. Preaching hatred and violence in the name of God is condemned as a desecration of His name. The king has also promised to build a museum of tolerance.

In 1867, two visitors to Ottoman Palestine separately showed that Palestine had declined since the Jews had left. First a British archaeologist, Charles Warren, conducted major excavations of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and found relics of King David’s city; then American writer Mark Twain, after visiting the Holy Land, wrote a hugely popular travel memoir entitled ‘The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrims’ Progress’. In 1917 the British defeated the Ottoman Empire and took control of Palestine. On 2 November 1917 they issued the Balfour Declaration pledging to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in the territory. In 1948, Zionists drove the British out of Palestine and founded the state of Israel. Then, when Israel captured eastern Jerusalem and its holy sites from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, some claimed the messianic era was nigh.