Globe Trot 11.30

Quite a picture (at right), as a Bahraini lawmaker burns an Israeli flag inside Parliament. Member of Parliament Osama Al-Tamimi’s gesture was not censured (even though he had to smuggle in petrol to light it)—with only 15 MPs of 21 votes needed calling for his punishment.

At least three Christians have been killed and a church destroyed in a persistent bombing campaign by the Sudanese government in the embattled Nuba Mountain region of the country. According to Morning Star News, “Since South Sudan split from Sudan in a referendum last year, ethnic Nuba people in Sudan’s South Kordofan state believe the government’s goal of quashing Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) rebels is also meant to rid the area of non-Arab peoples and Christianity.”

Palestine won non-member observer status in the UN yesterday, after 138 countries voted to upgrade its status. Two things this did not signify: progress in Middle East peace and the rebuke to the United States and Israel that headlines portrayed it to be. To be seen: whether the move somehow gives the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank an edge over the militant thugs working against it in Gaza and elsewhere. What it doesn’t do is resuscitate the Palestinian claim to statehood in a meaningful way, something that can’t be contrived at UN headquarters. Israeli ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor takes proper aim at the vote in today’s Wall Street Journal, but Israel doesn’t help its cause by lumping all Palestinians together as part of the Hamas terrorist batch.

The World Health Organization is calling for significant changes in the way countries with drug-resistant tuberculosis treat the disease. The Wall Street Journal reports, “India and other poor countries are now in the midst of an epidemic of drug-resistant strains—deadlier and harder-to-treat varieties of one of the world’s top infectious-disease killers.” Here’s just one reason it’s a problem for the rest of us: Medicines to treat regular TB cost $9 a month, compared with $2,000 for resistant strains.

The Christian Association of Nigerian Americans (CANAN) is a new organization in Washington aiming to bring needed pressure on the U.S. State Department and others to take action against the rising threat of Boko Haram—the terrorist group responsible for multiple attacks on churches in northern Nigeria. The latest: Twin blasts last Sunday that killed at least 11 and wounded dozens in Kaduna. In all more than 750 Nigerians are estimated dead as a result of Boko Haram attacks—many of them targeted Christians—this year.

A timeline on the Benghazi attack illustrates why troubling questions continue to dog U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and the president.