AFGHANISTAN: Ashraf Ghani has narrowly won a contested election, officials announced after a five-month dispute over the vote. Ghani, clearly the U.S. favorite as it tries to conclude a peace agreement with the Taliban, won a second term by securing only 50.64 percent of the vote, and his rival Abdullah Abdullah says he may form his own government.

NIGERIA: The killing of 18-year-old Catholic seminarian Michael Nnadi “is a defining moment for Christians and Christianity in Nigeria,” said Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah at a funeral Mass in Kaduna. Kukah blamed the Buhari government for failing to secure northern states and other areas from Muslim terror groups:

TAIWAN: The U.S. State Department blocked Taiwan from joining 27 other nations in a U.S.-led International Religious Freedom Alliance. But according to Taiwanese officials, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback did issue an invitation for the nation to join as an observer.

In this year of the international Oscar, few feature-length award winners can boast the scope packed into Free Burma Rangers: The 97-minute documentary spans two decades in war zones 3,000 miles apart. At the center is a missionary family whose American ordinariness draws viewers in to the extraordinary story of their life’s work.

SYRIA: Snow and sub-zero temperatures threaten 600,000 newly displaced Syrians fleeing fighting and trapped in northern Syria at the Turkish border. More than 200,000 Syrians have been forced from their homes in just the past week—in what aid groups warn could be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

A column of Russian trucks rolled to the border with Ukraine on Feb. 5 as U.S. senators in Washington prepared to vote on whether to remove from office President Donald Trump. The Russian convoy carried ammunition, weapons, and military equipment—all to reinforce Russian-backed rebels and Russian units that in 2014 took control of eastern Ukraine.

UNITED STATES: President Donald Trump addressed the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday morning during a momentous week that saw him acquitted on impeachment charges and take part in a public stand-off with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at his Sta