Once more, Lord, we pray for our Western believers—in America, England and other Western countries—may they team up together with us for prayer because the situation is very tense. But with You, O Lord, there is protection. So may we team up and pray.

Mursal Isse Siad became one of the latest victims of Islamist violence in Somalia when two masked men shot and killed the 55-year-old on Dec. 8. The assailants fled after gunning him down in Beledweyne, his hometown 200 miles north of Mogadishu, the capital.

Typhoon Bopha has left at least 418 people dead and nearly as many missing in the southern Philippines. “Probably half of the missing could be dead by now,” Compostela Valley Gov. Arturo Uy told Reuters. On Tuesday Typhoon Bopha struck the large southern island of Mindanao, which is rarely in the direct path of tropical cyclones.

A Japanese tunnel collapse on Sunday killed nine and trapped many motorists.

Two explosives-packed vehicles blew up early Wednesday morning near a cluster of commercial buildings in the Damascus, Syria, suburb of Jaramana, killing at least 34 people and wounding 83, according to the state-run news agency SANA.

This latest carnage to hit an area populated by Druze and Christian minorities that mainly supports President Bashar al-Assad further raises concerns of a growing Islamic militant element among the forces seeking to topple him.

The diplomatic hosannas for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi following his brokering of the recent ceasefire between Hamas and Israel were still being heard even as the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood started behaving like a pharaoh. Morsi "temporarily" seized new powers that, among other things, forbid judicial review of his policies.

In the film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray wakes up each morning and relives the previous day.

A similar scenario is playing out in the Middle East between Israel and her enemies. The deadly "movie" always goes like this: Israel is shelled or attacked by terrorists groups, often called "militants" by the media, each one with the same goal: Israel's elimination. After demonstrating considerable restraint of the kind that would never be tolerated by any other nation, Israel fires back.