days this year to bring a little lightness to a tough situation a north american aerospace defense unit also known as norad has kept its tradition of following santa claus as he travels the globe the so-called santa tracker has been updating children on the movements of father christmas for more than 60 is now right now santa is delivering gifts across north america as you can see this year he's also wearing a mosque to stay safe. there i missed in the hall with the headlines for you here on al-jazeera after months of tense talks and just 7 days before the deadline the european union and the u.k. have clinched a trade deal the agreement for is 0 tariff and 0 cordial relationship covers everything from energy to fisheries the one protection for a level playing field on regulation while the u.k. avoided a future role for the european court of justice mexico has started its coronavirus

vaccination campaign and intensive care and received the 1st approved dose and argentina is preparing to roll out a russian made vaccine from monday while thousands of pfizer biotech doses have arrived at hospitals in chile south korea there has recorded its biggest daily increase in infections since the start of this pandemic reported more than 1200 new cases including a large outbreak at a prison in seoul the country rolled out its toughest ever restrictions this week robert bryant has more for us from the capital. many people this christmas morning woke up to the depressing news that once again the country has set this record of well over 1200 new route cases being recorded in a single day the news actually was broken by the country's prime minister at a meeting of the coronavirus task force here a lot of the this jump is being attributed to an outbreak at a prison here in seoul some 288 cases recorded mostly inmates but also some staff

there that's in addition to a couple of 100 other cases that had already been recorded that the u.n. security council has approved a temporary deployment of more troops to central african republic ahead of sunday's presidential election there earlier women march to the headquarters of the un peacekeeping mission demanding a place for those tensions have fled ahead of the pole earlier this week rebels have captured a large town. syrian state t.v. says the country's ed defenses have shot down several missiles launched by israeli warplanes in the northwest sana news agency says the airstrikes were carried out in the area and there were also reports of blasts in the coastal city of tire tooth well those are the headlines i have more news for you here after the strain. what does somebody been doing with the money that it's boring we bring you the stories and developments that are rapidly changing the world we live in argentina the

congress is debating a bill seeking to raise billions of dollars for the super rich poor families hit odd by a democrat counting the cost on al-jazeera. i think kate welcome to one of my favorites tombstones of the here safe leaders roundtable a rabbi a reverend and walked into the stream let's see what happens they will be looking back at 2020 we'd love to hear about your 2020 as well how do you think faith impacts your year if you and you can jump into the comments section and you too can be part of this discussion we get started on a safety this roundtable with the reverend cut. this year i've watched faith help people survive their one of the greatest gifts god has given our

community i've watched our faith community have show up for one hour are dropping off meals on the doorsteps by making masks for other folks by teaching them how to use zoom or facebook or whatever for the 1st time by praying and by hoping that by loving it by protesting for one another's lives and as we've shown up in community we've realized that while this year community may have felt like our risk it's the only thing that gets us through the only thing that keeps us alive and it's the hope i have for all of the years to come. hi fi fleet is it so good to see you i am going to say hello to you you are going to greet our guest dr lewis tell our international audience who you are and what it. happy holidays everybody dr jackie her and i and the senior minister and it occurred to church where the oldest continuous part of the church in north america and the oldest cooperation in

the united states we pre-dating a country where mostly everything congregation of the lower he said i'm glad to be here. to have a rabbi was to welcome back to the stream good to see you know variously we know what you do by in job title but develop that a little bit more lovely to have you on the street and i'm delighted to be here rabbi daniel written bird and scholar in residence at the national council of jewish women which is also a very old organization we were founded $893.00 and have since then been mobilizing the jewish community to fight for justice and safety for women children and families we have now a $180000.00 grassroots advocates on the ground who push for just law does and fair courts and i'm latif nice to see things tonight i don't see. it was so nice to see you as well my name is col of the tea service the

university chaplain and you're going to versity also the executive director of the islamic center in n.y.u. where we have been going around for that long in comparison to my colleague institutions and that's so remarkable to hear a long year old been around for. our institutional memory is rooted in a student group that was founded in 1978 by a handful of muslim students we now have about 3000 muslim students at n.y.u. and many people who live and work in the surrounding area they come to our center and students community we cater to about 10000 people now from a diverse set of backgrounds in new york city and are blessed to work with many different institutions that have similar visions in this instance. so guests and audience always like to unpack a little bit of what happens behind the scenes on the stream so this title for this unofficially was 2020 was and then we had of the natura naughty what i can not say

. that was that it was the subtitle put a show now that you were going to find the black 2020 was dealt to the race what would you fill in the black no filter go for it a fully ness. i feel that i will rather than 2021 s dramatic. yet there are a lot of different kinds of traumas that were generated and other longstanding traumas in our country that were surfaced in it and new really not in new ways but yet again at its. 2020 was. say 2020 it was revealing and i think it was revealing of things that some segments

of our society and community of known for some time are revealing a certain thing that many segments of our society have sought to raise and hide and revealing over all of things that i think no one can really be in denial of anymore in terms of how our minds of race and class still determine who has and who has not how they are people who are motivated by elements of the common good and who meet everything with selflessness and interconnectedness on the front lines and people who are very self interested in egocentric always seek to cater to the majority and privileged and i think it's very revealing also an individual level of who it is that we are in terms of how we responded to all of. it was very educational samee and the stream is is a digital showroom we know how to be online we know how to be in the virtual out but was how quickly the rest of the world managed to navigate if we can't meet as

a community how else do we get together i want to bring in the voice of frank stana a friend stella is a member of the he american foundation he talks about going on the value of being on the night sirius one example i can think of a faith community supports its members is so from a zation fellowship known in india as you go to a society an organization deeply rooted in the hindu yoga tradition and ever since the start of the pen deming they've been offering online guided meditations yoga exercises and scriptural studies and offering tools to get us through this very stressful time for how did you deal with the virtual well it's. here you know i mean with mixed success i think i had of the jewish community as

a whole pivoted pretty quickly to being on zoom even though there are all sorts of reasons in jewish law that would not be extremely not the ideal saving lives trumps everything and so for our ritual holidays and sabbaths we went for jewel right away with you know some bumps but we did it and then she did other you know we moved all of our learning on line you know we moved all our gatherings on line and we need our advocacy tactics to be digital to be emails to be phone calls to be tweet storms and not to be showing off in person and people's spaces. and it's been remarkable to see how much community can be built in these spaces and we have to continue to remember that there is absolutely a difference between being as in the screen the way we are now and being in

physical proximity and to be continually tuned to those who are more isolated because of the pandemic the more risk and as he did of you he said in the program it is a lot of places around the world where people then set up ways to check in on our neighbors who are most vulnerable and most at risk and a lot of people got left you know in the wider community. and. yeah you know it's a fine line there's there are so many things that we can't do in person but i think the jewish community as a whole and it's really traveled how quickly and how well he managed to step up to do what could be done in the space to to learn. but yeah about about 7 years ago we outgrew our sanctuary it's 328 people and we had about a 1000 members and we try to work around there but african mid-week worship on

wednesday and to worship on sunday when called out and soul and lot of young people gravitated toward that but when we outgrew our space and were in a land the east village location the man can tell you what that's like we decided to quote push our sanctuary a while back by beginning to build a digital church we heard a digital minister we got some cameras and we began to do digital worship and i think people loved it they could wake up on saturday morning we play something from last and it were on their phones or on the computers watch church but really it was watching the backs of heads so we stop worshipping our sanctuary march 15th and the very next week we were doing digital worship differently naething at my computer typing directly to news in the archive to pieces of art or creating new ones and i have to tell you i am so amazed at what happened for us $250.00 people have joined our church since march they've joined from paris to morrow and

from chicago you know from chelsea they found us a progressive multi-racial multicultural actually interfaith church online and it was it was easy for them to find us and it was easy for them to join us so our movement has grown we've done lots of things for kids lots of educational programs and our big revolutionary love conference that we have and will actually have. more attendees this year than ever before so will we i think what we found is a justice. protestant modern need to all the net change that people needed from us and we were able to step into that i do agree with the rabbi the challenges that are just intimacy so we don't flower hooks down 5 people 7 people at a tea party to to create our connections and more easily in the neck the large ones for our movement has actually grown in assignments. you have quite

a young group of people that you have to take care of you was a deal with students you are on social media i love it's gonna be tweets you're out there but telling really important moments like ram a dam and eat and having that distance not being out to be close together how did you adapt. for starters you know as i say dr lewis i think the idea of a disease or minister is an amazing idea and i might steal that if. i'm looking forward and looking forward to the tick tock dr there is with rita for the entire eman we just heard and her sunday she's can't believe that 7 years of the making in a man's gone to great. so wonderful. you know on our end i think we adapted in a lot of the similar ways as most. communities. we

were doing a quick adaptation of virtual program that had us now at times doing 8 to 12 programs a day leveraging the talents and skills of our community so that in addition to spiritual and religious services that we're now online as best as we could with the restrictions on certain things that we weren't just able to do online virtually we were doing things like yoga at lunch time in story time for children and healing to the arts programs and how to create websites and rate resumes but a model that we seek to implement in person that has multiple entry points that caters to the diversity of our community we now see to transition to a virtual setting and that included holiday services and other things one of the things that we sought to do right off the bat was also given opportunities for members of our community to still live their faith we really like to tell them that

physical separation doesn't necessitate spiritual disconnectedness and we can still aspire to be a reason that people have hope in the world instead of a reason that people might find dread and so a week into social distancing right in march and we launched the 1st of a series of crowdfunding campaigns in about 2 weeks raised over $600000.00 and was the 1st of probably 5 or 6 campaigns that we then ran over the next few months to assist people who were impacted by coded people who lost loved ones people who are ill people who lost their jobs they had no health care somehow or the only country in the world in the midst of a pandemic that takes health care away from 5 and a half 1000000 people and over 3 months of time we had 40000 unique donations come in and got us close to about 2 point $6000000.00 there were 3 of you but it wasn't any one person running a 1000000. dollar check i think a leveraging

a sense of ethic and value and cohesiveness and community to say that where you can even give a dollar you can give 2 dollars 5 dollars and we all come together and really help people and that then in turn made the holiday services and the other services that weren't what they normally were a different source of spiritual growth and a different source of transformation because they were imbedded within these other projects in campaigns that we were running on to give people an opportunity to really actualize in dealing gays of living their faith so to speak. that 70 minutes led to it of course 12020 wasn't just about health crisis there were other things that were happening that i knew that you were getting involved 'd in there was protests and it was a kola takes i want to bring in the voices of rabbi had a spirit and it was

a pastor lucy a stalwart and they were in d.c. washington d.c. they want to get that have a listen to what they want to add to masha and we've been doing things together with you know our congregations 3 years now but it's picked up during the pandemic and it's not especially powerful one of the things we dear is that ringback we do it over 4 series talking conversation on race to do in the pandemic and do all of that we learned from me to this pandemic touches everybody no matter what our. economics the us. background is affects all of us and we also talked about the impact the grace. to the. so faith leaders have a number of questions for you from you tube i'm going to further questions at you i need a very fast instance response i know you can handle this and this one if you talk

to us this is from the low 2020 what kalu people up to government suppression and oppression you're still it's. the african-american person living in america these were not new insights for me but i do think the murder of george floyd we are a tailor and we all have been back to that woke up white people to racism and also woke up the nation to how much of our national ethic is built on white supremacy i think that's been a startling insight for some of my allies but it's really it's really truth. rabbi this one's for you against the religious leaders koolau well to lead us when we do not up hold the values of religion. as appropriate in. subtree as appropriate as relevant i think as

always we need to remember that focusing on particular policies as unjust rather than entire people or entire nations as evil is the way to do that but i think there are times in places when our moral leadership needs to extend an reverberate as far as injustices happening. why did you laugh. because i felt if that was actually directed to me specifically i don't know what the user if they they need me specifically so a little bit like you know me as being the mission oh ok. often often when i'm in the interest space the occupation israel's occupation of palestine land the palestinian land is an elephant in the room and people want to know how i am showing up as as a jew and as someone committed to human rights. that gross violation of human

rights civil rights and international law and it's a complex topic and requires to do it right it requires a lot of teasing out but the bottom line is you can and should criticize policies that are unjust and be clear about conflating that with demonizing entire people. are going to ask each of you respond to this briefly this is from critics mariya how do we find unity in 2021 why such a big question. think restorers. unity i think has to be real and i think one of things 2020 allowed us to do is to understand that we are all connected to each other and interdependence is something we don't have to aspire towards but individually we can determine what we base our connections off of and for us to be unified in those connections i

think we have to 1st understand what makes us separate and what divides us and to me good religion is one that brings people to taking on societal ills and illnesses and there's no greater illness than racism right now and if your practice of religion isn't bringing you to take that on and say what's the point of your religion and for us to come together in a way that's not performative or just convenient or tokenize ing people who are willing to come together have to recognize that there's a lot of people who don't want to be connected to people who have certain skin colors or come from certain levels of wealth or poverty and they want to be very much disconnected and where we can understand that has to be a stepping stone to becoming now more unified not at the level of shared xterm ills but shared internals shared values shared hearts we can't romanticize or be

idealistic in terms of how we approach this as a concept and i think to. echo what was said before fundamentally we have to be honest with the deeply entrenched anti blackness that is really entrenched in so much of what this country is built upon and what we've seen in 2020 is that every system from the prison system to the immigration system to the healthcare system to the justice system does not honor a black life and right now for us to come together on anything that. denies that. you race is that there pretends like it's not there that's not a real unity and where governmental apparatus is quite often engaged in equities policies for people of good conscience to come together in a way that i think is a real form of hope because it's not denying now what many people go through that there's some of us just will never have to see in our lives yeah i want to bring

woman who entered into a conversation if i made up there is not a right that you i do promise this is all to fire at the i.c. he's just thinking about what 2020 clanchy to teach them some ass site from after mental plunge if you he she it's. been a dramatic year and it completely disrupts one's life bringing. fear a sense of helplessness complete loss of control people who have religion and spirituality in this their lives it's inevitable that these times they turn to god and this free that angers them give them to strand to have the dom's this connection to a higher power give brings them to fly solution and spirit or give them coverage. so i have seen minutes left i have a minute each of you if i say please. what would you want to leave us with done to

us. for our people of faith and for people whose faith is. let us go to 2020 demanding that black eyes matter. demanding that we pay attention to the foundation's democracy and that will take us to eradicate and to some it has a eradicate and to islamic sentiment it will help us to think compassionately women and children and people on the margins it will help us with our border politics we have to start with a fundamental fault line on which this nation was built and that's racism and make that go away with love rabbi. a man. that's my favorite number 10. our job are on this planets it is how we serve god if that is

a phrase that makes sense to you it is how we are their job here is to take care of one another that's all we've got and that needs to permeate everything we are and everything we do it involves looking at all of the systems of racism and inequality that have been set. in this country all of the ways in which those in power are continuing to. increase divisions between rich and poor right and that to in further entrench systems avoid supremacy it involves overhauling the way we think about health care and mass incarceration and almost every other. it situation in our culture so that not every single human being can be free can flourish can be safe can be

healthy and has the opportunity to pursue happiness. let me share this with you on my laptop in i'm the chief is coming to instagram live with me at 2030 g.m.t. a piano joined in that conversation we were talking more about this year for the in mom and what it was like but if i ask you in a sentence just to tease that conversation in the teeth what would you say is your closing sought literally a sentence going to. say. it's time for each one of us to recognize our own ability to be a source of light for people and for all those of you who are watching right now is the time to go out and really share your light with others and you have it in you just have to choose. to love it and then go out and spread it. and this is the reason why the faith leaders roundtable is one of my favorite

strange shows if the entire. dot to do its. work in montana teen ichi this thank you so much seems to. the stories of abuse in aged care homes in the west to show the world that there is no alternative one to one of these meets those sending elderly loved ones to toilet to live out their dads on al-jazeera.

al-jazeera. after. the revolution classical music known for his extravagant productions and princes and. his success hasn't come without controversy andre rieu discusses the impact is what has happened in the classical music industry. to see our. job as a new day to take advantage of the relatively clean air after weeks of toxic small stopped people from venturing outside institutions including hobgood say air pollution is leading to more severe cases of the coronavirus and more deaths from it and no way in india is situation worse than a daddy the number of queues daughter. desperate situation of the indian government set up a new commission to monitor sukses of pollution across 5 states. it's and bob maginnis

had been warning for months that the easing of the lockdown would lead to an increase in pollution and the impact that would have on those who called the 19. i know this is a difficulty for some. and to our friends in the united kingdom i want to say parting is such sweet sorrow while the deal is finally done and the u.k. and the european union clinch a landmark post bret's the trade agreement redefining deaf you children nations. and i there i missed on the attain this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up that's in america begins mass coronavirus a vaccine.