In first, Israelis test positive for coronavirus on quarantined cruise ship

Israelis were confirmed to have caught coronavirus for the first time on Sunday, as the Health Ministry reported that three Israeli passengers on a cruise ship off Japan’s coast had tested positive. The Health Ministry said in a statement that it had learned from Japanese authorities that all three were showing only mild symptoms. It added that several other Israeli passengers were being tested for the virus. The Foreign Ministry said two of the Israeli passengers had been taken off the ship to receive treatment and confirmed that those two had tested positive for the virus. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the third passenger had also been taken to a hospital.

Singaporean mega-church switches to online services amidst Coronavirus spike

A Mega church in Singapore is moving its gatherings online this weekend after a spike in local cases of Coronavirus. City Harvest Church (CHC) which has a congregation of 16,000 has put a hold on gathering in its building and will now be live-streaming its sermons online in a bid to protect worshippers from infection. City Harvest Church's weekend services will be broadcast on their website and app in what the leadership have insisted is a temporary measure to protect their congregation.  An announcement about the service changes was posted on CHC's Facebook page. It reads: "While we honour the gathering of the saints, your safety is also our utmost concern. As such, we will be implementing alternative arrangements for our Weekend Services til the end of Feb, as we continue to monitor the situation with COVID-19. "There may be disruptions to our regular programming, but let's remember that God is still in control. Now is not our time to lose heart, but to keep our connection with God and one another more alive than ever

Spielberg’s film company buys rights to novel on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Steven Spielberg’s film production company has acquired the rights to a soon-to-be published novel about the unlikely friendship between an Israeli father and a Palestinian father who each lost a daughter to the Arab-Israeli conflict. “Apeirogon” by Colum McCann will be published by Random House on February 25. Its acquisition by Amblin Partners was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, which did not say what the company paid for the rights Apeirogon means a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. The novel, which tells the story of how the fathers turned their grief into activism, has been named a most anticipated book of 2020 by The New York Times..