METHODIST CHURCH BOYCOTTS ISRAELI BANKS: The BDS movement seeking to economically attack the Jewish state in a boycott campaign scored a victory on Tuesday, 12 Jan. 2016 as the United Methodist Church (UMC) announced its pension board will no longer invest in five Israeli banks. The UMC, a Presbyterian denomination that numbers over seven million members, said it will not invest in the banks for financing "settlement activity" over the 1949 Armistice lines. The five banks blacklisted by the church's pension board are Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot. The United Methodist Church decided to take the unprecedented move even as it watches its numbers dwindle and faces the threat of economic ruin. Last May 2015 on its website the church reported how a member of the UMC, himself an economist, told the church it has 15 years to "turn around" its shrinking denomination, or else it will not be able to make a recovery in the USA. According to the facts presented by the church, the denomination will not have enough churches in America in the coming decades to pay for its own "conferences, bishops, agencies, missions and international disaster response." (INN)