The militant Palestinian group Hamas has "arrested" a dolphin discovered off the Gaza coast and accused it of being no Flipper. In fact, the organization believes the dolphin is actually an Israeli spy.

For real though: Army Radio reported that the dolphin was decked out with "spying equipment," including cameras, when it was captured by Hamas' naval unit. While The Times of Israel reports that the Israeli Navy has a fleet of "dolphin-class submarines," Hamas was definitely talking about an actual dolphin.

Israel is so often accused of animal espionage that an entire "Israel-related animal conspiracy theories" Wikipedia page exists. However, since dolphins are some of the smartest mammals on the planet, perhaps they are more likely to actually be spies than, say, the "trained sharks" that Israel allegedly used to target Egypt.  Jeva Lange

President Trump on Saturday night spent a lot of his Valdosta, Georgia, rally for Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) pushing unfounded claims of election fraud, and otherwise veering far off topic, but he did intermittently make it clear that he wanted Republicans to head to the polls on Jan. 5 and vote for the two senators, both of whom are facing Democratic challengers.

If the Democrats win, Trump said, "we will have total Socialist one-party control," warning of "draconian military cuts," a "war on American energy," and the end of religious liberty. Therefore, he wants Republicans to "show up and vote in record numbers" next month, despite any distrust in the electoral process they may have.

There was concern among some Georgia Republicans that Trump's focus on widespread fraud allegations — for which he and his legal team have been unable to provide any evidence — would discourage rally attendees from casting their ballots in the runoffs, but at least some members of the crowd appeared convinced they should vote, The Wall Street Journal reports. "We were worried about voting, but we're going to show up," one rallygoer told the Journal. "Otherwise, what are we going to do, let them win by a landslide?" Read more at Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell

President Trump on Saturday called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), requesting that he call a special session of the state legislature to get lawmakers to override the presidential election results and appoint electors to vote for him instead of the winner, President-elect Joe Biden, a person familiar with the conversation told The Washington Post. He also reportedly demanded the governor order a signature audit for absentee ballots. Kemp declined on both accounts, the person said.

A spokesman for the governor confirmed he spoke with Trump, and Kemp — who has traditionally been an ally of the president, but has recently become a frequent target of his criticism — mentioned in a tweet that he talked to Trump on Saturday morning, adding that he's asked for a signature audit several times.

The phone call is the latest longshot attempt by the president to overturn the election, which he falsely claims he lost because of widespread voter fraud, despite being unable to produce evidence that it occurred in Georgia or any other state. The president is heading to Georgia on Saturday to stump for Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) ahead of their runoff elections. Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell

There may yet be a Brexit deal, though negotiations are seemingly far from over.

After speaking over the phone Saturday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have agreed to instruct their negotiators to renew Brexit talks in Brussels on Sunday, signaling that hope for a deal remains.

The U.K. has already left the bloc, but the transition period — during which governing rules have remained unchanged — ends Dec. 31, and both sides are hoping to strike some sort of agreement and avoid a chaotic breakup. However, major sticking points remain over fisheries, fair competition guarantees, and ways to solve future disputes. The two leaders acknowledged the differences are serious, but agreed a "further effort should be undertaken" to resolve the outstanding issues since no pact would be feasible unless a consensus is reached.

Johnson and Von der Leyen said they will speak again Monday night. Read more at Reuters. Tim O'Donnell

Dr. Yasuhiro Suzuki, who served as the highest-ranking doctor in the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare's medical corps until he retired in August, told The Wall Street Journal he believes there's a "strong" theory that East Asian countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore have all dealt with fewer COVID-19 infections and deaths than the United States and Europe because of prior exposure to similar pathogens.

Although he acknowledged there are no studies to back up the idea, Suzuki suggested it's worth following up. "There's a theory, and I think it's quite a strong one, that in East Asia a cold similar to the novel coronavirus spread widely and a large number of people caught it," he told the Journal. "As a result of having immunity to a similar virus — although it isn't bulletproof immunity — they either don't develop it or don't get seriously ill if they do."

Dr. Tatsuhiko Kodama, who is studying coronavirus antibodies at the University of Tokyo, said that similar viruses have probably spread repeatedly in the region, and he's confident that exposure is related to the COVID-19 immune response.

But not everyone is so sure sure that a previous virus could be behind the regional discrepancies. Prof. Tetsuya Mizutani, a virologist at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, told the Journal that the theorized pathogens would have traveled around the world just as quickly as the novel coronavirus has over the last several months. His much simpler explanation for the differences in severity? People in East Asian countries wear masks and wash their hands more consistently. Read more about research into the pandemic's regional differences at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell

Only 27 out of 249 congressional Republicans have acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden's election victory, a Washington Post survey has found.

The results of the survey aren't surprising, given that only a handful of GOP lawmakers have explicitly referred to Biden as the president-elect, but it does provide the most comprehensive look at where the party's elected officials stand.

Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican in the House and Senate between Wednesday evening and Saturday, asking them who the lawmakers consider to have won the presidential election, if they support or oppose Trump's continuing efforts to overturn the results, and if they'll accept Biden as a legitimately elected president should he win a majority of the Electoral College vote, as expected.

The most common answer, by far, to all three questions was actually a non-answer. In fact, more than 70 percent of Republicans left the Post's questions unattended. But two Republicans said they consider Trump the winner of the election, eight said they support his legal challenges, and two said they wouldn't accept Biden as a legitimate president even if he wins the Electoral College vote.

The Senate, proportionally, was more willing to acknowledge Biden's win than the House — 12 of the 52 Republicans sitting in the upper chamber told the Post he won the election, compared to just 14 of the 197 in the lower chamber. Among those 14, six are retiring from politics at the end of the month, suggesting that many Republicans may be staying out of the fray to avoid jeopardizing their re-election chances going forward. Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell

President Trump is heading to Georgia on Saturday to stump for Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), worrying some Republicans in the state.

Matt Towery, a former Georgia GOP legislator who is now a political analyst and pollster, told Reuters that Trump's rally could be a boost for the senators — who are both facing Democratic challengers in separate runoffs that will determine which party controls the upper chamber in the early stages of the Biden administration — "if he spends most of his time talking about the two candidates, how wonderful they are, what they've achieved." But if he centers the rally around his election defeat, pushing his unfounded claims of voter fraud and "telling everyone how terrible" Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is, Towery worries the president could wind up exacerbating Republican voters' fears of election tampering, prompting them to stay home in January.

That's been the challenge over the last few weeks for Loeffler, Perdue, and the Republican Party, who have had to straddle the line between encouraging voters to go to the polls, while also entertaining Trump's allegations and refusing to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden's win so as to avoid angering the president and his base. As Gabriel Sterling, a top election official and Republican who recently called out Trump for "inspiring" violence with his election fraud rhetoric, put it in an interview with The Atlantic, the senators "are stuck in a box and the president put them in it."

Vice President Mike Pence was in Georgia on Friday, urging voters to go to the polls despite their doubts. Trump may very well do the same, but he's also usually more liable to go off script than Pence. Read more at Reuters and The Atlantic. Tim O'Donnell