Santa Claus Caught On Camera!

Read More

Cops turn backs on de Blasio at funeral

Read More

Ice warnings as temperatures fall below zero across UK

Temperatures have plunged below freezing in parts of the UK amid warnings that drivers could face treacherous conditions on icy roads.
The lowest recorded temperature was almost -5C in Perthshire overnight with "widespread" frost hitting large areas of the UK, the BBC Weather centre said.
The Met Office issued yellow warnings to "be aware" of ice in all areas.
Widespread icy patches could form on untreated surfaces, especially where snow has fallen, the Met Office said.
Forecasters predict the temperature could drop below freezing even in southern cities on Sunday night and could fall as low as -10C in rural areas.
It follows wintry showers across northern Ireland, Wales and eastern England on Saturday, with the town of Leek in Staffordshire recording the day's heaviest snowfall of 12cm (4.7in).
The Met Office has warned drivers to take extra care on the roads.
A section of the M62 near Huyton was closed after an accident. In Derbyshire, part of the A6024 near High Peak was closed and in south Yorkshire the A631 near Beckingham was closed - both because of ice.
BBC Weather's Philip Avery said some of the lowest recorded temperatures overnight had been in areas where snow had already fallen.
He said temperatures had fallen to below freezing in parts of northern Scotland, while in much of England, Wales and Northern Ireland it was either close to or below zero.
Meanwhile, a cold weather alert for parts of England has been issued, with the Met Office saying there is a 90% chance that severe weather until 12:00 GMT on Wednesday could "increase the health risks to vulnerable patients and disrupt the delivery of services".
The amber - level three - alert is one below a national emergency and indicates social and healthcare services should target "high-risk" groups, such as the very young or old, or those with chronic diseases.

How to drive in snow and ice

 

• Balance your speed - too fast and you risk losing control, but if you go too slow you risk losing momentum
• Start gently in second gear, avoiding high revs. Stay in a higher gear for better control
• Only use the brake if you cannot steer out of trouble
• Increase the distance at which you follow other vehicles
• Plan your journey around busier roads, which are more likely to have been gritted
• On a downhill slope, get your speed low before you start the descent, and do not let it build up
• In falling snow, use dipped headlights or fog lights, but switch off if conditions improve

Read More

Pakistan bomb hoax man gets 26 years

A Pakistani man has been given a 26-year jail term for making two hoax bomb threats in two public places in Punjab province in July, prosecutors say.

The threats were made against a crowded market and children's park in the central city of Multan on the first day of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr.
Police managed to track the man, named Rana Yousuf, via the sim card he used, which belonged to one of his friends.
They said Yousuf was trying to set up his friend over a business rivalry.
The hoax phone calls led police, bomb disposal experts and emergency workers to rush to the scene and search the area for several hours before discovering the warnings were fake.
Over 2,000 people were gathered in Shams park at the time of the call, Pakistan's Express Tribune reports.
The other man, whose sim card was used, was reportedly cleared of all charges due to lack of evidence.
In addition to the jail term, Yousuf was also fined 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($993; £638).

Read More

Pope gunman Mehmet Ali Agca visits John Paul II's grave

The Turkish man who shot and injured former Pope John Paul II in 1981 has laid flowers on the late pontiff's tomb in the Vatican.

Mehmet Ali Agca told police he felt he needed to make the gesture, Italian media report.
It comes 31 years to the day that the Pope visited Agca in prison and forgave him for the attempt on his life.
Agca served 19 years in an Italian jail for shooting the Pope twice at close range. His motive remains a mystery.
He spent another 10 years in prison in Turkey on charges related to the earlier murder of a newspaper editor.
Agca, 56, laid white roses at the tomb of the late Pope on Saturday, in his first visit to the Vatican since his attack on John Paul II on 13 May 1981.
The Pope was left seriously injured, with one bullet passing through his abdomen and another narrowly missing his heart.
Vatican officials have for a second time denied Agca's request for a face-to-face meeting with Pope Francis.
"He has put flowers on the tomb of John Paul II. I think that is enough," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told La Repubblica newspaper.

Read More

France Alps: Snow strands motorists in Savoy

Snow and ice in the French Alps have stranded 15,000 vehicles, snarling up holiday traffic to and from ski resorts, French media report.

The country declared an orange weather alert, its second-highest, as local authorities scrambled to put up motorists for the night.
One man died when his vehicle slid into a ravine in the Isere region.
The government asked drivers to "exercise the utmost caution" and avoid travel if possible.
Three people died in other snow-related incidents across France earlier this week, according to French daily Le Monde.
Snowy conditions in the French Alps are expected to persist into Sunday, followed by freezing weather next week when Paris should see its first frosts in more than a year, French weather forecasters say.
Local gyms and community halls were opened up as shelters in the Savoy region on Saturday.
Motorists seeking accommodation "stormed" the Chambery exhibition centre, according to a live page (in French) on the website of Le Dauphine Libere newspaper.
British driver Gavin Rigby told BBC News he had taken 11 hours to drive between Val d'Isere and Bourg Saint Maurice - a journey which would normally take 30 minutes.
Mr Rigby, who is returning to the UK with his family from a skiing holiday, said they had received no help from the French authorities, and had had to rely on other motorists for information.
He felt most sorry for the drivers who had, unlike himself, set out without snow chains.
"The police should have got people to fit chains this morning after half a metre [20 in] of snow fell last night," he said, as he prepared to travel on through the night.
Strong winds caused damage elsewhere in France, shutting the port of Calais, where an anti-migrant fence was partially toppled.
Closer to Paris, the celebrated gardens of Versailles were closed to the public because of gales.
Heavy snow caused disruption to roads in Germany too, causing a 25km (16-mile) traffic jam on the A8 motorway near Stuttgart.
In the UK, the Met Office issued warnings of ice across the country and snow in some areas. Hundreds of homes were without power in parts of England, including nearly 500 in the East Midlands and nearly 300 in Devon.

Read More

Christmas baby born on US train in Philadelphia

An infant dubbed the "Christmas baby" was born on a subway train in the US city of Philadelphia when his mother suddenly went into labour.

Two transit police officers were called in and helped deliver the baby after the woman's waters broke.
The mother and child were immediately taken to hospital and are doing well.
Police Sergeant Daniel Caban told NBC TV he had been hoping for a quiet day at work but the baby's arrival had been "just a blessing".
The chief executive of Philadelphia's public transport system tweeted that the baby's fare had been waived.

Read More

Malaysia flooding: Najib Razak to tour inundated areas

Malaysia is battling some of the worst floods in decades along its east coast, which have killed at least five people.

More than 100,000 people have been forced from their homes, and Prime Minister Najib Razak has returned early from holiday in the US.
He is due to visit the worst-hit areas of northern Kelantan state.
Eastern states are often flooded during the monsoon season, but this time officials say heavier rain and stronger winds have made things worse.

In some areas, entire towns have been submerged.
Darius Dramburg, an eyewitness in the flooded region, told the BBC World Service that his entire village was under water and there was no electricity running in some parts.
"Because there is no electricity there's no water either. The shops have all closed down so we don't know how much food we could get.
"I decided to leave the place now and go down to Kuala Lumpur."
Rescue workers are struggling to bring in enough food and supplies for families sleeping in relief centres.
BBC Malaysia correspondent Jennifer Pak, in Kuala Lumpur, says Mr Najib cut short his holiday after the media published pictures of him golfing with US President Barack Obama in Hawaii.
The images reinforce the belief of some Malaysians that the government has not been doing enough to prevent these annual floods, our correspondent says.

PM Najib was criticised as photos emerged of him playing golf with President Obama on Christmas Eve

Read More

Pope condemns Taliban attack on Pak students

Pope Francis issued a strident call in his Christmas day message to safeguard children who are victims “under our very eyes” of violence and trafficking, while also demanding an end to “brutal persecution” worldwide.
Killings and hostage-takings from the Middle East

to Nigeria and elsewhere must stop, he said in his annual Christmas “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world) message.
Denouncing conflicts in Ukraine and Libya, and noting last week’s deadly attack against a school in Pakistan, the pontiff also lamented the thousands of victims of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
“Truly there are so many tears this Christmas,” he said.
Delivering his second Christmas blessing, the popular Argentine pontiff, visibly moved and departing from his text, noted “the children massacred by bombardments, including where the son of God was born” and their “powerless silence that cries under the sword.”
Denouncing “indifference”, he explicitly condemned abortion, deploring the children “killed before seeing the light”.
“May Jesus save the vast numbers of children who are victims of violence, made objects of trade and trafficking, or forced to become soldiers.” “May he give comfort to the families of the children killed in Pakistan last week” referring to the 150 people, including 134 school-children, killed in Peshawar by the Taliban.
Speaking to a large crowd massed outside Saint Peter’s Basilica, the pope urged Ukrainians to “overcome tensions, conquer hatred and violence and set out on a new journey of fraternity and reconciliation”. He turned too to the violence wrought by Islamic State fundamentalists this year in Syria and Iraq.
“I ask him, the saviour of the world, to look upon our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria, who for too long now have suffered the effects of ongoing conflict, and who, together with those belonging to other ethnic and religious groups, are suffering a brutal persecution.”
There were “too many displaced persons, exiles and refugees, adults and elderly, from this region and the whole world,” he said.
He called for peace in “the whole Middle East” and continued efforts towards “dialogue” between Israelis and Palestinians.
The pope too urged peace in Nigeria “where more blood is being shed”, as well as in Libya, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He noted the victims of Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and thanked those who were “courageously” assisting the sick.
The Pope urged people not to be indifferent to the suffering of so many around the world. Pope Francis also appealed for an end to conflicts in African countries and urged dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.
The 78-year-old pope spoke from the same balcony of St Peter’s Basilica where he first appeared as pontiff on the night of his election on March 13, 2013.
“May indifference be changed into closeness and rejection into hospitality, so that all who now are suffering may receive the necessary humanitarian help to overcome the rigours of winter, return to their countries and live with dignity,” he said, speaking in Italian.
On Christmas eve, Francis made a surprise telephone call to comfort Christian refugees in a camp in Ankawa, Iraq. “You are like Jesus on Christmas night. There was no room for him either ...” he told them.
The pope has a busy year ahead of him, with trips planned to Asia, Africa, Latin American and the United States.
Another key project for 2015 is the reform of the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration. In Christmas greetings on Monday to the Vatican’s top administrators, Pope Francis delivered a stinging critique of Vatican bureaucracy.
In his Christmas message, which was fairly brief, the pope traditionally calls for remedies to the world’s woes.
Francis however has put an end to a longstanding tradition of popes wishing a happy Christmas in dozens of languages.
At a Christmas Eve mass, he urged Roman Catholics to have greater empathy towards family and friends, saying the world needs “tenderness” and “warmth”.
Francis sent a video message to South Koreans recalling his trip to the country in August in which he said: “The great celebration in honour of the (Catholic) martyrs (in the 18th and 19th centuries in Korea), and the encounters with young people remain fresh in my memory.”
In Bethlehem on Christmas Eve hectic preparations preceded celebrations on the West Bank town’s biggest night of the year, culminating in midnight mass at the Church of the Nativity built over the spot where Christians believe the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus.
Scouts playing bagpipes and drums marched to the church in a procession led by Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, the top Catholic cleric in the Holy Land.
In his homily, Twal called for “peace in Jerusalem”, where violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians rocked the city for months, and “equality and mutual respect” among all faiths.
He also asked for the rebuilding of Gaza, which was ravaged this summer during a 50-day war between Hamas and Israel in which more than 2,200 people died.

Read More

Pope Francis makes Christmas call to Iraqi refugees

Pope Francis has spoken by telephone to Iraqi refugees in a camp near Irbil before celebrating Christmas Eve Mass.

The Pope urged the refugees - forced to flee their homes by the militant group Islamic State - to "persevere", and said he was close to them in his heart.
At a Christmas Eve midnight Mass at St Peter's Basilica, the Pope called on believers to show more empathy towards family and friends.
On Christmas Day, the Pope will deliver his "Urbi et Orbi" Christmas address.
The call to refugees at a camp in Ankawa was made by satellite phone and broadcast live on Italian TV.
"Dear brothers, I am close to you, very close to you in my heart," he told them, saying he was thinking particularly of children and the elderly.
"Innocent children, children who have died, exploited children... I am thinking, too, about grandparents, about the older people who have lived their lives, and who must now bear this cross."
He told them they were like Jesus, forced to flee because there was no room for them. "I embrace you all and wish for you a holy Christmas," he said.
Advances in Iraq by Islamic State have forced tens of thousands of Christians and people from other religious minorities to flee to Kurdish controlled areas.
Later in his homily during Christmas Eve Mass, the Pope said the world needed more tenderness and warmth.
"The question put to us simply by the infant's presence is: 'Do I allow God to love me?'" he said.
"Do we have the courage to welcome with tenderness the difficulties and problems of those who are near to us?"

Read More

what colour was Jesus?

Jesus has been named the top black icon by the New Nation newspaper. Their assertion that Jesus was black has raised eyebrows in some quarters - so what colour was he?

Just as no one will ever produce proof for the existence of God, the question of Jesus's colour may always be a matter for personal belief.
Was he white, white-ish, olive-skinned, swarthy, dark-skinned or black? There are people who believe he was any one of those shades, but there seem to be only two things about the debate that can be said with any degree of certainty.
First - if the past 2,000 years of Western art were the judge, Jesus would be white, handsome, probably with long hair and an ethereal glow.
Second - it can almost certainly be said that Jesus would not have been white. His hair was also probably cut short.

I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as 'a man of colour' Dr Mark Goodacre

Yet the notion that Jesus was black - highlighted this week in a survey of black icons by the New Nation newspaper which ranked him at number one - is genuinely held by some. One school of thought has it that Jesus was part of a tribe which had migrated from Nigeria. And Jesus probably did have some African links - after all the conventional theory is that he lived as a child in Egypt where, presumably, his appearance did not make him stand out.

Blue-eyed Robert Powell, left, and brown-eyed Jim Caviezel

The New Nation takes it further: "Ethiopian Christianity, which pre-dates European Christianity, always depicts Christ as an African and it generally agreed that people of the region where Jesus came from looked nothing like Boris Johnson," the paper says. As light-hearted evidence that Jesus was black, it adds that he "called everybody 'brother', liked Gospel, and couldn't get a fair trial". But the truth, says New Testament scholar Dr Mark Goodacre, of the University of Birmingham, is probably somewhere in between.
"There is absolutely no evidence as to what Jesus looked like," he says. "The artistic depictions down the ages have total and complete variation, which indicates that nobody did a portrait of Jesus or wrote down a description, it's all been forgotten."
Traditional depictions
Dr Goodacre was involved in the reconstruction of a Middle Eastern first century skull for the BBC's Son of God programme in 2001, which resulted in a suggestion of what a man like Jesus might have looked like. He advised on hair and skin colour.

People - even mullet-wearers - project their ideal on to Jesus

"The hair was the easiest - there's a reference in Paul which says it's disgraceful for a man to wear long hair, so it looks pretty sure that people of that period had to have reasonably short hair. The traditional depictions of Jesus with long flowing golden hair are probably inaccurate." Deciding on skin colour was more difficult, though. But the earliest depictions of Jews, which date from the 3rd Century, are - as far as can be determined - dark-skinned.
"We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus. In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as 'a man of colour'." This probably means olive-coloured, he says.
'Fascinating' debate
Professor Vincent Wimbush, of California's Claremont Graduate University, who is an expert on ethnic interpretations of the Bible, says the matter of the historical colour of Jesus seems to him a "flat, dead-end issue".
"He's of Mediterranean stock, and it's quite clear what that means. We see people like that in the world today, and that should end the matter." The fact that the debate rages on regardless is fascinating, he says, because of what it says about people's other issues.
The artistic representations of Jesus which are so familiar are not necessarily a negative thing, Dr Goodacre says. There is "theologically something quite profound" in the fact that throughout history people have tried to depict Jesus in their own image.
"This is not a rough image of themselves people have been depicting. It's an ideal image of themselves, painting Jesus as something they are aspiring to.
"Things have changed a bit in recent culture because people are conscious of the need to be challenged by him and shocked. I think that's why in more contemporary representations, even those coming from a white, western background, people will think very carefully about the representation."
Even the world of film is catching up, albeit slowly. Robert Powell had famously piercing blue eyes in Jesus of Nazareth in 1977. And although Jim Caviezel, who played the lead in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, also has piercing blue eyes, by the time the film was shown they had miraculously become brown.

Read More