December 25, 2022

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 25.12.2022, 13:38

Christmas.
Christians are celebrating Christmas, the birth of Christ. The holiday is based
on the description in the biblical gospels of Matthew and Luke. More than two
thousand years ago, the Virgin Mary and Joseph, the man she was engaged to,
travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register for a census ordered by the
Roman emperor. Mary had been pregnant following the miraculous apparition of
archangel Gabriel, who announced to her that she was to give birth to the
Messiah. In Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph stayed in a cave used as a shelter for
cattle and that’s where Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Saviour. Three wise men
came from the East, guided by a star, to the place where Jesus was born,
bringing him gifts and recognising that a king was born.

Pope.
Pope Francis on Sunday delivered his traditional Christmas message from the
central balcony of St. Peter’s Square in Rome. In his Christmas eve homily, he
condemned the human hunger for wealth and power and decried war, whose main
victims are the weak and the vulnerable. Men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power,
consume even their neighbours, their brothers and sisters, said the
pontiff, without directly mentioning the Russian-Ukrainian war during his
service, the BBC notes.

Fuel.
The Romanian government is to decide in its final meeting this year to be held
in the coming days whether to extend the 10 eurocent subsidy on the price of
petrol and diesel oil beyond January 1st. In recent days, the price
of petrol has fallen, even dropping below 6 lei per litre at some petrol
stations. The price of diesel oil also dropped to around 7.2 lei. This comes
after fuel prices for petrol have fallen on the international market.

Ukraine. Russia is ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine, said Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to Reuters. In an interview to Russian state television, he said it’s not Russia who refuses to engage in talks. He also said his country was acting in the right direction, defending national interests and those of its citizens. On the ground, sirens were heard on Sunday morning in Kyiv and all across Ukraine. Russian strikes on Saturday in the Kherson region killed 16 people and wounded dozens. The city of Kherson was freed by the Ukrainian troops on 11th November, but part of the Kherson region is still under Russian control.

US.
Many Americans are feeling the effects of a powerful winter storm and extremely
low temperatures causing mass outages over the Christmas weekend. Travel has
been seriously disrupted at a time when tens of millions of Americans want to
be with their families for the winter holidays. More than 5,500 flights were
cancelled on Friday, accounting for 20% of air traffic that day, said US
transport secretary Pete Buttigieg. 2,300 other flights were cancelled on
Saturday. Canada was also affected, with weather alerts in all its provinces. Hundreds
of thousands of people are without electricity and many flights were cancelled
from the airports in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. (CM)