Russia has launched a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system and cities in its eastern region.
A barrage of cruise and ballistic missiles hit Kharkiv on Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s energy minister and local officials said.
Ukrainian air forces said Kharkiv was attacked by ballistic missiles and Governor Oleh Vasyliovych Syniehubov said on the Telegram messaging app that there were “damages to civilian non-residential infrastructure”.
As Canadians reflect on 2024, new data reveals none of the country’s three major federal leaders have successfully connected with the public, with all facing negative perceptions from a majority of Canadians.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who must decide whether to lead the Liberals into an expected election next year, ends the year with an approval rating of just 28%, according to the Angus Reid Institute.
The far-Right Alternative for Germany party has claimed the Magdeburg Christmas market killer is “a closet jihadist and undercover Islamist” despite his avowed anti-Muslim views.
Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD, made the claims at a mass rally outside the cathedral in Magdeburg, near where Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, 50, a Saudi psychiatrist, ploughed his rented SUV into the crowd at the Christmas market on Friday.
It’s not a conspiracy theory.
As Parliamentarians of all stripes head home for the holidays, their hands are likely full of gifts (maybe a bottle of Speaker’s Scotch or Canadian whisky?) and their heads full of questions about what will happen to the federal government.
They aren’t the only ones, as Canadians are left puzzling about what fate awaits the Trudeau government in the next few weeks.
During my days as an equity analyst and now as a portfolio manager I am often asked what the most important factors are when investing. I would have to say the answer is the quality of the management team in charge and the environment they are operating in — you can have an Olympic gold medal swimmer, and it won’t make a difference if there are sharks in the pool.
Ever since the October 7 massacres in Israel, antisemitism has exploded on college campuses. Universities that had embraced DEI and canceled students and faculty for imaginary microagressions suddenly took an expansive view of free speech when it meant allowing demonstrators to take over campuses, disrupt classes, chant genocidal slogans, harass Jewish students, and target Jewish spaces. No matter how heinous the actions of the protesters, they have been framed as coming from idealistic students expressing genuine humanitarian concern for the people of Gaza, and as mere criticism of Israel.
Then Vice President Joe Biden met his son Hunter’s foreign business partners during a 2013 overseas trip to China, newly released photographs show. The unearthed records also document Hunter meeting Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
Obtained by America First Legal (AFL) via open records request, the photographs from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) appear to show Hunter introducing his father to several Chinese members of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment firm with ties to the country’s Communist government.
A University of Oregon staffer who told Trump voters to kill themselves has kissed his job goodbye.
Leonard Serrato is ‘no longer an employee,’ the university said in a statement to DailyMail.com, after he was placed on leave after making the dark remarks in a video posted right after Trump was declared winner of November’s election.
The school cited the reason for his dismissal as ‘personal’ and did not elaborate on why he no longer holds the position.
‘I ain’t no regular singer’, declares Beyoncé on Cowboy Carter, her critically acclaimed country-and-western album, released earlier this year. ‘Now come get everythin’ you came for.’
On Christmas Day, she will perform tracks from the album during halftime of the National Football League game between her hometown team, Houston Texans, and the Baltimore Ravens. It will be broadcast live on Netflix and available to the streaming service’s 280million subscribers.
Her alleged cultural import is vastly overblown media hype.
In Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel Silence, the apostatised priest Cristóvão Ferreira tells a Portuguese compatriot a bitter truth about Japanese Christianity. “The Japanese till this day have never had the concept of God,” he proclaims, “and they never will.” For a book set in the 17th century, it’s a fair point. Wary of colonisation by Western powers, the ruling shogunate banned Christianity in 1614, a policy aimed at isolating Japan from the rest of the world. As for those Japanese Catholics who remained, many were tortured and killed, with some crucified in an ironic play on the fate of their saviour.
In a sense, Ferreira’s argument remains true today. Barely 1% of Japanese people now identify as Christian, and if you asked the average Tokyo commuter to explain the Eucharist, they’d likely just stare. Yet if Japan is unique among the East Asian countries for remaining almost devoid of Christians, this is also a society where people wear their faith lightly, and where Buddhism and Shintoism have coexisted for centuries. That surely explains why modern Japanese now wallow in the symbols and traditions of Christmas, even as they twist outside customs to their needs. No less striking, those few Japanese who do embrace Jesus tend to do remarkably well — hinting at its long associations with Western sophistication.
Church of England clergy have been urged to avoid ‘problematic’ hymns – it’s no wonder the pews are empty
If you’re planning to attend a carol service tomorrow night, you might want to check out the hymn sheet first – make sure you don’t end up bellowing out: O Come, All Ye Wokeful.
You see, priests have been told to edit popular carols this Christmas in order to avoid (I really need to create a custom keyboard shortcut for this phrase) “causing unnecessary offence”. Quite why you would be in a church to begin with if you found Christianity so offensive has not been made clear.
Do you see many vegans in butchers demanding to talk to the managers? Last time you were down the pub, did you notice any teetotallers raging at the landlord about his “disgusting wall of booze”?
A man who was hit in the groin with a brick during riots in Southport has been jailed for two years and six months.
Brian Spencer was filmed gyrating his hips and taunting riot police as they were pelted with stones and bricks.
He had drunk 10 pints and a litre of rum beforehand, according to The Mirror. A judge had previously described the dance moves as his “best Mick Jagger impression”.
Christians held protests across Syria after Islamists burned a Christmas tree, with demonstrators in Damascus vowing to defend themselves with arms if necessary.
Hundreds of protesters holding up crosses gathered in the Christian quarter of Bab Tuma in the capital, Damascus, after news of the fire in Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town.
“Hold up your cross high,” they chanted. “We are your soldiers, Christ — the cross and the rifle are the two options.”
Earlier today, armed extremists set fire to a Christmas tree in Suqaylabiyah in Hama, Syria. Local channels say they were Uzbek militants.
HTS apologized for the incident and promised to deal with any future threats, but many Christians do not believe this will happen. pic.twitter.com/1Op98CUmTB
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) December 23, 2024
Christians marched through Syria's Damascus to demand protection for minorities after a Christmas tree was seen burning near Hama. pic.twitter.com/TSX1rrVIN4
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 24, 2024
Having managed to get through last week without losing the prime ministership, Justin Trudeau has successfully kicked the ball to touch. Parliament reopens on January 27th, which makes the end of January the earliest that he cold be called to account.
At some point soon after in the weeks following however, one of the Opposition parties will have the opportunity to introduce a motion of non-confidence in his government, and precipitate an election.
OTTAWA — Canada appears to be barrelling toward a spring election now that the NDP is vowing to vote down the government early next year — whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stays on or not.
Political watchers are abuzz over the possible scenarios that could play out in the coming year following last week’s drama that rocked Trudeau’s government, and a springtime national campaign is the one that’s solidifying the fastest.
The exact timing is very much up in the air, but the best bet is for the government to fall by late March, and then a general election day would fall in April or May, said Yaroslav Baran, co-founder of the Pendulum Group and former chief of staff to Conservative house leader Jay Hill.
