Pittsburgh Couple Has "Best Christmas Ever" After Adopting 5-Year-Old Boy

A Pittsburgh couple says this is the “best Christmas ever” after adopting a 5-year-old boy who they had been fostering since last December.

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  • In official Christmas Day message, Trump barely mentions Covid; Biden talks of pandemic's pain

    Nearly 330,000 Americans have died from the virus, and there are over 18.7 million confirmed cases in the U.S.

  • Japan official, calling Taiwan 'red line,' urges Biden to 'be strong'

    TOKYO (Reuters) -A top Japanese defence official on Friday urged U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to "be strong" in supporting Taiwan in the face of an aggressive China, calling the island's safety a "red line." In an interview, Nakayama, Japan's deputy defence minister, urged Biden to take a similar line on Taiwan as outgoing President Donald Trump, who has significantly boosted military sales to the Chinese-claimed island and increased engagement.

  • 4 arrested in Mexico crash that killed current, ex-governor

    Four people have been arrested in connection with the 2018 crash of a helicopter that killed a central Mexican governor and her husband — who had preceded her as governor — authorities said Friday. The Agusta 109 helicopter crashed in flames 10 minutes after takeoff on Dec. 24 that year while carrying newly installed Puebla Gov. Martha Erika Alonso and her husband, former Gov. Rafael Moreno Valle, as well as three other people. The Puebla state prosecutor's office said the four suspects worked for a Rotor Flight Services, a company “related to the functioning of the aircraft,” It said the suspects were accused of culpable homicide, damage to another's property and false testimony.

  • How the Nazis co-opted Christmas

    In 1921, in a Munich beer hall, newly appointed Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to an excited crowd. According to undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters cheered when Hitler condemned “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross” and swore “not to rest until the Jews…lay shattered on the ground.” Later, the crowd sang holiday carols and nationalist hymns around a Christmas tree. Working-class attendees received charitable gifts. For Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, this combination of familiar holiday observance, nationalist propaganda and anti-Semitism was hardly unusual. As the Nazi party grew in size and scope – and eventually took power in 1933 – committed propagandists worked to further “Nazify” Christmas. Redefining familiar traditions and designing new symbols and rituals, they hoped to channel the main tenets of National Socialism through the popular holiday.Given state control of public life, it’s not surprising that Nazi officials were successful in promoting and propagating their version of Christmas through repeated radio broadcasts and news articles.But under any totalitarian regime, there can be a wide disparity between public and private life, between the rituals of the city square and those of the home. In my research, I was interested in how Nazi symbols and rituals penetrated private, family festivities – away from the gaze of party leaders.While some Germans did resist the heavy-handed, politicized appropriation of Germany’s favorite holiday, many actually embraced a Nazified holiday that evoked the family’s place in the “racial state,” free of Jews and other outsiders. Redefining ChristmasOne of the most striking features of private celebration in the Nazi period was the redefinition of Christmas as a neo-pagan, Nordic celebration. Rather on focus on the holiday’s religious origins, the Nazi version celebrated the supposed heritage of the Aryan race, the label Nazis gave to “racially acceptable” members of the German racial state.According to Nazi intellectuals, cherished holiday traditions drew on winter solstice rituals practiced by “Germanic” tribes before the arrival of Christianity. Lighting candles on the Christmas tree, for example, recalled pagan desires for the “return of light” after the shortest day of the year.Scholars have called attention to the manipulative function of these and other invented traditions. But that’s no reason to assume they were unpopular. Since the 1860s, German historians, theologians and popular writers had argued that German holiday observances were holdovers from pre-Christian pagan rituals and popular folk superstitions. So because these ideas and traditions had a lengthy history, Nazi propagandists were able to easily cast Christmas as a celebration of pagan German nationalism. A vast state apparatus (centered in the Nazi Ministry for Propaganda and Enlightenment) ensured that a Nazified holiday dominated public space and celebration in the Third Reich.But two aspects of the Nazi version of Christmas were relatively new. First, because Nazi ideologues saw organized religion as an enemy of the totalitarian state, propagandists sought to deemphasize – or eliminate altogether – the Christian aspects of the holiday. Official celebrations might mention a supreme being, but they more prominently featured solstice and “light” rituals that supposedly captured the holiday’s pagan origins. Second, as Hitler’s 1921 speech suggests, Nazi celebration evoked racial purity and anti-Semitism. Before the Nazis took power in 1933, ugly and open attacks on German Jews typified holiday propaganda. Blatant anti-Semitism more or less disappeared after 1933, as the regime sought to stabilize its control over a population tired of political strife, though Nazi celebrations still excluded those deemed “unfit” by the regime. Countless media images of invariably blond-haired, blue-eyed German families gathered around the Christmas tree helped normalize ideologies of racial purity. Open anti-Semitism nonetheless cropped up at Christmastime. Many would boycott Jewish-owned department stores. And the front cover of a 1935 mail order Christmas catalog, which pictured a fair-haired mother wrapping Christmas presents, included a sticker assuring customers that “the department store has been taken over by an Aryan!” It’s a small, almost banal example. But it speaks volumes. In Nazi Germany, even shopping for a gift could naturalize anti-Semitism and reinforce the “social death” of Jews in the Third Reich.The message was clear: only “Aryans” could participate in the celebration. Taking the ‘Christ’ out of ChristmasAccording to National Socialist theorists, women – particularly mothers – were crucial for strengthening the bonds between private life and the “new spirit” of the German racial state.Everyday acts of celebration – wrapping presents, decorating the home, cooking “German” holiday foods and organizing family celebrations – were linked to a cult of sentimental “Nordic” nationalism.Propagandists proclaimed that as “priestess” and “protector of house and hearth,” the German mother could use Christmas to “bring the spirit of the German home back to life.” The holiday issues of women’s magazines, Nazified Christmas books and Nazi carols tinged conventional family customs with the ideology of the regime.This sort of ideological manipulation took everyday forms. Mothers and children were encouraged to make homemade decorations shaped like “Odin’s Sun Wheel” and bake holiday cookies shaped like a loop (a fertility symbol). The ritual of lighting candles on the Christmas tree was said to create an atmosphere of “pagan demon magic” that would subsume the Star of Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus in feelings of “Germanness.” Family singing epitomized the porous boundaries between private and official forms of celebration. Propagandists tirelessly promoted numerous Nazified Christmas songs, which replaced Christian themes with the regime’s racial ideologies. Exalted Night of the Clear Stars, the most famous Nazi carol, was reprinted in Nazi songbooks, broadcast in radio programs, performed at countless public celebrations – and sung at home. Indeed, Exalted Night became so familiar that it could still be sung in the 1950s as part of an ordinary family holiday (and, apparently, as part of some public performances today!). While the song’s melody mimics a traditional carol, the lyrics deny the Christian origins of the holiday. Verses of stars, light and an eternal mother suggest a world redeemed through faith in National Socialism – not Jesus. Conflict or consensus among the German public?We’ll never know exactly how many German families sang Exalted Night or baked Christmas cookies shaped like a Germanic sun wheel. But we do have some records of the popular response to the Nazi holiday, mostly from official sources. For example, the “activity reports” of the National Socialist Women’s League (NSF) show that the redefinition of Christmas created some disagreement among members. NSF files note that tensions flared when propagandists pressed too hard to sideline religious observance, leading to “much doubt and discontent.” Religious traditions often clashed with ideological goals: was it acceptable for “convinced National Socialists” to celebrate Christmas with Christian carols and nativity plays? How could Nazi believers observe a Nazi holiday when stores mostly sold conventional holiday goods and rarely stocked Nazi Christmas books?Meanwhile, German clergymen openly resisted Nazi attempts to take Christ out of Christmas. In Düsseldorf, clergymen used Christmas to encourage women to join their respective women’s clubs. Catholic clergy threatened to excommunicate women who joined the NSF. Elsewhere, women of faith boycotted NSF Christmas parties and charity drives. Still, such dissent never really challenged the main tenets of the Nazi holiday. Reports on public opinion compiled by the Nazi secret police often commented on the popularity of Nazi Christmas festivities. Well into the Second World War, when looming defeat increasingly discredited the Nazi holiday, the secret police reported that complaints about official policies dissolved in an overall “Christmas mood.”Despite conflicts over Christianity, many Germans accepted the Nazification of Christmas. The return to colorful and enjoyable pagan “Germanic” traditions promised to revitalize family celebration. Not least, observing a Nazified holiday symbolized racial purity and national belonging. “Aryans” could celebrate German Christmas. Jews could not.The Nazification of family celebration thus revealed the paradoxical and contested terrain of private life in the Third Reich. The apparently banal, everyday decision to sing a particular Christmas carol, or bake a holiday cookie, became either an act of political dissent or an expression of support for national socialism.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Read more: * Hitler at home: How the Nazi PR machine remade the Führer’s domestic image and duped the world * How Charles Dickens redeemed the spirit of Christmas * Can astronomy explain the biblical Star of Bethlehem?Joe Perry has received funding from the German Academic Exchange Service and Georgia State University.

  • Boris Johnson 'totally capitulated' on fishing in trade deal, say EU diplomats

    Boris Johnson has "totally capitulated" on fishing in the EU trade deal negotiations, but both sides have compromised, EU diplomatic sources have claimed. On Thursday Mr Johnson finally accepted the bloc’s final offer of returning 25 percent of the value of fish caught in UK waters to British fishermen. It was a “big move”, sources said, because he had been demanding 35 percent of the value of the catch. French officials claimed that the British had made major last minute concessions. The UK and EU settled on a five and a half year transition period before annual negotiations over fishing opportunities would begin. There was satisfaction in Brussels at having forced the prime minister into the climbdown but anxiety he will not be able to sell the deal to hardline Brexiteers in his party. “It won’t be a total victory. It never is,” an EU diplomat said. “I am a little concerned that London has not got the landing rights for the deal with its constituents.” “Whatever happens will be presented as a great victory. The Europeans will yawn,” another source said before confidently predicting that Mr Johnson has the European Research Group of MPs “in his pocket”. “Every deal requires compromise and I do think the UK can compromise over fish as it is a short term arrangement anyway,” the first EU diplomat said. “If we didn’t have what we needed, it would be hard to see a deal coming together but a deal is never an all out rout.” The diplomat’s comments came as fishermen on both sides of the Channel bemoaned the deal that has been struck. Jim Portus, of the South Western Fish Producers' Organisation, said: “We are all sitting with our fingers crossed hoping for the best for January 1st. "Improved opportunities even a modicum of extra quotas and a staged transition would be welcome, so long as it is well defined and the EU can't wriggle out of it in a few years time." Frederic Cuvillier, the Mayor of Boulogne-sur-Mer, said: “ It is a relief for our fishermen, but what will be the impact on stocks? “Who, for example, will be handling the controls? And over what time?" "The only certainty today is that we need to find, during the transition period, more deals within the deal." Focus in Brussels is now switching to the approval process for the deal, which must be backed by EU leaders. That is expected to take place later this month in a video summit. Diplomatic sources said they expected leaders in Europe’s capitals to hold back from an enthusiastic celebration of the deal at this stage.

  • Human remains found at blast site of bomb-rigged vehicle playing message that it was about to explode

    Police believe the act was intentional

  • Erdogan says Turkey would like better ties with Israel, criticizes Palestine policy

    President Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey would like to have better ties with Israel, but criticized Israeli policy toward Palestinians as "unacceptable" and a "red line" for Ankara, adding that intelligence talks resumed between the two sides. The two countries have had a bitter falling out in recent years, despite strong commercial ties, expelling ambassadors in 2018. Ankara has repeatedly condemned Israel's occupation in the West Bank and its treatment of Palestinians.

  • Christmas in Florida: Chilly forecast, falling iguanas

    With unexpectedly cold weather in the forecast and pandemic-related curfews in some places, Florida is about to have a Christmas unlike any other in recent memory, and it may involve falling iguanas. The National Weather Service earlier this week warned that South Florida could experience the coldest Christmas Day in 21 years. Morning lows on Saturday could drop into the low 30s and 40s degrees Fahrenheit, the weather service said.

  • Royal Caribbean tries to block families suing over fatal tour to island of live volcano

    Royal Caribbean, the world's largest cruise company, is trying to prevent victims of the 2019 New Zealand volcanic eruption from suing in the US. Passengers from the Royal Caribbean ship Ovation of the Seas took a trip to White Island, a popular tourist site, last December, when a volcano suddenly erupted, killing 27 visitors and injuring 25 more. Ivy and Paul Reed, from the US state of Maryland, who suffered burns as a result of the eruption, and Australians Marie and Stephanie Browitt, who lost family members because of the eruption, filed separate lawsuits against Royal Caribbean claiming that the cruise line did not properly explain the dangers of visiting White Island. Peter Gordon, a lawyer for the Browitt family, told the Australian Broadcasting Company that Royal Caribbean should have known that the volcano could erupt before allowing its passengers to visit White Island.

  • Coronavirus: New York City orders international visitors to quarantine

    Foreign travellers who break the new rules will be fined $1,000 a day, as cases surge across the US.

  • India's Modi calls farmer protests over contested laws politically motivated

    India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that protests by farmers against three laws brought by his government were politically motivated, as he touted the success of an agricultural scheme launched last year. Thousands of farmers from several Indian states have been camped on the outskirts of New Delhi for over a month, blocking highways to demand that Modi's government repeal the farm laws passed in September that they say threaten their livelihoods. But Modi's virtual public address on Friday was not focused on the laws under contention.

  • Queen Elizabeth praises key workers in Xmas speech

    In her traditional pre-recorded Christmas Day address to the nation, the 94-year-old monarch repeatedly spoke of hope for the future whilst acknowledging millions of Britons would be unable to have their usual family celebrations this year. The Queen herself has had to eschew her traditional Christmas celebrations, and is spending the festive season quietly at Windsor Castle with her husband Prince Philip, 99. Usually, all the Windsors gather at her home on the Sandringham estate in eastern England. The walk to a nearby church for a Christmas Day service is a staple of the royal calendar. However, Britain is currently battling to curb the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus, with the number of new infections reaching record levels this week and the number of hospital admissions and deaths soaring. Much of the country has been placed under tight restrictions, and for London and the surrounding areas, households are not allowed to mix at all over Christmas, while for other areas there are strict curbs limiting contact to just a single day.

  • The Latest: France confirms case of new virus variant

    French health authorities have confirmed the country’s first case of the virus variant that prompted strict new lockdown measures in Britain and global travel restrictions. A French man living in England arrived in France on Dec. 19 and tested positive for the new variant Friday, the French public health agency said in a statement. The British announcement Dec. 19 prompted countries around the world to suspend flights from the U.K., and France banned all passengers and cargo from Britain for two days, causing massive traffic problems around the British port of Dover.

  • Dog crushed to death by owner during confrontation with mugger

    A dog was crushed to death by its owner after she was knocked over during a confrontation with a mugger in an “unprovoked and unacceptable” attack. Norfolk Terrier, Rufus was crushed while the woman tried to pull the thief off her husband. The man, 56 and his 36 year old wife were walking their two dogs in Westminster, central London, when they were approached by a man pushing a bike along the footpath. The man, who wore a face covering and gloves, stopped the pair before pulling the watch off the man's arm, causing scratches to his forearm. The pair began to struggle and it was at this point that the wife tried to pull the mugger away during the attack at 4.15pm in Spanish Place on August 4.

  • Half of Russians sceptical Kremlin critic Navalny was poisoned - poll

    Half of Russians believe that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was either not poisoned, as he and Western governments contend, or that his poisoning was stage-managed by Western intelligence services, a poll showed on Thursday. The poll, released by the Levada-Center, shows how hard it remains for Navalny to shape public opinion in Russia even as his case attracts wide media attention in the West and his own slickly-produced videos of what happened to him this summer rack up millions of views online. Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics, was airlifted to Germany for medical treatment in August after collapsing on a plane in Russia.

  • New round of Trump clemency benefits Manafort, other allies

    President Donald Trump pardoned more than two dozen people, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest wave of clemency to benefit longtime associates and supporters. The actions, in Trump's waning time at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president has granted clemency in the last week. The list from the last two days includes not only multiple people convicted in the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia but also allies from Congress and other felons whose causes were championed by friends.

  • Beaver found in Plymouth among first to be reintroduced to wild in Britain for 400 years

    A beaver rescued by police this week was among the first of its kind to be reintroduced to the wild in Britain for nearly 400 years The 20kg creature had escaped from a specially designed re-wilding enclosure near Poole Farm in Plymouth. Local officers say they were confronted with the “unusual sight” of the beaver at large on Monday and posted a photograph on social media of the runaway creature in the city. They tweeted yesterday: “An unusual sight for one of our crews on Monday night shift: Plymouth's resident beaver spotted out and about! “He has apparently been caught since and is back home for Christmas.” The male had been released into the wild at Forder Valley in November – the first in the city for 400 years. The Eurasian Beaver was originally caught in late September in the wild from the Tay Catchment in Scotland and was released as part of a nationwide trend to reintroduce beavers in the wild. The beaver’s behaviour and actions will now be monitored in the hope that its actions will reduce flooding further downstream and create habitats for wildlife in the Bircham Valley. This comes after a 25kg young male beaver was spotted in Italy for the first time in nearly 500 years, after it walked over the border from Austria or Slovenia into the Dolomites. The first clues that the rodent might be back on Italian soil were noticed by a hunting guide who spends his days roaming the mountains and forests. Forester Reinhard Pipperger had noticed at the time young trees had been felled along a stretch of the Sesto river in Northern Italy. The beaver was later photographed by a camera set up along the river by wildlife rangers.

  • I knew this Christmas was going to be awful. And then I saw my neighbor's Christmas lights.

    All of the symbolism of Christmas is designed to remind us that better days are coming. There is no better year to remember that than this one.

  • United, Delta passengers from Britain must show negative COVID-19 tests

    CHICAGO (Reuters) -United Airlines and Delta Air Lines are requiring all passengers on flights from the United Kingdom to the United States to present a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of departure. The decision follows the emergence of a highly infectious new coronavirus variant in Britain that has prompted many countries to shut their borders to travelers from there. Delta's policy, expanded from its decision on Monday to require the screenings on UK flights to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, is effective Dec. 24, while United's requirement begins Dec. 28.

  • Commander threatens to target Turkish forces in Libya

    A Libyan commander who launched an offensive last year to capture the capital Tripoli from the U.N.-recognized rival government threatened Thursday to use force against Turkish troops if Ankara doesn't stop interfering in the war-stricken North African country. Khalifa Hifter's comments came in response to the Turkish parliament's decision to extend for 18 months a law that allows the deployment of Turkish troops to Libya. Turkey has also been accused of sending thousands of Syrian mercenaries to Libya.