December 25, 2022 UPDATE

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 25.12.2022, 18:12

Christmas.
Christians are celebrating Christmas, the birth of Christ. In his Christmas
service at the Patriarchal cathedral, Patriarch Daniel, the head of the
Romanian Orthodox Church, spoke about how important it is to give. The holiday
of the Nativity 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.
In his Christmas message delivered
on Sunday from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Pope
Francis called for an end to what he described as the senseless war in
Ukraine. Let us also see the faces of our Ukrainian brothers and
sisters, who are experiencing this Christmas in the dark and cold, far from
their homes due to the devastation caused by 10 months of war,
the pontiff also said. 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, the Pope said.

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.

Weather.
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)