UNITED KINGDOM
Astronaut misdials
Anyone can dial a wrong number, but it is not often done from outer space. British astronaut Tim Peake tweeted an apology on Christmas Day from the International Space Station after calling a wrong number. “I’d like to apologize to the lady I just called by mistake saying: ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ — not a prank call — just a wrong number,” he wrote. The 43-year-old former army helicopter pilot did not say who he was calling. Since he is Britain’s first publicly funded astronaut and the first Briton to visit the space station, millions of Britons have been following his mission closely. Peake has also used Twitter to send Christmas greetings.
IRAN
Jason Rezaian allowed visit
Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post correspondent who has been incarcerated in Iran since July last year, was permitted an extended visit with his wife and mother on Friday in what appeared to be a Christmas gesture by Iranian authorities. Rezaian, 39, a California native, has been accused of espionage and other hostile acts, charges that he and his supporters say are unfounded. His mother, Mary Rezaian, and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, shared a home-cooked meal with him at Evin Prison in Tehran, according to an account Mary Rezaian relayed to her other son, Ali Rezaian, in the US. “It was the longest meeting with him since she arrived last December,” Ali Rezaian said in an e-mail. Martin Baron, the Post’s executive editor, said in a statement that he welcomed the gesture, but said Iran should release Rezaian “and allow him a return to life as a free man who can spend time with his family where and whenever he pleases.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Medics top Justin Bieber
A choir of doctors and nurses beat Justin Bieber to the Christmas No. 1 spot in Britain’s pop music chart on Friday after the heartthrob urged his fans to buy their song. The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir’s charity single, A Bridge Over You, outsold Bieber’s Love Yourself to snatch the coveted festive top spot. That came after Bieber wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “So for 1 week it’s ok not to be #1. Let’s do the right thing & help them win. It’s Christmas. @Choir_NHS good luck.” The southeast London-based choir is made up of staff who work for the state-funded National Health Service. Their song is a mash-up of Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel and Coldplay’s Fix You. Harriet Nerva, a junior doctor in the choir, decided to start a social media campaign to get the song to No. 1 after a tough day at work. “A patient with cancer that I had been looking after for quite a number of weeks died,” she told the Guardian newspaper. “I was listening to the song and it dawned on me that a great way of translating how I was feeling and how proud I was to work for the NHS would be getting [the song] to No. 1.”
HAWAII
‘Hokulea’ to cross Atlantic
The Polynesian voyaging canoe that is in the middle of its round-the-world journey has left South Africa for Brazil. Hawaii News Now reports (http://bit.ly/1RKkrxr) that the crew of the Hokulea set sail on Thursday from Cape Town. The crew plans to stop at the island of St Helena, located in a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean about midway between Africa and South America. This is to be the first time the Hokulea will cross the Atlantic Ocean. The double-hulled canoe left Hawaii last year, and its crew members are sailing without modern navigation equipment.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion