Новости за 24.12.2016

A nephew of Anis Amri, the Tunisian man believed to be responsible for this week's deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market, was among three people arrested in Tunisia on Saturday and held on "suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization and connections with terrorist offenses." The nephew has not been named by authorities.

A Louisiana appeals court this week tossed out a sentence of life without parole given to a man named Walter Johnson for stealing $15 from a bait vehicle set up by police to catch petty thieves.

This week's presidential address saw President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sending out their final Christmas greetings as First Family. After a giggly throwback clip of their very first Christmas message, the Obamas reminisced about policy triumphs of the last eight years — and the 200,000 holiday cookies White House pastry chefs have baked in that time — before turning to the subject of Christmas itself.

In 1955, a Sears advertisement mistakenly printed a top secret military phone number in an ad inviting local children to call Santa Claus. But when a little boy got through to Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, he played along, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Santa's trip around the world every year since.

A New York Police Department squad raided a Brooklyn home on Thursday and arrested the whole family. After handcuffing them, an NYPD officer took a Snapchat photo and shared it with the caption "Merry Christmas Its [sic] NYPD." The image — plus a second picture captioned "Warrant sweeps its [sic] still a party" — showed up in Snapchat's New York City story, visible to anyone in the NYC area.

The Nigerian army on Friday successfully drove Boko Haram militants from their last stronghold in the Sambisa Forest, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhar announced Saturday, a major victory against the terrorist organization that kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014, nearly 200 of whom remain missing.

The FBI issued a warning to local law enforcement Friday that the Islamic State has urged supporters in the United States to attack holiday gatherings this weekend, including churches celebrating Christmas. The warning came after ISIS-linked websites posted a list of churches, but the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security emphasized there are no known, credible threats against any congregations.

1.

The United Nations Security Council on Friday voted in favor of a resolution against Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. The U.S. did not use its veto, as President-elect Donald Trump and several senators hoped, and instead abstained from voting either way. The abstention marks a break from Washington's typical position as "Israel's sturdiest shield," The New York Times reported, indicating the Obama administration's frustration with the difficulty settlement-building poses to a two-state solution. Читать дальше...

Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher suffered a cardiac episode on a London to Los Angeles flight Friday and was hospitalized for emergency treatment in an intensive care unit on landing in California midday.

**Get the best political cartoons delivered to your inbox with our free daily cartoon newsletter. Sign up here.**

It's the middle of summer and the 10-story atrium at the Chateau on the Lake hotel is filled with Santas.