Author: staff
Brave winter swimmers gathered at Oranke Lake in Berlin on Christmas Day for a holiday tradition that mixes cheer with cold resolve. Dressed in Santa hats and festive costumes, the group walked together toward the water as onlookers watched from the frozen shore. The lake temperature stood at 1.5 degrees Celsius, but the greater test came from the air. Outside temperatures dropped to minus eight, making the moments before and after the swim the hardest part of the ritual. After the plunge, swimmers gathered on the bank to warm up, share laughter and sing Christmas carols. For many, the cold…
2025 has been a pretty iconic year for travel, with trends like experience-driven holidays and nostalgia tourism taking off. More people are also using artificial intelligence tools to book trips and streamline their planning. Wellness, adventure and nature travel saw a renewed boom globally as well, with more focus on sustainable tourism and places with raw natural beauty. Tripadvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards 2025 has highlighted the top destinations of the year in its Best of the Best Destinations ranking. It looks at the places which have received a high volume of outstanding reviews from the TripAdvisor community in the last…
Welcome to a special year-end edition of Declassified, a humor column Thanks for nothing, 2025. It was a burning dumpster fire of a year and one in which most of us wished we were either Suni Williams or Butch Wilmore. Williams and Wilmore were astronauts who were supposed to be in space for around 10 days but ended up staying for nearly 10 months, thus not getting back to Earth until March this year and missing almost three months of the misery. “Welcome back, guys. There’s good news and bad news: the good news is you’re home safe and sound;…
The US carried out “powerful and deadly” strikes on Thursday against Islamic State militants in northwestern Nigeria, US President Donald Trump announced. The attack marked a major escalation in an offensive that Nigeria’s overstretched military has struggled with for years, as it is battling multiple armed groups. Trump described the militants as “terrorist scum,” accusing the group of “viciously targeting and killing mostly innocent Christians”. Trump said the US military “executed numerous perfect strikes”, while the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) later said Thursday’s attack was a joint operation, part of an exchange of intelligence and strategic coordination between the two…
Updated: 26/12/2025 – 7:00 GMT+1 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond this December 26th, 2025 – latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel. … More
Every animal with a brain needs sleep – and even a few without a brain do, too. Humans sleep, birds sleep, whales sleep and even jellyfish sleep. Sleep is universal “even though it’s actually very risky”, says Paul-Antoine Libourel, a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon in France. When animals nod off, they’re most vulnerable to sneaky predators. But despite the risks, the need for sleep is so strong that no creature can skip it altogether, even when it’s highly inconvenient. Animals that navigate extreme conditions and environments have evolved to sleep in extreme ways – for example,…
Sonst prägt sie die politische Debatte mit ihren Fragen, heute antwortet sie: In dieser Feiertags-Sonderfolge dreht Gordon Repinski den Spieß um und bittet Sandra Maischberger zum Interview.Es geht um die Rolle des Journalismus in polarisierten Zeiten: Maischberger spricht über den Neutralitäts-Druck auf die Öffentlich-Rechtlichen. Sie erklärt, warum sie konstruktive Kritik für unverzichtbar hält, die Debatten auf z.B. X aber teils nicht mehr an sich heranlässt.Der Blick nach vorn fällt realistisch aus: Für 2026 und 2027 erwartet die Moderatorin disruptive Jahre. Angesichts der Rückkehr von Donald Trump und der geopolitischen Lage dämpft sie Hoffnungen auf ein schnelles Ende des Ukraine-Krieges, sieht…
Alex Davies-Jones, justice minister: Boxing Day in the Davies-Jones household consists of the 3 C’s: Chocolate, cheese and chaos! The house is full of people, we eat too much, drink even more, play games, and sing songs! I always host the annual Christmas quiz (which gets highly competitive) and we have fun. Chris Philp, shadow home secretary: It’s a massive lump of beef cooked on an outside BBQ. Slow cooked for tenderness and a bit of a blast at the end for a crispy outer coating. Dawn Butler, Labour MP: I make fried rice (rice and peas) with chopped up…
Moving forward, companies would do well to train their staff to be similarly alert when it comes to saboteurs and reconnaissance operators in different guises. We can’t know exactly what kind of subversive activities will be directed against our societies, but companies can teach their employees what to look for. If someone suddenly starts taking pictures of something only a saboteur would be interested in, that’s a red flag. Indeed, boards could also start requiring company staff to become more vigilant. If alertness can make the difference between relatively smooth sailing and considerable losses — or intense tangling with insurers…
By euronews with AP Published on 25/12/2025 – 21:47 GMT+1 King Charles III Christmas address: “A few weeks ago, the Queen and I were delighted to make a state visit to the Vatican, where we prayed with Pope Leo in a historic moment of spiritual unity. Together, we celebrated the jubilee theme, ‘Pilgrims of Hope’. Pilgrimage is a word less used today, but it has particular significance for our modern world and especially at Christmas. It is about journeying forward into the future while also journeying back to remember the past and learn from its lessons. We did this during the summer as…