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Bethlehem Lights up Christmas Tree for First Time Since Gaza War

People gather during the lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony at the Manger Square, next to the Church of Nativity in the background, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, 06 December 2025. (EPA)
People gather during the lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony at the Manger Square, next to the Church of Nativity in the background, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, 06 December 2025. (EPA)
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Bethlehem Lights up Christmas Tree for First Time Since Gaza War

People gather during the lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony at the Manger Square, next to the Church of Nativity in the background, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, 06 December 2025. (EPA)
People gather during the lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony at the Manger Square, next to the Church of Nativity in the background, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, 06 December 2025. (EPA)

Christmas cheer returned to the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ on Saturday as Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank lit up a tree for the first time since the war in Gaza began over two years ago.

Covered in red and gold baubles, the Christmas tree standing meters away from the Church of the Nativity on Manger Square has become a symbol of hope.

At the end of a two-hour ceremony, the tree was illuminated to cheers, its yellow lights twinkling and a bright red star on top shining against the clouded night sky irradiated by a luminescent, almost full moon.

It is the first time the city has held the usual celebrations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.

“It’s like a symbol for resilience,” said 27-year-old Abeer Shtaya, who works at Al-Zaytoonah University of Science and Technology in Salfit in the West Bank.

She had traveled 100 kilometers (60 miles) with a group of the university’s students because “we want to celebrate and be with our brothers and sisters in Bethlehem to enjoy this day.”

“It’s a message for the world that it’s calm,” Mike Shahen, 43, said at his ceramic store on the square, after a handful of visitors came in for purchases.

Thousands of people attended, including Christians and Muslims, and many who traveled from Palestinian territories and Israel -- some from even further afield -- to enjoy the festive spirit return.

Nuns could be seen watching from one roof, while many families including small children filled balconies and roofs to catch a glimpse of the tree lit up.

Sounds of laughter filled the air as many could not help but smile despite moments of rain.

“This event didn’t happen for the last two years because of the war and it’s quite emotional after two years of nothing but war and death,” said 50-year-old Liyu Lu, who had traveled from northern Israel, close to the border with Lebanon.

Originally from China but now living in Israel for decades, she was with a group including Gary Lau, a traveling businessman and Christian staying in Jerusalem for the past couple of months.

“Being here, with the festivities, is something very nice and special,” Lau, 51, said, adding he was “taking in the atmosphere.”

For the past two years, Bethlehem has celebrated Christmas in a more somber manner, with no major public festivities.

Tentative return

Christian pilgrims, especially from Asia, South America and eastern Europe have, however, slowly returned in the past few months.

Fabien Safar, guide and director of Terra Dei which organizes pilgrimages to the Holy Land, said a few small groups would come for Christmas this year and he already saw some bookings for 2026.

Safar expected a real recovery in 2027 but “this obviously depends on how the situation evolves” in Gaza and Lebanon.

Despite a November 2024 ceasefire that was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and militant group Hezbollah, Israel has kept up strikes on Lebanon.

Pilgrims “remain afraid because there’s no official end to the war” in Gaza, Safar said, adding they were also worried about the situation in Lebanon.

‘Worse than COVID’

But it has all taken a toll on Bethlehem, which had only just cheered the return of tourists in 2022 after the COVID-19 pandemic, before the war in Gaza broke out.

Bethlehem’s economy relies almost completely on tourism.

“Covid was bad but nothing like the last two years,” said Shahen from the ceramic store.

Many visitors from Israel and the Palestinian territories spent hours on the road to reach Bethlehem including musician Lu.

She woke up at 6 am to get a bus at 7 am with a large group. They arrived at 12:30 pm, she said, without any trouble.

War isn’t the only reason for Bethlehem’s woes.

Since the 2023 Hamas attack, it is more difficult to travel around the West Bank with long queues on the roads with Israeli military checkpoints.

Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has also surged since the Gaza war. It has not stopped despite the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas that began this October.

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Varieties

Glasgow Building Fire Closes Scotland’s Busiest Train Station and Disrupts Rail Services

Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)
Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)
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Glasgow Building Fire Closes Scotland’s Busiest Train Station and Disrupts Rail Services

Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)
Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)

A major fire in the heart of Glasgow crippled Scottish train services Monday as firefighters worked to douse the blaze that destroyed a four-story building near Scotland's busiest railway station.

Glasgow Central Station was closed and all travel to, from and through the station was expected to be disrupted, National Rail said. There was no estimate when the station would reopen.

The fire broke out Sunday in a vape shop on Union Street, next to the station. It burned through the night and part of the building that dates back to 1851 collapsed.

Overnight footage of the blaze showed the building and its dome-like roofing structure completely engulfed in flames. That section of roofing later appears to have collapsed.

There were no reported casualties, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said.

Varieties

World’s Oldest Icebergs is Nearly at an End

 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 
 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 
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World’s Oldest Icebergs is Nearly at an End

 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 
 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 

The story of one of the world’s oldest icebergs is nearly at an end, after a breathtaking 40-year journey that has captivated scientists.

The iceberg, known as A23a, was once the largest on Earth, covering an area more than twice the size of Greater London, according to BBC.

But after a path full of twists and turns, A23a has melted, fractured and spectacularly disintegrated over the past year.

Now, far from the icy seas of Antarctica, what’s left of A23a is being eaten away by warmer waters. It’s in its death throes, not expected to last more than a matter of weeks.

All icebergs melt eventually, but scientists have been looking at how it's disintegrated for clues about how other parts of Antarctica might respond as the climate changes.

“It’s been an extraordinary journey,” said Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. “But it is on its last legs now.”

This is the story of A23a’s final months.

But first we have to go back to 1986. That year, a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl power plant in what is now northern Ukraine, Gary Lineker won the golden boot at the Fifa World Cup in Mexico, and Whitney Houston received her first Grammy award.

Away from the world’s gaze, the Filchner Ice Shelf - a massive floating tongue of ice extending from the Antarctic continent and into the Weddell Sea - was changing dramatically. One of the icebergs to break off - or calve - was A23a, then about 4,000 sq km.

It soon became anchored in the muds of the Weddell Sea, where it remained stuck for more than 30 years. It wasn’t until 2020 that scientists noticed signs that A23a was on the move again.

While it’s likely icebergs have lived longer in the Earth’s distant past, A23a is thought to be the oldest iceberg in the world today, at least among those picked up by satellites and tracked by scientists.

“Its journey is really pretty impressive, just for sheer longevity,” said Dr Christopher Shuman, a retired scientist formerly with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in the US. He likens tracking its path to watching a TV drama “where you don't know what you're going to see next.”

As A23a moves across the vast South Atlantic Ocean, it can be hard to grasp its scale - but if you could drop it into the English Channel its size would be much more striking.

At the start of 2025 - even after 39 years - A23a was still a collosus. It would have almost stretched between the Isle of Wight and Normandy in France. Now, it wouldn’t even reach halfway from Dover to Calais.

“To watch it be so stable for so long, and then just disintegrate over one year, has been fascinating,” said Dr Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, who was born the same year as A23a.

Over the past two weeks A23a has been carried by ocean currents in a near-complete clockwise loop. This could be its final dance.

Recent satellite images suggest further hydrofracturing of what was left of it - “tantalizing evidence of sudden disintegration”, according to Prof Adrian Luckman of Swansea University.

While other icebergs have travelled further in the past, A23a is the furthest north of any Antarctic iceberg being tracked by scientists today. It’s closer to the equator than London.

The prolonged exposure to sea warmth means the berg’s remains will inevitably fragment and eventually melt away, even though the Southern Hemisphere winter is on the horizon.

By 5 March, A23a had shrunk to approximately 180 square km, although estimates can vary slightly.

Once it gets to roughly 70 square km, scientists will stop tracking it. That moment’s not far away, according to Luckman.

“All traces will probably have disappeared in a matter of weeks now, at most,” Luckman said.

 

 

 

Varieties

Digital Reconstruction Reveals Face of ‘Little Foot,’ A 4 Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor

The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 
The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 
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Digital Reconstruction Reveals Face of ‘Little Foot,’ A 4 Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor

The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 
The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 

Scientists can now come face to face with an early human ancestor nicknamed Little Foot who lived 3.67 million years ago, thanks to digital reconstruction technology, according to CNN.

Renowned paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke identified four tiny bones in the University of the Witwatersrand’s museum collection and went on to discover Little Foot’s nearly pristine fossil in the 1990s in the Sterkfontein Caves northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Full excavation of the remains took a painstaking 20 years, but it was worth it.

At 90% intact, the specimen is the most complete known skeleton belonging to Australopithecus, chimpanzee-like ancestors who were able to walk upright on two feet but also adept at climbing trees to escape from predators like saber-toothed cats.

The skeleton represents the oldest evidence of human evolution in southern Africa, said Dr. Amélie Beaudet, an honorary researcher in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who has studied the fossil unearthed from the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site for years.

However, Little Foot’s skull, which became crushed as surrounding cave sediment grew heavier and shifted over time, has been difficult to study. The skull distortion was so extensive that physical reconstruction wasn’t possible.

Now, Beaudet and her colleagues have digitally rearranged the facial bones to their rightful places, providing a clearer look at Little Foot’s face — and hinting at features that may be shared across the human family tree.

“Only a handful of Australopithecus fossils preserve an almost complete face, making Little Foot a rare and valuable reference point,” said Beaudet, lead author of the study published Monday in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol, in a statement. “Little Foot’s face preserves key anatomical regions involved in vision, breathing and feeding, and its skull will offer further key elements for understanding our evolutionary history.”

Little Foot’s fossilized remains left South Africa for the first time so researchers could capture precise images of the inner structures of her face, which had never been seen.

The skull was shipped to England so it could go through high-resolution scanning at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.

The size of Little Foot’s face fell between that of a gorilla and an orangutan, while the shape was closer to what is seen in orangutans and bonobos.

The team was surprised to find that the face size, as well as the shape and measurements of her eye sockets, were also more similar to the East African Australopithecus fossils, despite the fact that Little Foot was found in South Africa.

Little Foot’s skeleton is 50% more complete than the famed Lucy fossil, found in Ethiopia in 1974 by paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray.

Next, the team wants to use digital reconstruction methods to correct deformation on other parts of the skull, such as the braincase, to reveal insights about the brain size of Little Foot — and potentially unlock clues about the cognitive abilities of our early human ancestors.