Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has thanked US counterpart Donald Trump for intelligence that helped foil “acts of terrorism” on Russian soil, according to a Kremlin statement. Mr Putin and Mr Trump spoke on the phone on Sunday, it said.

The Kremlin said the information came via intelligence services, but it provided no further details. Russian media is reporting the discovery of a plot to attack St Petersburg over the new year period. Tass news agency says two Russian nationals have been arrested and plans to attack a mass gathering were seized, according to a spokesperson from the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency. Mr Putin and Mr Trump have spoken on the phone and in person various times since the latter took office.(BBC)…[+]

Pope Francis has called for people to put away their mobile phones at the dinner table and get talking, citing Jesus, Mary and Joseph as examples. They “prayed, worked and communicated with each other”, the pope told a packed St Peter’s Square on Sunday.

“We have to get back to communicating in our families,” Pope Francis said in his unscripted remarks. The Pope is an avid user of social media and often allows himself to be snapped with pilgrims for selfies.  “I ask myself if you, in your family, know how to communicate or are you like those kids at meal tables where everyone is chatting on their mobile phone … where there is silence like at a Mass but they don’t communicate,” the Pope said.

“Fathers, parents, children, grandparents, brothers and sisters, this is a task to undertake today, on the day of the Holy Family,” he added. This is not the first time the Pope – who boasts more than 18 million Twitter followers – has chided his followers for spending too much time glued to their devices, especially during Mass.

“At a certain point the priest leading the ceremony says ‘lift up our hearts’. He doesn’t say ‘lift up our mobile phones to take photographs’ – it’s a very ugly thing,” he said in 2017.(BBC)…[+]

Austrian mountain rescuers have dubbed the survival of a man in his twenties a “Christmas miracle” after an avalanche buried him in snow for five hours. Police were contacted shortly before 17:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Christmas Day by a man who said the 26-year-old had not returned from skiing. The man had managed to get through to the skier’s mobile phone but heard only “crackling noises” on the line.

The missing skier was located some two hours later. Rescuers traced him beneath a metre of snow on his electronic avalanche victim transceiver, which pinpointed the man on a slope on Mt Pleschnitzzinken in the north-western area of Upper Styria.

Transceivers are worn on the body and emit an electromagnetic signal. They can also be used in search mode to pick up signals from other devices.(BBC)…[+]

More than 235,000 people have fled from their homes in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, the UN says, as government forces step up their offensive on the area. The exodus happened between 12 and 25 December as fighting intensified.

Idlib in north-western Syria is the last major region held by rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad. The Russian-backed Syrian government has been bombarding Idlib since late November. An increase in air strikes and ground fighting since mid-December has accelerated civilian displacement from the area, UN humanitarian agency Ocha said in a report. Tens of thousands of families – including some already displaced numerous times during the civil war – have been heading north in trucks and private cars.

The government offensive had left the city of Maarat al-Numan and the nearby region in southern Idlib “almost empty”, Ocha said. Most of the displaced civilians are moving to cities and refugee camps in northern areas of Idlib and neighbouring Aleppo province.(BBC)…[+]