A red suit with white trim and a silky beard have long been Santa’s trademark style, but the jolly figure bringing holiday cheer around the world comes in many guises, much like the varied shapes and sizes of the Christmas presents he bears reut.rs/34bihSL 1/7
'My Christmas message to the world is to be kinder to everyone in a time when we are so isolated,' said Oliver Levi-Malouf, 22, who performs as a drag queen Santa at The Imperial Hotel in Sydney 2/7
'While you're at it, do something nice for a total stranger,' is the advice of Dana Friedman, who has been a Santa since wanting to hearten first responders and their families after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York
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'I’ve never heard of a Christmas where Santa Claus didn’t appear,' says Japanese mambo musician Paradise Yamamoto, who has been a Santa for 23 years, and takes an annual certification test he says is no walk in the park
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'I will not visit children who do not respect their mother and father, who have not taken care of themselves during COVID,' warns children’s theatre actor and director Alejandro Zelayaran. He will don a face shield when he distributes gifts at an orphanage in Mexico City 5/7
'Get on the phone, send messages, it doesn’t cost much with the internet,' says Limachem Cherem who runs a school for Santas in Rio de Janeiro. He will be spending more time in a studio this month, raising children’s spirits with recorded messages and live video chats 6/7
From Lebanon to Nigeria, Santas unite in a year decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. Here are Christmas wishes from around the world reut.rs/3gR6tdu 7/7
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In a crowded Wuhan beer hall, Zhang Qiong wipes birthday cake from her face after a food fight with her friends. 'I feel like I'm living a second life,' the textile worker who lives in the city says reut.rs/2KA2GVW 1/6
Outside, maskless partygoers spill onto the streets, smoking and playing street games with toy machine guns and balloons. Nightlife in Wuhan is back in full swing almost seven months after the city lifted its lockdown 2/6
The revival of the city's hard-hit nightlife economy offers a glimpse into a post-pandemic lifestyle that many hope will become a reality in 2021, after the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines 3/6
Q2: The International Criminal Court refused to look into the Uighur situation in China as China is not a party to the Rome Statute setting up the ICC.
Is Myanmar a party to that statute and is there any chance of politicians being prosecuted?
As diplomats gathered at the African Union’s headquarters earlier this year to prepare for its annual leaders’ summit, employees of the international organization made a disturbing discovery. Someone was stealing footage from their own security cameras reut.rs/34fxDG0
Acting on a tip from Japanese cyber researchers, the AU discovered that a group of suspected Chinese hackers had rigged a cluster of servers in the basement of an administrative annex to quietly siphon surveillance videos from across the campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital
The security breach was carried out by a Chinese hacking group nicknamed 'Bronze President,' according to an internal memo reviewed by @Reuters. It said the affected cameras covered 'AU offices, parking areas, corridors, and meeting rooms'
A year into the coronavirus epidemic, a Japanese retailer has come up with a new take on the theme of facial camouflage - a hyper-realistic mask that models a stranger’s features in three dimensions reut.rs/3gT8Igx by Akira Tomoshige 1/5
Shuhei Okawara’s masks won’t protect you or others against the virus. But they will lend you the exact appearance of an unidentified Japanese adult whose features have been printed onto them 2/5
The masks will go on sale early next year for $950 apiece at his Tokyo shop, Kamenya Omote, whose products are popular as accessories for parties and theatrical performance 3/5
Ten years ago, a fruit seller set himself ablaze in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid after an altercation with a policewoman about where he had put his cart. Word of Mohamed Bouazizi's fatal act of defiance quickly spread, sparking nationwide protests reut.rs/3nlc3Yn 1/4
The demonstrations eventually toppled Tunisia’s long-serving leader and helped inspire similar uprisings across the region - the so-called 'Arab Spring'. Huge protests broke out in Egypt and Bahrain, governments fell and civil war engulfed Libya, Syria and Yemen 2/4
Tunisians are now free to choose their leaders and can publicly criticize the state. Yet for all the chaos they have been through, many people look back on the events of 2010 and regret that their dreams remain unfulfilled reut.rs/3nlc3Yn 3/4
Usama Aminu was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape when gunmen abducted more than 300 pupils from his school in northwestern Nigeria reut.rs/3mrehEl 1/5
‘When I decided to run they brought a knife to slaughter me but I ran away quickly,’ Aminu said as he described how he had been in bed at the all-boys school in Kankara when he heard gunshots on Friday night 2/5
The attackers, armed with AK-47s, threatened groups who tried to leave their dormitories at the Government Science secondary school. According to Katsina Governor Aminu Bello Masari on Sunday, 333 students remained missing 3/5