NSA leaker Edward Snowden delivered a Christmas message on British television today. Each year, Britain’s Channel Four broadcast what it calls an alternative to the Queen’s holiday message, mimicking her format and sometime playful, sometime serious way. As Larry Miller reports from London, Snowden’s statements today were very serious.

 

Snowden says today surveillance society goes well beyond anything George Orwell imaged. NSA technology gets more invasive. A child born today will never experience privacy.

 

They will never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.”

 

Snowden says the conversation going on today will determine the balance between the technology and the government they regulated. And he says if government really wants to know what people are doing and thinking, asking is always cheaper than spying. For NPR News, I am Larry Miller in London.

 

In South Sudan heavy fighting continues between two tribes that supported the country’s two competing politicians. They ignored the ceasefire that was proposed by the African Union. Meanwhile an AU delegation is heading to South Sudan’s capital Juba to try a negotiated political peace. NPR’s Gregory Warner is in Juba.

 

The African Union delegation includes the Kenyan president and Ethiopian prime minister. They will join other international diplomats trying to negotiate talks between South Sudan’s two most power politicians, President Salva Kiir and former vice President Riek Machar. A power struggled between the two men sparks to more than a week, a violence along ethnic lines that left thousands dead across the country. Some 45,000 people are taking shelter in UN compounds afraid to return to their homes. The United Nations voted to almost double its peacekeeping force to 12,500 troops for fear further ethnic violence around next year’s party elections. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Juba.

 

Officials at US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan say the compound was hit today by two rounds of mortar a rocket fire. They say all Americans are accounted for and no one was injured. Taliban militants claim they fired four rockets at the embassy.

 

This is NPR.

 

UPS says some of its holiday shipments are delayed because of heavy volume and bad weather in recent days. The company says the volume of packages being transported by air exceed its capacity. FedEx also delay getting shipment out. A spokesman says relative few are not being delivered in time. 

 

The Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count is underway across the country but in Utah its bird counts are very different nature. Wildlife official is finding unusually high number of dead and dying bald eagles. NPR’s Howard Berkes reports at least dozen have died from a mysterious disease. 

 

Utah wildlife officials are expecting necropsy results after the New Year from a government wildlife health lab in Wisconsin. Six of the body goes to find alive but suffering from debilitating disease that trigger tumors, paralysis seizure and death. Other eagles were found dead by hunters, farmers and homeowners, all within the general vicinity of the Great Salt Lake. Wildlife rehabilitation experts initially suspected the lead poisoning from shotgun bullets but so far none of birds are tested positive for lead. Avian cholera is also a possibility. It reflects other species of birds around Great Salt Lake where hundreds of eagles often spent the winter. Howard Berkes, NPR News, Salt Lake City.

 

At the Vatican today, Pope Francis celebrated Christmas in keeping with simple style that is smart to papacy so far. He wore a white cassock as he delivered his first Christmas message at St. Peter’s Basilica. Speaking in Italy, Francis prayed for peace which he called a daily commitment and for protection of Christians under attack, battered women and trafficked children.