Staff Editor

(Reuters) – Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has no illusions about the hostile reception awaiting his team at Melbourne Cricket Ground but insists it will only spur the tourists in the second test against Australia starting tomorrow.

(Trinidad Express) Two months after he was found guilty of the 2005 murder of a San Juan resident, convict Darryl Charles-Bissoon scaled the walls of the Port of Spain prison yesterday morning and sprinted to freedom, despite desperate efforts by prison officers to recapture him.

VATICAN CITY,  (Reuters) – Pope Benedict used his Christmas message to the world today to say people should never lose hope for peace, even in conflict-riven Syria and in Nigeria where he spoke of “terrorism” against Christians.

JOHANNESBURG,  (Reuters) – Former South African president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela is looking much better after more than two weeks in hospital, President Jacob Zuma said today.

VATICAN CITY,  (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Roman Catholics into Christmas, on Monday urged people to find room for God in their fast-paced lives filled with the latest technological gadgets.

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s condition has “improved slightly” after a cancer operation in Cuba, the information minister said on Monday, amid doubts over whether the former soldier is in good enough health to continue governing.

(Jamaica Observer) The harsh economic climate has been cited as one of the factors driving an increase in Jamaican youths exchanging sex for money, according to the 2012 HIV/AIDS Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviour Survey (KABS).

JOHANNESBURG,  (Reuters) – Former South African President Nelson Mandela continues to respond to treatment more than two weeks after being taken to hospital in Pretoria and will remain there for Christmas Day, the presidency said today.

(Jamaica Gleaner) The Government is expecting to roll out the National Health Card before January 31 next year.

(Barbados Nation) An infant and two teenagers lost their lives yesterday after a car and a minibus collided, marring the Yuletide season just two days ahead of Christmas.

(Trinidad Express) People’s National Movement (PNM) public relations officer Faris Al-Rawi says UNC chairman Jack Warner has crossed a line in the way he criticised President George Maxwell Richards’ request for information from the Prime Minister on the Section 34 fiasco.

NEW DELHI,  (Reuters) – Indian authorities throttled movement in the heart of the capital today, shutting roads and railway stations in a bid to restore law and order after police fought pitched battles with protesters enraged by the gang rape of a young woman.

(Trinidad Express) Caribbean Airlines communications manager Clint Williams says the State-owned carrier has leased more than one Boeing 767-300 aircraft to get all of the 300 passengers stranded in New York since Friday back home.

KABUL,  (Reuters) – An Afghan woman wearing a police uniform today shot dead a civilian contractor working for Western forces in the police chief’s compound in Kabul, NATO said.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said Robin Van Persie was “lucky to be alive” after claiming the Dutchman was blasted “deliberately” in the head with the ball from point-blank range by Swansea’s Ashley Williams.

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Dozens of people were killed and many more wounded in a Syrian government air strike that hit a bakery where a crowd was queuing for bread today, activists said.

(Jamaica Observer) The Office of the Contractor General (OCG) says that the J$1.2 billion in cost overruns on Government projects last year was just the tip of the iceberg as the true figure could be “frightening”.

The police are investigating a fatal accident that occurred at about 2305h.

A Plaisance businessman who was shot twice last night in what family members and neighbours believe was a botched robbery, died about five minutes after being rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital.

(Jamaica Gleaner) While Sizzla Kalonji may not be one of the artistes gay lobby groups have called ‘reformed’, the reggae crooner has strongly rejected the olive branch from the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), offered to support Jamaican entertainers, who despite toning down their anti-gay rhetoric, have continued to come under attack from gay lobby groups abroad.