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In early December 1955, the phone rang at an air base in Colorado Springs. The officers on the watch floor of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) – who were defending the skies above the US and Canada – stiffened.

The Cold War was in full swing and tensions were running high.

The command’s director of operations Colonel Harry Shoup answered the call. On the other end was a child’s voice asking: “Is this Santa Claus?”

According to the colonel’s daughter Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank, and replied: “I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center. Who’s this?”

In response, the child started crying and asked if he was one of “Santa’s helpers”.

Col. Harry Shoup, the operations officer at NORAD on Dec. 24, 1955, answered a child's wrong-number call and began the tradition of NORAD tracking Santa. Shoup died March 14, 2009, yet the tradition he started decades ago continues to bring holiday cheer to millions of children around the world. Pic: David Bedard
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Colonel Harry Shoup. Pic: David Bedard

Terri van Keuren, whose father started the Santa Tracker
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Terri van Keuren was six years old when her father began the Santa Tracker tradition

The colonel then decided to play along, replying that he was indeed Santa Claus and mustering a convincing “ho-ho-ho”.

This surprise call started the nearly 70-year tradition of the Santa Tracker, which allows children around the world to track the whereabouts of Father Christmas via a livestream and a phone line answered by volunteers.

It is now run by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).

Nearly 1,000 volunteers cycled through the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, between 4 a.m. and 10 p.m. Dec. 24, 2022. Volunteers providing updated information on Santa's location and gifts delivered worked in two-hour shifts answering phone calls from children and adults located around the globe. Pic: Department of Defense/Chuck Marsh
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The NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, on Christmas Eve 2022. Pic: Department of Defense/Chuck Marsh

But how did a child seemingly get the phone number of a colonel in the US air force?

The American department store Sears had printed an advert in a local newspaper telling children they could call Santa, Terri explains.

“They had printed one digit wrong in the phone number. And it was dad’s top secret number.”

Pic: NORAD DVIDS
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Children can use a livestream to track Father Christmas as he delivers his presents. Pic: NORAD DVIDS

Colonel Shoup called the phone company and asked for a new number for his office.

Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was “ringing off the hook” and Colonel Shoup told his staff they were to answer the calls as Santa Claus.

In the story told by Terri, on 24 December that year her parents arrived at the base to deliver cookies to those on duty, and found the military establishment unusually festive.

A picture of a sleigh had been drawn by a map writer on plexiglass – which was used to mark where unidentified flying objects were located.

“Next thing they knew, dad was calling the radio station. ‘This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs. And we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh’,” says Terri.

Terri, who lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, was six years old when her father became the “Santa Colonel”. She says the NORAD Santa Tracker, which reaches millions of children around the world every year, is his “legacy”.

NORAD’s tracking of Santa is a military operation in itself beginning on 1 December.

Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, tells Sky News how the day unfolds on Christmas Eve.

“We have about a thousand people come together to set up the operations centre that is used to track Santa and that allows anyone to call in to check on his whereabouts”.

Pic: Charles Marsh
Image:
Pic: Charles Marsh

Volunteers are responsible for answering calls from tens of thousands of children around the world. In 2022, 78,000 calls were answered at Peterson Space Force Base.

For 10 years Terri was one of these volunteers. “I always wore a t-shirt that had a picture of my dad. It says: ‘My dad’s the Santa Colonel’.”

What’s next for the Santa Tracker? Terri says her father’s festive story is so famous she’s “had several requests to make a movie out of it”.

Head to Sky News’ YouTube and other social media channels to watch NORAD’s Santa Tracker and find out where he is in the world delivering presents.

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At least five killed in shooting in Jerusalem

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At least five killed in shooting in Jerusalem

At least five people have been killed in a shooting in Jerusalem, authorities have confirmed.

Footage showed dozens of people fleeing from a bus stop during the morning rush hour.

Paramedics who responded to the scene said the area was chaotic and covered in broken glass, with people wounded and lying unconscious on the road and a pavement near the bus stop.

Police said two attackers were “neutralised” soon after.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now holding an assessment with his heads of security.

A motive for the shooting has not yet been confirmed. Pic: Reuters
Image:
A motive for the shooting has not yet been confirmed. Pic: Reuters

Around 15 people were injured – with six in a serious condition – after it appeared two attackers boarded a bus and opened fire as it reached a major intersection at the northern entrance to Jerusalem, on a road that leads to Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.

Israeli Defense Force soldiers were dispatched and are searching the area for any other suspects. They are also searching several areas on the outskirts of Ramallah.

The bus with bullet holes in the windscreen. Pic: Reuters
Image:
The bus with bullet holes in the windscreen. Pic: Reuters

A spokesperson for Israeli emergency services, MDA, confirmed four deaths – a man about 50 years old and three men aged around 30.

The fifth victim, a woman about 50 years old, was confirmed at hospital.

Paramedics have evacuated from the scene other casualties in serious conditions with gunshot wounds, to hospitals in Jerusalem.

Several people with minor injuries from glass shards are being treated at the roadside.

The motive for the shooting and who carried it out, was not immediately clear.

The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in both the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel.

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Death cap mushroom killer Erin Patterson jailed for minimum of 33 years

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Death cap mushroom killer Erin Patterson jailed for minimum of 33 years

An Australian mother who murdered her estranged husband’s parents and aunt by feeding them a beef wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms has been jailed for life with a minimum of 33 years.

Erin Patterson, 50, lured her former parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, to lunch at her home in Leongatha, Victoria, on 29 July 2023.

Mrs Wilkinson’s husband, Reverend Ian Wilkinson, also ate the meal, which was served alongside mashed potatoes and green beans, but survived after receiving a liver transplant and spending months in hospital.

Patterson, a mother-of-two, had made the pastry dish with deadly death cap mushrooms, also known as amanita phalloides.

At the sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne, Justice Christopher Beale said the substantial planning of the murders and Patterson’s lack of remorse meant her sentence should be lengthy.

“The devastating impact of your crimes is not limited to your direct victims. Your crimes have harmed a great many people,” he said.

“Not only did you cut short three lives and cause lasting damage to Ian Wilkinson’s health, thereby devastating the
extended Patterson and Wilkinson families, you inflicted untold suffering on your own children, whom you robbed of their beloved grandparents.”

Pic: AP
Image:
Pic: AP

Patterson’s trial in Morwell, southern Australia, heard that she fabricated a cancer diagnosis to use as an excuse not to invite her children, pretending to want to discuss how to break the news to them after the meal.

The four guests fell ill immediately after eating her food. Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs Patterson died on 4 August, and Mr Patterson a day later.

Reverend Wilkinson spent seven weeks in hospital but survived.

Reverend Ian Wilkinson arrives at court. Pic: Reuters
Image:
Reverend Ian Wilkinson arrives at court. Pic: Reuters

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More details of mushroom case revealed

In his victim impact statement, he said the poisoned food meant he had to have a liver transplant and was left feeling “half alive”.

Patterson, who maintains her innocence and that she poisoned her victims by accident, also invited the father of her children, Simon Patterson, to the fatal meal.

Simon Patterson outside of court in May. Pic: AP
Image:
Simon Patterson outside of court in May. Pic: AP

He declined the invitation.

In his victim impact statement, Mr Patterson said of the couple’s children: “The grim reality is they live in an irreparably broken home with only a solo parent, when almost everyone else knows their mother murdered their grandparents.”

In July, Patterson was found guilty of murdering Don and Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson.

What makes death cap mushrooms so lethal?

The death cap is one of the most toxic mushrooms on the planet and is involved in the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide.

The species contains three main groups of toxins: amatoxins, phallotoxins, and virotoxins.

From these, amatoxins are primarily responsible for the toxic effects in humans.

The alpha-amanitin amatoxin has been found to cause protein deficit and ultimately cell death, although other mechanisms are thought to be involved.

The liver is the main organ that fails due to the poison, but other organs are also affected, most notably the kidneys.

The effects usually begin after a short latent period and can include gastrointestinal disorders followed by jaundice, seizures, coma, and eventually, death.

Previous poisoning attempts left husband ill

Following the guilty verdicts, more details of the case were revealed.

Mr Patterson said he had rejected the lunch invite “out of fear” as he believed his former partner had tried to poison him three times before.

After they separated in 2015, he stopped eating any food she had prepared, having become seriously ill after meals cooked by her.

Death cap mushrooms. Pic: iStock
Image:
Death cap mushrooms. Pic: iStock

Reverend Wilkinson also revealed he and the other three guests were served their food on large grey dinner plates, while Patterson served her portion on a smaller, tan-coloured plate.

The nine-week trial attracted intense interest in Australia – with podcasters, journalists and documentary-makers descending on the town of Morwell, around two hours east of Melbourne, where the court hearings took place.

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Trump says he’s ready to move to second stage of Russia sanctions after Moscow launches large aerial attack

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Trump says he's ready to move to second stage of Russia sanctions after Moscow launches large aerial attack

Donald Trump has said he is ready to move to a second stage of sanctioning Russia, just hours after Moscow launched the largest arial attack of the war so far.

At least four people have been killed, including a mother and a three-month-old baby, with more than 40 others injured, after Russia launched a bombardment of drones overnight.

While on his way to the final of the US Open tennis tournament, the president was asked if he was ready to move to the second stage of punishment for Moscow, to which he replied, “Yes”.

It echoes US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said additional economic pressure by the United States and Europe could prompt Putin to enter peace talks with Ukraine.

“We are prepared to increase pressure on Russia, but we need our European partners to follow us,” Treasury Secretary Scott told NBC News’ Meet the Press.

Sir Keir Starmer said the latest attack shows Vladimir Putin is “not serious about peace” as he joined other allies in condemning Russia’s actions.

The prime minister said the “brutal” and “cowardly” assault on Kyiv – which resulted in a government building catching fire – proved the Russian leader feels he can “act with impunity”.

Russia attacked Kyiv with 805 drones and decoys, officials said, and Ukraine shot down and neutralised 747 drones and four missiles, the country’s air force has said.

The attack caused a fire to break out at a key government building, with the sky above Kyiv covered in smoke.

Appeasement makes ‘no sense’

Polish premier Donald Tusk said the latest military onslaught showed any “attempts to appease” Putin make “no sense”.

“The US and Europe must together force Russia to accept an immediate ceasefire. We have all the instruments,” Mr Tusk said on Saturday.

Read more:
Putin’s warning to Western allies

Why fears of an attack on Europe are not ‘hysteria’

Meanwhile the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the Kremlin was “mocking diplomacy”.

Vladimir Putin reportedly wants control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine – known as the Donbas – as a condition for ending the war.

Russia occupies around 19% of Ukraine, including Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region it seized before the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But this attack comes after European nations pressed the Russian leader to work to end the war at a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing” – a group of countries led by France and Britain seeking to help protect Kyiv in the event of a ceasefire.

Some 26 of Ukraine’s allies pledged to provide security guarantees as part of a “reassurance force” for the war-torn country once the fighting ends, Mr Macron has said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is ready to meet Mr Putin to negotiate a peace agreement, and has urged US president Donald Trump to put punishing sanctions on Russia to push it to end the war.

Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
Image:
Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine

“The world can force the Kremlin criminals to stop the killings – all that is needed is political will,” he said on Sunday.

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