NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world a glimpse of the universe as it existed when the first galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from South America’s northeastern coast, opening a new era of astronomy. The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, hailed by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch base in French …

Hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation, marked Christmas on Saturday without homes, adequate food and water, electricity and cellphone connections after a powerful typhoon left at least 375 people dead last week and devastated mostly central island provinces. Elsewhere, New Zealanders are celebrating Christmas in the warmth of mid-summer with few restrictions, in one of the few countries in the world largely untouched by the omicron variant of COVID-19. Australia is marking the holiday amid a surge of COVID-19 cases, worse than at …

Despite a second year of travel restrictions because of COVID-19, the town of Bethlehem, the site of Jesus’ birth, is reviving its annual Christmas Eve celebration. “Last year, our festival was virtual, but this year it will be face to face with popular participation,” Bethlehem Mayor Anton Salman told the Associated Press. On a typical Christmas, the biblical town is a popular destination for tourists from around the globe. An average of 3 million tourists come each year. Much smaller crowds attended the holiday celebrations in Bethlehem on Friday, accompanied …