More books have been banned in US schools than ever before. Book burning next?

Alaska Airlines cancelled 24 flights on Sunday and Monday after flu-stricken pilots and flight attendants called in sick.

Alaska spokeswoman Bobbie Egan says about 270 passengers were affected by cancelled flights. Another 14 flights were cancelled Sunday due to bad weather.

Egan says a "very unusual" cold and flu season hit the airline's Pacific Northwest hub, and the entire region was affected.

Egan says pilots and flight attendants who were off-duty have volunteered to work while their colleagues are out sick.

The airline forecasts a less-busy Tuesday, and says it probably won't have to cancel any more flights because of illness.

As we reported on Tuesday, NSA leaker Edward Snowden will deliver Channel 4 UK's "Alternative Christmas Message," the network's annual response to the Queen's address. They aired on Christmas Day at 4:15 p.m. local time in England.

Snowden's remarks were filmed by Glenn Greenwald's film collaborator Laura Poitras, from an undisclosed location in Russia.


Full remarks transcribed below.

Hi and Merry Christmas. I'm honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain's George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information.

The types of collection in the book - - microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us - - are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance, and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.

For everyone out there listening, thank you and Merry Christmas.

Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Turkey demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid a widening corruption scandal rattling his government. There are reports of tear gas and clashes with police in Istanbul.

Over 5,000 people gathered in Istanbul's Kadikoy district and some 1,000 in the Besiktas district on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reports. Protesters have also gathered in the capital of Ankara, as well as in Izmir and other cities. Ruptly news agency says hundreds took to the streets of Istanbul.

Police in Istanbul have fired tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. At least four people have been arrested, according to Firat news agency.

Late on Wednesday, Erdogan announced a major cabinet reshuffle, replacing 10 key ministers. This came soon after the resignation of interior, economy, and environment ministers over a high profile corruption investigation. Resigned Environment Minister Erdogan Bayraktar turned against the Turkish leader, urging him to step down.

The scandal and ensuing feud between Erdogan and the judiciary have reignited anti-government protests against Erdogan's 11-year rule within the past week.

According to official science, Homo is the genus of human-like great apes, with only one surviving species today - 'Modern Human', or Homo Sapiens. Strange as it may seem, the great majority of the 7 billion or so members of this species that presently inhabit planet Earth believe themselves to be active creators of, and participants in, what they call a 'highly advanced civilization'.

Yet there remain a few members of this species who, unlike the majority of their fellow sapiens who have cast off their bothersome critical thinking capacities in favor of a sonambulistic approach to life, can see quite clearly that this particular 'highly advanced civilization' is in fact a society where, to paraphrase hypnotist Michel Ellner, "Everything is backwards, everything is upside down; doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom."

The illusion of the 'great advancement in civilization' aside, if we really take a look at what's going on in the world around us these days, it becomes difficult to make any sense of inter-human relationships, to say nothing about our relationships with the other species with which we share this planet. Official science routinely stretches credulity in the obtuse and often deceitful way that it dismisses the many bizarre and 'out of place' anthropological and archeological artifacts and remains that have been discovered all over the planet in recent decades. If mainstream science refuses to take all the available evidence into account in its attempt to come up with a theory of humanity's origins, how can we expect to ever understand the true position of our species within the larger animal kingdom on Earth?

An unidentified woman beat Christine Beckwith, of Lake Mary, Fla., in front of her daughter Sunday night. 'Dear Santa, Today my mom, Christine, got physically hurt by a woman. I want you to put her on the naughty list!' the girl wrote to Kris Kringle.

An African-America Santa Claus was shot in the back with a pellet gun during a toy giveaway in Washington, D.C. on Christmas Eve - and the whole thing was caught on video by a local news crew.

A WJLA photographer was interviewing the Santa Claus as he was waving to children on a Washington, D.C. street. The Santa then began screaming in pain.

"Somebody just shot me!" Santa says. "Something in my back. Ahh! Ahh! My back! Oh!"

According to WJLA, the pellet was still lodged in Santa's shoulder when he was taken to a nearby hospital. A "Grinch" character filled in to finish the toy giveaway.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly recently told children that the only real Santa Claus was white.

An 8-year-old Pennsylvania girl who inspired thousands in her community to sing Christmas carols outside her door died of leukemia on Wednesday, the Reading Eagle reported.

The family of Delaney Brown released a statement confirming her death, four days after an estimated 10,000 people converged outside her home to fulfill her wish of hearing Christmas carols, part of an Internet-fueled campaign that earned her and her family support.

"We are eternally grateful for all of the love kindness, prayers and support that we have received from people across the world," her family said in a statement. "You will never know how meaningful it was for all of you to rally around Laney."

Brown was diagnosed with a rare form of the disease in May 2013, and her condition worsened over the past week, despite having undergone five rounds of radiation therapy and stem cell therapy.

It was a Monday night in early June. Protesters will remember it as the night they celebrated the occupation of Istanbul's central Taksim Square and the adjacent Gezi Park after a weekend of clashes with the police in what was arguably the largest wave of protests in recent Turkish history.

But Hakan Yaman, neither a protester nor a political activist, remembers it as the night Turkish policemen tortured him on the street, gouging out his eye and left him for dead on a smouldering fire. Now he is fighting for justice.

Yaman, 38 - a minibus driver hurrying home from work - was trying to avoid the demonstrations when he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. "I walked fast to get home. The street was empty at that moment. Only one [water cannon] was there, waiting."

The jet of water hit him without warning, followed by a teargas canister to his stomach, from very close range. "I doubled over, I could not breathe," Yaman remembers. "Then around five policemen were coming towards me, but I was unable to move."

The police officers started to beat and repeatedly hit him on his head and face and he fell to the floor. "They continued hitting me very hard, with their batons, with their fists and I am not sure what else. Then one of them gouged my eye out with something sharp. It just burst and started bleeding."

Millions of Americans are facing hidden tax surcharges on their insurance premiums under President Barack Obama's healthcare law as well as new health-related taxes on their income tax bills, the New York Post reports.

Some health insurance companies are not informing patients about the Obamacare taxes, instead deciding to quietly pass them on to its customers. But Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama has revealed the taxes on its bills with a separate line item for "Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes."

According to the report quoting Kaiser Health News, the surprise taxes on one customer's bill was $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually, which increased the monthly premium from $322.26 to $345.40 for that person.

The two percent tax on customers for every health plan is expected to net about $8 billion for the government in 2014 and increase to $14.3 billion in 2018.

There's also a $2 fee per policy that goes into a new medical research trust fund called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. As for insurers, they have to pay a 3.5 percent user fee to sell medical plans on the HealthCare.gov website.

The Post says Obamacare supporters may point out that federal subsidies for low-income families will cover the taxes and pay a large part of the actual premiums.

However, there's also another Obamacare tax that people don't know about. Americans who have to buy medical devices like pacemakers, stents and prosthetic limbs will have to fork over a 2.3 percent medical device tax.

Another hidden expense will affect Americans who have to pay out a large share of their annual income for medical costs. Currently, Americans are allowed to deduct medical expenses higher than 7.5 percent of their incomes. But that figure leaps to 10 percent under Obamacare, which will cost taxpayers $15 billion over 10 years, says the Post.

For some Americans there will also be an increase in Medicare tax. Individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and families earning more than $250,000 will have 0.9 percent surtax over the existing 1.45 percent Medicare payroll tax.

Furthermore, these high-earning Americans will also pay an extra 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income, such as investment dividends, rental income and capital gains, adds the Post.