Austrian mountain rescuers have dubbed the survival of a man in his twenties a “Christmas miracle” after an avalanche buried him in snow for five hours. Police were contacted shortly before 17:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Christmas Day by a man who said the 26-year-old had not returned from skiing. The man had managed to get through to the skier’s mobile phone but heard only “crackling noises” on the line.

The missing skier was located some two hours later. Rescuers traced him beneath a metre of snow on his electronic avalanche victim transceiver, which pinpointed the man on a slope on Mt Pleschnitzzinken in the north-western area of Upper Styria.

Transceivers are worn on the body and emit an electromagnetic signal. They can also be used in search mode to pick up signals from other devices.(BBC)…[+]

More than 235,000 people have fled from their homes in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, the UN says, as government forces step up their offensive on the area. The exodus happened between 12 and 25 December as fighting intensified.

Idlib in north-western Syria is the last major region held by rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad. The Russian-backed Syrian government has been bombarding Idlib since late November. An increase in air strikes and ground fighting since mid-December has accelerated civilian displacement from the area, UN humanitarian agency Ocha said in a report. Tens of thousands of families – including some already displaced numerous times during the civil war – have been heading north in trucks and private cars.

The government offensive had left the city of Maarat al-Numan and the nearby region in southern Idlib “almost empty”, Ocha said. Most of the displaced civilians are moving to cities and refugee camps in northern areas of Idlib and neighbouring Aleppo province.(BBC)…[+]

Astronomers are warning that their view of the Universe could be under threat. From next week, a campaign to launch thousands of new satellites will begin in earnest, offering high-speed internet access from space. But the first fleets of these spacecraft, which have already been sent into orbit by US company SpaceX, are affecting images of the night sky.

They are appearing as bright white streaks, so dazzling that they are competing with the stars. Scientists are worried that future “mega-constellations” of satellites could obscure images from optical telescopes and interfere with radio astronomy observations. Dr Dave Clements, an astrophysicist from Imperial College London, told BBC News: “The night sky is a commons – and what we have here is a tragedy of the commons.” The companies involved said they were working with astronomers to minimise the impact of the satellites.(BBC)…[+]