Trending Issues Today

The evacuation of passengers on the ferry that caught fire off the coast of Greece is trending. The death toll has risen to seven, Italy's coastguard said on Monday. The ferry was sailing from Patros in western Greece to Ancona in Italy carrying 478 passengers and more than 200 vehicles when a fire broke out in the early hours of Sunday. More than 200 people were still trapped on a burning ferry between Italy and Albania on Monday morning, despite Italian, Greek and Albanian crews working in rough, freezing conditions through the night to rescue them. Ships and helicopters fought choppy seas and strong winds in the dark in a race against time to rescue passengers still left aboard the Italian-flagged Norman Atlantic. The Italian coastguard said 251 of the 478 people on the ferry had been evacuated by early Monday. 

  An AirAsia Indonesia airliner flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has gone missing. Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at 06:24 local time (23:24 GMT Saturday) over the Java Sea. The plane, an Airbus A320-200, disappeared midway into the flight of more than two hours from the city of Surabaya. No distress call was made. Bad weather was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night.

Much of what’s been said about the actual content of “The Interview” has centered on the story of characters played by James Franco and Seth Rogen attempting to assassinate Kim Jong-un. But it turns out there’s an equally, if not more, surprising plot point: Eminem is gay. Eminem treats the whole thing very seriously, telling Franco’s character that he has been "playing gay peek-a-boo" with his fans, and has "pretty much been leaving a bread crumb trail of gayness" for his fans to follow back to the truth. You can watch the scene from Sony’s comedy here on Billboard.com , but don’t be surprised if it gets pulled down, soon.

Boxing Day is the 26th December and is a national holiday in the UK and Ireland. Arguments abound on the origins of the name Boxing Day; all of the answers here are relevant, so maybe it is all of them. A ‘Christmas Box’ in Britain is a name for a Christmas present. Boxing Day was a day off for servants and when they received a ‘Christmas Box’ from the master. The servants would also go home to give ‘Christmas Boxes’ to their families. A box to collect money for the poor was placed in Churches on Christmas day then opened the next day. Great sailing ships when setting sail would have a sealed box containing money on board for good luck. If the voyage were a success the box was given to a priest, opened at Christmas and the contents given to the poor.

  Thousands of people reported Christmas Day problems on the Xbox Live and Playstation gaming networks, as a band of hackers took gleeful credit. The networks, which allow users of the popular consoles to play the video games with a wider online community, first crashed on Wednesday evening and the problems persisted into Christmas Day, enraging many users — but especially those powering-up new machines from Santa Claus. Hours after Microsoft’s Xbox Live went down Wednesday , Sony’s PlayStation Network went  down , too. These are two giant networks that console gamers access to play their games online. It's especially bad timing since a lot of people are probably getting new PlayStations and Xboxes for Christmas.

Academy Award (R) winner Angelina Jolie directs and produces Unbroken, an epic drama that follows the incredible life of Olympian and war hero Louis "Louie" Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) who, along with two other crewmen, survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal plane crash in WWII-only to be caught by the Japanese Navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

The International Space Station (ISS) is among the greatest international cooperative endeavors in the history of engineering, science, and technology. The permanently crewed orbital laboratory enables scientific research supporting innovation on Earth and future deep space exploration . The platform’s external space and interior microgravity environment support fundamental and applied physical, chemical and biological investigations paving the way to profound discovery and commercial applications.