LONDON – For decades, speculating on who will top the music charts on Christmas Day has been as much a part of the holiday build-up for many Brits as decorating the tree or wondering if there will be a white Christmas. 

There’s endless discussion in the media, bookmakers offer bets on the outcome and people gather around the office water cooler discussing what song they think will win the  much-coveted number one prize. 

However in recent years, the game has been somewhat spoiled. For the past five years, the song released by the winner of the popular British talent show the “X-Factor,” a TV show as popular as “American Idol” in the U.S., has topped the chart.

With guaranteed TV exposure and the guiding hand of the show’s omnipotent host Simon Cowell, the ballad (it’s always a ballad) sung by a pretty face, inevitably outsells all its rivals.

This year it seemed no different as Joe McElderry, an angelic-looking 18-year-old with a toothy smile who has been favorably compared to the American actor Zac Efron, released his song, “The Climb.” It’s the kind of soaring ballad that could provide the soundtrack for many a Disney film.

Music fans however said enough was enough and launched an Internet campaign to end The “X-Factor” and Cowell’s dominance over the Christmas charts. 

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HAVANA – No record store here has ever sold their music, and before Sunday, no one in the country had ever seen the band live. Yet for decades Cubans have loved Kool and the Gang, seemingly unconditionally.

Cuba filmmaker Gloria Rolando said the band’s funky sound provided the soundtrack for her generation’s coming of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. And even though there was a brief period in the 1960s when the communist government outright banned American music and frowned on it during the subsequent decade when it was rarely heard on government airwaves, Rolando remembers K&G’s music “playing everywhere.”

“It was a period of time that we didn’t listen openly, in public, but the people never stopped listening to good American music. There were always underground ways.”  

VIDEO: Kool and the Gang celebrate good times in Cuba

She recalls exercising at home to K&G and dancing to the music at teen parties. “The music made you happy when you were down, told you to celebrate life,” Rolando said.

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CAIRO – Once upon a time, Mohamed ElBaradei was Egypt’s favorite son. He was extolled in the media as his achievements mounted.

The nation looked on proudly as he was elected three times to the post of director general of the powerful International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), admired his courage when he publicly disputed the U.S. rationale behind the invasion of Iraq, and applauded his success as a national victory when he and the IAEA won the Nobel Peace Prize for striving to prevent the spread of nuclear energy for military use. In recognition, he was awarded the highest accolade in Egypt, the Nile Medal.

Caren Firouz / Reuters file

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the IAEA, speaks during an agency press conference in Tehran on Oct. 4, 2009.

But once he stepped down from the IAEA and stated publicly he would be willing to run for president in Egypt’s 2011 election, a position held by President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak for the past 28 years, his most vocal supporters began a campaign of vilification. 

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