Promised Land: Just days after the UN Security Council denounced Israel for building settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, the government said it is moving ahead to build thousands more homes on disputed land. The city of Jerusalem said it plans to approve 600 new housing units in the first phase of developing 5,600 homes in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem.

In response to the UN vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Israel is a country with national pride, and we do not turn the other cheek.” He doesn’t have so much national pride that he refuses to accept $3.4 billion a year in military aid from the US.

It’s Political: President Obama told his former senior advisor David Axelrod in a meeting that be believes if he’d been running a third time Americans would have rallied once again behind his vision. “I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama said in an interview for the “The Axe Files” podcast.

Donald Trump tweeted, “President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”

World: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Hawaii yesterday to visit the memorial that honors the US sailors and Marines killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December, 7, 1941. He’s the first Japanese prime minister to visit the actual memorial. Shigeru Yoshida went six years after the war, but the Arizona memorial had not yet been built.

Speed: French sailor Thomas Coville has beaten the record for sailing around the world alone without stopping by eight days. The 48-year-old Coville did it in a trimaran in 49 days, 3 hours, 7 minutes and 38 seconds. “With the speeds you reach, you’re always on a razor’s edge,” he told Yachts and Yachting Magazine.

So much for the leisurely sport of sailing.

Greed: Thieves broke into a Manhattan fur shop in the early hours of Christmas Eve and scooped up armloads of expensive fur coats. The Dennis Basso store on Madison Ave. is where the rich and famous shop for furs. But the thieves were the most discriminating. They didn’t settle for mink; they took only the sables, one of them worth $200,000.

The Obit Page: S. Newman Darby, a sign painter credited with sticking a mast and sail on a surfboard and inventing the sport of windsurfing, has died at age 88. Darby tried to patent his invention and go into production, but was drained by legal fees. He was surpassed by two other men, Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer, who invented what became known as the Windsurfer.

>Vera Rubin, an astronomer whose work helped lead to the discovery of what’s known as “dark matter,” has died at age 88.

Rubin observed that the outer edge of the Andromeda Galaxy was rotating at the same speed as its inner matter, defying Newton’s Laws of Motion. Objects at the center should move faster.

Rubin eventually attributed the phenomenon to the existence of dark matter spread throughout the galaxy, equalizing the speed of rotation from center to edge. Dark matter, which cannot be seen and is little understood, was previously only a theory.

Early in her career she met resistance in the male-dominated world of science. But Rubin was a steadfast feminist who once solved the problem of having no ladies room by cutting out a paper skirt and pasting it on the male figure on the men’s room door.

The Amazing Trump: Never shy to shine his own spotlight, Donald Trump tweeted yesterday, “The world was gloomy before I won – there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!” Well then, the world’s problems are solved.

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