Harold Pinter, Nobel-Winning Playwright, Dies at 78  —  Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday.  He was 78 and lived in London.

Iraq Declares Christmas an Official Holiday for First Year  —  BAGHDAD — Iraq's Christians, a small minority in the overwhelmingly Muslim country, quietly celebrated Christmas on Thursday with a present from the government, which declared it an official holiday for the first time.

Blog ‘miracle’ saves Christmas for hard-luck family  —  (CNN) — A family facing foreclosure is anything but a unique story in these troubled economic times.  —  But this is a happier story of one family whose financial ruin was averted by the actions of a friend, the compassion of strangers …

Pardon Lasts One Day for Man in Fraud Case  —  WASHINGTON — President Bush changed his mind on Christmas Eve, pulling back a pardon he had extended a day earlier to a Brooklyn developer at the center of a Long Island real estate fraud case and adding a bizarre twist to the episode.

Hamas mocks Israel's nonresponse to Kassams  —  Hamas on Wednesday remained as defiant as ever and said it would continue to fire rockets at Israel as an act of “self-defense.”  —  Hamas also mocked what it described as the “state of confusion” in Israel over how to react to the latest spree of rocket and mortar attacks.

BARACK NAME LOSES ‘CLASS’ ON LI  —  SCHOOL NIXES CHANGE TO ‘OBAMA ELEMENTARY’  —  They said NO-bama.  —  A proposal to change the name of a Long Island public school to Barack Obama Elementary was scrapped this week after running into fierce public opposition.

Top Bush Aides to Linger on High-Profile Boards  —  As President Bush settles in for his last Christmas in office, he has been busy handing out presents to some of his top aides.  And they are not the kind that require wrapping paper or a bow.  —  The White House announced on Wednesday …

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Christmas C4 speech sparks row  —  Channel 4 will screen an alternative Christmas message from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, in a move that has provoked widespread condemnation.  —  President Ahmadinejad's address will focus on spiritual messages …

Joe and Jill feed the homeless  —  Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, slipped on aprons Wednesday afternoon to serve meatloaf to a few hundred homeless people at a soup kitchen in Wilmington, Del.  —  Biden told a local news station that the long lines outside …

Print news is fading, but the content lives on  —  It's been about 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on the back of the Internet.  For more than a billion people on the planet, the Web today is an alternate, digital universe that is gradually overtaking the analog …

Poll: America's honeymoon with Obama continues  —  CNN Deputy Political Director  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Call it a love affair so far between Barack Obama and the American people.  —  More than eight in 10, or 82 percent, of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Wednesday approve …

Minnesota Supremes Shoot Down Crucial Coleman Lawsuit, Making A Franken Win Nearly Certain  —  Norm Coleman just got a Christmas present from the Minnesota Supreme Court: A giant lump of coal.  —  In a unanimous decision handed down just now, the state Supremes denied Coleman any relief …

White House Views on Past 8 Years Diverge  —  WASHINGTON — President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been unusually talkative in recent weeks, sharing candid thoughts in a string of exit interviews.  But after eight years of a tight partnership that gave Mr. Cheney powerful influence inside …