AP - The top U.S. military officer said Sunday he does not assume Iran's brief seizure of an Iraqi oil well is part of an orchestrated plan in Tehran to threaten its neighbors.

AP - A fierce weekend storm dropped record snowfall and stranded travelers up the coast from Virginia to New England, but its timing helped minimize headache-inducing work commutes and left many with the prospect of a very white Christmas.

AP - Polish police found the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign that was stolen from the gate of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after an intensive three-day hunt and arrested five suspects, police said early Monday. The sign was found cut into three pieces.

AP - EDITOR'S NOTE — AP reporter Elliot Spagat followed Tijuana's new public safety chief, Julian Leyzaola, for eight months as he launches the city's most aggressive police reform to date, in the middle of a raging drug war.

AP - A jailed Brazilian admitted in a television interview that he shoved nearly three dozen sewing needles into his 2-year-old stepson because he wanted to kill the boy to spite his wife.

AP - A Russian rocket blasted off from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan lighting up the frigid Central Asian steppe Monday, shuttling an American, a Russian and a Japanese to the International Space Station.

AP - The snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast, closing malls and snowing in shoppers, spelled trouble for retailers, but elsewhere in the country stores saw a strong turnout on the last weekend before Christmas.

AP - Brittany Murphy, the actress who got her start in the sleeper hit "Clueless" and rose to stardom in "8 Mile" before her movie roles declined in recent years, died Sunday in Los Angeles of what appeared to be natural causes, a Los Angeles County coroner's official said. She was 32.

AP - It was supposed to be a night when the Minnesota Vikings celebrated a division title and inched closer to the best record in the NFC.

AP - Landmark health care legislation backed by President Barack Obama passed its sternest Senate test in the pre-dawn hours early Monday, overcoming Republican delaying tactics on a 60-40 vote that all but assures its passage by Christmas.