Faithful return to Bethlehem and Pope Leo XIV celebrates his first Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter's

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Thousands of people flocked to Bethlehem's Manger Square on Christmas Eve as families there and at other sites across the Holy Land heralded a much-needed boost of holiday spirit, after two years of subdued celebrations because of the war in Gaza.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV presided over his first Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. In his homily, he marveled at the “wisdom” of the Christmas story — an infant Jesus born to save mankind.

“In the face of the suffering of the poor, (God) sends one who is defenseless to be the strength to rise again,” the first U.S. pope told a packed basilica.

Bethlehem, where Christians believe Jesus was born, had canceled Christmas celebrations during the war. But on Wednesday, the giant Christmas tree returned to Manger Square, temporarily replacing the wartime nativity scene of baby Jesus surrounded by rubble and barbed wire in a homage to Gaza's suffering.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Catholic leader in the Holy Land, kicked off this year's celebrations during the traditional procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, calling for “a Christmas full of light.”

___

Zelenskyy says he's open to creating demilitarized zone in Ukraine's industrial heartland

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end Russia’s war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

The proposal offered another potential compromise on control of the Donbas region, which has been a major sticking point in peace negotiations.

Zelenskyy said the U.S. proposed the creation of a “free economic zone," which he said should be demilitarized. But it was unclear what that idea would mean for governance or development of the region.

A similar arrangement could be possible for the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control, Zelenskyy said. He said any peace plan would need to be put to a referendum.

Zelenskyy spoke to reporters Tuesday to describe an overarching 20-point plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the U.S. hammered out in Florida in recent days, though he said many details are still being discussed.

___

Powerball’s $1.7B jackpot could make Christmas unforgettable for a lucky winner

A Christmas Eve Powerball drawing could add new meaning to holiday cheer as millions of players hope to cash in on the $1.7 billion prize, which comes after months without a jackpot winner.

The United States' 4th-largest jackpot on record comes after 46 consecutive draws without someone claiming to have all six numbers. The last contest with a jackpot winner was on Sept. 6. The game’s long odds have people decking the halls and doling out $2 — and sometimes more — for tickets.

Chris Winters, a glass artist in Indianapolis, said Wednesday: “With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?”

It's a sign the game is operating as intended. Lottery officials made the odds tougher in 2015 as a mechanism for snowballing jackpots, all the while making it easier to win smaller prizes.

Here are Wednesday’s winning numbers:

___

California drivers warned to reconsider Christmas travel plans ahead of storms

California officials and weather forecasters urged holiday travelers to avoid the roads on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day ahead of a series of powerful winter storms that threatened to slam the state with relentless rains, heavy winds and mountain snow through Friday.

Millions of people are expected to travel across the state. They will likely meet hazardous, if not impossible, traveling conditions as several atmospheric rivers were forecast to make their way through the state, the National Weather Service warned.

“If you’re planning to be on the roads for the Christmas holidays, please reconsider your plans,” said Ariel Cohen, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Los Angeles.

Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding, mudslides and debris flows in areas burned by last January's wildfires. Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday they were knocking on the doors of some 380 particularly vulnerable households to order them to leave.

Most areas saw scattered showers Tuesday morning, and the system was expected to pick up in the evening and intensify into Christmas Eve. Some regions will see rain and winds taper off Wednesday before another storm moves in.

___

'The best gift ever': Baby is born after the rarest of pregnancies, defying all odds

Suze Lopez holds her baby boy on her lap and marvels at the remarkable way he came into the world.

Before little Ryu was born, he developed outside his mom’s womb, hidden by a basketball-sized ovarian cyst — a dangerous situation so rare that his doctors plan to write about the case for a medical journal.

Just 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occur in the abdomen instead of the uterus, and those that make it to full term “are essentially unheard of — far, far less than 1 in a million,” said Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where Ryu was born. “I mean, this is really insane.”

Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse who lives in Bakersfield, California, didn’t know she was pregnant with her second child until days before giving birth.

When her belly began to grow earlier this year, she thought it was her ovarian cyst getting bigger. Doctors had been monitoring the mass since her 20s, leaving it in place after removing her right ovary and another cyst.

___

After missing deadline, DOJ says it may need a 'few more weeks' to finish releasing Epstein files

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it may need a “few more weeks" to release all of its records on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after suddenly discovering more than a million potentially relevant documents, further delaying compliance with last Friday’s congressionally mandated deadline.

The Christmas Eve announcement came hours after a dozen U.S. senators called on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine its failure to meet the deadline. The group, 11 Democrats and a Republican, told Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume in a letter that victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.

The Justice Department said in a social media post that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI “have uncovered over a million more documents” that could be related to the Epstein case — a stunning 11th hour development after department officials suggested months ago that they had undertaken a comprehensive review that accounted for the vast universe of Epstein-related materials.

In March, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that a “truckload of evidence” had been produced after she ordered the FBI to “deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office.” She issued the directive after saying she learned from an unidentified source that the FBI in New York was “in possession of thousands of pages of documents.”

In July, the FBI and Justice Department indicated in an unsigned memo that they had undertaken an “exhaustive review” and had determined that no additional evidence should be released — an extraordinary about face from the Trump administration, which for months had pledged maximum transparency. The memo did not raise the possibility that additional evidence existed that officials were unaware of or had not reviewed.

___

Rescuers rushed into flames to save nursing home residents after deadly explosion

BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) — Rescuers braved shooting flames, falling debris and the threat of more explosions to evacuate dozens of nursing home residents after a blast ripped through a Pennsylvania facility, killing a resident and an employee, and setting off a frantic search of the wreckage.

Officials said Wednesday they'd located everybody after hours of looking.

The police chief of Bristol Township said he'd “never seen such heroism,” and a speech therapist working there described feeling the building shake in Tuesday's blast and hurriedly wheeling out a bed-bound resident, bed and all.

“They were running into a building that I could — from 50 feet away — could still smell gas, and walls that looked like they were going to fall down,” Police Chief Charles Winik told reporters Wednesday.

Responders spent hours digging through the badly damaged building and checking with hospitals into the night Tuesday to locate the missing. But officials said they didn't yet know the cause of the explosion, even though a utility crew had been on site investigating a reported gas leak.

___

US stocks drift to more records on a holiday-shortened day of trading

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street closed higher and reached more records Wednesday on a holiday-shortened trading day.

The S&P 500 index rose 22.26 points, or 0.3%, to 6,932.05. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 288.75, or 0.6%, to close at 48,731.16, and the Nasdaq composite added 51.46, or 0.2%, to 23,613.31

Trading was extremely light as markets closed early for Christmas Eve and will be closed for Christmas Thursday. Roughly 1.8 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, which is roughly a third of the average trading day.

Markets will reopen for a full day of trading on Friday; however volumes are expected to remain light this week with most investors having closed out their positions for the year.

The S&P 500 is up more than 17% this year, as investors have embraced the deregulatory policies of the Trump administration and been optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence in helping boost profits for not only technology companies but also for Corporate America. Some of the strongest performers this year include Nvidia and Micron Technologies, both companies that make chips or other components that power the proliferation of data centers across the country.

___

Pro-Russian hackers claim cyberattack on French postal service

PARIS (AP) — A pro-Russian hacking group claimed responsibility for a major cyberattack that halted package deliveries by France’s national postal service just days before Christmas, prosecutors said Wednesday.

After the claim by the cybercrime group known as Noname057, French intelligence agency DGSI took over the investigation into the hacking attack, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The group has been accused of other cyberattacks in Europe, including around a NATO summit in the Netherlands and French government sites. It was the target of a big European police operation earlier this year.

Central computer systems at French national postal service La Poste were knocked offline Monday in a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, cyberattack that still wasn’t fully resolved by Wednesday morning, the company said.

Postal workers couldn’t track package deliveries, and online payments at the company’s banking arm were also disrupted. It was a major blow to La Poste, which delivered 2.6 billion packages last year and employs more than 200,000 people, during the busiest season of the year.

___

How Christian artists are winning over listeners and entering pop's mainstream

NEW YORK (AP) — It is one of the most surprising music stories of the year. While streams of new music — releases from the last 18 months — were down from last year, one genre is on the rise: Christian and gospel music, according to industry data and analytics company Luminate’s 2025 Midyear Report.

Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, said the shift is led by acts like Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship, who are connecting with a “younger, streaming-forward fan base” that's 60% female and 30% millennial. In fact, for the first time in 11 years, two contemporary Christian music songs — Frank’s “Your Way’s Better” and Lake’s “Hard Fought Hallelujah” with Jelly Roll — broke through the Billboard Hot 100's all-genre Top 40, placing them in direct competition with mainstream artists.

It's also why traditionally secular artists like Jelly Roll, Killer Mike and T.I. are nominated in Christian music categories at the forthcoming 2026 Grammys — the lines are blurring.

“Christian music (is) unlike any other genre that’s defined by a sonic component. Christian music is defined by its lyrical component,” says Holly Zabka, the president of Provident Entertainment, a Sony Christian music subsidiary. “It’s not limited to a narrow definition. It’s a lyrical component that can appeal to anyone’s musical preference.”

From a label perspective, she’s interested in pursuing artists that “don’t have to fit within that narrow lane of Christian bookstore and Christian radio. It can be rap, hip-hop, it can be rock, it can be country, and that’s appealing to a broader audience because it’s what they’re already listening to,” she says. “Very few people listen in a vacuum and only listen to one genre.”

News from © The Associated Press, 2025