• President Barack Obama, introducing himself at a Washington military base as the "big elf," exclaimed "Ho, ho, ho" and made merry as he delivered a pair of giant red sacks filled with toys and other gifts to the Marine Corps' annual Toys for Tots campaign.
• Princess Charlene, 36, of Monaco gave birth to twins, Gabriella Therese Marie and Jacques Honore Rainier, with young Jacques arriving second yet securing his spot as the principality's future ruler, reflecting the male priority of Monaco's laws of succession.
• Desmond Tutu, 83, the retired South African archbishop, canceled travel plans for the rest of the year so he can undergo new treatment for prostate cancer, a foundation said.
• David Cameron, the British prime minister, visited the site of the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland, saying he wanted to see for himself the place where Nazi Germany killed more than 1 million people, mostly Jews.
• Lech Walesa, 71, Poland's former democracy leader, has broken his leg and landed in a hospital where a fellow patient is Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, 89, a communist-era official involved in directing the 1981 crackdown that put Walesa in jail.
• Yao Hongwen, a spokesman for China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, said the government is likely to raise cigarette taxes to boost prices and deter smoking.
• Sam Brownback, the newly re-elected Republican governor of Kansas, said in a memorandum that he must take "corrective action" to close a projected $280 million budget hole created by his income-tax cuts, and plans to reduce spending on pensions and highways.
• Anthony Janow, 26, who stole part of the Porsche that Fast and the Furious actor Paul Walker died in last year, has been sentenced in Southern California to six months in jail.
• Joshua Basinger, 30, and Rachel Pecharka, 21, an unemployed couple facing eviction, told officers they swiped a Salvation Army donation bucket from a Pittsburgh-area store so they could buy heroin, police said after their arrest.
• Zacarias Moussaoui, 46, who is known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks, asked a Florida federal judge for a transfer from his maximum-security prison in Colorado to the military lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where several purported senior terror plotters are awaiting trial.
A Section on 12/11/2014