Pope Benedict ushered in Christmas for the world's 1.3 billion Roman Catholics on Saturday, urging humanity to see through the superficial glitter and commercialism of the season and rediscover the real significance of the humble birth of Jesus.

The 84-year-old pope, celebrating the seventh Christmas season of his pontificate, also urged that those marking the holiday in poverty, suffering or far from home not be forgotten.

At the start of a Christmas Eve service, he was wheeled up the central aisle of St Peter's Basilica standing on a mobile platform which he has been using since October.

The Vatican says it is to conserve his strength, allow more people to see him and guard against attacks such as one on Christmas Eve, 2009, when a woman lunged at him and knocked him to the ground. He is believed to suffer from arthritis in the legs.

But he seemed to be in good shape during the solemn service in Christendom's largest church as choirs sang, cantors chanted and organ music filled the centuries-old basilica.

Beijing, China: A rich Chinese couple who had eight babies with the help of two surrogate mothers has been forced to move out of their villa following a public uproar, and could face a large fine for breaching strict family planning laws mandating only one child.

The couple in the booming southern metropolis of Guangzhou had the children last year, but the story only came to light after media discovered a picture of the babies -- four boys and four girls -- taken by a photography studio.

The couple turned to in vitro fertilization after years of trying to have children and spent nearly one million yuan ($157,800) on the procedure, state television CCTV reported this week.

The mother had three of the children herself, and the other five with two surrogates, though the couple had not intended to have so many.

On 12 December 2011 hundreds of Israeli settler fanatics besieged a West Bank Israeli army base. They destroyed equipment, set fires and even stoned the base soldiers. This was the second such attack in a month. The cause? Anger over the army's dismantlement of a small number of isolated, unauthorized settler outposts. The chief of the Central Command of the Israel "Defence" Forces (IDF), Major-General Avi Misrahi, is quoted as saying "I have not seen such hatred of Jews towards soldiers during my 30 years of service." He must not have been looking.

Staged hypocrisy

This was not an exceptional event. The subsequent indignation over the attack expressed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ("red lines have been crossed") was, as Alex Fishman writing in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth put it, staged hypocrisy. The prime minister is certainly aware that for some time there has been on-going skirmishing between the settlers and government security forces. Right-wing settlers regularly throw rocks and fire bombs at police and army vehicles and "physical altercations" between settlers and Israeli police and soldiers are "almost routine". This is so despite the fact that the government - both prime minister and Knesset - "either tacitly or openly" support the settlers. Then why the hatred and why the attacks?
　
At this stage the battle is over strategy. The Israeli government wants to gobble up all of Palestine in an orderly step by step fashion. In part, this is to avoid too much international criticism at any particular stage of the process. On the other hand, the settlers don't give a damn about international opinion - no more than does al-Qaeda, to which they have an unsavoury resemblance. Led "by fundamentalist religious leaders who do not recognize the state of Israel and its laws", they are driven by religious fanaticism and have no respect for governments or their agents. It is their ideological conviction that all of Palestine (including, by the way, Jordan) must be Jewish as soon as possible. The authorities sometime get in the way of this goal and that has led the settlers to, as Fishman puts it, "terrorize not only the Palestinian population but also the police and the army".

A New Hampshire couple said Saturday that Southwest Airlines flight attendants put the couple's terminally ill son at risk by ordering him out of a safety seat and into a regular passenger seat for a flight home from Florida.

Chris Dainiak and his wife, of Bedford, were told to remove 8-year-old Nicholas from his protective travel seat for a Friday flight home from Orlando to Manchester, N.H., Chris Dainiak said. Nicholas suffers from a rare illness called Batten disease and can't walk, talk, feed himself or hold his head up.

The attendants agreed Nicholas would be safer in his special seat but didn't know if it was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, Dainiak told The Associated Press. He said the boy has used the seat on previous flights, including the Southwest flight that took the family to Orlando so they could visit Disney World.

He said he wants Southwest to develop a policy to ensure other people with disabled children aren't put in similar situations.

A Delaware man who faked his way into Harvard has been sentenced to a year in prison for violating his probation by putting the university on his resume.

A probation department spokeswoman says Adam Wheeler was sentenced Friday at Middlesex Superior Court.

Prosecutors say the 25-year-old Wheeler got into Harvard and obtained about $45,000 in financial aid by falsely claiming he attended elite schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Last year, he was convicted of identity fraud and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and 10 years' probation. The Milton, Del., man served a month in jail awaiting trial, and the remainder of his sentence was suspended.

His attorney acknowledged that Wheeler violated probation by representing himself as a Harvard graduate. But he said it was due to financial pressure after losing his job.

More than 200 employees at a pair of bankrupt hospitals in Hawaii are getting notices that they're losing their jobs on Christmas Eve.

The operators of the Hawaii Medical Center hospitals on Oahu plan to close the facilities, putting nearly 1,000 people out of work. More than 200 got notices Friday saying they'll be laid off effective Saturday.

The closures were announced after the hospitals' former owner and largest secured creditor objected to a potential sale.

Less than 60 patients remain at the hospitals. Hawaii Medical Center CEO Maria Kostylo says they will be discharged or transferred in the next week or two.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports that state officials are bracing for the closures to swell Hawaii's unemployment rate at a time when jobs are already hard to come by.

Wal-Mart and health officials awaited tests Thursday on a batch of powdered infant formula that was removed from more than 3,000 stores nationwide after a Missouri newborn who consumed it apparently died from a rare infection.

The source of the bacteria that caused the infection has not been determined, but it occurs naturally in the environment and in plants such as wheat and rice. The most worrisome appearances have been in dried milk and powdered formula, which is why manufacturers routinely test for the germs.

Wal-Mart pulled the Enfamil Newborn formula from shelves as a precaution following the death of little Avery Cornett in the southern Missouri town of Lebanon.

The formula has not been recalled, and the manufacturer said tests showed the batch was negative for the bacteria before it was shipped. Additional tests were under way.

"We decided it was best to remove the product until we learn more," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Dianna Gee said. "It could be returned to the shelves."

Customers who bought formula in 12.5-ounce cans with the lot number ZP1K7G have the option of returning them for a refund or exchange, Gee said.

The product is not exclusive to Wal-Mart. The manufacturer, Mead Johnson Nutrition, declined to answer questions about whether formula from that batch was distributed to other stores.

It will be a special Christmas for the family of a 21-year-old University of Arizona student who was nearly taken off life support before awaking from a coma.

Sam Schmid was walking and speaking Friday at a Phoenix hospital. Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers, he was able to use a walker and talk in brief sentences.

"Right now, I'm feeling all right ... except for the rehabilitation, I'm feeling pretty good," Schmid said.

Doctors at Barrow Neurological Institute say Schmid has a long recovery ahead of him to regain full speech, balance and memory abilities.

Schmid was involved in an Oct. 19 car crash in Tucson that left him with a brain aneurysm, among other life-threatening injuries. Because of the complexity of his brain injury, Schmid was flown to Phoenix.

Monsanto has long been trying to establish control over the seeds of the plants that produce food for the world.

They have already patented a number of genetically altered food crops, which can only be grown with proper license, and the seeds for which must be purchased anew each year.

But genetically engineered crops cannot be contained.

And rather than being found guilty of contaminating farmers' property, Monsanto has successfully sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement.

Many farmers have subsequently, quite literally, lost their farms.

Percy Schmeiser of Saskatchewan, Canada, was also a victim of Monsanto's vile ways.

Though the Christmas holiday is getting nearer, vandals and pranksters haven't displayed a holiday spirit. Communities around Chicago have reported acts of theft and vandalism to Christmas displays recently.

Among the suburbs reporting such incidents recently were Elmwood Park, Lombard and Naperville.

In Elmwood Park, thefts were reported Dec. 15 from the 2200 block of 75th Court and the 2300 block of 75th Avenue, according to police. In the former, someone took Christmas decorations that made up a nativity scene from the front yard of a home, and in the latter someone took two Christmas penguins from the front yard of a home.

On Dec. 17, a theft was reported on 7700 block of Sunset Drive, police said. Sometime on Dec. 15 someone removed a 3-foot-tall illuminated Santa Claus from a fence.