Last-minute Christmas shoppers packed stores Thursday. Surveys suggest the procrastinators are more likely to be men – and evolution may offer an explanation.

Senate confirms Rajiv Shah, a food security expert, to head USAID, a key development agency. One task: help devise a strategy for infusion of new foreign aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Yemen’s air strike on Al Qaeda Thursday reportedly targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric linked to the Fort Hood shooter. If true, it could alter Americans' understanding of the Fort Hood rampage.

AP - In an epic struggle settled at dawn, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed health care legislation Thursday, a triumph for President Barack Obama that clears the way for compromise talks with the House on a bill to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and rein in the insurance industry.

AP - Pope Benedict XVI's Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter's Basilica got off to a tumultuous start Thursday after an apparently deranged woman jumped the barriers and knocked him down on his way to the altar.