Fireworks coordinator Phil Grucci has a request of Mother Nature in this city of glitzy shows: If you're going to let it snow on New Year's Eve, let it snow at just the right moment, like right before midnight when his show launches from the Las Vegas Strip.

Grucci, president and creative director of Fireworks by Grucci, talked about the weather as he stood atop the Treasure Island casino-hotel on the Strip on Tuesday, one of seven hotel rooftops where 70 workers have been readying the displays since the day after Christmas.

Jennifer Lopez decided to hit the road after her split from singer Marc Anthony two years ago.

She went on her first world tour, visiting 65 cities on five continents and reaching 1 million fans.

In small-town northern India, Muslims are offered food and money to convert to Hinduism. If that doesn't suffice, they say they're threatened. Across the country, the Christmas holiday is canceled for hundreds of government servants who spend the day publicly extolling the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Powerful Hindu nationalist leaders — some with close ties to Modi's government — say they intend to ensure India becomes a completely Hindu nation.

But Modi himself? He has remained silent as nationalist demands have bubbled over into day-to-day politics, and amid growing fears among minority religious groups of creeping efforts to shunt them aside.

A Las Vegas man has been charged with drunk driving after he crashed into Jennifer Lopez's Rolls Royce, in which she was riding, in Malibu, California.

Los Angeles County prosecutors said in a statement Monday that 53-year-old Robert John Reitz was charged with misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence of an alcoholic beverage and driving at nearly twice the legal blood-alcohol limit. He could get six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.

For most of the past 20 years, a live animal has been used in a small North Carolina town's annual New Year's Eve Possum Drop. But this year, following challenges from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the organizer says he'll no longer use a live opossum — instead, it'll be a road-kill opossum or perhaps a pot of opossum stew.

The Brasstown event involves enclosing an opossum in a tinsel-covered plastic box and lowering it to the ground at midnight, then releasing the animal.

Police say they matched a would-be pizza shop robber to a roll of toilet paper in his Pennsylvania home.

Uniontown police say 29-year-old Eric Frey tried to rob Michael Maria's Pizza on Saturday by handing an employee a note written on toilet paper that read: "I have a gun. Give me $300."

A state agency in Minnesota is claiming the world record for largest ball of paper.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says the ball measures 9 feet 7 inches tall and 32.2 feet in circumference. The 426-pound ball was displayed at the Minnesota State Fair to show how much recyclable paper state residents throw away every 30 seconds.

The Oregon cat accidentally sold with a mattress set is home after 10 days on his own.

Roy Dufek wrote in a statement that his girlfriend, Hayley Crews, caught Camo in a trap Saturday night after he was reportedly seen near the Hillsboro Airport west of Portland. The trap was baited with sardines in oil and familiar scented clothing.

West Africa's fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus.

In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea's tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.

Comedian Chris Rock filed for divorce from his wife Malaak Compton-Rock, a statement from his representative confirmed Sunday.

The statement went on to specify that Rock and his family request privacy as they go through this process because it is a personal matter.