The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border to neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. Their exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling questions lingering over whether the Arab nation will remain a steadfast U.S. ally.

The mission cost nearly 4,500 American and well more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The question of whether it was worth it all is yet unanswered.

A small comet survived what astronomers figured would be a sure death when it danced uncomfortably close to the broiling sun.

Comet Lovejoy, which was only discovered a couple of weeks ago, was supposed to melt Thursday night when it came close to where temperatures hit several million degrees. Astronomers had tracked 2,000 other sun-grazing comets make the same suicidal trip. None had ever survived.

Snoop Dogg remembered watching all of the Cheech and Chong movies growing up, idolizing their ability to always escape from danger in their comedy films.

Wiz Khalifa revered Snoop Dogg for his marijuana-smoking, ultra-smooth West Coast swagger shown extensively throughout his rap career.

Fifth-grader Jolie Leach says she "was gonna explode" with excitement when Justin Bieber performed a concert at her Las Vegas school, and vowed she'd never wash her hand after he gave her a high-five.

Leach was one of hundreds who showed clear symptoms of Bieber fever after the 17-year-old teen pop sensation staged a private show Friday at low-income Whitney Elementary School. The concert was filmed for an episode of "The Ellen Degeneres Show" and came two months after Bieber promised the school's 650 students a $100,000 donation.

Bayern Munich overcame an early red card for star forward Franck Ribery to beat Cologne 3-0 on Friday and ensure it remains at least three points clear at the top of the Bundesliga before the four-week winter break.

Ribery was sent off in the 33rd minute, earning a second yellow card for grabbing at Henrique Sereno's face just half a minute after both were shown a yellow for clashing in the penalty area.

Former top-ranked tennis player Marat Safin has won a seat in Russia’s lower house of Parliament and will represent the pro-Kremlin party United Russia.

The 31-year-old Safin will be one of the youngest members in the 450-seat legislature.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. said Thursday that new phones deemed critical to the company's future will be delayed until late 2012.

Mike Lazaridis, one of the company's co-CEOs, said the BlackBerry 10 phones will need a highly integrated chipset that will not be available until mid-2012, so the company can now expect them to ship late in the year. He disclosed the delay on a conference call with analysts.

Christmas has come early to some remote islands in the western Pacific.

Care packages full of medicine, food, toys and school supplies have been raining down on dozens of tiny Micronesian islands over the past week, with "Operation Christmas Drop," the oldest ongoing U.S. Department of Defense mission in the world, in full swing.

The tsunami-devastated Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has reached a stable state of "cold shutdown" and is no longer leaking substantial amounts of radiation, Japan's prime minister announced Friday.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's announcement marks a milestone nine months after the March 11 tsunami sent three reactors at the plant into meltdowns in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Carlos the Jackal, the flamboyant Venezuelan who symbolized Cold War terrorism, was sentenced to life in prison — again — in a Paris trial that ended late Thursday with him rallying for revolution and weeping for Moammar Gadhafi.

Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, hasn't seen freedom since French agents spirited him out of Sudan in a sack in 1994. He's already serving a life sentence in a French prison for a triple murder in 1975, the worst punishment meted out in a country that does not have the death penalty.