1. Deadly Iraq war ends with exit of last U.S. troops.
Early Sunday, as the sun ascended to the winter sky, the very last American convoy made its way down the main highway that connects Iraq and Kuwait. The military called it its final "tactical road march." A series of 110 heavily armored, hulking trucks and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles carrying about 500 soldiers streamed slowly but steadily out of the combat zone. A few minutes before 8 a.m., the metal gate behind the last MRAP closed. With it came to an end a deadly and divisive war that lasted almost nine years, its enormous cost calculated in blood and billions.
2. Blizzard sweeps out of the Southwest.
A powerful blizzard roared out of the southwestern United States early Monday, threatening residents from Arizona to Kansas with a foot or more of snow. Combined with strong winds and icy roads, the snow could make driving during the holidays dangerous across the region. Snow, falling at a rate of up to two inches an hour, is expected in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, the National Weather Service said. The snow is forecast to start battering northeast New Mexico on Monday morning. State emergency personnel and transportation crews there are on call, officials say, ready to act if and when the storm hits hard.
3. North Korea's Kim Jong Il dies; South goes on high alert.
Seoul put South Korean forces on high alert and Pyongyang urged an increase in its "military capability" as the death of North Korea's enigmatic leader Kim Jong Il spurred fresh security concerns in the tense region.
The 69-year-old "dear leader" of the reclusive communist state died of a heart attack on Saturday, state news outlets reported Monday. The ruling Worker's Party proclaimed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, "the great successor," indicating he would assume his father's post. In the South, across one of the world's most heavily fortified borders, President Lee Myung-bak canceled the rest of his Monday schedule and put all members of South Korea's military on "emergency alert," his office said. The two nations never signed a peace treaty following the Korean War of the early 1950s, leaving the two nations technically at war.