President Bush gets shoulder scan, shot at Walter Reed

Sick Bay

While visiting injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, President Bush on Monday sought some medical treatment of his own. The president has been feeling pain in his left shoulder and received an MRI scan upon his arrival in the early afternoon. After looking at the results, doctors gave the president a shot of cortisone, an anti-inflammatory medication, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

People

The butler did it

Paul Kidd, a former butler to Queen Elizabeth II who took one of his victims to a royal Christmas party was sentenced Monday to at least six years in jail for multiple child sex offenses.

Critters

Pandas off to Taiwan

A pair of pandas in China — "Tuan Tuan" and "Yuan Yuan" — traveled Tuesday to their new home in Taiwan. Beijing first offered the pandas to Taiwan in 2005, hoping they would strengthen Taiwanese public support for reuniting with the mainland, an offer rejected by the island's former leaders who supported independence for the self-governed island.

He wanted to cuddle

A man jumped into the Berlin zoo enclosure of famed polar bear Knut on Monday, but officials were able to keep the animal away from the intruder by distracting him with a leg of beef, police said. Police said the man told them he felt lonely and the bear appeared lonely, too. Knut, now 2, was hand-raised after his mother rejected him at birth. He rose to stardom early last year as a cute white ball of fluff but has since grown rapidly into a hulking 440-pound predator.

Sign of the Times

iPrayers on iPhone?

The Vatican is endorsing new technology that brings the book of daily prayers used by priests straight onto iPhones. The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications is embracing the iBreviary, an iTunes application created by a technologically savvy Italian priest, the Rev. Paolo Padrini, and an Italian Web designer.

Passages

Robert Mulligan, 83, who directed the classic film "To Kill a Mockingbird," died Saturday in Lyme, Conn., after a battle with heart disease.

A. Carl Kotchian, 94, a former head of Lockheed Aircraft who admitted in the 1970s to paying millions in bribes in an scandal that brought down Japan's prime minister, died Dec. 14 in Redwood City, Calif., of age-related ailments.

Today in History

1823: The poem "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel; the verse, more popularly known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," was later attributed to Clement C. Moore.

1941: During World War II, U.S. forces on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese.

1948: Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo.

1968: 82 crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after being captured.

1986: The experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first nonstop, non-refueled, round-the-world flight as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

2003: The government announced the first suspected (later confirmed) case of mad-cow disease in the U.S.

Today's Birthdays

Actor Ronnie Schell, 77. Emperor Akihito of Japan, 75. Rock musician Jorma Kaukonen, 68. Actress Susan Lucci, 62. Rock singer Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), 44. The first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, 41. Actor Corey Haim, 37. Actress Estella Warren, 30.

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