World: Egypt’s military-backed government yesterday declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. It’s been banned twice before in its history. The police claim that a car bombing that killed 15 people Tuesday was carried out by the Brotherhood.

  The 85-year-old Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt’s best-organized political group with a network of charities and businesses. The decision means that even public protests by the group will be banned. They’ve demonstrated against the arrest of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, who is a member.

• In a Christmas day message that competed with the Pope’s annual speech, NSA leaker Edward Snowden urged for an end to mass surveillance by governments. On British television Snowden said, “A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought.”

Hostage: Warren Weinstein, a 72-year-old American abducted in Pakistan two years ago, appears today in a video saying he feel like his government has abandoned him. In a message to his family he says, “Unless you continue to try to get President Obama and his administration to actively pursue my release, we may never see each other again.”

Iraq: At least 38 people were killed in Baghdad yesterday in bombings targeted at Christians. The NY Times reports that the US is rushing Hellfire missiles and low-tech surveillance drones to Iraq to help the government fight a growing al Qaeda-backed insurgency that’s gaining ground in Western Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Free Willy: Russia is beginning to release crew members of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Surprise, taken into custody in September. Seven of the 30-person crew were given visas to leave Russia. The ship was monitoring Russian oil and gas development and claimed to be in international waters when it was taken. Again, the release of the Greenpeace crew is seen as an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to improve his human rights image in advance of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Nation: Long-term unemployment benefits for an estimated 1.3 million Americans are scheduled to end on Saturday. Congress did not include an extension of unemployment payments in its budget agreement. Unemployment insurance usually lasts six months, but they were extended as the country dipped into recession, allowing some people to receive payments for up to 99 weeks.

  The administration today reported a sharp drop in weekly claims for unemployment benefits, down about 42,000 last week. But they caution that the figures are distorted by holiday hiring.

Post Mortem: Russian investigators say the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning. There was no autopsy when Arafat died in November, 2004. A French inquiry also said Arafat was not poisoned, but Swiss scientists said they found traces of radioactive polonium in Arafat’s body. Split decision.

Mail Early: UPS and FedEx missed the Christmas deadline for thousands of customers because of weather and heavy traffic. UPS said in a statement that, “The volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity.” FedEx said the company handled 275 million shipments between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some customers took to Twitter to complain that Johnny’s gift didn’t arrive for Christmas because it couldn’t possibly have been their own fault.

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