1. Brussels cancels New Year's Eve fireworks.

["Traditional New Year's Eve fireworks in the center of Brussels have been canceled because the police contend there is a continuing terror threat to the Belgian capital, officials said Sunday.

A judge ordered their release 24 hours later for lack of evidence, and all of the suspects have maintained their innocence. In a letter published by the newspaper La Dernière Heure, the prisoner, Nizar Trabelsi, denied the allegation that his supporters were involved in preparations for a jailbreak or a terrorist attack."]

["FIRST it released its new album free on the web, now English rock outfit Radiohead is giving fans an online New Year's Eve concert.

The commercial-free download will be available from midnight on the internet (UK time)as well as British and US satellite and cable channel Current TV and is simply called Songs and other bits."]

["It was not always a midnight kaleidoscope of roaring multitudes and a 1,200-pound sphere clad in Waterford crystal, with 30,000 watts of light-emitting diodes to dazzle America. A century ago Monday, the first New Year's ball descended in Times Square and a tradition was born, with modest crowds cheering a five-foot iron globe studded with 216 electric lamps."]

["George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story is an epitome of stylish wit and charm, evincing the same concern with class and life decisions as Cukor's earlier (and much superior) Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn vehicle Holiday. Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, a society heiress with a long history as a tabloid gossip mainstay, especially in regards to her marriage to and angry divorce from Grant's C.K. Dexter Haven (a brilliant high-class name if ever there was one). The opening scene perfectly captures the antipathy between these two, in a quick and wordless evocation of the end of their marriage: Hepburn breaks Grant's golf club over her knee, and Grant palms her face and shoves her backwards, after first feigning a punch. But when Tracy plans to get remarried, to the nouveau-riche George Kittredge (John Howard), Dexter returns into her life, dragging with him a pair of gossip-rag journalists who he plans to introduce as friends of his."]

["Norman Mailer, Luciano Pavarotti, Ingmar Bergman, Liz Claiborne, Beverly Sills, Oscar Peterson, Boris Yeltsin, Lady Bird Johnson: They were just some of the notable figures of our time who passed from the scene in 2007. The [NY] Times here remembers them and others in a slide show and a month-by-month list with links to each of their obituaries.]