Utility crews from Maine to Michigan and into Canada worked to restore power to more than half a million homes that were left in the dark by last weekend's ice storm, which has been linked to 27 deaths.

In the United States, the death toll from the storm reached at least 17 on Christmas day, from traffic accidents and carbon monoxide fatalities.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday reshuffled his Cabinet after three key ministers resigned over a sweeping corruption and bribery scandal that has targeted his allies and rattled his government.

Erdogan replaced Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan, Interior Minister Muammer Guler and Erdogan Bayraktar, the minister for the environment and urban planning. All three men's sons were detained as part of the corruption investigation. They all deny any wrongdoing.

BlackBerry co-founder Michael Lazaridis has trimmed his stake in the troubled smartphone pioneer to just below 5 percent after selling 3.5 million shares during the past two days.

The sales disclosed in a Tuesday regulatory filing came after BlackBerry Ltd. announced a third-quarter loss of $4.4 billion last week.

It almost sounds sadistic — making rape victims as young as 13 relive their harrowing assault over and over again. But a new study shows it works surprisingly well at eliminating their psychological distress.

The results are the first evidence that the same kind of "exposure" therapy that helps combat veterans haunted by flashbacks and nightmares also works for traumatized sexually abused teens with similar symptoms, the study authors and other experts said.

Gay-rights activists and health workers in India are warning that a new Supreme Court ruling criminalizing homosexuality will undo years of progress in fighting AIDS by driving gay and transgender people underground.

They say HIV services expanded and gay and transgender people became more likely to seek them out after a landmark 2009 ruling decriminalized same-sex acts by throwing out a colonial-era law. India's top court revived the law Dec. 11, saying it is up to the country's lawmakers — not the court — to change it.

Space station astronauts repaired a crippled cooling system during a rare Christmas Eve spacewalk Tuesday, braving a "mini blizzard" of noxious ammonia as they popped in a new pump.

It was the second spacewalk in four days for U.S. astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins, and only the second Christmas Eve spacewalk ever.

Tablet computers are so easy to use that even a 3-year-old can master them.

And that has some pediatricians and other health experts worried.

Maybe it was getting his first video game, Cosmic Avenger, for Christmas at the age of 12, and then having to wait an entire year for the hard-to-land Colecovision console to play it on that made Michael Thomasson so determined to get his hands on every video game and system he could find.

Now, 31 years and roughly 11,000 games later, Thomasson is the newly crowned world record holder for having the largest collection of video games. He is featured in a two-page spread in the just-released "Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer's Edition."

Already in the swing of parenting, Roger Federer is getting ready for a larger family.

The tennis star says on Twitter that he and his wife, Mirka, are expecting another child next year.

California hospitals are spreading holiday cheer for new parents by delivering newborns in giant Christmas stockings.

The bright red stockings were provided this week for babies born at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Redlands, California. The Long Beach Press-Telegram says it's a half-century-old tradition.