(CNN) – Two days before Christmas, Imam Mohamed Magid, the executive director at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, preached about Jesus at Friday prayers.

“We live in a country with a majority of Christians, where Christmas is a major holiday… It’s a reminder we do believe in Jesus. Jesus’ position in Islam is one of the highest prophets in Islam,” Magid said, adding that Muslims view Jesus as a prophet on par with Abraham, Moses, Noah and Mohammad.

Often when he says the name of Mohammad or Jesus in conversation, Magid adds the Islamic honorific “Peace be upon him” after his name.

“Jesus is a unifying figure, unifying Muslims and Christians,” he said. The Quran, the Islamic scriptures, makes specific mention of Jesus and of his mother Mary. “It’s very interesting that there are many places where the prophet (Mohammad) is quoting Jesus.”

New York (CNN) — An estimated 1 million people marked the passing of one year and the beginning of another in New York’s Times Square with the descent of an iconic ball.

With the help of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Medal of Honor recipient Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta, the dazzling crystal ball began its 70-foot drop at 11:59 p.m. Friday to the harmonious chants of New Year’s Eve revelers counting down the final seconds of 2010.

There were two separate warnings that an American businessman was plotting a terrorist attack in India with the Pakistani extremist group that carried out the Mumbai assault, NBC News confirmed Saturday.

But the second warning, given by the man’s wife to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad just a year before the attack, was never passed to the FBI in New York, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

The November 2008 attack in Mumbai left 166 people dead and severely frayed relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department on Sunday will issue a travel “alert” urging American citizens to be vigilant as they travel in Europe, government officials told NBC News on Saturday.

The alert is due to new al-Qaida threats although officials have not identified specific targets that terrorists might be considering, NBC News said.

Senior U.S. diplomats who report to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in Washington Saturday today to discuss the wording, The Sunday Telegraph of London reported.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—

PayPal suffered periodic breakdowns that crimped Internet sales for more than four hours Monday.

The main outage occurred from 1:30 p.m. EDT through 2:30 p.m. when PayPal was unable to process any transactions worldwide, according to company spokesman Anuj Nayar.

The online payment service continued to experience scattered problems until about 6:10 p.m EDT. A bad piece of hardware caused the trouble, according to PayPal’s blog.

PayPal is looking into whether merchants should be reimbursed for any lost sales during the outage, Nayar said. The payment service is owned by San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc., one of the Internet’s main shopping centers.

Presley — the daughter of Elvis, the “King of Rock,” and the ex-wife of Jackson, the “King of Pop” — wrote on her MySpace page that she wanted “to say now what I have never said before because I want the truth out there for once.” Her publicist confirmed Presley wrote the blog.

She said her short marriage to Jackson — from May 1994 until January 1996 — “was not ‘a sham’ as is being reported in the press,” but she divorced him because she was “in over my head in trying” to save Jackson “from the inevitable, which is what has just happened.”

Jackson talked with her about his death during “a deep conversation” 14 years ago about “the circumstances of my father’s death.” Video Watch more from Presley on Jackson »

BASEL, Switzerland – Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said Friday it has successfully produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of expectations.

The vaccine was made in cells, rather than grown in eggs as is usually the case with vaccines, the company said.

The announcement comes a day after the World Health Organization declared swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, a pandemic. The move indicates that a global outbreak is under way. WHO says drugmakers will likely have vaccines approved and ready for sale after September.

(CBS/AP) North Korea vowed Tuesday to bolster its nuclear deterrent and boycott six-party talks aimed at its denuclearization in protest of a U.N. Security Council statement condemning the country’s recent rocket launch.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it “resolutely condemns” the action by the United Nations, which it said “rampantly” infringes upon the country’s sovereignty and “severely debases” the people’s dignity.

The Group of Seven finance ministers also urged countries not to close their markets to goods and services from abroad.

“An open system of global trade and investment is indispensable for global prosperity,” they said in a statement at the end of their meeting Saturday.

“Protectionist measures … would only exacerbate the downturn” in the worldwide economy.

The ministers said the global banking crisis had revealed “fundamental weaknesses in the international financial system” and called for urgent reform.

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) — Pirates holding a Saudi-owned oil
supertanker off the coast of Somalia have set the vessel free after
receiving a ransom payment, a piracy monitor in neighboring Kenya and
the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet said Saturday

“The supertanker VLCC Sirius Star is currently under way to safe waters,” Andrew Mwangura of the Kenya Seafarers Association said in an e-mail.

Mwangura said all 23 crew members of the Sirius Star, the largest ship ever hijacked by pirates, are safe and in good health. They are citizens of Croatia, Great Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.