Dance to Life: She was found nearly...

Dance to Life: She was found nearly frozen in a West Virginia snowbank, her heart stopped and eyes open. That was a year ago, and now 4-year-old Brittany Eichelberger counts to 10, says the alphabet up to G and loves to dance. “I’m just glad she’s OK,” declares Brittany’s mother, Melinda. Eichelberger remembers finding her daughter’s body, dressed only in a T-shirt and underwear, outside a neighbor’s back door. Temperatures were in the mid-20s. But today Brittany exclaims “See!” as she proudly pulls off her red socks and wiggles 10 toes.

* Who Weeps Now?: “We heard the bells of the church ring and saw the priests at the door, crying ‘Help! Help! They’ve taken the icon!’ ” said the bishop, but it was too late. Just two days before Christmas, the 72-year-old painting of the “weeping icon” of peace, St. Irene Chrisovalantou, was stolen at gunpoint from New York’s St. Irene’s Greek Orthodox Church. Bishop Vikentios said he saw beads of moisture coming from the icon’s eyes on Oct. 17, 1990, and the icon continued to weep as the Persian Gulf conflict escalated into war.

* Never Again: Philippines President Corazon Aquino took center stage and crooned “I’ll never run again” to the tune of “I’ll Never Smile Again” during a party in the presidential palace. “I’ll never run again, I’ll just vote,” she sang, the lyrics rhyming in the Tagalog language. Her die-hard supporters cheered her singing, but not her decision to stay off the May presidential ballot.

* Fast Lane: If you missed seeing Santa drop off presents at your house last night, no wonder: St. Nick and the reindeer visit each house about a hundred times faster than the wink of an eye, says a teacher at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. Stephen Saupe gives Santa about 12 hours on his rounds, and then mixes in other figures, like a guess of how many families celebrate Christmas, and he concludes that Santa has 0.00102 seconds per house. Actually, Santa is faster than that: Saupe admits his figures are based on Santa only visiting homes in North America and Europe.