Danny Puff

WASHINGTON (AP) Doctors treating Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a blood clot in her head said blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery.

Clinton didn't suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said.

The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton's complication "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull. It's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus. It was announced Dec. 13.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remained a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age and thereby health would probably be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health and age to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Two decades after Clinton became the first lady, signs of her popularity and her political strength are ubiquitous.

Obama had barely declared victory in November when Democrats started zealously plugging Clinton as their strongest White House contender four years from now, should she choose to take that leap.

"Wouldn't that be exciting?" House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared in December. "I hope she goes. Why wouldn't she?"

Even Republicans concede that were she to run, Clinton would be a force to be reckoned with.

"Trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl," Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, said in December. "The Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level."

Americans admire Clinton more than any other woman in the world, according to a Gallup poll released Monday the 17th time in 20 years that Clinton has claimed that title. And a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 57 percent of Americans would support Clinton as a candidate for president in 2016, with just 37 percent opposed. Websites have already cropped up hawking "Clinton 2016" mugs and tote bags.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of her ailment after she canceled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report she had commissioned on the attack. It found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington and AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a surprise New Year speech broadcast on state media.

The address by Kim, who took over power in the reclusive state after his father, Kim Jong-il, died in 2011, appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year editorial published in leading state newspapers.

But North Korea has offered olive branches before and Kim's speech does not necessarily signify a change in tack from a country which vilifies the United States and U.S. ally South Korea at every chance it gets.

Impoverished North Korea raised tensions in the region by launching a long-range rocket in December that it said was aimed at putting a scientific satellite in orbit, drawing international condemnation.

North Korea, which considers North and South as one country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests.

"An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the north and the south," Kim said in the address that appeared to be pre-recorded and was made at an undisclosed location.

"The past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war."

The New Year address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader after the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather. Kim Jong-il rarely spoke in public and disclosed his national policy agenda in editorials in state newspapers.

"(Kim's statement) apparently contains a message that he has an intention to dispel the current face-off (between the two Koreas), which could eventually be linked with the North's call for aid (from the South)," said Kim Tae-woo, a North Korea expert at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification.

"But such a move does not necessarily mean any substantive change in the North Korean regime's policy towards the South."

The two Koreas have seen tensions rise to the highest level in decades after the North bombed a Southern island in 2010 killing two civilians and two soldiers.

The sinking of a South Korean navy ship earlier that year was blamed on the North but Pyongyang has denied it and accused Seoul of waging a smear campaign against its leadership.

Last month, South Korea elected as president Park Geun-hye, a conservative daughter of assassinated military ruler Park Chung-hee whom Kim Il-sung had tried to kill at the height of their Cold War confrontation.

Park has vowed to pursue engagement with the North and called for dialogue to build confidence but has demanded that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, something it is unlikely to do.

Conspicuously absent from Kim's speech was any mention of the nuclear arms program.

(Additional reporting by Sung-Won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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BALTIMORE (AP) Same-sex couples in Maryland were greeted with cheers and noisemakers held over from New Year's Eve parties, as gay marriage became legal in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line on New Year's Day.

James Scales, 68, was married to William Tasker, 60, on Tuesday shortly after midnight by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake inside City Hall.

"It's just so hard to believe it's happening," Scales said shortly before marrying his partner of 35 years.

Six other same-sex couples also were being married at City Hall. Ceremonies were taking place in other parts of the state as well.

The ceremonies follow a legislative fight that pitted Gov. Martin O'Malley against leaders of his Catholic faith. Voters in the state, founded by Catholics in the 17th century, sealed the change by approving a November ballot question.

"There is no human institution more sacred than that of the one that you are about to form," Rawlings-Blake said during the brief ceremony. "True marriage, true marriage, is the dearest of all earthly relationships."

Brigitte Ronnett, who also was married, said she hopes one day to see full federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Maryland, Maine and Washington state were the first states to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote, in November, a development Ronnett said was significant.

"I think it's a great sign when you see that popular opinion is now in favor of this," said Ronnett, 51, who married Lisa Walther, 51, at City Hall.

Same-sex couples in Maryland have been able to get marriage licenses since Dec. 6, but they did not take effect until Tuesday.

In 2011, same-sex marriage legislation passed in the state Senate but stalled in the House of Delegates. O'Malley hadn't made the issue a key part of his 2011 legislative agenda, but indicated that summer that he was considering backing a measure similar to New York's law, which includes exemptions for religious organizations.

Shortly after, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore wrote to O'Malley that same-sex marriage went against the governor's faith.

"As advocates for the truths we are compelled to uphold, we speak with equal intensity and urgency in opposition to your promoting a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith, not to mention the best interests of our society," wrote O'Brien, who served as archbishop of the nation's first diocese from October 2007 to August 2011.

The governor was not persuaded. He held a news conference in July 2011 to announce that he would make same-sex marriage a priority in the 2012 legislative session. He wrote back to the archbishop that "when shortcomings in our laws bring about a result that is unjust, I have a public obligation to try to change that injustice."

The measure, with exemptions for religious organizations that choose not to marry gay couples, passed the House of Delegates in February in a close vote. O'Malley signed it in March. Opponents then gathered enough signatures to put the bill to a statewide vote, and it passed with 52 percent in favor.

In total, nine states and the District of Columbia have approved same-sex marriage. The other states are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont.

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(Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is "making excellent progress" recovering from a blood clot in her head that was discovered during a medical examination, her doctors said Monday. But Clinton remains hospitalized until a proper medication level is established, they said.

A day after announcing that Clinton had been admitted to a New York hospital for treatment of a blood clot related to a concussion she sustained, State Department spokesman Philippe Reines on Monday released a statement from Drs. Lisa Bardack and Gigi El-Bayoumi offering further detail on Clinton's condition and how it was first diagnosed.

"In the course of a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday, the scan revealed that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed. This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage," the statement said.

To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the Secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established," the statement continued. "In all other aspects of her recovery, the Secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."

In mid-December, the State Department announced Clinton had suffered a concussion after fainting at home. She has not been seen publicly for several weeks, but was scheduled to return to work shortly.

Clinton is expected to step down from her post later in January. President Barack Obama has name Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry as his choice to succeed Clinton.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A deal worked out by U.S. Senate leaders to avoid the "fiscal cliff," was far from any "grand bargain" of deficit reduction measures.

But if approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, it could help the country steer clear of recession, although enough austerity would remain in place to likely keep the economy growing at a lackluster pace.

The Senate approved a last-minute deal early Tuesday morning to scale back $600 billion in scheduled tax hikes and government spending cuts that economists widely agree would tip the economy into recession.

The deal would hike taxes permanently for household incomes over $450,000 a year, but keep existing lower rates in force for everyone else.

It would make permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.

Scheduled cuts in defense and non-defense spending were simply postponed for two months.

Economists said that if the emerging package were to become law, it would represent at least a temporary reprieve for the economy. "This keeps us out of recession for now," said Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The contours of the deal suggest that roughly one-third of the scheduled fiscal tightening could still take place, said Brett Ryan, an economist at Deutsche Bank in New York.

That is in line with what many financial firms on Wall Street and around the world have been expecting, suggesting forecasts for economic growth of around 1.9 percent for 2013 would likely hold.

At midnight Monday, low tax rates enacted under then-President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 expired. If the House agrees with the Senate - and there remained considerable doubt on that score - the new rates would be extended retroactively.

Otherwise, together with other planned tax hikes, the average household would pay an estimated $3,500 more in taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. Budget experts expect the economy would take a hit as families cut back on spending.

Provisions in the Senate bill would avoid scheduled cuts to jobless benefits and to payments to doctors under a federal health insurance program.

AUSTERITY'S BITE

Like the consensus of economists from Wall Street and beyond, Deutsche Bank has been forecasting enough fiscal drag to hold back growth to roughly 1.9 percent in 2013. Ryan said the details of the deal appeared to support that forecast.

That would be much better than the 0.5 percent contraction predicted by the Congressional Budget Office if the entirety of the fiscal cliff took hold, but it would fall short of what is needed to quickly heal the labor market, which is still smarting from the 2007-09 recession.

"We continue to anticipate a significant economic slowdown at the start of the year in response to fiscal drag and a contentious fiscal debate," economists at Nomura said in a research note.

In particular, analysts say financial markets are likely to remain on tenterhooks until Congress raises the nation's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, which the U.S. Treasury confirmed had been reached on Monday.

While the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent for many Americans under the budget deal, a two-year-long payroll tax holiday enacted to give the economy an extra boost would expire. The Tax Policy Center estimates this could push the average household tax bill up by about $700 next year.

The suspension of spending cuts sets up a smaller fiscal cliff later in the year which still could be enough to send the economy into recession, said Chinn.

He warned that ongoing worries about the possibility of recession could keep businesses from investing, which would hinder economic growth.

"You retain the uncertainty," Chinn said.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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WASHINGTON (AP) The FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies but not the White House made major changes in talking points that led to the Obama administration's confusing explanations of the attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, a Senate report concluded Monday.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee report said the White House was only responsible for a minor change. Some Republicans had questioned whether the presidential staff rewrote the talking points for political reasons.

The committee, headed by independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, also said the director of national intelligence has been stonewalling the panel in holding back a promised timeline of the talking point changes.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 attack. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said she used the talking points to say in television interviews on Sept. 16 that it may have been a protest that got out of hand.

Rice's incorrect explanation may have cost her a chance to be nominated as the next secretary of state, as Senate Republicans publicly said they would not vote to confirm her. President Barack Obama instead nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is expected to win easy confirmation.

The State Department this month acknowledged major weaknesses in security and errors in judgment exposed in a scathing independent report on the assault. Two top State officials appealed to Congress to fully fund requests to ensure diplomats and embassies are safe.

Testifying before two congressional committees, senior State Department officials acknowledged that serious management and leadership failures left the diplomatic mission in Benghazi woefully unprepared for the terrorist attack. The State Department review board's report led four department officials to resign.

The Senate report said that on Sept. 19, eight days after the attack, National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen told the Homeland committee that the four Americans died "in the course of a terrorist attack."

The same day, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department stood by the intelligence community's assessment. The next day, Sept. 20, presidential spokesman Jay Carney said, "It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also used the words "terrorist attack" on Sept. 21.

Olsen's acknowledgement was important, the report said, because talking points prepared by intelligence officials the previous week had undergone major changes.

A line saying "we know" that individuals associated with al-Qaida or its affiliates participated in the attacks was changed to say, "There are indications that extremists participated."

The talking points dropped the reference to al-Qaida and its affiliates altogether. In addition, a reference to "attacks" was changed to "demonstrations."

The committee said the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and representatives from the CIA, State Department, National Counterterrorism Center and the FBI told the panel that the changes were made within the CIA and the intelligence community. The change from "we know" there was an al-Qaida connection to "indications" of connections to "extremists" was requested by the FBI.

The report said the only White House change substituted a reference of "consulate" to "mission."

Intelligence officials differed over whether the al-Qaida reference should remain classified, the report said. It added, however, that the analyst who drafted the original talking points was a veteran career analyst in the intelligence community who believed it was appropriate to include a reference to al-Qaida in the unclassified version.

The analyst came to that conclusion because of claims of responsibility by a militant group, Ansar al-Sharia.

The committee said Clapper offered to provide the committee a detailed timeline on the development of the talking points. Despite repeated requests, the committee said the information has not been provided.

"According to a senior IC (intelligence community) official, the timeline has not been delivered as promised because the administration has spent weeks debating internally whether or not it should turn over information considered 'deliberative' to the Congress," the report said.

The report added that if the administration had described the attack as a terrorist assault from the outset, "there would have been much less confusion and division in the public response to what happened there on Sept. 11, 2012."

"The unnecessary confusion ... should have ended much earlier than it did," the committee said.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) Oscar-winning sound editor Mike Hopkins, who worked on the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and other Peter Jackson films, has died in a rafting accident in New Zealand. He was 53.

Hopkins drowned on Sunday when his inflatable raft capsized during a flash flood in a river on New Zealand's North Island, police senior Sgt. Carolyn Watson said. His wife survived.

The New Zealand Herald newspaper quoted "Rings" director Peter Jackson as saying many actors, directors and film crew members who were lucky enough to work with Hopkins would miss him deeply.

"Mike was a very genuine, caring and warm-hearted guy with a great sense of humor," Jackson said.

A native New Zealander, Hopkins shared Oscars with sound editing partner Ethan Van der Ryn in 2006 for "King Kong" and in 2003 for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." They also were nominated for 2007's "Transformers."

Hopkins also was sound editor on the two other "Rings" films and had worked on earlier Jackson movies including "Heavenly Creatures" and "The Frighteners."

The Herald reported a family celebration of Hopkins' life was planned on Thursday.

A river contractor, Bruce Slater, and his son used a jet boat to rescue Hopkins' wife. Nicci Hopkins had been in the Waiohine River two hours and was clinging to a ledge in a narrow part of the gorge too dangerous for bigger boats or a helicopter.

Watson called the Slaters heroic. Slater told Fairfax New Zealand the flash flood raised the river 2 to 3 meters (9.8 feet) while the rafters were in the water.

"If they'd been half an hour earlier, they would have been clear of the gorge," he said. And a half hour later, the water levels would have been noticeably dangerous before the rafters launched, Slater said.

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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are feeling lucky about their first child together.

"It's true," the 32-year-old reality TV star said in a statement on her site Monday. "Kanye and I are expecting a baby. We feel so blessed and lucky and wish that in addition to both of our families, his mom and my dad could be here to celebrate this special time with us."

Kardashian's father, Robert Kardashian, died in 2003. West's mother, Donda West, died in 2007.

Kardashian added in the blog post that she was "looking forward to great new beginnings in 2013 and to starting a family."

The 35-year-old rapper revealed to a crowd of more than 5,000 in song form at a concert Sunday that his girlfriend is pregnant. Kardashian was in the crowd at Revel Resort's Ovation Hall with her mother, Kris Jenner, and West's mentor and best friend, Jay-Z.

The news instantly went viral online, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.

Most of the Kardashian clan tweeted about the news, including Kim's sisters. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: "Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!"

West told concertgoers to congratulate his "baby mom" and that this was the "most amazing thing."

Representatives for West and Kardashian didn't immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public with their relationship in March.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West's Sunday-night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like "Good Life," ''Jesus Walks" and "Clique" in an all-white ensemble with two bandmates.

Kardashian is expected to spend New Year's Eve at public appearance at a Las Vegas nightclub.

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AP Writer Bianca Roach contributed to this report.

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Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin . Follow Bianca Roach at http://twitter.com/B__Roach

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Many Americans seem to be in a sour mood as 2013 begins, after Hurricane Sandy ravaged parts of the East Coast, a gunman massacred 20 school children in Connecticut and a long, contentious election campaign was followed by failure to resolve the "fiscal cliff" issue by year-end.

Americans have not been very optimistic since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, but the gloom had begun to lift this year until the blast of bad news as 2012 ended, IPSOS pollster Cliff Young said on Monday. IPSOS polling showed that some angst set in as the year ended.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents said the economy was on the wrong track at the end of 2012, IPSOS said, and 64 percent had a negative opinion of national politics.

"I do think these events had some sort of effect on people's short-term prospects," Young said.

But the headlines of 2012 belie a number of positive underlying trends in America, and Young said he expects public opinion to turn more positive in the new year.

Here is a summary of some of the positive trends in health, health, security, the environment, personal finance and education:

COLLEGE EDUCATION: More than 30 percent of Americans 25 years of age or older have finished four years of college, the highest level since 1940. Another 26 percent of adults have completed one to three years of college such as a community college, according to Census Bureau data.

This is important because the lifetime earnings of a person with a college associate's degree working from age 25 to 64 will be $442,000 more than that of a high school graduate. A bachelor's degree could yield $1 million more in lifetime earnings, a Census Bureau study found.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/index.html

CONSUMER DEBT: While Americans are known as big spenders on credit, some surveys show that since the Great Recession of 2008-09, consumers are becoming more frugal. The average consumer with an account had credit card debt of $5,371 in November, 2012, down from $6,503 the same month a year ago, according to consumer organization Credit Karma. Average mortgage and auto debt also was down and even student loan debt, which has been rising, inched lower in November.

The end of the year usually brings increases in credit card debt due to holiday shopping, but consumers seem to be spending more responsibly and paying more with cash. Spending has been more conservative in general over the last four years since the recession, and credit card companies are lowering debt limits, Credit Karma said.

CHARITABLE GIVING: Despite the uncertain economy, Americans continue to be generous to charities. Donations rose to $298.42 billion in 2011, the highest since the Great Recession, although giving has not yet reached pre-recession levels.

Giving by Americans increased 4 percent in 2011 compared with 2010, with individual donations accounting for nearly three-quarters of the total, according to the 57th annual report by the Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Corporate donations remained flat at $14.5 billion last year, foundations made almost $42 billion in grants - an increase of 1.8 percent - while gifts from estates jumped more than 12 percent to $24.4 billion.

The money went to around 1.1 million registered charities and some 222,000 American religious groups.

Religious groups received the most donations - about one- third of the total - but dropped 1.7 percent in 2011 to $95.8 billion. The only other sector to record a drop in donations was giving to foundations, which fell 6.1 percent to $25.8 billion.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/19/us-usa-charity-idUSBRE85I05T20120619

CANCER: Cancer claims the lives of more than half a million Americans every year and is the second leading cause of death after heart disease. But the numbers of deaths and people afflicted with the disease continue to decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the latest data is for 2008, officials said the trend continued in more recent years.

The federally funded CDC attributes the decline to identifying populations with unhealthy sedentary lifestyles and obesity, and intervening in a targeted way to improve their health and prevent cancer.

The highest rate of cancer deaths in the United States is for lung cancer, followed by prostate, breast cancer among women, colon, pancreatic, ovarian cancer and leukemia.

While lung cancer causes a greater rate of deaths, it is not the most frequent cancer. More Americans contract prostate cancer than any other type of the disease, followed by women with breast cancer. Lung cancer is third, followed by colon cancer, women with cancer of the uterus, and urinary bladder cancer.

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p0328_Cancer_deathrates.html

SMOKING: The number of Americans who smoke continues to gradually decline, to 19 percent of adults over 18 in 2011, the latest year for which statistics are available, from 19.3 percent in 2010. The news is even better for young adults: the rate of smoking among 18- to 24-year-olds dropped to 18.9 percent in 2011 from 24.4 percent in 2005.

The best trend of all is that four out of five teenagers do not smoke, and teen smoking has been on the decline since 2000, although the rate of decline has slowed.

Fewer people addicted to tobacco means lower health costs and fewer deaths, such as from lung cancer, down the road, according to the CDC.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6144a2.htm?s_cid

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p0809_youth_tobacco.html

TEEN PREGNANCY: The number of births to girls aged 15 to 19 fell 8 percent in 20ll to a record low level. Teens seems to be less sexually active and more of those who are active seem to be using birth control, the CDC said.

http://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/

CHILD OBESITY: After years of grim news about Americans getting fatter and sedentary, overweight children fixated on video games, the first signs of hope emerged this year. The CDC said new data showed a "modest" decline in child obesity in recent years. Two possible reasons - higher rates of breastfeeding and rising awareness of the importance of physical activity among young kids. A CDC study found 13 percent of preschoolers surveyed were obese in 1998, growing to 15 percent in 2003, but again falling below 15 percent by 2010, the most recent study year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/25/us-obesity-kids-idUSBRE8BO07J20121225

DRINKING AND DRIVING: The incidence of Americans driving after drinking too much has declined by 30 percent over the past 5 years although it remains a serious problem. Four-in-five drunk drivers are men and especially men from ages 21 to 34.

The best news is that drinking and driving among teenagers has fallen 54 percent since 1991. Only about 10 percent of teens ages 16 years or older had driven after drinking in 2011 compared with more than 20 percent two decades ago.

The reasons for this success include a minimum drinking age of 21 in all states, zero tolerance laws, graduated drivers' license systems and better parental monitoring, according to the CDC.

http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/DrinkingAndDriving/

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p10_02_teen_drinking.html

LAW ENFORCEMENT DEATHS: Deaths of law enforcement officials in the line of duty fell by 23 percent in 2012 after two years of sharp increases. Some 127 federal, state and local officers were killed, with traffic accidents the top cause of death, followed by shootings.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund attributed the reduction to better safety for police such as use of bullet-proof vests.

While national headlines have regularly featured terrible shootings such as those at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the number of police officers killed in shootings fell 32 percent in 2012.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/research-bulletins/

AIR QUALITY: In 2010, about 90 million tons of pollution were emitted into the atmosphere in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These emissions form ozone and particles, reduce visibility and deposition of acids, and visibility impairment.

But the good news is that pollution in the air we breathe is down substantially in all categories. In the three decades since 1980, emissions of carbon monoxide from cars, ozone, lead, nitrogen, sulfur and particulate matter such as soot all have declined. Carbon monoxide is down 82 percent, lead down 90 percent, nitrogen down 52 percent and sulfur declined 76 percent.

http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html

TRASH: Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash in 2010, most of which fouls the environment or goes into landfills. We may be starting to reform our wasteful ways, according to data from the EPA. The amount of waste generated per person per day had declined to 4.43 pounds by 2010 from 4.67 pounds five years earlier, according to the EPA.

Another positive trend is that recycling is increasing. Of the 250 million tons of trash produced in 2010, more than 85 million tons or 34.1 percent was recycled or composted.

http://www.epa.gov/waste/nonhaz/municipal/msw99.htm

(Reporting By Greg McCune; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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NEW YORK (AP) ESPN anchor Hannah Storm will return to the air on New Year's Day, exactly three weeks after she was seriously burned in a propane gas grill accident at her home.

Storm suffered second-degree burns on her chest and hands, and first-degree burns to her face and neck. She lost her eyebrows and eyelashes, and roughly half her hair.

Storm will host ABC's telecast of the 2013 Rose Parade on Tuesday. Her left hand will be bandaged and she said viewers might notice a difference in her hair texture where extensions have been added.

"I'm a little nervous about things I used to take for granted," she said by phone this weekend from Pasadena, Calif. "Little things like putting on makeup and even turning pages on my script."

The award-winning sportscaster and producer was preparing dinner outside her home in Connecticut on the night of Dec. 11 when she noticed the flame on the grill had gone out. She turned off the gas and when she reignited it "there was an explosion and a wall of fire came at me."

"It was like you see in a movie, it happened in a split-second," she said. "A neighbor said he thought a tree had fallen through the roof, it was that loud. It blew the doors off the grill."

With her left hand, she tore off her burning shirt. She tried to use another part of her shirt to extinguish the flames that engulfed her head and chest, while yelling for help. Her 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, called 911 and a computer technician who was working in the house grabbed some ice as Storm tried to cool the burns.

Soon, police and rescue teams arrived at the house. Storm's husband, NBC sportscaster Dan Hicks, also had returned home with another of the couple's three daughters. As her mother was being treated, the younger Hannah calmly said something that, days later, her mom could laugh about.

"OK, Mommy, I'm going to do my homework now," she said.

Storm was taken by ambulance to the Trauma and Burn Center at Westchester Medical Center and was treated for 24 hours.

"I didn't see my face until the next day and you wonder how it's going to look," she said. "I was pretty shocked. But my overarching thought was I've covered events with military members who have been through a lot worse than me, and they've come through. I kept thinking, 'I can do this. I'm fortunate.'"

Other than going to Christmas Eve Mass, Storm hadn't been outside until her trip to California. ESPN reworked its anchor schedule while she was recovering, and NBC and the Golf Channel rearranged their staffing while Hicks attended to his wife.

Storm is set to host her fifth Rose Parade, with some changes. She's left-handed, and taking notes is almost impossible. Dressing and showering are challenges, too.

Storm said that long before her accident, she'd been inspired by Iraq War veteran, actor and "Dancing With the Stars" winner J.R. Martinez, the grand marshal at last year's parade. He was severely burned in a land mine accident while serving overseas.

One attraction of this year's parade that she was eager to see the Nurses' Float, and she hoped to use that moment on air to thank everyone who had taken care of her.

Storm wants to anchor "SportsCenter" in Bristol, Conn., next Sunday. After that, the Notre Dame alum is ready to go in person to watch the No. 1 Irish play Alabama in the national championship game at Miami. She said the school reached out after hearing about her injuries and had been very supportive.

"More than anything, I feel gratitude," she said. "Something like this really makes you appreciate everything you have, even the chance to wake up on New Year's Day and do your job."

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