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(Continued from page 38)
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• Today's Birthdays: Author Judith Krantz is 85. Football Hall-of-Famer Bart Starr is 79. Sportscaster Dick Enberg is 78. Actress K. Callan is 77. Folk singer Joan Baez is 72. Rockabilly singer Roy Head is 72. Rock musician Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) is 69. Singer David Johansen (aka Buster Poindexter) is 63. Singer Crystal Gayle is 62. Actor J.K. Simmons is 58. Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberto Menchu is 54. Rock musician Eric Erlandson is 50. Actress Joely Richardson is 48. Rock musician Carl Bell (Fuel) is 46. Rock singer Steve Harwell (Smash Mouth) is 46. Rock singer-musician Dave Matthews is 46. Actress-director Joey Lauren Adams is 45. Roots singer-songwriter Hayes Carll is 37. Singer A.J. McLean (Backstreet Boys) is 35. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, is 31. Pop-rock musician Drew Brown (OneRepublic) is 29. Rock-soul singer Paolo Nutini is 26. Actress Nina Dobrev is 24. Actor Tyree Brown (TV: "Parenthood") is nine.
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• Thought for Today: "Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits." - President Richard Nixon (1913-1994).
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US seared during hottest year on record by far
SETH BORENSTEIN,AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.
• A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.
• Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.
• "It was off the chart," said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which calculated the temperature records.
• Last year, he said, will go down as "a huge exclamation point at the end of a couple decades of warming."
• The data center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.
• Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather (Continued on page 40)
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