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While Chicago and Detroit are struggling to control rising murder rates, New York City hit a record low number of homicides in 2012. The police commissioner has often pointed to several controversial policing tactics for falling crime, but some analysts say there are many potential explanations.

Among others receiving the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom: writer/activist Gloria Steinem, newspaper editor Ben Bradlee and jazz musician Arturo Sandoval. Posthumous honors went to astronaut Sally Ride, Sen. Daniel Inouye and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.

This subtle relative of bitter chicories may masquerade among the lettuces, but it's not just for salads. Sturdy escarole stands up to a saute, simmer or braise; with heat it seems to mellow and ripen in flavor, growing only sweeter for the ordeal.

Almost three months after Superstorm Sandy, parts of lower Manhattan are limping along to recovery. More than 20 large buildings are without power, and many businesses remain closed and boarded up. Even businesses that are open are struggling without the old foot traffic.

Novelist Bernard Cornwell returns to Saxon England while Libyan writer Hisham Matar delivers a tale of loss and Madeline Miller's debut reimagines The Iliad. In nonfiction, Sally Jacobs examines Obama's father, and Jim Steinmeyer recalls a magician who rivaled Houdini.

Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland in the wake of the first Gulf War, after her writing was labeled subversive by Saddam Hussein's government. She has never physically returned to Iraq, but she remembers it in her poetry.

Republicans have strong language opposing same-sex marriage in their official platform. While some Log Cabin Republicans are discouraged, others think the vehement opposition they are facing is a sign they're making progress.

Dynamite Hill is a section in Birmingham so nicknamed because Ku Klux Klan members regularly bombed its streets during the Civil Rights era. NAACP attorney Arthur Shores had a home in this middle-class African-American neighborhood.

Until recently, inmates with life sentences — most for murder — were rarely released from prison, regardless of their behavior. But a 2008 court case and a new governor have changed their odds.

Former President Ronald Reagan would surely be pleased to know that many of his legacies remain vital in 2012, from campaign pledges to lower taxes to ketchup's classification as a vegetable. Reagan is also responsible for a lesser-known contribution to American food culture: National Frozen Food Day.

The judges ruled it was unconstitutional and infringed on the government's responsibility to preserve Spain's cultural patrimony. Catalan lawmakers approved the ban in 2010, citing animal cruelty.

When she was just 12, Edith Lee-Payne's face was immortalized in an iconic photo from the March on Washington. Decades would pass before Payne learned that her image has been used as part of documentaries, books, calendars and exhibits about the history of the civil rights movement.