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Mortgage rates, which took some dramatic dips in 2012, were among the lowest on record this year, according to data released by Freddie Mac on Thursday. The 30-year fixed-rate average dropped to 3.35 percent, down 0.7 from the week before. It is substantially lower than the 3.95 percent level it reached during the final week of 2011.

The big deal for Hollywood is not the record $10.8 billion that studios took in domestically in 2012. It's the fact that the number of tickets sold went up for the first time in three years.

In a mega moment for the man called Megatron, Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson broke Jerry Rice's single-season record for receiving yards Saturday night against the Atlanta Falcons.

Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" led the box office with a haul of $84.8 million, a record-setting opening better than the three previous "Lord of the Rings" films. The Warner Bros. Middle Earth epic was the biggest December opening ever, surpassing Will Smith's "I Am Legend," which opened with $77.2 million in 2007, according to studio estimates Sunday. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" also passed the December opening of "Avatar," which opened with $77 million. Internationally, "The Hobbit" also added $138.2 million, for an impressive debut well north of $200 million.

Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees is on the verge of becoming unattainable, researchers said.

Endangered sea turtles are becoming stranded on Massachusetts' Cape Cod shores so frequently that they are on track to break records.

The 2012 hurricane season has come to an end and it's another one for the record books, above and beyond the destruction of Sandy. There were 19 named storms in what meteorologists consider an above-average year that tied as being the third most-active season since 1851. The season runs from June 1st to November 30th, although tropical storms can and do sometimes develop outside those dates.

The words "four more years", coupled with a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama embraced in a hug, have become the most retweeted Twitter post ever. The US president tweeted the message at 0416 GMT, and it has since been retweeted over half a million times. It underlined the now pivotal role social media plays in informing and persuading potential voters.

Peyton Manning had no trouble clearing those two interceptions out of his head and leading a fourth-quarter comeback....

A small earthquake hit northern New Jersey early Monday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The magnitude 2.0 temblor struck at 1:19 a.m. and was centered in Ringwood, N.J., a community that’s still reeling from downed trees and power outages caused by Superstorm Sandy.