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It's official: 2012 was the hottest year on record for the contiguous United States. In fact, it shattered the record set in 1998. The National Climatic Data Center says last year was also extraordinarily dry — and drought conditions are persisting into 2013.

The London Olympics are more than a month away, but fans of swimming were eager to see the 2012 edition of the rivalry between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte get started Monday, when the two Olympic gold medalists face off in the final of the 400-meter individual medley at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

For this week's roundup of best political folks to follow on Twitter, we chose some lesser-known and local names you might want to see in your feed.

Balding men have decisions to make: Go with a comb over, take medication, get hair plugs or a toupee or do nothing at all. So when New York Times contributing editor Daniel Jones started losing his hair, he chose what he considers a "cooler alternative" — head shaving.

NPR's Scott Horsley talks about what some are terming the "diplopaloozaa" this weekend, when President Obama hosts the G8 conference at Camp David on Saturday and the next day plays host to two dozen NATO heads of state in Chicago.

The former FBI director's investigators were "more successful in burrowing into the traditionally closed university" than state investigators had been, writes Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Sara Ganim of Harrisburg's The Patriot-News.

Vinegar pie and green tomato pie don't usually top the list of America's favorite sweets. But in Depression-era America, these and other desperation pies that survive today showed off home cooks' ingenuity.

The E. coli outbreak that sickened more than 4,300 people in May and June had epidemiologists scrambling to find the contaminated vegetables that caused it. What made it difficult, they say in a new paper, is that people had trouble remembering what exactly was in the salads they ate. In this case, the culprit turned out to be fenugreek seeds, but it was a long road to get there.

Nearly a third of people said they'd questioned or refused a doctor's recommendation of painkillers, according to findings from the latest NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll. Fear of addiction and worries about side effects were common concerns.

U.S. News & World Report's ratings count when it comes to marketing to prospective medical students and fundraising, med school deans acknowledge. But they take the rankings less seriously as a scientific gauge of what actually goes on at their schools.