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China may have just dislodged the U.S. from a position its held for decades — the world's top trading nation. The latest Chinese figures put the value of its overall trade at $4.6 trillion last year. The U.S. will release its own 2013 data next month.

The Labor Department on Friday said the nation's jobless rate fell to 6.7 percent as U.S. employers added 74,000 jobs to payrolls while more Americans stopped looking for work in December. In November, the unemployment rate was 7 percent.

A drop in the numbers of fierce beasts worldwide might seem like good news for deer and antelope. But expanding herds of grass-eaters leave stream banks naked and vulnerable to erosion, and can even change the stream's course, according to scientists calling for more protection of large predators.

"I see the government operating the way the founders intended," says FBI Director Jim Comey, who notes that branches of the U.S. government approved the bulk collection of U.S. phone records.

There are about 137 million jobs in America. Here's how they break down — and how the picture has changed over the past few years.

Slow-cooking expert Stephanie O'Dea shares the story behind her KFC-inspired chicken: It was an attempt to recreate the Colonel's secret recipe so that her daughter, who has celiac disease, could experience a taste most Americans take for granted. In a twist, O'Dea also wanted to cook the chicken in a Crock-Pot.

Anjan Sundaram's new memoir Stringer chronicles his adventures as a budding journalist in one of the world's most chaotic spots: the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Reviewer and veteran journalist Ted Koppel says Stringer "is a book about a young journalist's coming of age, and a wonderful book it is, too."

The New York music marathon turns 10 this year and expands far beyond its modest origins, but it remains a place to discover new views of improvisation. Hear tunes from groups like the Jeff Ballard Trio, Tillery and Aruán Ortiz's Orbiting Quartet.

In Little Failure, the novelist recounts his emigration from the USSR to the U.S. when he was 7. For the first few years, he says, he would sit alone in the school cafeteria, talking to himself in Russian "in this gigantic fur hat and fur coat." It wasn't long before a teacher advised, "Children won't play with you if you have that much fur on."

Health care costs grew at 3.7 percent in 2012, the fourth year of a trend of smaller annual increases. The Obama administration says that the Affordable Care Act is a factor. But the actuaries who wrote the report beg to differ, saying the recession is a more likely cause.