Ten Words from Today's NY Times - Jan. 9, 2013

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

Scientists said that natural variability almost certainly played a role in last year’s extreme heat and drought.

Most important to Mr. Obama and his national security adviser, Tom Donilon, all three are likely to accommodate themselves, in ways their predecessors often did not, to a White House that has insisted on running national security policy from the West Wing.

While both Mr. Gates and his successor, Leon E. Panetta, expressed similar concerns at various points in the first term, Mr. Hagel’s view is considerably to the left of Mr. Obama’s.

But Mr. Hagel has opposed unilateral sanctions and suggested that threatening Iran just closes down opportunities for dialogue.

It is where the specter of the Iraq war, and Vietnam before it, most haunts the discussion.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, will outline his proposal in his State of the State address, but even before he speaks, he has incited anxiety among gun owners by acknowledging in a radio interview that “confiscation could be an option” for assault weapons owned by New Yorkers.

According to people briefed on the talks, the governor is considering not only rewriting the state’s assault weapons ban, but also proposing more expansive use of mental health records in background checks of gun buyers, lower limits on the capacity of magazines sold legally in New York and a new requirement that gun permits be subject to periodic recertification.

New York already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and the debate over new restrictions here reflects a significant change in the national conversation over guns, as states and the federal government grapple with whether and how to limit the possession of weapons that have been used in multiple mass killings in recent years.