Think the number 13 is something to be scared of? Try spelling the fear's official name without breaking into a cold sweat: triskaidekaphobia.

Tuesday is New Year's Day 2013, a day for revelers to nurse their hangovers and gyms to overflow with exercisers eager to rejoin the weight-loss bandwagon. But for people suffering from the tongue-twisting terror, it means just 364 days until 2014.

Edward Burger, a professor of mathematics at Williams College in Massachusetts, dismisses any unease that might be associated with the new year because it ends with 13, suggesting instead that the bad luck associated with the number has been imposed on it by society.

"Culturally, it's an induction point when something does happen. Mathematically, there's nothing to this numerology nonsense," he said.

Perhaps 13 is considered so taboo in American culture, Mr. Burger suggested, because "when things happen, all of a sudden you tether it to historical interest or intrigue, and you go 'Oh! it's the 13th!'"

When and what inspired the phobia, even psychologists and superstition experts can only hazard a guess, though two myths tend to surface regularly.

New York - Three cops were shot Thursday night in two separate incidents an hour apart in the Bronx and Brooklyn, police said.

The first shooting, at 6:32 p.m. in the Bronxdale section of the Bronx, left an off-duty officer with a gunshot wound to the leg after he bravely fought back against a robbery crew that tried to rip off his car dealership. Exactly an hour later in Dyker Heights, in a gun battle on an N train, two officers and a straphanger were shot and wounded, and the gunman was killed by a police bullet.

The three officers -- all expected to recover -- were the first officers to be shot in 2013, following a year in which a dozen of the city's Finest were shot.

"As both of these incidents illustrate, the historic crime reductions that New Yorkers enjoy come at a price," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said late Thursday night in a press conference at Lutheran Medical Center, where the officers wounded in the Brooklyn shooting were treated.
"A dozen police officers were shot last year. And now three more, in the first three days of the new year, so thank God ... all of these officers will recover," Kelly added.

The first shooting occurred after a group of men tried to hold up Officer Juan Pichardo's car dealership on Boston Road, police and the officer's friends said.

While two suspects waited in a getaway car, two others went inside and pretended to be interested in buying a car - then at least one of them pulled a gun at the Auto Mall near Adee Ave., sources said.

• Woman fell asleep in her bed with her boyfriend who went home later
• Her brother's friend then came upstairs and got in her bed and started kissing her
• She woke up once he began having sex with her but at first she thought it was her boyfriend because the room was dark
• Once she realized it wasn't him, she screamed and kicked him out
• Now his rape conviction overturned based on 1872 law that does not give single women same rights as unmarried women
• Law does not protect unmarried women against 'rape' by 'imposters'

The rape conviction of a California man who pretended to be a sleeping woman's boyfriend has been overturned, with an appeals court ruling Wednesday that an arcane law from 1872 doesn't protect unmarried women in such cases.

By reversing the decision, the Los Angeles court ruled that Julio Morales, a friend of the victim's brother, should not be convicted of raping a woman and serving the three year sentence that he originally faced.

He was accused of entering a woman's bedroom late one night after her boyfriend had gone home and initiating sexual intercourse while she was asleep, after a night of drinking.

An unidentified man was shot in the face twice with a pellet gun early on Wednesday morning by another man in the parking lot of a Walmart store in Lutz, Florida (video below).

The shooter allegedly asked the man: "Are you of Middle Eastern descent?" and "Are you Muslim?" before shooting him, reports MyFox Tampa Bay.

About 20 pellets were fired from the gun, but only two hit the man, who was not seriously injured.

Germany's annual inflation rate rose for the first time in fourth months in December on increases in food and package holiday prices, breaching the European Central Bank's target threshold for the broader euro zone of 2 per cent.

Compared to the prior year period, prices increased by 2.1 per cent in the final month of 2012, preliminary data from the Federal Statistics Office showed. On the month, consumer prices rose 0.9 per cent.

Food price inflation will only get worse as the rising global population and climate change add to the volatility faced by British consumers, the government's chief scientist warned today.

In a new blow to families struggling to pay their grocery bills, Prof Sir John Beddington said the cost of food was "not going to stop" rising in the foreseeable future.

During a radio discussion about food prices, he said much of world's agriculture was dependent on stable weather patterns, which have undergone "major changes" in recent years.

This, he warned, meant that food supplies were "extremely fragile" and that reserves were subjected to extremes in conditions caused by climate change.

With food inflation currently hovering at around five per cent, Sir John warned that as the world's population grew, and the fight against poverty became more successful, the volatility of prices would only get "worse".

"The concern [on rising food prices] has been there for some time and I think the message I got, is this is not going to stop," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme. "The volatility ... is also going to get worse."

But competition among food retailers could provide some relief in the near term

With several forecasts predicting food prices increasing anywhere from 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent in 2013, consumers will have to rethink how they will spend their hard-earned discretionary income, writes University of Guelph professor Sylvain Charlebois. News services file photo

Last year, Canadian consumers enjoyed modest increases in food prices. In fact, not only did food prices barely increase, but prices of fruits and vegetables decreased by more than eight per cent.

Unfortunately, 2013 will be a different story. Several forecasts predict food prices will go up anywhere from 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent, likely exceeding our national inflation rate.

In other words, consumers will have to rethink how they will spend their hard-earned discretionary income. Indeed, meat and poultry lovers will be especially hard hit as prices for meats will likely increase by more than 4.5 per cent.

The driller whose floating Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in 2010 to cause the nation's biggest oil spill has agreed to settle civil and criminal claims with the federal government for $1.4 billion, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The Deepwater Horizon exploded, burned and sank in April 2010. Eleven men were killed and millions of gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and fouled the shores of coastal states. The well, known as Macondo, was owned by British oil giant BP, which settled its own criminal charges and some of its civil charges in November for $4.5 billion.

While this settlement resolves the government's claims against Transocean, that company and the others involved in the spill still face the sprawling, multistate civil case, which is scheduled to begin in February in New Orleans. In a deal filed in federal court in New Orleans, a subsidiary, Transocean Deepwater, agreed to one criminal misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act and will pay a fine of $100 million. Over the next five years, the company will pay civil penalties of $1 billion, the largest ever under the act.

As part of the criminal settlement, Transocean also agreed to pay the National Academy of Sciences and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation $150 million each. Those funds will be applied to oil spill prevention and response in the Gulf of Mexico and natural resource restoration projects. The agreement will be subject to public comment and court approval. The company agreed to five years of monitoring of its drilling practices and improved safety measures.

For most people, Facebook is a place to share your thoughts, boast about your accomplishments and show off pictures of you, your friends and your family.

But for one Astoria man, it was also a place to share his crime - a crime he had yet to be caught for, until now.

"Drivin drunk ... classsic ;) but to whoever's vehicle i hit i am sorry. :P"

That is what Jacob Cox-Brown, 18, of Astoria, posted on Facebook. That post was soon sent to Astoria Police Officer Nicole Riley by one of Cox-Brown's friends. Another friend soon called in the same thing to Sgt. Brian Aydt.

"Astoria Police have an active social media presence," a press release from Astoria Police read Wednesday. "It was a private Facebook message to one of our officers that got this case moving, though. When you post ... on Facebook, you have to figure that it is not going to stay private long."

The study also found drowsy driving was more common in men and people ages 25 to 34.

This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.

And health officials think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel.

In a government study released Thursday, a little over 4 percent of U.S. adults said they fell asleep while driving at least once in the previous month. Some earlier studies reached a similar conclusion, but the survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was far larger.