Maryland ushers in New Year with its first gay marriages

By Medina Roshan

BALTIMORE | Tue Jan 1, 2013 1:45am EST

BALTIMORE (Reuters) - Seven gay couples in Maryland rang in the New Year with wedding bells early Tuesday, the first wave of nuptials since voters in the state backed the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The couples were "lawfully married" rather than pronounced "husband and wife" at the 12:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) ceremony on New Year's Day in Baltimore's City Hall.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake officiated at the wedding of the first of the couples, 68-year-old James Scales and 60-year-old William Tasker. Scales and Tasker said they had been together for 35 years.

The mayor joked that everyone had come to celebrate a relationship that began many years ago - "and I mean that, many years ago."

Soon after the November vote legalizing gay marriage, Scales, a long-time city employee, asked the mayor to marry the two.

"She wanted to make a statement to tell gay, lesbian, transgendered couples that they're welcome here," said the mayor's press secretary Ian Brennan of her decision.

Voters in Maryland, Maine and Washington state approved same-sex unions on Election Day, becoming the only states to pass such a measure by popular vote.

Nine of the 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., now have legalized gay marriage. Another 31 states have passed constitutional amendments banning it.

Rawlings-Blake called the November 6 vote "a remarkable achievement for Maryland" and welcomed friends and families of the couples to witness history at the early morning ceremony.

"We are excited to open City Hall to host some of the first wedding ceremonies in our great state," Rawlings-Blake said.

Public opinion has been shifting in favor of allowing same-sex marriage. A Pew Research Center survey from October found 49 percent of Americans favored allowing gay marriage, with 40 percent opposed. In May, President Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to say he believed same-sex couples should be allowed to get married.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review two challenges to federal and state laws that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The nation's highest court said this month it will review a case against a federal law that denies married same-sex couples the federal benefits that heterosexual couples receive.

It also will look at a challenge to California's ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, which voters narrowly approved in 2008.

Washington state's law legalizing same-sex unions took effect on December 9 and Maine's on December 29.

(Reporting by Medina Roshan; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Tim Dobbyn and Eric Walsh)

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U.S. House aims to split Sandy aid bill into two parts

A destroyed ocean-front home is seen in the Ortley Beach area of Toms River, NJ, November 29, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Andrew Burton

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 31, 2012 9:54pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to split a $60.4 billion Superstorm Sandy disaster aid bill into two parts, staging votes on $27 billion to fund immediate recovery needs and $33 billion for long-term and other projects, Republican lawmakers and aides said on Monday.

The plan for votes on Tuesday or Wednesday would meet the demands of many Republican lawmakers to vote on a smaller initial package of aid for victims of the October 29 storm that devastated New York and New Jersey coastlines.

But the House plan still provides members from those states an opportunity to try to drum up support for the full aid package approved by the Senate last week. Details emerged after a House Republican caucus meeting on Monday.

"There's going to be two votes, unless the plan changes - one at $27 billion and one at $33 billion," said Representative Steven LaTourette, a member of the appropriations committee who will retire from Congress when it adjourns on Wednesday.

Should the House fail to pass a Sandy bill by then, the Senate's $60.4 billion measure would expire, and the new Congress that gets sworn in on Thursday would have to start over with new legislation, further delaying the disaster funds.

"If we get into the next Congress, you have to hit the reset button," said Representative Jon Runyan, a New Jersey Republican who added that the Sandy aid package has been largely drowned out in recent days by negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in starting on Tuesday.

"We're doing everything we can to keep this in the forefront," Runyan added.

Many Republicans in Congress say that the Sandy aid bill contains billions of dollars in spending on projects unrelated to damage caused by the storm or for long-term infrastructure improvements that should compete with other discretionary spending.

Among expenditures criticized was $150 million to rebuild fisheries, including those in the Gulf Coast and Alaska, thousands of miles from Sandy's devastation, and $2 million to repair roof damage that pre-dates the storm on Smithsonian Institution buildings in Washington.

There were few details on which expenditures would be considered immediate disaster needs that would go into the $27 billion portion of the House measure, which is likely to win easier passage.

Senate Republicans tried a similar approach, proposing to shrink the $60.4 billion package to $24 billion for near-term projects, but this was defeated in the Democratic-controlled chamber.

Aides said the New York and New Jersey delegations were working to drum up support for the full package. An aide to a New York area Republican congressman said there appeared to be sufficient Republican support for passage.

Democrats, including New York and New Jersey senators, have argued that long-term rebuilding projects such as tunnel repairs, would be delayed if the full funding was not approved. They say that businesses would not start to rebuild if they were not confident of reimbursement.

(Reporting By David Lawder; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Sour end to 2012 masks positive trends in America

1 of 2. Fireworks explode over Times Square as the crystal ball is hoisted before New Year celebrations in New York December 31, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott

By Greg McCune

CHICAGO | Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:53pm EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Many Americans seem to be in a sour mood as 2013 begins, after Hurricane Sandy ravaged parts of the East Coast, a gunman massacred 20 school children in Connecticut and a long, contentious election campaign was followed by failure to resolve the "fiscal cliff" issue by year-end.

Americans have not been very optimistic since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, but the gloom had begun to lift this year until the blast of bad news as 2012 ended, IPSOS pollster Cliff Young said on Monday. IPSOS polling showed that some angst set in as the year ended.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents said the economy was on the wrong track at the end of 2012, IPSOS said, and 64 percent had a negative opinion of national politics.

"I do think these events had some sort of effect on people's short-term prospects," Young said.

But the headlines of 2012 belie a number of positive underlying trends in America, and Young said he expects public opinion to turn more positive in the new year.

Here is a summary of some of the positive trends in health, health, security, the environment, personal finance and education:

COLLEGE EDUCATION: More than 30 percent of Americans 25 years of age or older have finished four years of college, the highest level since 1940. Another 26 percent of adults have completed one to three years of college such as a community college, according to Census Bureau data.

This is important because the lifetime earnings of a person with a college associate's degree working from age 25 to 64 will be $442,000 more than that of a high school graduate. A bachelor's degree could yield $1 million more in lifetime earnings, a Census Bureau study found.

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CONSUMER DEBT: While Americans are known as big spenders on credit, some surveys show that since the Great Recession of 2008-09, consumers are becoming more frugal. The average consumer with an account had credit card debt of $5,371 in November, 2012, down from $6,503 the same month a year ago, according to consumer organization Credit Karma. Average mortgage and auto debt also was down and even student loan debt, which has been rising, inched lower in November.

The end of the year usually brings increases in credit card debt due to holiday shopping, but consumers seem to be spending more responsibly and paying more with cash. Spending has been more conservative in general over the last four years since the recession, and credit card companies are lowering debt limits, Credit Karma said.

CHARITABLE GIVING: Despite the uncertain economy, Americans continue to be generous to charities. Donations rose to $298.42 billion in 2011, the highest since the Great Recession, although giving has not yet reached pre-recession levels.

Giving by Americans increased 4 percent in 2011 compared with 2010, with individual donations accounting for nearly three-quarters of the total, according to the 57th annual report by the Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Corporate donations remained flat at $14.5 billion last year, foundations made almost $42 billion in grants - an increase of 1.8 percent - while gifts from estates jumped more than 12 percent to $24.4 billion.

The money went to around 1.1 million registered charities and some 222,000 American religious groups.

Religious groups received the most donations - about one- third of the total - but dropped 1.7 percent in 2011 to $95.8 billion. The only other sector to record a drop in donations was giving to foundations, which fell 6.1 percent to $25.8 billion.

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CANCER: Cancer claims the lives of more than half a million Americans every year and is the second leading cause of death after heart disease. But the numbers of deaths and people afflicted with the disease continue to decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the latest data is for 2008, officials said the trend continued in more recent years.

The federally funded CDC attributes the decline to identifying populations with unhealthy sedentary lifestyles and obesity, and intervening in a targeted way to improve their health and prevent cancer.

The highest rate of cancer deaths in the United States is for lung cancer, followed by prostate, breast cancer among women, colon, pancreatic, ovarian cancer and leukemia.

While lung cancer causes a greater rate of deaths, it is not the most frequent cancer. More Americans contract prostate cancer than any other type of the disease, followed by women with breast cancer. Lung cancer is third, followed by colon cancer, women with cancer of the uterus, and urinary bladder cancer.

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SMOKING: The number of Americans who smoke continues to gradually decline, to 19 percent of adults over 18 in 2011, the latest year for which statistics are available, from 19.3 percent in 2010. The news is even better for young adults: the rate of smoking among 18- to 24-year-olds dropped to 18.9 percent in 2011 from 24.4 percent in 2005.

The best trend of all is that four out of five teenagers do not smoke, and teen smoking has been on the decline since 2000, although the rate of decline has slowed.

Fewer people addicted to tobacco means lower health costs and fewer deaths, such as from lung cancer, down the road, according to the CDC.

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TEEN PREGNANCY: The number of births to girls aged 15 to 19 fell 8 percent in 20ll to a record low level. Teens seems to be less sexually active and more of those who are active seem to be using birth control, the CDC said.

www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/

CHILD OBESITY: After years of grim news about Americans getting fatter and sedentary, overweight children fixated on video games, the first signs of hope emerged this year. The CDC said new data showed a "modest" decline in child obesity in recent years. Two possible reasons - higher rates of breastfeeding and rising awareness of the importance of physical activity among young kids. A CDC study found 13 percent of preschoolers surveyed were obese in 1998, growing to 15 percent in 2003, but again falling below 15 percent by 2010, the most recent study year.

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DRINKING AND DRIVING: The incidence of Americans driving after drinking too much has declined by 30 percent over the past 5 years although it remains a serious problem. Four-in-five drunk drivers are men and especially men from ages 21 to 34.

The best news is that drinking and driving among teenagers has fallen 54 percent since 1991. Only about 10 percent of teens ages 16 years or older had driven after drinking in 2011 compared with more than 20 percent two decades ago.

The reasons for this success include a minimum drinking age of 21 in all states, zero tolerance laws, graduated drivers' license systems and better parental monitoring, according to the CDC.

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LAW ENFORCEMENT DEATHS: Deaths of law enforcement officials in the line of duty fell by 23 percent in 2012 after two years of sharp increases. Some 127 federal, state and local officers were killed, with traffic accidents the top cause of death, followed by shootings.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund attributed the reduction to better safety for police such as use of bullet-proof vests.

While national headlines have regularly featured terrible shootings such as those at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the number of police officers killed in shootings fell 32 percent in 2012.

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AIR QUALITY: In 2010, about 90 million tons of pollution were emitted into the atmosphere in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These emissions form ozone and particles, reduce visibility and deposition of acids, and visibility impairment.

But the good news is that pollution in the air we breathe is down substantially in all categories. In the three decades since 1980, emissions of carbon monoxide from cars, ozone, lead, nitrogen, sulfur and particulate matter such as soot all have declined. Carbon monoxide is down 82 percent, lead down 90 percent, nitrogen down 52 percent and sulfur declined 76 percent.

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TRASH: Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash in 2010, most of which fouls the environment or goes into landfills. We may be starting to reform our wasteful ways, according to data from the EPA. The amount of waste generated per person per day had declined to 4.43 pounds by 2010 from 4.67 pounds five years earlier, according to the EPA.

Another positive trend is that recycling is increasing. Of the 250 million tons of trash produced in 2010, more than 85 million tons or 34.1 percent was recycled or composted.

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(Reporting By Greg McCune; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Revelers gather in NY's frigid Times Square on New Year's Eve

1 of 8. National Guardsman John Cebak (R) kisses his fiancee Sonja Babic at the start of the new year in Times Square in New York January 1, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford

By Peter Rudegeair and Greg Roumeliotis

NEW YORK | Tue Jan 1, 2013 12:43am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Throngs of revelers in and around New York's Times Square bid farewell to 2012 and extended a raucous greeting to 2013 early Tuesday.

The crowd in midtown Manhattan, which police expected to approach 1 million, cheered and counted down the final seconds of 2012 as a large lighted crystal ball descended for the last minute of the old year - a tradition started in 1907.

Thousands cheered as the new year officially began and a blizzard of colorful confetti fell on the famous square. But the cheers - and a spirited crowd rendition of the song "New York, New York" - were quickly drowned out by a fireworks show.

Paul Hannemann, the head of an incident response team at the Texas Forest Service, was in New York to help with the reconstruction efforts in areas hit by Superstorm Sandy.

Even as he spent his first New Year's Eve in Times Square, Hannemann's thoughts were on Washington, D.C., where lawmakers worked late into the night to reach a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that many economists fear could send the nation back into recession.

"I hope everybody can come together in 2013 so our country can get its finances in order and our economy back in place," Hannemann, 60, said.

In addition to the crowd on hand in Times Square, another billion people were expected to watch on television, city officials said.

People filled pens in the center of Times Square hours before the end of 2012. Police set up barricades to keep away the overflow crowd. Once people entered the police pens, they were not allowed to leave, no alcohol was permitted and there were no restrooms.

At 6 p.m. the ball rose to the top to the top of its 70-foot (21-meter) pole and fireworks went off.

A few minutes earlier, the cheering crowd turned silent when the ceremony released balloons for each of the victims of the December 14 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Mark Barrigan, a medical software product manager, traveled from Dallas to witness the ball drop live for the first time this year, fulfilling a longtime wish.

"It was one of those bucket list items," Barrigan said, referring to a list of activities people plan to do before they die.

Asked what he was hoping for in the new year, Barrigan replied, "Hopefully they'll make some good decisions in Washington, D.C."

Elsewhere in America, same-sex marriage became legal at 12:01 a.m. in Maryland.

Maryland, Maine and Washington state became the first three U.S. states to approve gay marriage by popular vote on November 6. Nine states and the District of Columbia now have statutes legalizing gay marriage.

FREEZING TEMPERATURES

The temperature in Times Square was predicted to hover just above freezing around midnight, with a possibility of rain or snow flurries, forecasters said.

The revelers came for the people-watching for which Times Square is famous, and to see performers such as Taylor Swift, Psy, Carly Rae Jepsen and Neon Trees.

"For me, 2013 is about leaving everything behind and starting from scratch," said Mara Trevin, a 26-year-old who moved from Buenos Aires to New York last week to start a new life.

"That's my resolution."

The illuminated, crystal-covered ball - some 12 feet in diameter and weighing nearly 12,000 pounds (5,443 kg) - began its descent on schedule at 11:59 a.m. EST, dropping 70 feet in 60 seconds.

One of those crystals was engraved with the name of Dick Clark, the American entertainer who hosted a popular television presentation of the Times Square New Year's celebrations for decades.

He died in April of a heart attack. Clark had suffered a stroke in 2004 that sidelined from the New Year's Eve show for the first time since he launched the annual broadcast in 1972.

But he gamely returned to the program the following year, and had continued to announce the annual countdown to midnight.

As part of the city's New Year's Eve celebration, more than one ton of confetti was to be released from the rooftops of surrounding buildings in Times Square.

The end-of-the-year crowds capped a year in which 52 million people visited New York City, the third straight record-breaking year for tourism, city officials said on Monday.

More than a million additional tourists visited the city in 2012 compared to 2011, a 2.1 percent increase, they said.

The first version of the ball in Times Square descended in 1907 from a flagpole.

(Additional reporting by Joshua Lott; Editing by Daniel Trotta, James B. Kelleher, David Gregorio, M.D. Golan and Eric Walsh)

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Federal safety team joins probe of fatal Oregon bus crash

1 of 4. Tow truck operators work tour on bus that careened off a mountain highway and plunged down a snow-covered slope, killing nine passengers and injuring at least 27 others, in Oregon on December 31, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Steve Dipaola

By Tim Trainor

PENDLETON, Oregon | Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:40pm EST

PENDLETON, Oregon (Reuters) - Federal safety investigators joined Oregon state police on Monday in trying to find out what caused a tour bus to veer off a mountain highway and plunge down a snow-covered slope, killing nine passengers and injuring 39 others.

The charter bus was carrying nearly 50 people, about two dozen of them holding foreign passports, through the Blue Mountains of northern Oregon en route from Las Vegas to Vancouver, British Columbia, when it crashed through a guard rail on Interstate 84 shortly after 10 a.m. on Sunday, authorities said.

The foreign nationals included South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese and Canadians along with American passengers.

The bus rolled over at least once as it careened 200 feet down the embankment before coming to rest upright in the snow at the bottom of a hill, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Oregon State Police Lieutenant Gregg Hastings said many of the victims were ejected from the bus.

Photos of the crash scene posted by the state police showed that part of the vehicle's roof was crushed.

"This was a very horrible, tragic crash which led to many people's lives being lost and many people being injured," Hastings said. "We still want to keep that in perspective."

Authorities said they could not immediately explain what triggered the accident, which occurred near the town of Pendleton, about 200 miles east of Portland. Attention turned early on to road conditions but a full investigation was expected to take at least four weeks to complete.

Hastings said troopers arriving on the scene found icy spots along on the stretch of road where the bus hit a concrete barrier along the highway's inside median, then veered across both westbound lanes of traffic and plowed through a guard rail.

At an afternoon news conference on Monday, Hastings said investigators had yet to determine the speed of the bus at the time it crashed.

A spokesman for the state transportation department, Dave Thompson, told Reuters on Monday that the area where the crash occurred "is well known for treacherous conditions in winter."

Road surfaces there at the time were generally were "icy in spots, with some areas of packed snow, and that's absolutely typical for the area at this of the year."

Thompson said road crews had been out spreading sand in the area and that one sand truck "was just turning around after having passed the bus" on the highway shortly before the crash, but he said he did not know the condition of the highway surface where the bus veered off the interstate.

The NTSB, which has made improved motor coach transportation safety a top priority, said Monday it was sending a team to investigate the accident. A spokesman for the agency in Washington, Terry Williams said, "We'll be looking at the man, the environment and the machine."

The 49 passengers on the bus ranged in age from 7 to 70, though most of them were adults, and none of the nine killed were believed to be children, Hastings said.

In addition to nine passengers confirmed killed, 39 people were transported to area hospitals with injuries, authorities said. Of those, 29 remained hospitalized on Monday, several in serious condition.

Investigators had spoken to the driver, who was also injured, Hastings said.

According to the NTSB, more than 250 people were killed and 20,000 injured in bus-related crashes in 2009, the latest year for which data was available.

(Reporting by Tim Trainor, Teresa Carson,; Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by M.D. Golan and Cynthia Osterman)

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"Fiscal cliff" deal reached between White House, lawmakers: source

A man walks past the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington December 17, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 31, 2012 9:42pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House and congressional lawmakers have reached a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" that would delay harsh spending cuts by two months, Obama administration officials said on Monday.

President Barack Obama called Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who both signed off on the deal, one source said.

The agreement includes a balance of spending cuts and revenue increases to pay for the delay in the automatic spending cuts that would go into effect without a deal by lawmakers.

Of those spending cuts, 50 percent would come from defense and 50 percent from non-defense areas, the sources said. The White House viewed that as a victory, one source said, and sees it as a model for future deficit reduction pacts.

Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Capitol Hill to discuss the deal.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Clinton suffers clot behind right ear, full recovery seen

1 of 2. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers a speech ''Frontlines and Frontiers: Making Human Rights a Human Reality'' at Dublin City University in Ireland in this file photo from December 6, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

By Arshad Mohammed and Jilian Mincer

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK | Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:39pm EST

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suffered a blood clot in a vein between her brain and skull behind her right ear but is expected to make a full recovery, her doctors said on Monday in a statement released by the State Department.

Clinton did not suffer a stroke or neurological damage as a result of the clot, the doctors said, adding that "she is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family and her staff."

The U.S. secretary of state, who has not been seen in public since December 7, was revealed on Sunday evening to be in a New York hospital under treatment for a blood clot that stemmed from a concussion she suffered in mid-December.

The concussion was itself the result of an earlier illness, described by the State Department as a stomach virus she had picked up during a trip to Europe that led to dehydration and a fainting spell after she returned to the United States.

"In the course of a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday, the scan revealed that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed. This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear," Clinton's doctors, Drs. Lisa Bardack and Gigi El-Bayoumi said in the statement released by the State Department.

"To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the Secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established," the doctors said. "In all other aspects of her recovery, the Secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery."

MAY RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY WHITE HOUSE RUN

Clinton's illness may raise questions about her fitness to be president should she make a new run for the White House in 2016. Barack Obama defeated her in the 2008 Democratic primary and then, upon his election as president, took the unusual step of tapping her for the most important post in his Cabinet.

Clinton earlier this month played down the notion that she would run again for the White House in 2016, telling a TV interviewer: "I've said I really don't believe that that's something I will do again. I am so grateful I had the experience of doing it before.

The former first lady turned U.S. senator from New York turned diplomat has played down talk of possibly making another White House run. She is expected to step down when her replacement as secretary of state, Senator John Kerry, is confirmed by the Senate.

Clinton has kept up a punishing schedule as the top U.S. diplomat, flying more than 950,000 miles to visit 112 countries and spending more than a quarter of her tenure - 401 days - on the road, according to the State Department.

Her health setbacks have forced her to cancel an overseas trip and postpone testimony to Congress regarding a report on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. Her two deputies testified instead.

Clinton has said she intends to appear before Congress to discuss the attack - in which four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, died - but it is unclear when she will be back at work.

The doctors gave no estimate of when she may go home from the hospital.

On Sunday, a State Department spokesman said Clinton was "being treated with anti-coagulants and is at New York-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours."

'PIPES' DRAIN BLOOD FROM THE BRAIN

Clinton's condition is unusual, but by no means unheard-of.

"This condition is not very common, but it certainly happens," said Dr. Raj Narayan, chair of neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. It probably happens more often than we realize, he said, because it must be diagnosed with an MRI, as Clinton's was.

Narayan, who is not treating Clinton, said it likely was caused by her dehydration and the concussion that occurred from her fall. Head trauma can cause blood clots, Narayan said, because the injury triggers the production of thromboplastin, a blood protein that causes the blood to clot.

The severity depends in part on how someone is built, he said.

People normally have two of the veins where Clinton suffered the clot. Some people, however, have only one, while others have two but one is much larger than the other. The prognosis is typically better if you have two normal veins because the blood could flow through the other vein if one is blocked.

"Think of it as two pipes draining all of the blood out of the brain," Narayan said. "If one is blocked and the other is open, there is no problem. But if both pipes are blocked, you are in trouble."

Dr. Geoffrey Manley, chief of neurosurgery at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of neurosurgery at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), said the condition can be fatal if not treated but that most patients recover well.

"Left untreated, these things could be fatal. But typically, injuries to the transverse sinus, if treated appropriately, patients typically do very well," Manley said.

Manley, who is also not involved in Clinton's treatment, said it was quite possible she would be out of the hospital in a week or less and the condition was not likely to have long-term effects or to be the harbinger of more clots over time.

"One doesn't necessarily dictate another one," he said.

"This is ultimately not going to cause any long-term brain problems for her, and I think that it's a message to the public that when you fall and hit your head, you need to be evaluated by somebody that takes care of brain-injured patients," he added.

(Additional reporting by Dhanya Skariachan and by Warren Strobel; editing by Todd Eastham)

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