Civil defense officials have said the death toll in the floods and mudslides caused by heavy downpours in two states in southeastern Brazil has risen to 32. More than 50,000 have been forced to leave their homes.

The civil defense department of Minas Gerais state said Wednesday on its website that 17 people died there in floodwaters or mudslides.

China's Cabinet estimates this year's economic growth edged down to 7.6 percent and warned it faces pressure to decline further, a state news agency said Thursday.

The forecast, reported by the Xinhua News Agency, is below the 2012 rate of 7.7 percent but above the government's 7.5 percent target.

China's leaders bowed three times before a statue of Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of his birth Thursday in carefully controlled celebrations that also sought to uphold the market-style reforms that came after his death.

The approach underscores the delicate balancing act the Communist Party leadership — installed last year — has to perform in managing perceptions of Mao's legacy.

George Washington has made his annual Christmas Day ride across the Delaware River.

Washington's daring Christmas 1776 crossing of the river turned the tide of the Revolutionary War. The 61st reenactment of it was staged Wednesday.

More than 210 surfers dressed as Santa Claus, elves and snowmen were surfing the Christmas Eve waves off central Florida's Atlantic coast.

Florida Today reports that when Cocoa Beach Mayor Dave Netterstrom took in the view from the sand Tuesday, he declared the fourth-annual gathering "the largest surfing Santa event on the planet."

Utility crews from Maine to Michigan and into Canada worked to restore power to more than half a million homes that were left in the dark by last weekend's ice storm, which has been linked to 27 deaths.

In the United States, the death toll from the storm reached at least 17 on Christmas day, from traffic accidents and carbon monoxide fatalities.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday reshuffled his Cabinet after three key ministers resigned over a sweeping corruption and bribery scandal that has targeted his allies and rattled his government.

Erdogan replaced Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan, Interior Minister Muammer Guler and Erdogan Bayraktar, the minister for the environment and urban planning. All three men's sons were detained as part of the corruption investigation. They all deny any wrongdoing.

BlackBerry co-founder Michael Lazaridis has trimmed his stake in the troubled smartphone pioneer to just below 5 percent after selling 3.5 million shares during the past two days.

The sales disclosed in a Tuesday regulatory filing came after BlackBerry Ltd. announced a third-quarter loss of $4.4 billion last week.

It almost sounds sadistic — making rape victims as young as 13 relive their harrowing assault over and over again. But a new study shows it works surprisingly well at eliminating their psychological distress.

The results are the first evidence that the same kind of "exposure" therapy that helps combat veterans haunted by flashbacks and nightmares also works for traumatized sexually abused teens with similar symptoms, the study authors and other experts said.

Gay-rights activists and health workers in India are warning that a new Supreme Court ruling criminalizing homosexuality will undo years of progress in fighting AIDS by driving gay and transgender people underground.

They say HIV services expanded and gay and transgender people became more likely to seek them out after a landmark 2009 ruling decriminalized same-sex acts by throwing out a colonial-era law. India's top court revived the law Dec. 11, saying it is up to the country's lawmakers — not the court — to change it.