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The 113th Congress has come to be defined more by what it failed to do than what it did. But the two warring parties controlling either end of Capitol Hill managed to accomplish a few things in 2013.

Only a rare few people have the ability to remember everything that happened in their lives. But that gift can seem like a curse, they say, keeping them marooned in the past and unable to enjoy the present. Forgetting, it seems, can be a good thing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to take the gray wolf off the endangered species list. The wolf had been extirpated from the West and had dwindled most other places in the U.S. The great canine has rebounded since it was reintroduced to the northern Rockies in the 1990s and is continuing to spread into the Pacific Northwest. But biologists warn that if these wolves loses federal protection, they will not be able to return to some places, such as Colorado, where the ecosystem sorely needs them.

The government says the former vice president is mobilizing an army of youth to seize key cities in the newly independent nation. The United Nations is not sure it can protect the thousands of people staying at its compound who have been displaced by recent ethnic fighting.

Beyond drastically curtailing a safety-net for jobless workers, allowing the benefits to expire sets up a major political fight for the coming new year.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of a short-lived Cleveland TV show that's still being talked about today — by musicians. It was called Ghoulardi's Shock Theater, and for a generation of Ohio kids, its anarchic host could be called a godfather of punk.

Is that a cross? A ship with a figurehead? It's only human to wonder what the future will hold, especially on the threshold of a new year. In one German tradition, fortune-seekers drop molten lead into cold water — then it's anyone's guess what the strange shapes portend.

David Edelstein says it was a "miraculous year" for movies. David Bianculli says two Netflix shows this year changed the game. Maureen Corrigan says it's just a fluke that 9 of the 11 titles she picked were written by female authors. And Ken Tucker picks his 10 favorite albums.

By the time 2013 ends, the Minnesota Orchestra will not have played a single note in its own concert hall due to a labor dispute between musicians and management. It's an emblem of the problems facing non-profit arts institutions around the country.

A senior official in South Sudan said Saturday that government troops will attack the main rebel stronghold if the rebels turn down a proposed cease-fire. The government had offered a truce on Friday to end two weeks of ethnic violence that has killed more than a thousand people.