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British TV personality Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011, was a sexual predator who abused hundreds of victims on a scale that is "unprecedented" in Britain, according to a comprehensive police report on the disgraced celebrity. The report by a team that included 30 detectives found that Savile exploited "the vulnerable or star-struck for his sexual gratification."

The case received widespread attention on Oct. 4, 2012, when British broadcaster ITV aired a program in which five women said they had been abused by Savile in the 1970s. Three of them said the abuse occurred at BBC facilities.

The accusations led to the creation of a task force, named Operation Yewtree, the day after the program aired. It also sparked tumult at the BBC, where Savile worked between 1965 and 2006.

The arrival of the report three months after the ITV broadcast in which the women made their accusations against Savile. The report is titled "Giving Victims A Voice." Here are some of its findings:

450 people came forward with information related to Jimmy Savile.

214 crimes were formally recorded, spanning 28 jurisdictions.

The reported abuses occurred between 1955 and 2009, most of them in Leeds and London.

82 percent of those who came forward are female.

73 percent of Savile's victims were under age 18; 27 percent were adults.

The victims' ages at the time of the abuse ranged from 8 to 47.

"It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fundraising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades," the report's authors wrote. Police say "the locations where victims report being abused include 14 medical establishments (hospitals, mental care establishments and a hospice)."

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Three Latin American presidents turned up, as did foreign diplomats. And thousands of President Hugo Chavez's supporters flooded the streets Thursday outside the presidential palace in Venezuela's capital, Caracas.

But Chavez himself didn't show — he remained in Cuba, incapacitated after his latest round of cancer surgery.

Still, the carefully choreographed show did go on, and Chavez's aides said he remains in charge.

There was guitar-laden music. And the salsa that's much beloved in Venezuela. On a huge stage were Venezuela's top leaders, along with the presidents of Uruguay, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

There were also countless people like Florencio Rondon, 67, who came carrying a sign like so many others: "I Am Chavez," it read.

"He's not here, but we're all here as if he were with us," Rondon said.
"He is the greatest thing we have. He may not be here, but he lives in our hearts."

The level of support on the streets reflected the strong backing Chavez's government still maintains after 14 years and three terms in office.

On inauguration day, as on other big days in Venezuela's political calendar, Chavez usually gives a booming, revolutionary speech from the balcony of the Miraflores palace.

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Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is resigning, opening up one more slot in President Obama's second-term administration. A former member of Congress, Solis was the first Hispanic woman to head a Cabinet-level agency.

"This afternoon, I submitted my resignation to President Obama," she wrote in a letter to her agency's employees. "Growing up in a large Mexican-American family in La Puente, California, I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to serve in a president's Cabinet, let alone in the service of such an incredible leader."

Solis said that in the future, she plans to return to California.

Prior to becoming Labor Secretary, Solis was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2000, she became the first woman to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, for her work on environmental justice while serving in the California state Senate.

In October, Solis was moved to defend her agency's work, after a closely watched indicator — the U.S. jobless rate — fell to 7.8 percent. The news, which came one month before the presidential election, was greeted with suspicion by critics of President Obama.

Wednesday afternoon, the president released a statement in which he called Solis "a tireless champion for working families."

The statement continued, "Over the last four years, Secretary Solis has been a critical member of my economic team as we have worked to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and strengthen the economy for the middle class."

Solis' resignation comes on the same day the president is said to be poised to nominate Jacob Lew for the post of Treasury Secretary. This afternoon, a CNN writer pondered what a second Obama administration will look like, in a piece titled "Obama's Cabinet shaping up to be a boys club."

From Superstorm Sandy to gun laws to the fiscal cliff, national issues are on the minds and the lips of the nation's governors setting their state agendas this week.

Some want Congress and President Obama to act; others urged state legislators to do what Congress hasn't.

"No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer. End the madness now," an impassioned New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday in calling for the state to enact the "toughest assault weapon ban in the nation, period."

"Gun violence has been on a rampage," Cuomo, a Democrat, said in his annual State of the State address in Albany. "We must stop the madness, my friends, and in one word, it's just enough. It has been enough."

In neighboring Connecticut, scene of last month's massacre in the town of Newtown, Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy pointedly rejected the National Rifle Association's proposal to arm school personnel.

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