Michael Sam said in a TV documentary that aired Saturday night that coming out as gay was the right thing to do. He'd have preferred the news come out after he informed the team that drafted him.

"It didn't need to be public," Sam said. "Why do gay people have to do it?"

Alicia Keys gave birth to son Genesis Ali Dean early Saturday morning. It's baby number two for the Grammy-winner and husband, producer-rapper Swizz Beatz, who are also parents to 4-year-old Egypt Daoud.

The 33-year-old singer shared the news on her Instagram account, Sunday, with a photo of Genesis's footprints. The image also details that the baby was born at 1:52 a.m. and weighs 6 pounds, 5 ounces (2.86 kilograms).

A Pennsylvania town plans to nail their New Year's Eve and bicentennial celebrations by dropping some major hardware to mark the occasion.

The Sentinel (http://bit.ly/1zLN2tm) reports West Fairview plans to drop a 7-foot-tall nail as the clock ticks down Wednesday night. Local artists constructed the nail out of wood.

A brain-dead pregnant woman was taken off life support Friday after a court ruled that her 18-week-old fetus was doomed to die — a case that exposed fear and confusion among doctors over how to apply Ireland's strict ban on abortion in an age of medical innovation.

The three-judge Dublin High Court said that all artificial support for the woman should end more than three weeks after she was declared clinically dead. Her relatives gathered at a hospital in the Irish Midlands to bid farewell to the unidentified woman, who was in her late 20s and had two young children.

The presents are unwrapped. The children's shrieks of delight are just a memory. Now it's time for another Yuletide tradition: cleaning up the needles that are falling off your Christmas tree.

"I'm not particularly worried about it ... I'll just sweep it up," said Lisa Smith-Hansford of New York, who bought a small tree at a Manhattan sidewalk stand early this week. She likes the smell of a real tree, she said, comparing it to comfort food.

Time and Mother Nature are threatening to dismantle the Alamo. Not the original, but the replica 18th-century Spanish mission and Old West movie set John Wayne built for his Oscar-nominated 1960 movie and that for decades was a tourist mecca and film production site.

"It's not just something that represents history to a movie set — it is now history for sure," says Rich Curilla, the one-man curator and custodian of the now-closed Alamo Village.

Renowned jazz clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, who led the way on his instrument in the transition between the swing and bebop eras, has died at the age of 91, his family said Friday.

DeFranco's family told The Associated Press that the famed musician died Wednesday evening at a Panama City hospital. His wife, Joyce, said he had been in declining health in recent years. The couple lived in Panama City.

A yellow Labrador that got spooked on a Christmas Day hike in the Columbia Gorge, snapping her leash and plunging 150 feet down a cliff, was rescued in the dark by a climber who rappelled to a narrow ledge where the dog was trapped.

David Schelske of West Linn told the Oregon Humane Society that when 3-year-old Sandy bounded around a bend and disappeared he figured her for a goner.

A journalist for state media in the Democratic Republic of Congo was shot dead Friday in Goma in the vast country's restive east, officials said.

Robert Chamwami Shalubuto's body was found in a grocery store close to his home after having been shot in the chest, said Celestin Sibomana, spokesman for North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital.

LeBron James was running the gamut of emotions Thursday when he arrived at the arena that he called home for the past four seasons.

So did the Miami Heat fans who were seeing him again.