SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- New Mexico is switching gears on its plan for a health insurance exchange and initially will partner with the federal government for computer services needed for an online insurance marketplace.

The state intends to have a New Mexico-run insurance exchange ready for small businesses to shop for coverage for their employees this fall and will use a federally operated exchange to offer medical insurance plans to individuals for the next year, Dr. J.R. Damron, chairman of the exchange's governing board, said Monday.

A law was enacted earlier this year to create a state-run exchange for individuals and small businesses.

But a "hybrid" approach to the exchange, Damron said, is necessary because the state doesn't have enough time to implement its own computer system to serve individuals by a looming federal deadline.

Federal law called for states to have exchanges ready to enroll the uninsured in October and be fully operating by January. States had the option of establishing their own exchange, leaving it to the federal government or developing a state-federal partnership for some operations

Although New Mexico will rely on the federal exchange for enrolling uninsured individuals until October 2014, the state will determine the health benefit packages that are offered to individuals and will regulate prices charged by private insurers for those insurance plans.

"The state of New Mexico is different than Massachusetts or California or whatever. Our prices will be different. The feds will use our prices not someone else's prices," said Damron, a Santa Fe physician.

New Mexico also will continue to handle some of the responsibilities of an exchange for individuals, such as outreach, education and marketing to make residents aware of their options in obtaining medical coverage through the online marketplace.

The 13-member governing board voted last week to partner with the federal government because a computer system needed to enroll individuals will take more time to establish and is more complicated than what's necessary to offer online insurance shopping for small businesses, according to Damron and board vice chairman Jason Sandel of Farmington.

The individual exchange will not only need to allow people to shop for insurance plans, but also must connect with other government systems that will determine whether someone is eligible for a federal tax credit to help pay for insurance or qualifies for health care through Medicaid, which is jointly financed by the state and federal government.

Sandel said the state had little choice but to partner with the federal government but he's worried that New Mexicans may face problems with the federal exchange.

"Obviously my concern is that where an individual signs up and has a bad experience, and then we lose them forever," Sandel said in a telephone interview. "If we lose people in this process, whether it be because of bad customer service or language barriers or just a lack of understanding of what our unique needs are, then we've have kind of defeated the purpose of the entire reform."

Nearly 200,000 New Mexicans may be able to buy health insurance through the exchange by 2020.

The board has agreed to contract with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Getinsured.com to build and maintain the computer system needed for the New Mexico exchange. The five-year contract is worth nearly $40 million. The state has received a $34 million federal grant for an exchange and may be able to qualify for more federal assistance. The board also can impose fees on insurers to help cover costs of the state-run exchange.

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Follow Barry Massey on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bmasseyAP

Keith, who hit Carter during the second period of Tuesday's game with a retaliatory high stick in the face that required 20 stitches, was assessed a four-minute penalty for the play.

The ban will keep Keith, Chicago's top scoring defenseman, out of Thursday's Game Four of the best-of-seven series, which Chicago leads 2-1.

(Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Frank Pingue)

The envisioned talks, welcomed by Washington, could help rebuild avenues of inter-Korean cooperation that were obliterated in recent years amid hardline stances by both countries, though the key issue isolating the North from the world community its nuclear program is not up for debate.

The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, in a statement carried by state media, said it is open to holding talks with Seoul on reopening the Kaesong complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the countries. The complex closed this spring.

It also proposed talks on resuming reunions of families separated by war, and on resuming South Korean tours to a mountain resort in the North.

Pyongyang offered to let the South set the time and venue, and hours later South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae proposed meeting on all three topics in Seoul on June 12.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye welcomed the North Korean agreement to government-level talks that Seoul had proposed in April.

"I feel it's fortunate that the North accepted the proposal for government-level talks even though (the acceptance) came late," she said, according to her presidential office.

The agreement to meet could represent a change in North Korea's approach, or could simply be an effort to ease international demands that it end its development of nuclear weapons. Pyongyang has committed a drumbeat of provocative acts since April 2012, when it scuttled a nuclear and humanitarian aid deal with the U.S. by launching a rocket that was viewed as an effort to test its long-range missile technology.

The isolation of the authoritarian country has grown following a satellite launch in December and a nuclear test in February. Pyongyang was enraged by the United Nations Security Council sanctions those actions brought, and further angered by U.S.-South Korean military drills that the allies call routine but that the North claims are invasion rehearsals. Pyongyang earlier this year threatened nuclear attacks on Seoul and Washington.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. welcomed the agreement between the two Koreas to discuss the industrial complex.

"We support and have always supported improved inter-Korean relationships," she told reporters in Washington, but cautioned it doesn't signal progress on restarting talks on North Korea's nuclear program. For that to happen, North has to abide by its previous commitments on denuclearization, she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the agreement to meet, calling it "an encouraging development toward reducing tensions and promoting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Lee Ji-sue, a North Korea specialist and professor at Myongji University in Seoul, said Pyongyang has been forced to pull back in large part because of China, its neighbor and ally.

North Korea's economy relies heavily on China, which like the U.S. wants North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. Under American urging to pressure the North, Beijing has tightened inspections on cross-border trade, and its state banks have halted business with North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank.

Pyongyang's statement came after Choe Ryong Hae, a North Korean military official and confidant of leader Kim Jong Un, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in late May and said that Pyongyang was "willing to accept the suggestion of the Chinese side and launch dialogue with all relevant parties."

"North Korea has reached critical mass for talks," Lee said. "Even its ally China is cutting off bank dealings. Nothing is working out for the North. It needs a breakthrough now."

Lee said it still remains to be seen whether North Korea's overtures are genuine. "If North Korea starts accepting South Korean conditions one by one in future talks, we can then say it is really serious," he said.

China welcomed the Koreas' impending talks. "We hope they will cherish this hard-won momentum of dialogue, actively promote easing the situation and remain committed to peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.

Xi is meeting President Barack Obama in California on Friday, and Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said Pyongyang's announcement is timed for those talks.

"North Korea is making it easier for China to persuade the U.S. to get softer on Pyongyang," Koh said.

Xi is also scheduled to meet with Park later this month.

Ryoo, the unification minister, asked Pyongyang to follow through on its offer to restore its Red Cross communication line with South Korea by Friday so the sides could start discussing arrangements for the talks. The line is among several ties between the Koreas cut by the North in the last several months.

A likely partner for Ryoo in minister-level talks would be Kim Yang Gon, secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party. Kim visited Kaesong in early April before the North withdrew all its workers from the park.

The decade-old Kaesong complex, the product of an era of inter-Korean cooperation, shut down gradually this spring after Pyongyang cut border communications and access, then pulled the complex's 53,000 North Korean workers. The last of hundreds of South Korean managers at Kaesong left last month.

More than 120 South Korean companies had operations at Kaesong, which gave them access to cheap North Korean labor. It was also a rare source of hard currency for North Korea, though the economically depressed country chafed at suggestions that it needed the money Kaesong generated.

Smiling broadly, Han Jae-kwon, chief of the association of South Korean factories in Kaesong, told reporters that he welcomes the agreement. "We are having hope that the Kaesong factory park will be revived," he said.

The talks will be the first government-level negotiations between the two Koreas since President Park took office earlier this year with a North Korea policy dubbed "trustpolitik." She has outlined her intention to reach out to the foes to build trust while remaining firm on intolerance to provocations.

After relations dropped to their lowest level in decades under her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, North Korea had been looking for a change under Park, who visited North Korea in 2002. But the first 100 days of her administration were trying times for "trustpolitik" as Pyongyang threatened to carry out nuclear attacks and to close Kaesong.

Both sides, however, have been looking for a face-saving way to restart relations. Pyongyang proposed a joint event on June 15, the anniversary of their 2000 agreement on reconciliation; Seoul has so far rejected the proposal.

The mood on the Korean Peninsula has been tense since North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died in December 2011. Pyongyang denounced Seoul for blocking most civilian visits to the North to pay respects.

The Koreas have technically been in a state of war for nearly 60 years because the Korean War ended in 1953 with a truce and not a peace treaty. The last reunions of Korean families pulled apart by that war were held in 2010.

Under Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il's son, North Korea has pursued both nuclear weapons and economic development as top priorities. In a Memorial Day speech earlier Thursday, President Park repeated her criticism of that stance, saying the two goals can't be achieved simultaneously. But she also called on North Korea to come to talks with Seoul to build trust.

The North has established economic development zones at Kaesong and near the Chinese border in Rason to pursue foreign investment. On Wednesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency announced that the country had passed a law allowing the creation of new economic development zones open to foreign investors. It wasn't clear where those zones would be set up.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - For the first time, a cable show is the top-rated scripted series on television - and we have zombies to thank. AMC's "The Walking Dead" was not only the highest-rated scripted show of the 2012-13 season, but the second highest-rated show overall, behind NBC's "Sunday Night Football."

It's a victory not just for cable, but for scripted TV. For nearly a decade, the reality competition "American Idol" was television's top-rated series. (It was only in 2011-12 that "Idol" was surpassed by football.)

TheWrap first reported in October of last year that "The Walking Dead" could become TV's top scripted show. Since then it has repeatedly broken its own viewing records, and surpassed every other show by "Sunday Night Football."

With all the numbers in, CBS's "The Big Bang Theory" was the second-highest rated scripted show, after "The Walking Dead," and the third highest-rated series overall.

Based on final Live + 7 numbers, which measure a show's viewership over the week after it airs, "Sunday Night Football" averaged an 8.2 rating in the key 18-49 demographic.

"Walking Dead" averaged a 7.5 rating, and "The Big Bang Theory" a 7.2.

"Walking Dead" wasn't the top scripted show, however, in total viewers. That was CBS's "NCIS," which averaged 22.7 million viewers of all ages per episode. "Sunday Night Football" averaged 21.4 million, and "The Big Bang Theory" averaged 21.1 million.

"The Walking Dead" demo win is especially bad news for broadcasters because it comes as their own ratings are down. ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC all slipped in the key demo this past season, and all but CBS were down in total viewers. CBS was up slightly.

To help your readers support their loved ones through these health issues and many more, the FDA's Office of Women's Health and the GSA's Federal Citizen Information Center have created the free Friends and Family Health Kit. It contains more than 20 publications that are quick to read, easy to understand, and feature health care and prevention tips for women and their families.

Abby, thank you for letting your readers know about the Friends and Family Health Kit, and for sharing advice we can all use to better care for ourselves and for one another. -- MARSHA HENDERSON, FDA ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER FOR WOMEN'S HEALTH

DEAR MARSHA: Your letter is timely because we are in the middle of Women's Health Week, which runs from May 12-18. I'm always glad to receive your health kits because they are constantly being updated to reflect the latest information.

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DEAR ABBY: I live in Alaska and have good friends I visit every summer on the East Coast. I have some acquaintances and former co-workers who live there, too. Many of them want me to visit when I come down. I have grown apart from these former friends and keep in touch only through occasional emails and Facebook.

Flying from Alaska to the East Coast is expensive and time-consuming. I really just want to rest and hang out with the friends I'll be staying with. Even when I avoid posting pictures of my vacation on Facebook until after the trip, I get comments or emails about me not stopping by or letting them know I was in town.

What's the polite way to tell these former co-workers and acquaintances that I don't want to spend my vacation time with them? Or should I just get over it and devote some time to them as well? -- TRYING TO BE POLITE IN ANCHORAGE

DEAR TRYING TO BE POLITE: If you have any desire to continue the relationships with your former co-workers and acquaintances, why not arrange to meet a group of them at an agreed-upon place one afternoon for a "reunion"? If you don't, then either ignore their comments or respond to the emails by saying you needed to rest, which is the reason you didn't socialize more during your vacation.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

Good advice for everyone -- teens to seniors -- is in "The Anger in All of Us and How to Deal With It." To order, send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Anger Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

Ernst von Freyberg was named president of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) in February, replacing Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, an Italian banker ousted by the bank's board last May for incompetence and other failings.

Von Freyberg's appointment was part of the Vatican's efforts to shed the bank's image as a secretive tax haven and improve its reputation in global financial circles following a series of scandals, including a money-laundering investigation launched by Rome prosecutors in 2010.

In interviews published Friday, Von Freyberg said he had hired a leading firm, Promontory Financial Group, and the U.S.-based law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton to ensure that the bank complies with anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing standards. He also hired an outside public relations expert, saying a big part of the bank's problem was its failure to communicate.

"When I came here I thought I would need to focus on what is normally described as cleaning out and dealing with improper deposits," he told Vatican Radio. "There is - until now - nothing I can detect. That doesn't mean that there isn't anything, but it means that it is not our biggest issue.

"Our biggest issue is our reputation," he said.

Some of the sharpest calls for reform of the Vatican bureaucracy that accompanied the March election of Pope Francis focused on the bank and came from cardinals who suggested it needn't exist at all, given its shady reputation.

Von Freyberg, a 54-year-old German industrialist and aristocrat, said the bank's 18,900 customers choose to stay with the IOR because it provides "very, very safe" investment returns and other services such as asset management and wire transfers.

"They want us to be there," he said of the customers. But he acknowledged: "We haven't rendered a good service to the Holy Father with the reputation we have, and this reputation obscures the message. And that I consider my first and most important task to address."

Earlier this month, Von Freyberg announced the bank would publish its annual report online for the first time on Oct. 1.

In a parallel bid to show greater transparency, the Vatican's new financial watchdog agency published its own annual report last week, revealing that six suspect transactions had been reported in 2012, two of which were forwarded onto Vatican prosecutors for further investigation.

Von Freyburg said so far another seven suspicious transactions have been reported by the bank in 2013.

The IOR was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it also manages the pension system for the Vatican's thousands of employees.

The IOR on Friday provided preliminary figures for 2012, saying its net profit was 86.6 million euros ($112.6 million), with total assets under management of 7.1 billion euros ($9.23 billion).

It didn't provide figures for 2011, saying only its average net profit from 2009-2012 was 69 million euros ($89.7 million). The bump was due in large part to the performance of Italian government bonds last year.

The bank is not open to the public. Depositors are usually limited to Vatican employees, religious orders and diplomats accredited to the Holy See, though its customer base has long been the subject of speculation that Italians were hiding money there to avoid paying taxes. Currently, each account is being checked to ensure the owner belongs there.

As part of its transparency bid, the Vatican agreed to an independent evaluation process to ensure it was complying with international anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing norms. It passed the first evaluation of the Council of Europe's Moneyval process last summer, though it received poor or failing grades for its financial watchdog agency and the IOR, specifically the bank's ability to ensure that its customers and transactions were clean.

Von Freyberg has set a July 31 deadline to come up with norms for customer checks, after the bank missed its December deadline.

"We are late and I will do my utmost to catch up," he said in an email via his Munich-based spokesman Max Hohenberg of CNC Communications.

Von Freyberg, a member of the Roman Catholic charitable group Knights of Malta, was named IOR president after a months-long search by a headhunting firm a novelty for the Vatican where backroom deals, nepotism and patronage appointments are common.

His appointment initially raised eyebrows since he is also chairman of German shipbuilder Blohm + Voss. Von Freyberg chairs the company's civilian branch, but that unit is part of a consortium building four frigates for the German navy.

The Vatican and its bank have traditionally steered clear of investments in companies that manufacture weapons or contraceptives.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield