NOTE 4. PENSION AND OTHER POSTRETIREMENT BENEFITS

We sponsor funded and unfunded domestic and foreign defined benefit pension and other postretirement plans. Contributions to these plans were as follows:

We made $121 million of pension contributions in the six months ended June 30, 2013 and we anticipate making an additional $49 million of contributions during the remainder of 2013.  We paid $26 million of claims and premiums for other postretirement benefits in the six months ended June 30, 2013; payments for the remainder of 2013 are expected to be $21 million.  The $170 million of pension contributions for the full year include voluntary contributions of approximately $115 million.  These contributions and payments may be made from trusts or company funds either to increase pension assets or to make direct benefit payments to plan participants.  Our expected pension expense for 2013 has been reduced $10 million, to $87 million, from the amount we had expected at December 31, 2012, due to a remeasurement of the U.S. plan for changes in employee census data in the first quarter of 2013.

The components of net periodic pension and other postretirement benefit cost under our plans consisted of the following: