Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death
Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments
Apple's patents under fire at US patent office
The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung
Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species
The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity
Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise
A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems
Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours
The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory
Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune
This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true
Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur
A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?
Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings
A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission
Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?
A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more
The link between devaluing animals and discrimination
Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello
Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins
Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year
2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke
Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire
Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation
They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products
The pregnant promise of fetal medicine
As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory
2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia
Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead
The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat
Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one
A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer
Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?
When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses
Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball
Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began
SINGAPORE: Prime area rent for shopping malls and retailers in Orchard Road inched down 0.28 per cent this quarter, compared to the previous quarter.
In a report by Savills World Research, average monthly rent in prime areas in Orchard Road were S$35.1 per square foot in the fourth quarter.
This is a slight drop from the S$35.2 per square foot in Q3.
Analysts felt that this is due to adjustments in the market, as rent in the area were growing too fast previously.
Alan Cheong, director of Savills Research said the fall could be due to over-expecting the level of tourism in Singapore.
He said: "While (tourism) did increase, apparently the spending power did not quite live up to its expectation. Rent and performance in the Orchard Road belt will be dependent on tourism trade and on the state of the economy."
More retail spaces will also be available soon.
Recently, Plaza Singapura completed its expansion works, providing 80 more shops.
A larger scale development, Orchard Gateway, will provide 180,000 square feet of retail space next year.
Analysts also say that a gloomy economic outlook ahead could also see rent fall by up to 3 per cent, and if economic growth slows, people will spend less.
Retailers may then take a hit, in turn exerting a downward pressure on rent.
Republicans rejected his Plan B to avert fiscal cliff, raising questions about his future
Some conservatives have called for Boehner's resignation
Most Republicans say it's premature to say his speakership is in jeopardy
While the failure of the Plan B vote was bad, Boehner faces tougher days ahead
Washington (CNN) -- Roughly six weeks ago, Rep. John Boehner was reelected unanimously by his colleagues as speaker of the House of Representatives. They cheered and applauded him in an ornate hearing room on Capitol Hill.
But on Thursday, many of those same Republicans abandoned Boehner in droves, rejecting his Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff and raising questions about his future.
Thursday night's epic meltdown in the House GOP conference came at a defining moment for Boehner. As he has done several times in the past two years, the speaker attempted to persuade conservatives who campaigned against any compromise to support his strategy, putting pressure on Democrats to agree to what these members demanded: more spending cuts.
But Boehner's own members refused to go along, and some conservative and tea party groups began to call Friday for him to step down.
Ned Ryun, founder of one conservative group called American Majority Action, posted an article on RedState.com harshly critical of Boehner: "He should save the Republican Party the embarrassment of a public leadership battle and resign."
Behind the scenes: A breakdown of Boehner's miscalculation on Plan B
But most Republicans say it's premature to say that this episode means Boehner's speakership is in jeopardy.
Texas Rep. John Carter said he believes that the House GOP will stick with Boehner.
"If he resigned or something, that would have been different, but I don't think there's any threat, and I don't think there's any serious opposition out there," said Carter, a former member of Boehner's leadership team.
Carter conceded that outside pressure on Boehner to step aside could affect "a few people" but not enough to threaten his position.
Boehner argued that passing his Plan B bill, allowing tax breaks to be extended for all those making less than $1 million, demonstrated that the GOP was trying to preserve as many tax cuts as possible. But his failure to get enough Republicans to back the plan only raised questions about his failing to get many in his conference to back the plan.
Boehner said he's not worried about losing his job and repeated an answer he's used before when asked about being in a tough spot politically.
"If you do the right things every day for the right reasons, the right things will happen," the speaker said. He explained that some House Republicans were worried about public perception of supporting tax increases, adding, "I don't think, they weren't taking that out on me."
GOP disarray jeopardizes fiscal cliff deal
One senior House GOP aide quipped that many rank and file members who criticized Boehner's negotiation strategy didn't understand that his effort would have given them some political cover at a time when Congress' ratings are at rock bottom. "These guys are pizza store owners, not Republican strategists."
During recent skirmishes, some looked to the No. 2 House Republican, Eric Cantor, to step in, but Cantor was part of the leadership effort pushing Plan B this week and publicly predicted that it had the votes hours before they pulled the bill. And Cantor's presence beside Boehner on Friday morning signaled that he's staying with the speaker.
Multiple Republican members and aides say there is no current member who has enough support to mount a real challenge.
Some point to former GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, but he has shown no interest in the job, and he publicly backed Boehner's Plan B strategy, even in the face of opposition from many of the same groups who hold him up as key leader. Georgia Rep. Tom Price, who ran unsuccessfully for the fourth slot as House GOP conference chairman, has been floated as a possible successor, but few believe he is serious about taking it on, because he couldn't muster substantial votes.
Carter argued that a move to unseat Boehner could be worse for the party. "He's done yeoman's work in a tough job. I don't see us replacing the speaker. Actually, we would create more crisis that we would create solutions if we did that."
Even some of the Republicans who opposed the speaker's plan refrained from blaming Boehner and instead shifted their anger at President Obama, who they say isn't leading.
No mistletoe: Obama laments no cliff deal, punts until end of year
"He is my speaker, and I support him strongly; he's in a very difficult position," said Rep. John Fleming, R-Louisiana, adding that he simply disagreed on giving any ground on taxes.
"Raising taxes on any American, to me, is not the right message," he said.
Another Republican leadership aide said that as vulnerable as Boehner seems to many on the outside, "this probably strengthens Boehner's hand internally. He avoided forcing members from taking a vote many of them didn't want to have to take."
As GOP leaders worked to get the votes for Plan B on Thursday, they felt that they had the majority of GOP members on board but knew that without Democrats' support, they needed to get almost all their members to support the bill. Many of the undecided told leaders that if it was the final deal, they would vote yes, but since they knew it would change, they didn't want to go on record giving in at all on taxes.
Thursday night was for bad for Boehner, but he faces trickier terrain in the days ahead. Few expect further negotiations between the speaker and the White House to yield any deal.
Boehner said Friday that if the Senate came up with a compromise, he would take a look at it. But after his own strategy fell apart, he'll be faced with presenting his members with something they like even less. Boehner will then have to evaluate the personal and political cost of pushing a plan in the face of further defections.
Boehner said on Capitol Hill that he still wants a significant agreement that includes both taxes and spending but admitted, "how we get there, God only knows."
In this photo taken Wednesday, May, 23, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI, flanked by his private secretary Georg Gaenswein, top left, and his butler Paolo Gabriele arrives at St. Peter's square at the Vatican for a general audience. /AP Photo/Andrew Medichini
VATICAN CITY Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday granted his former butler a Christmas pardon for stealing the pontiff's private papers and leaking them to a journalist, one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times.
The pope met for 15 minutes with Paolo Gabriele in the prison where the ex-butler was serving his sentence for the theft. Gabriele was subsequently freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lived with his wife and three children.
The Vatican said he would not continue living or working in the Vatican, but that it "intends to offer him the possibility to serenely restart his life together with his family."
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope's meeting with Gabriele was "intense" and "personal," noting that Gabriele and the pope had worked together closely for six years.
The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.
Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an "enormous" stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.
He told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and thought that exposing it publicly would put the church back on the right track.
The publication of the leaked documents, first on Italian television then in Nuzzi's book "His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers" convulsed the Vatican all year, a devastating betrayal of the pope from within his papal family that exposed the unseemly side of the Catholic Church's governance.
If the Dec. 31 deadline passes, income taxes will go up and across-the-board spending cuts will hit government programs. But while most of the political world frets as if a major disaster is looming, others have treated it more like the Y2K bug: a fiscal canard ginning up a lot of unnecessary panic.
The cliff is a "fantasy," former House speaker Newt Gingrich told a sold-out crowd at the Ronald Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif., a week before Election Day.
"It is an excuse to panic," Gingrich said. "It is a device to get all of us running down the road so we accept whatever Obama wants, because otherwise we will have failed the fiscal cliff, and how can you be a patriot if you don't do what the fiscal cliff requires?"
Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?
The former speaker wanted Republicans to stop negotiating with President Obama, for fear of giving too much away. "Back out of all of this negotiating with Obama," Gingrich publicly advised House Republicans. "The president is overwhelmingly dominant in the news media" but, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, liberals have said the same thing for a similar reason.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Fiscal Cliff: Boehner Doesn't Have Votes for Plan B Watch Video
'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Boehner's Plan B Watch Video
While the "cliff" would mean higher taxes on the middle class, it would also mean higher taxes on the wealthy, a chief demand for liberals. Automatic budget cuts would hit defense programs, which liberals have wanted to cut anyway, but not the Medicare and Social Security entitlements that Democrats and progressives want so badly to protect.
Boehner Pulls 'Plan B' Amid GOP Disarray
Van Jones, the environmental activist and resigned White House green jobs "czar," sought to quiet the "fiscal cliff" alarms Election Night on CNN. "The problem with the label 'the cliff' is that it creates a mindset that there is nothing worse that this set of cuts, and there are things that are worse," Jones said.
"We cannot be in a situation where we get bullied or stampeded into putting in a deal that's even worse than what the fiscal cliff is about."
Jones later wrote on his blog that the "fiscal cliff" is actually a "fiscal bluff": "The so-called fiscal cliff is actually a fiscal bluff --- a made-up crisis to make us think our government is out of money and time. Congress continues to drag its feet over raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, despite the top 1% earning 23% of the nation's income, and insists on calling for cuts to vital programs instead of reining in massive subsidies ($100 billion in 2011 alone) to major corporations that already make billions in profits.
"America isn't broke --- it's being robbed. Gingrich and Jones started the conversation, but as the deadline creeps closer, others are finishing it."
To some, the "fiscal cliff" offers a clearer upside.
"Democratic and progressive leverage goes immensely up if we get past the beginning of the year," Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee told ABC News. "Once they have to proactively lower taxes on the rich, it makes it harder and harder to move that number up and makes it easier and easier to force votes or demand votes on policies that clearly benefit the middle class."
Green says liberals will get what they want immediately, if the Dec. 31 deadline passes without a deal.
"We really want to get past the first of the year so that we have that leverage in the bag," Green told ABC. "It will also show that the fiscal cliff was a mess. If we get into 2013, the really good stuff happens right away, and the really big cuts are a 10-year phasing."
Potentially fatal bird flu viruses can spread on the wind, a hitherto suspected but unproven route of transmission.
Usually, people catch bird flu through close physical contact with each other or, much more commonly, with infected poultry.
The newly identified capacity for wind to spread it opens up a potential route by which the viruses can spread between farms.
The finding came about after Dutch researchers studied an outbreak of the avian flu strain H7N7 in poultry on Dutch farms in 2003, which resulted in 89 confirmed human infections including one death.
Computer models showed that wind patterns at the time of the outbreak explain how different genetic variants of H7N7 ended up on different farms (Journal of Infectious Diseases, doi.org/j3b).
H5N1 is the most harmful strain of avian flu, having killed 360 of 610 infected people since it was discovered in 2003. The fact that a related strain can travel on the wind suggests that H5N1 can too, says Marion Koopmans of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, who coordinated the research project. "You must assume that this same potential is there for H5N1," she says.
Other researchers agreed that by implication, H5N1 could spread in the same way. "Because we don't know, we should assume the worst case – and the worst case is that H5N1 travels on the wind as well," says John McCauley, a bird flu researcher at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London.
He says it's well known that the virus that causes foot and mouth disease in cattle and pigs travels many kilometres on the wind, but it's lighter than avian flu and is produced in huge amounts by infected animals. McCauley says the most likely scenario for bird flu is that the virus hitches a ride on airborne particles from farms, especially particles of infected faeces from poultry farms.
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SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the issue of an open skies agreement between ASEAN and India is something which Singapore will continue to push for.
Speaking to the Singapore media at the end of his visit to New Delhi for the ASEAN-India commemorative summit, Mr Lee said passenger traffic keeps on growing, and hence the need for more capacity.
"I keep on making the point to them that if you want to engage Asia, if you want to engage ASEAN, this is really one of the easiest ways you can help to make it happen because if you open up the links, then the businessmen will travel, the tourists will travel, the business opportunities will be identified, more investments will come.
"I think the business people are quite persuaded but I think it's a subject we need to keep on pushing because some of the incumbent players, they prefer a slower pace. I hope there will be progress. The Singapore-India path we are discussing how to improve the air services agreement. The ASEAN-India air services agreement is something they have not started talking about, but we hope that they will begin soon," he shared.
Mr Lee concluded his trip to New Delhi with a visit to the Red Fort and he had the opportunity to meet the Singaporean team which took part in the ASEAN-India Car Rally.
The Prime Minister was encouraged by their participation, and it was also an opportunity for him to hear first-hand their experiences in driving 8,000 kilometres and through several states in ASEAN, before reaching New Delhi.
NEW: "The president will work with Congress to get this done," the White House says
The House Speaker says his Plan B wasn't voted on because it didn't have "sufficient support"
A bill to alter cuts did narrowly pass the House; the White House says it would veto
The fiscal cliff's tax hikes and spending cuts are set to take effect in January
Washington (CNN) -- House Speaker John Boehner's proposal to avert the looming fiscal cliff's automatic tax increases failed to curry enough Republican support Thursday night, after which Congress left for the holiday with no clear end in sight in the high-stakes debate.
Boehner said earlier Thursday that he was confident that his so-called Plan B -- which would extend tax cuts that are set to expire at year's end for most people while allowing rates to increase to 1990s levels on income over $1 million -- would pass the House, and in the process put pressure on President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate. But his gambit seemed in doubt later as Republican leaders struggled to get most all their members to sign on -- even enlisting senators like Sen. Rob Portman, to work the House floor -- knowing the chamber's Democrats oppose it.
Then, around 8 p.m., House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that the measure would not go up for a vote as planned.
"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass," Boehner said in a statement. "Now it is up to the president to work with Senator (Harry) Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff."
Democratic leaders already had signaled they oppose the so-called Plan B.
After Thursday night's unexpected reversal, Republican legislators walked past reporters through the halls of Congress, and most did not take questions. One who did -- Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizonan who will move to the Senate next month -- said he was disappointed.
"It's too bad; I'd rather vote on it tonight," said Flake, who said he sides with Democrats in backing the extension of tax cuts except for household income of more than $250,000. "Get it done."
What this means next in the fiscal cliff talks is unclear. From here, scenarios range from intensified and ultimately successful talks in the coming days or entrenchment as the fiscal cliff becomes a reality next year, when a new Congress could enter negotiations with Obama.
The Plan B was significant because Republican leaders previously insisted they wouldn't raise rates on anyone, while Obama called tax rates for those earning more than $250,000 threshold to return to 1990s levels while extending tax cuts for everyone else.
Although the House didn't vote on Boehner's tax measure, most Republicans did vote together earlier Thursday as the House narrowly approved, 215-209, a related measure to alter automatic spending cuts set to kick in next year under the fiscal cliff, replacing cuts to the military with reductions elsewhere. The Congressional Budget Office said this would lead to $217.7 billion in cuts over the next decade, short of the $1.2 trillion in cuts that would go into effect in January if the fiscal cliff isn't averted.
Moments after that vote, the White House issued a statement indicating it would veto this bill. But that should be a moot point, since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he won't bring it up for a vote.
Republicans consider piggybacking spending cuts to 'Plan B'
"For weeks, the White House said that if I moved on rates, that they would make substantial concessions on spending cuts and entitlement reforms," House Speaker John Boehner said before his plan fell flat. "I did my part. They've done nothing."
While the Ohio congressman said Obama seems "unwilling to stand up to his own party on the big issues that face our country," Democrats say Republican leaders are buckling to their conservative base by backing off as negotiations seemed to be nearing a deal.
White House spokesman Jay Carney called the GOP alternatives "a major step backwards," claiming they'd lead to extended tax cuts of $50,000 for millionaires. Reid slammed the two Republican measures -- the one that passed and the one that wasn't brought up for a vote -- as "pointless political stunts."
The war of words notwithstanding, Boehner, Carney and Senate Democratic leaders all said they are ready to talk. Reid has said the Senate -- with many members attending a memorial service Friday and funeral in Hawaii on Sunday for Sen. Daniel Inouye -- will be back at work December 27. And after Thursday's session, Cantor's office said legislative business was finished for the week but the House could reconvene after Christmas if needed.
"I remain hopeful," Boehner said. "Our country has big challenges, and the president and I are going to have to work together to solve those challenges."
The path toward the fast-approaching fiscal cliff
The possibility of a fiscal cliff -- which economists warn will hit the American economy hard -- was set in motion two years ago, as a way to force action on mounting government debt. Negotiations between top Congressional Republicans and Democrats resumed after Obama's re-election last month as did the barbs from both sides.
Polling has consistently shown most Americans back the president, who insists wealthy Americans must pay more, rather than Boehner and his Republican colleagues, who have balked at tax rate hikes and demanded spending cuts and entitlement program reforms.
A new CNN/ORC International survey released Thursday showed that just over half of respondents believe Republicans should give up more in any solution and consider the party's policies too extreme.
CNN poll: Are GOP policies too extreme?
The two sides seemingly had made progress on forging a $2 trillion deficit reduction deal that included new revenue sought by Obama and spending cuts and entitlement changes desired by Boehner.
Senior administration officials said Obama and Boehner have not spoken since Monday, when the president made a counterproposal to a Republican offer over the weekend.
The president's offer set $400,000 as the household income threshold for a tax rate increase. It also included a new formula for the consumer price index applied to benefits for programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to protect against inflation, much to the chagrin of some liberals.
The new calculation, called chained CPI, includes assumptions on consumer habits in response to rising prices, such as seeking cheaper alternatives, and would result in smaller benefit increases in future years. Statistics supplied by opponents say the change would mean Social Security recipients would get $6,000 less in benefits over the first 15 years of chained CPI.
Boehner essentially halted negotiations by introducing his Plan B on Tuesday. He described it as a fallback option to prevent a sweeping tax increase when tax cuts dating to President George W. Bush's administration expire in two weeks. The spending cut vote -- similar to one passed by the House last year that went nowhere in the Senate -- was added to the docket later Thursday, to appeal to conservative legislators upset about backing a tax increase without acting on spending and protecting the military budget.
The House speaker's reasoning was that the passage of Plan B and the spending bill would put the onus on Obama and Senate Democrats to accept them or offer a compromise.
For now, the Obama administration won't have to weigh in on the tax part of that scenario. As to the House-approved spending cuts bill, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage dismissed the GOP alternative as "nothing more than a dangerous diversion" for eliminating federal funding by negatively impacting millions of seniors, disabled individuals and poor and at-risk children.
In a statement Thursday night, the White House didn't address Thursday's House proceedings but referenced its top priority -- ensuring that 98% of Americans don't see their taxes rise in January. The statement expressed confidence that there will be deal on the fiscal cliff but with no explanation of how, when or what such an agreement would look like.
"The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy," the White House said.
Delay of 100 million tax returns?
CNN's Tom Cohen, Greg Botelho, Joe Sterling and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
PYONGYANG, North Korea North Korea said Friday that an American citizen has been detained after confessing to unspecified crimes, confirming news reports about his arrest at a time when Pyongyang is facing criticism from Washington for launching a long-range rocket last week.
The American was identified as Pae Jun Ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. News reports in the U.S. and South Korea said Pae is known in his home state of Washington as Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old tour operator of Korean descent.
An expert said he is likely to become a bargaining chip for the North, an attempt to draw the U.S. into talks. Five other Americans known to have been detained in North Korea since 2009 were all eventually released.
North Korean state media said Pae arrived in the far northeastern city of Rajin on Nov. 3 as part of a tour.
Rajin is part of a special economic zone not far from Yanji, China, that has sought to draw foreign investors and tourists over the past year. Yanji, home to many ethnic Korean Chinese, also serves as a base for Christian groups that shelter North Korean defectors.
"In the process of investigation, evidence proving that he committed a crime against (North Korea) was revealed. He admitted his crime," the KCNA dispatch said.
The North said the crimes were "proven through evidence," but did not elaborate.
KCNA said consular officials from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang visited Pae on Friday. Sweden represents the United States in diplomatic affairs in North Korea since Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.
Karl-Olof Andersson, Sweden's ambassador to North Korea, told The Associated Press he could not comment on the case and referred the matter to the U.S. State Department.
The State Department was not immediately able to provide any additional information about the report.
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said on Dec. 11 that Washington was "obviously aware" of reports that a U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea. She didn't confirm the reports.
In Seoul, the Segye Ilbo newspaper reported last week that Bae had been taking tourists on a five-day trip to the North when he was arrested. The newspaper cited unidentified sources.
News of the arrest comes as North Korea is celebrating the launch of a satellite into space on Dec. 12, in defiance of calls by the U.S. and others to cancel a liftoff widely seen as an illicit test of ballistic missile technology.
The announcement of the American's detainment could be a signal from the North that it wants dialogue with the United States, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. He said trips by former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to North Korea to secure the release of other detained Americans created a mood for U.S.-North Korea talks.
"North Korea knows sanctions will follow its rocket launch. But in the long run, it needs an excuse to reopen talks after the political atmosphere moves past sanctions," Cheong said.
Cheong said he expects that the American will be tried and convicted in coming months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has the power to grant amnesty and will exercise it as a bargaining chip, Cheong said.
Nuland said earlier this week that Washington had been trying to reach out to Kim.
"Instead, that was met not only with an abrogation of agreements that had been made by the previous North Korean regime, but by missile activity both in April and in December," she told reporters.
She said Washington had no choice but to put pressure on Pyongyang, and was discussing with its allies how to "further isolate" the regime.
In April 2009, a North Korean rocket launch took place while two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were in North Korean custody after allegedly trying to sneak into the country across the Tumen River dividing the North from China.
They were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor before being released on humanitarian grounds after Clinton flew to Pyongyang to negotiate their release.
Subsequently, three other Americans were arrested and eventually released by North Korea. All three are believed to have been accused of illegally spreading Christianity.
North Korea has several sanctioned churches in Pyongyang but frowns on the distribution of Bibles and other religious materials by foreigners. Interaction between North Koreans and foreigners is strictly regulated.
For the past week, leadership at the National Rifle Association has largely stayed away from the media, but this morning the group may weigh in on how to keep a deadly shooting massacre like last week's at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school from happening again.
The NRA will hold a news conference in Washington, D.C., just before 11 a.m.
Its leadership has held off on interviews this week after refusing to appear on Sunday morning public affairs shows this past weekend.
The group came under pressure after Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults before shooting himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last Friday.
"Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting," the group said in a press release Tuesday. "The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."
NRA News anchor Ginny Simone said Thursday that in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, membership surged "with an average of 8,000 new members a day."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the NRA is partially to blame for the tragedy.
"We're not trying to take away your right to advance the interests of gun owners, hunters, people who want to protect themselves," Bloomberg told "Nightline" anchor Cynthia McFadden in an interview Thursday. "But that's not an absolute right to encourage behavior which causes things like Connecticut. In fact, Connecticut is because of some of their actions."
Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP Photo
President Obama Launches Gun-Violence Task Force Watch Video
President Obama on Gun Control: Ready to Act? Watch Video
Joe Biden to Lead Task Force to Prevent Gun Violence Watch Video
The guns used in the attack were legally purchased and owned by the shooter's mother, Nancy Lanza, who Adam Lanza shot to death before his assault on the school.
In the aftermath of the shooting, many, including Bloomberg, have called for stricter regulations on the type of weapons used in this and other instances of mass gun violence this year.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has said she intends to introduce a bill banning assault weapons on the first day of next year's Congress -- a step the president said he supports.
President Obama announced Wednesday that Vice President Joe Biden will head a task force of leaders from across the country that will evaluate the best solutions to reduce gun violence in the United States.
Obama said he will "use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this."
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, of which Mayor Bloomberg is co-chair, released a letter to President Obama signed by more than 750 mayors calling on him to produce a plan to "make it harder for dangerous people to possess guns."
The letter asked for mandatory background checks for gun buyers, a ban on high-capacity rifles and ammunition magazines, and a designation of gun trafficking as a federal crime.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos looked at whether strict gun control laws like those that have worked for the United Kingdom and Japan could work for the U.S. on "Good Morning America" Thursday.
Others have argued that, rather than banning guns, the government should be arming teachers and administrators in schools so that they can defend students in the event of another school shooting.
While Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed a measure that would have let guns into schools on Tuesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell praised the idea.
Speaking on the NRA's daily news program Tuesday, Dave Koppel of the Independence Institute said the teachers at Sandy Hook should have had weapons.
"We'd certainly be talking about fewer innocent people and children dead," Koppel said.
While a national debate over the necessary solutions to prevent a tragedy of this nature from ever happening again wages on, Connecticut residents will have to wait "several months" before the final Connecticut State Police report on the Newtown shootings is complete.
SINGAPORE: The Singapore Exchange (SGX) is consulting the securities and derivatives markets on proposed rule changes to provide market participants with more clarity of their rights and responsibilities.
The proposed rule changes are meant to clarify when settlement and other payments between the clearing house and clearing members become final.
SGX is proposing rule refinements to remove rules related to the trading, clearing or settlement of physical scrip in the securities market.
It is also seeking to formalise the practice of SGX members maintaining separate accounts for each customer.
This will help monitor risks associated with customers of SGX members.
The rule amendments are set out in two consultation papers and are available from Thursday at www.sgx.com
The SGX invites comments on the papers till 3 January 2013.
Power outages affect thousands in Des Moines, Iowa
23-car pileup in Texas dust storm kills one, injures 17
Heavy snow, high winds stretch from Colorado to Wisconsin in season's first blizzard
Storm to crawl from Midwest to New England by Friday
Is the storm hitting near you? Share your photos and videos on CNN iReport.
(CNN) -- Tens of thousands of people lost power in Iowa on Thursday as the first major storm of the season swept in, bringing blizzards, high winds and severe thunderstorms to the central United States.
The storm prompted the National Weather Service to issue a blizzard warning for a huge swath of the Midwest stretching from eastern Colorado to Wisconsin's Lake Michigan shoreline, including virtually all of Iowa.
The declaration warned of snow accumulations of up to 12 inches, complemented by 25- to 35-mph winds that will occasionally gust to 45 to 50 mph.
More than 30,000 people were without electricity Thursday morning in Iowa, the bulk of them in Des Moines, according to MidAmerican Energy.
Iowa has seen the highest levels of snow so far, the National Weather Service said, with more than 8 inches in places.
Travelers who have hit the road early for the holiday season may face challenging conditions.
Gov. Scott Walker declared a state of emergency in Wisconsin ahead of the storm, mobilizing the Wisconsin National Guard, the state patrol, Wisconsin Emergency Management and other state agencies.
The Wisconsin State Patrol and National Weather Service have urged people to avoid traveling.
"Mobilizing our state agency resources during this storm will ensure we leave nothing to chance when it comes to protecting the citizens of Wisconsin," Walker said.
In Colorado, adverse weather has closed U.S. Highway 6 at Loveland Pass, the state's Department of Transportation reported Thursday.
A 156-mile stretch of Interstate Highway 70 between Denver and the Kansas state line was closed in both directions for a time Wednesday. U.S. Highway 385 was closed in the Cheyenne Wells region Wednesday but reopened Thursday, Colorado's Department of Transportation said, with warnings of high winds and icy spots.
Airlines were reporting relatively few cancellations or delays in areas affected by the storm Wednesday night, but that may change Thursday.
The storm will race into western Illinois, the weather service said. Rain will quickly change to snow as the storm advances northeast, with the heaviest snow occurring overnight.
"Snow drifts several feet deep will be possible given the strong winds," the blizzard warning states.
Wrapping around the blizzard warning on the north, south and east is a winter storm warning, which will be no picnic either. The winds won't be quite as strong, but residents should expect a strong dose of rain, sleet and snow, with a few hail-packing thunderstorms thrown in for good measure.
A winter weather advisory is in effect for the Indiana-Ohio-Michigan tri-state area, as well as central Missouri and Kansas.
The "intense cyclone" will crawl across the Great Lakes region Thursday and slog into northern New England by Friday evening, the National Weather Service predicted.
Another storm is beginning to affect the Pacific Northwest and northern California, where heavy mountain snow and coastal flash flooding are possible through at least Thursday, the National Weather Service said.
Dodging the heavy precipitation but not the high winds is an area from western Texas and eastern New Mexico through the Oklahoma Panhandle and into southwest Kansas.
Much of the Southwest and Mississippi Valley is extremely dry, and the high winds have kicked up blinding dust near Lubbock, Texas.
At least 17 people were sent to hospitals near Lubbock after a 23-vehicle chain-reaction crash on Interstate Highway 27 north of New Deal, Texas, state safety officials told CNN on Wednesday. There was at least one fatality, said Clinton Thetford, emergency management coordinator of Lubbock County. A stretch of the freeway in Lubbock County remains closed indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service in Mobile, Alabama, issued a tornado warning until 5:30 a.m. CT on Thursday for a cell that was moving directly toward downtown Mobile.
The storm has shown signs of strong rotation and could affect downtown Mobile and the Mobile Regional Airport.
Storm damage reported in Alabama
CNN's Jim Kavanagh, Laura Smith-Spark, Carma Hassan and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.
Colin Goddard knows what it's like to be in a classroom when an armed man bursts through the door and starts randomly shooting people. Goddard was a student at Virginia Tech when a gunman shot him and killed 32 people in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
"It was the most terrifying nine minutes of my life," Goddard told Terry Moran of "Nightline" Wednesday. "One moment you're conjugating French verbs, the next you're shot."
Four of Seung-Hui Cho's bullets hit Goddard April 16, 2007. Three of the bullets are still in him and serve as a constant reminder in his work with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Goddard does more than just lobby and appear in public-service announcements. He says he goes undercover to show how easy it is to buy guns without any background check. It's the subject of his documentary called "Living for 32," after the 32 people who died at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
"There is not one thing that will stop all shootings," Goddard said. " There's not one policy that will save us all, but a background check is something that will make it more difficult for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun."
School Shooting Survivor Documents Gun Law Fight Watch Video
Virginia Tech Documentary Debuts at Sundance Watch Video
In "Living for 32," Goddard says he was able to buy, for example, an Egyptian Maadi AK-47, a TEC-9 and a MAC-11 machine pistol at gun shows across the United States.
"I bought the same gun that was used to shoot me," he said. "I bought it all, all without a background check and it was all legal. My question is, 'Why is that legal?'"
Only licensed dealers are required by law to perform background checks on the people to whom they sell guns while private sellers can make gun-show sales with no background checks.
This is known as the "gun-show loophole" and Goddard has made it his mission to close it.
In one instance, Goddard was able to buy the Maadi Egyptian for $660 and was told by the dealer "there's no tax and no paperwork."
The dealer requested to see Goddard's Ohio driver's license. When Goddard couldn't provide it, he was still able to purchase the gun by providing an Ohio address instead.
"I didn't think I was going to be able to do it at first," he said. "And then once I did it once, then twice, then three times. I was like, 'Wow, this is really easy.'
"Toward the end I wasn't even thinking about it. I tried to do it as quickly as I could, say as few words as I could."
Polls show that a majority of Americans favor closing the loophole.
Goddard says closing the loophole won't end all gun violence, but that the government can do better.
The Brady Campaign recently launched a YouTube series, "We Are Better than This," in the wake of last week's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The videos feature celebrities and, perhaps more significantly, families of mass-shooting victims.
In the first three videos, Goddard appears, as do Lonnie and Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Redfield Ghawi, died in the Aurora, Colo., mass shooting in July.
NEW YORK: Time magazine on Wednesday named the recently re-elected US President Barack Obama as its person of the year for 2012 -- the second time it has accorded him this honor.
The venerable American news magazine said the United States is in the midst of huge cultural and demographic changes and Obama is "both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America."
The magazine noted that Obama was the first president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to win more than 50 per cent of the vote in two straight elections and the first since 1940 to be re-elected despite a jobless rate above 7.5 per cent.
Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney soundly in November's election to win a second four year term.
"In 2012, he found and forged a new majority, turned weakness into opportunity and sought, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union," said Time, which named Obama person of the year in 2008 when he became America's first black president.
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in September of this year
He was the first U.S. ambassador murdered since 1988
Along with Stevens, three other Americans were killed
(CNN) -- They were hiding in a place security officers called a "safe area." It was anything but.
Outside an angry crowd grew, gunfire rang out and a fire blazed.
Thick smoke blinded the three trapped men. The intruders banged on the fortified safety gate of the bunker-like villa.
A security officer handed his cell phone to Ambassador Chris Stevens. Prepare for the mob to blast open the locks of the safety gate, the officer said.
Security blog: Benghazi review critical of State's diplomatic security
Attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya
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It was a little before 10 at night on September 11, 2012. And time was running out for Stevens.
Vivid new details of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were released Tuesday night by a federal committee trying to come to grips with the violence that led to the first murder of a U.S. ambassador since 1988 and the deaths of three other Americans.
The report spoke of grossly inadequate security, an issue that Stevens had complained about well before September 11.
Read more: nquiry cites 'failures' at State Department
The brief phone call
Instead of blasting their way into the villa, the crowd retreated for some reason. But the fire still blazed.
Stevens used the cell phone to try to alert others about the attack.
Struggling to see, choked by smoke, he dialed.
Read more: Benghazi problems suggest long list of changes
He may have wanted to tell embassy officials in Tripoli that he and the small security detail at that 13-acre compound were in big trouble.
They were outmanned, outgunned. The militants had doused a large area with diesel fuel and started a hideous fire.
He may have wanted to say that he was trapped in a building they called Villa C with a security officer, and Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.
They had to flee to the villa after intruders stormed the walled-in consulate compound armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
But in that 9:50 p.m. phone call, Stevens could only tell the U.S. deputy chief of the mission in Tripoli that they were under attack.
The call promptly dropped.
Warning signs
Though fierce and sudden, the attack may not have been surprising for some.
U.S. diplomats who worked in Libya, a country struggling to form a government after overthrowing longtime dictator Moammar Ghadafi,had repeatedly asked for more security.
American officials, for the most part, were well-received in Libya, where many locals were grateful for the help the United States provided in overthrowing Ghadafi.
But danger remained.
Read more: State Department: Clinton not dodging Benghazi hearings
There were still many Ghadafi loyalists, there was easy access to guns and the new fledgling government was having a difficult time maintaining security.
On June 1, a car bomb exploded outside a hotel in Tripoli where Stevens was staying.
Read more: Benghazi talking points omitted link to al Qaeda
The same month, Stevens had to move with his security team from the hotel because of a "credible' threat.
On June 6, a roadside bomb exploded near the U.S. compound in Benghazi, hurting no one but blasting a large hole in a wall of the compound.
The threats continued for U.S. officials and diplomats from other countries -- but security staffing remained unchanged.
The ambassador is missing
But now, there was no time to fret about woeful security.
Black smoke was filling up the safe area.
Stevens, Smith and the security officer crawled to a bathroom, hoping to open a window.
The security officer placed towels under the bathroom door and flung open the panes.
It made things worse.
The open window pulled more smoke into the bathroom, making breathing impossible.
Despite the explosions outside, they would have to flee the safe area, the officer thought. The smoke had choked out the lights. They were in total darkness.
The officer left the bathroom, crawled through a hallway, banging on the floor and yelling that the ambassador and Smith follow him.
He slipped though another window and collapsed in an enclosed patio area.
And then he noticed it.
Stevens and Smith were not there.
The officer slipped back through the window several times, even though the intruders were still shooting at him.
The smoke and heat was unbearable. He could not find either man.
He used a ladder to climb to the roof of the villa and radioed for help.
He had been in the smoky room for so long he could hardly speak. It took some time for the officers on the other end of the line to understand what he was saying.
He did not have Smith, he said. And the ambassador is missing.
The battle at the Annex
Three other security officers had barricaded themselves in another building when the siege began.
Once the first wave of attackers seemed to retreat, the officers got out of their "defensive" positions and drove an armored car to the villa. They found their colleague on the roof, vomiting, about to pass out.
The three officers crawled through the smoke inside.
Read more: Ex-CIA chief Petraeus testifies Benghazi attack was al Qaeda-linked terrorism
They found Smith. They dragged his body out. But they were too late.
A team, from a nearby U.S. facility called the Annex, arrived and helped search for Stevens. They could not find him.
Concerned that the large crowd of militants was about to overtake the entire compound, they decided to flee back to the Annex without Stevens.
Men in the crowd began shooting, the bullets almost piercing the armored vehicle and blowing out two of its tires.
They drove on. At least two vehicles followed them.
They made it to the Annex, preparing for another fight. It was about 11:30 at night.
Just before midnight, bullets began hitting the Annex. This started a gun battle that lasted for an hour.
Hours later, another wave of attacks hit the facility with mortars, killing security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
Finding Stevens
Hours passed and no one knew where Stevens was.
About 2 a.m., the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli received a phone call.
It was from the cell phone of the security officer who had given his phone to Stevens.
The man on the line spoke Arabic, telling embassy officials that Stevens had been taken to a hospital in Benghazi.
Officials could not determine what hospital Stevens was taken to.
Some wondered if the phone call was a trick from militants who wanted to lure U.S. officers to their death.
A Libyan official was sent to Benghazi Medical Center. He said Stevens was there.
Hospital staff said six civilians brought Stevens to the emergency room about 1:15 a.m.
Even though the ambassador showed no signs of life, doctors worked to revive him for 45 minutes.
It was too late.
This narrative account was pieced together from a report released Tuesday night by the Accountability Review Board, an independent panel selected by the State Department.
GENEVA Switzerland's UBS AG agreed Wednesday to pay some $1.5 billion in fines to international regulators following a probe into the rigging of a key global interest rate.
In admitting to fraud, Switzerland's largest bank became the second bank, after Britain's Barclays PLC, to settle over the rate-rigging scandal. The fine, which will be paid to authorities in the U.S., Britain and Switzerland, also comes just over a week after HSBC PLC agreed to pay nearly $2 billion for alleged money laundering.
The settlement caps a tough year for UBS and the reputation of the global banking industry. As well as being ensnared in the industry-wide investigation into alleged manipulations of the benchmark LIBOR interest rate, short for London interbank offered rate, UBS has seen its reputation suffer in a London trial into a multibillion dollar trading scandal and ongoing tax evasion probes.
As a result of the fines, litigation, unwinding of real estate investments, restructuring and other costs, UBS said it expects to post a fourth quarter net loss of between $2.2-2.7 billion.
Nevertheless, the Zurich-based bank maintained that it "remains one of the best capitalized banks in the world."
Other banks are expected to be fined for their involvement in the LIBOR scandal. LIBOR, which is a self-policing system and relies on information that global banks submit to a British banking authority, is important because it is used to set the interest rates on trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages and credit cards.
UBS characterized the probes as "industry-wide investigations into the setting of certain benchmark rates across a range of currencies."
The UBS penalty is more than triple the $450 million in fines imposed by American and British regulators in June on Barclays for submitting false information between 2005 and 2009 to manipulate the LIBOR rates. Those fines exposed a scandal that led to the departure of Chief Executive Bob Diamond and the announcement that Chairman Marcus Agius would step down at the end of the year.
In accepting the fines, UBS said some of its employees tried to rig the LIBOR rate in several currencies, but that its Japan unit, where much of the manipulation took place, entered a plea to one count of wire fraud in an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.
UBS said some of its personnel had "engaged in efforts to manipulate submissions for certain benchmark rates to benefit trading positions" and that some employees had "colluded with employees at other banks and cash brokers to influence certain benchmark rates to benefit their trading positions."
UBS added that "inappropriate directions" had been submitted that were "in part motivated by a desire to avoid unfair and negative market and media perceptions during the financial crisis."
Britain's financial regulator called the misconduct by UBS "extensive and broad" with the rate-fixing carried out from UBS offices in London and Zurich.
Different desks were responsible for different rate submissions. At least 2,000 requests for inappropriate submissions were documented -- an unquantifiable number of oral requests, which by their nature would not be documented, were also made, the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority said.
"Manipulation was also discussed in internal open chat forums and group emails, and was widely known," the FSA said. "At least 45 individuals including traders, managers and senior managers were involved in, or aware of, the practice of attempting to influence submissions."
Sergio Ermotti, who was appointed CEO of UBS AG in November 2012 in the wake of a major trading scandal, said the misconduct does not reflect the bank's values or standards.
"We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of the firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity," he said.
With more than $2.4 trillion in invested assets, UBS is one of the world's largest managers of private wealth assets. At last count, the bank had 63,745 employees in 57 countries. It has said it aims for a headcount of 54,000 in 2015.
Along with Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, UBS is on the list of the 29 "global systemically important banks" that the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements, the central bank for central banks, considers too big to fail.
It's not the first time that UBS has fallen afoul of regulators. Notably, in 2009, U.S. authorities fined UBS $780 million in 2009 for helping U.S. citizens avoid paying taxes.
The U.S. government has since been pushing Switzerland to loosen its rules on banking secrecy and has been trying to shed its image as a tax haven, signing deals with the United States, Germany and Britain to provide greater assistance to foreign tax authorities seeking information on their citizens' accounts.
In April, Ermotti called Switzerland's tax disputes with the United States and some European nations "an economic war" putting thousands of jobs at risk.
And in September 2011, the bank announced more than $2 billion in losses and blamed a 32-year-old rogue trader, Kweku Adoboli, at its London office for Britain's biggest-ever fraud at a bank.
Britain's financial regulator fined UBS, saying its internal controls were inadequate to prevent Adoboli, a relatively inexperienced trader, from making vast and risky bets. Adoboli has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
If there is one country that best represents the possibility of cutting gun crime by increasing gun control, it is Australia.
In 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant finished his lunch in a café in the seaside resort of Port Arthur and pulled out a semi-automatic rifle. In the first 15 seconds of his attack, he killed 12 and wounded 10. In all, he shot more than 50 people in six locations, killing 35. The worst mass shooting in Australia's history capped a violent decade of mass shootings that killed nearly 100 – and Australians had had enough.
Only 12 days later, Prime Minister John Howard – a conservative who had just been elected with the help of gun owners – pushed through not only new gun control laws, but also the most ambitious gun buyback program seen in recent memory.
The laws banned assault rifles, tightened gun owner licensing, and created national uniform registration standards. Howard knew they might be unpopular among some of the same voters who helped put him into office -- during one particularly hostile public town hall, he wore a bulletproof vest.
But something extraordinary happened: the laws tapped into public revulsion at the shooting and became extremely popular. And they became extremely effective.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images
In the last 16 years, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia has fallen by more than 50 percent. The national rate of gun homicide is one-thirtieth that of the United States. And there hasn't been a single mass shooting since Port Arthur.
"It's not that we are a less violent people and that you are a more violent people," says Philip Alpers, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Sydney who runs GunPolicy.org, which tracks gun violence and gun laws across the world. "It's that you have more lethal means at your disposal."
But it wasn't just the new laws that made Australia safer. The gun buyback program collected nearly 650,000 assault weapons and 50,000 additional weapons – about one sixth of the national stock. Fewer guns on the street helped severely reduce the likelihood that guns could be used for a mass shooting.
"Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of gun owners simply, voluntarily gave up guns that they did not need to give up," Alpers told ABC News. "You could not be a gun owner during that period and not feel terribly persecuted, terribly under threat from public opinion. The commentaries were vicious."
Gun advocates hold up Australia's example as a reason to try similar laws in the United States, following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But Australians' willingness to give up their guns suggests a fundamental difference between Australia and the United States' gun cultures – and why Australia could be looked at for inspiration, rather than a model.
In the U.S., the founding fathers wrote gun ownership into the country's bedrock documents. Gun owners have long seen their weapons as a sign of freedom.
"But Australians are predisposed toward not having guns," Alpers argues. "We take it for granted that you license the gun owner and you register the firearm. Just as you do with a car. In the United States, everything went in the different direction."
So gun control advocates urge the Obama administration to look at certain steps Australia took – but not necessarily reproduce them.
SINGAPORE: The Singapore Sports Hub has appointed SMRT Alpha to lease and operate 41,000 square metres of commercial retail space at the Singapore Sports Hub.
This new joint venture is a partnership between subsidiaries of SMRT and NTUC FairPrice.
The retail mall and waterfront area will feature a variety of indoor and alfresco food and beverage outlets.
For shoppers, the mall will offer a wide range of stores and amenities.
Tenants will also include a FairPrice Xtra hypermarket at the mall, providing affordable daily essentials and groceries, as well as sportswear and sporting equipment, catering to the needs of the residents and shoppers in the area.
The Singapore Sports Hub will be opened and fully operational in April 2014.
NEWTOWN, Conn. With security stepped up and families still on edge in Newtown, schools are opening for the first time since last week's massacre, bringing a return of familiar routines -- at least, for some -- to a grief-stricken town as it buries 20 of its children.
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Holiday week is full of funerals for Newtown, Conn.
Two 6-year-old boys were laid to rest Monday in the first of a long, almost unbearable procession of funerals. A total of 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S history.
While classes resume Tuesday for Newtown schools -- except for students at Sandy Hook -- some parents were likely to keep their children at home anyway. Local police and school officials have been discussing how and where to increase security, and state police said they will be on alert for threats and hoaxes.
Suzy DeYoung said her 15-year-old son is going back to the high school.
"I think he wants to go back," she said. "If he told me he wants to stay home, I'd let him stay home. I think going back to a routine is a good idea; at least that's what I hear from professionals."
On Monday, Newtown held the first two funerals of many the picturesque New England community of 27,000 people will face over the next few days, just as other towns are getting ready for the holidays. At least one funeral is planned for a student -- 6-year-old Jessica Rekos -- as well as several wakes, including one for teacher Victoria Soto, who has been hailed as a hero for sacrificing herself to save several students.
Play Video
Funerals begin for Conn. shooting victims
Two funeral homes filled Monday with mourners for Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto, both 6 years old. A rabbi presided at Noah's service, and in keeping with Jewish tradition, the boy was laid to rest in a simple brown wooden casket with a Star of David on it.
"I will miss your perpetual smile, the twinkle in your dark blue eyes, framed by eyelashes that would be the envy of any lady in this room," Noah's mother, Veronique Pozner, said at the service, according to remarks the family provided to The Associated Press. Both services were closed to the news media.
"Most of all, I will miss your visions of your future," she said. "You wanted to be a doctor, a soldier, a taco factory manager. It was your favorite food, and no doubt you wanted to ensure that the world kept producing tacos."
She closed by saying: "Momma loves you, little man."
Noah's twin, Arielle, who was assigned to a different classroom, survived the killing frenzy.
At Jack Pinto's Christian service, hymns rang out from inside the funeral home, where the boy lay in an open casket. Jack was among the youngest members of a youth wrestling association in Newtown, and dozens of little boys turned up at the service in gray Newtown Wrestling T-shirts.
Jack was a fan of New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz and was laid to rest in a Cruz jersey.
In the middle of town, an ever-growing memorial has become a pilgrimage site for strangers who want to pay their respect.
One man told CBS Station WCBS why he visited: "Because I'm a dad with four beautiful daughters, when I found out it broke my heart. It's hard to sleep, I don't know how to feel."
Authorities say the man who killed the two boys and their classmates, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot his mother, Nancy, at their home and then took her car and some of her guns to the school, where he broke in and opened fire. A Connecticut official said the mother, a gun enthusiast who practiced at shooting ranges, was found dead in her pajamas in bed, shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle.
Lanza was wearing all black, with an olive-drab utility vest with lots of pockets, during the attack.
As investigators worked to figure out what drove him to lash out with such fury -- and why he singled out the school -- federal agents said he had fired guns at shooting ranges over the past several years but that there was no evidence he did so recently as practice for the rampage.
Debora Seifert, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said both Lanza and his mother fired at shooting ranges, and also visited ranges together.
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Political reaction to Newtown, CT tragedy
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Gun sales on the rise after Conn. shooting
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CBS News poll: Strong support for tougher gun laws
"We do not have any indication at this time that the shooter engaged in shooting activities in the past six months," Seifert said.
Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack.
Whatever his motives, normalcy will be slow in revisiting Newtown.
Classes were canceled district-wide Monday, though other students in town were expected to return to class Tuesday.
Dan Capodicci, whose 10-year-old daughter attends the school at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, said he thinks it's time for her to get back to classes.
"It's the right thing to do. You have to send your kids back. But at the same time I'm worried," he said. "We need to get back to normal."
Gina Wolfman said her daughters are going back to their seventh- and ninth-grade classrooms tomorrow. She thinks they are ready to be back with their friends.
"I think they want to be back with everyone and share," she said.
Newtown police Lt. George Sinko said whether to send children to school is a personal decision for every parent.
"I can't imagine what it must be like being a parent with a child that young, putting them on a school bus," Sinko said.
The district has made plans to send surviving Sandy Hook students to Chalk Hill, a former middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe. Sandy Hook desks that will fit the small students are being taken there, empty since town schools consolidated last year, and tradesmen are donating their services to get the school ready within a matter of days.
"These are innocent children that need to be put on the right path again," Monroe police Lt. Brian McCauley said.
With Sandy Hook Elementary still designated a crime scene, state police Lt. Paul Vance said it could be months before police turn the school back over to the district.
The shooting has put schools on edge across the country.
Anxiety ran high enough in Ridgefield, Conn., about 20 miles from Newtown, that officials ordered a lockdown at schools after a person deemed suspicious was seen at a train station.
Two schools were locked down in South Burlington, Vt., because of an unspecified threat. A high school in Windham, N.H., was briefly locked down after an administrator heard a loud bang, but a police search found nothing suspicious.
Lanza is believed to have used a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, a civilian version of the military's M-16. It is similar to the weapon used in a recent shopping mall shooting in Oregon and other deadly attacks around the U.S. Versions of the AR-15 were outlawed in this country under the 1994 assault weapons ban, but the law expired in 2004.
The outlines of a national debate on gun control have begun to take shape. At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said curbing gun violence is a complex problem that will require a "comprehensive solution."
Carney did not offer specific proposals or a timeline. He said President Obama will meet with law enforcement officials and mental health professionals in coming weeks.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, flanked by shooting survivors and relatives of victims of gunfire around the country, pressed Mr. Obama and Congress to toughen gun laws and tighten enforcement after the Newtown massacre.
"If this doesn't do it," he asked, "what is going to?"
At least one senator, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, said Monday that the attack in Newtown has led him to rethink his opposition to the ban on assault weapons.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is an avid hunter and lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, said it's time to move beyond the political rhetoric and begin an honest discussion about reasonable restrictions on guns.
"This is bigger than just about guns," he added. "It's about how we treat people with mental illness, how we intervene, how we get them the care they need, how we protect our schools. It's just so sad."
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