Biden to head gun policy push after Newtown shootings

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will announce on Wednesday that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an effort to come up with policies to address gun violence amid calls for action following the massacre of 26 people including 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school last week.

The president is not expected to announce policy decisions but rather lay out the process by which his administration will move forward, White House aides said.

Obama has turned to Biden in the past to take a role in high-profile policy initiatives, such as efforts to seek a deficit-reduction compromise with congressional Republicans in 2011.

Biden's mission - to coordinate a process among government agencies to formulate policies in the wake of the Newtown shootings - comes just days after an event that appears to have generated a national outcry for greater efforts to stem gun violence.

The Connecticut massacre was the fourth shooting rampage to claim multiple lives in the United States this year.

The president issued a call to action at a memorial service in Newtown on Sunday, demanding changes to the way the United States deals with gun violence. Obama said that in coming weeks he would "use whatever power this office" holds to start efforts to preventing further such tragedies.

However, gun control has been a low priority for most U.S. politicians due to the widespread popularity of guns in America and the clout of the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun industry lobby.

The constitutional right to bear arms is seen by many Americans as set in stone, and even after mass shootings, politicians have tiptoed around specific steps to limit access to lethal weapons.

Even so, the horror of the Newtown killings, in which a 20-year-old man killed 6- and 7-year-old children and their teachers in their classrooms before taking his own life, has provoked an apparent change of heart in some politicians who have previously opposed gun control.

One such lawmaker is Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The gun rights advocate said he would now be open to more regulation of military-style rifles like the one used in Newtown. Obama spoke with him on Tuesday, the White House said.

The White House spelled out some gun control measures on Tuesday that Obama would support.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would back U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's effort to reinstate an assault weapons ban. The president also would favor any law to close a loophole related to gun-show sales, he said.

Efforts to limit high-capacity gun ammunition clips would be another area of interest, Carney said.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Gunmen kill 5 female polio workers in Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen killed five Pakistani women working on a U.N.-backed polio vaccination campaign in two different cities on Tuesday, officials said. The attacks were likely an attempt by the Taliban to counter an initiative the militant group has opposed.

The attacks came a day after an unknown gunman killed a male volunteer for the World Health Organization's anti-polio campaign in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi.

The government is in the middle of a three-day vaccination campaign in the highest risk parts of the country, part of an effort to vaccinate millions of children under the age of five.

Four of the women killed Tuesday were gunned down in Karachi, said Sagheer Ahmed, the health minister for surrounding Sindh province. Two male workers were critically wounded in the shootings, said Ahmed, who wrongly reported earlier that one of them had died.

The attack on the polio workers was well-coordinated and occurred simultaneously in three different areas of the city, said police spokesman Imran Shoukat.

The government suspended the vaccination campaign in Karachi in the wake of the shootings, said Ahmed. The campaign started on Monday and was supposed to run until Wednesday, he said.

Gunmen on a motorcycle also shot to death a woman working on a government anti-polio campaign in a village near the northwestern city of Peshawar, said Janbaz Afridi, a senior health official in surrounding Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

He said the attacks would not stop the government from continuing its vaccination program in the province and the neighboring tribal region, the main sanctuary for Taliban militants in the country.

"These incidents are depressing and may cause difficulties in the anti-polio drive, but people should not lose heart," said Afridi. "The government is very serious, and we are determined to eliminate polio despite all odds and difficult conditions."

The Taliban have spoken out against polio vaccination in recent months, claiming the health workers are acting as spies for the U.S. and the vaccine itself causes harm. Militants in parts of Pakistan's tribal region have also said the vaccination campaign can't go forward until the U.S. stops drone attacks in the country.

The shootings in Karachi on Tuesday all took place in areas mainly populated by ethnic Pashtuns, said Ahmed, the health minister. The Taliban are a Pashtun-dominated movement, and many militants are reported to be hiding in these communities in Karachi.

The immunization campaign was suspended in Karachi in July as well after a local volunteer was shot to death and two U.N. staff were wounded.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is endemic. The virus usually infects children living in unsanitary conditions, attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyze.

The government, teaming up with U.N. agencies, is on a nationwide campaign to give oral polio drops to 34 million children under the age of five.

But vaccination programs, especially those with international links, have come under suspicion in the country since a Pakistani doctor ran a fake vaccination program last year to help the CIA track down Osama bin Laden.

Also Tuesday, two men on a motorcycle hurled hand grenades at the main gate of an army recruiting center in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, wounding 10 people, police said.

The injured in the attack in the garrison town of Risalpur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa included civilians and security personnel, senior police official Ghulam Mohammed told The Associated Press. The police have launched a manhunt to trace and arrest the attackers, he said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a string of assaults in recent days that illustrate the continued challenge Pakistan faces from militants despite military operations against the Pakistani Taliban and their supporters.

Tuesday's attack came a day after a car bomb exploded in a crowded market in Pakistan's northwestern town of Jamrud near the Afghan border, killing 17 people and wounding more than 40 others.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is located on the edge of Pakistan's tribal region, the main sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban in the country. The province has witnessed scores of attacks, most of them blamed on the Taliban.

Ten Taliban fighters armed with rockets and car bombs attacked the military section of an international airport in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday night, killing four people and wounding over 40 others. Five of the militants were killed during the attack and the other five died Sunday after hours-long shootout with security forces.

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Associated Press writer Jamal Khan contributed to this report from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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$35 Raspberry Pi computer gets its own app store

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Zooey Deschanel, rocker husband finalize divorce

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has finalized Zooey Deschanel's divorce from her rocker husband of roughly three years.

Court records show a judge finalized the actress' divorce from Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Gibbard and Deschanel, who stars in Fox's "New Girl," were married in September 2009. They had no children together.

The actress filed for divorce in December 2011 after separating two months earlier.

The judgment does not provide financial details of the breakup, although it states that the former couple's marriage cannot be repaired by counseling or mediation.

Deschanel was nominated last week for a Golden Globe for her work on "New Girl."

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Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence

NEW YORK (AP) — While an official has said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut school shooting had Asperger's syndrome, experts say there is no connection between the disorder and violence.

Asperger's is a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness.

"There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior," said psychologist Elizabeth Laugeson, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Little is known about Adam Lanza, identified by police as the shooter in the Friday massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. He fatally shot his mother before going to the school and killing 20 young children, six adults and himself, authorities said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's.

High school classmates and others have described him as bright but painfully shy, anxious and a loner. Those kinds of symptoms are consistent with Asperger's, said psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's, but has no knowledge of Lanza's case.

Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population, he said.

"But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown," he said in an email.

"These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles," he added.

Autism is a developmental disorder that can range from mild to severe. Asperger's generally is thought of as a mild form. Both autism and Asperger's can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. Unlike classic autism, Asperger's does not typically involve delays in mental development or speech.

Experts say those with autism and related disorders are sometimes diagnosed with other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"I think it's far more likely that what happened may have more to do with some other kind of mental health condition like depression or anxiety rather than Asperger's," Laugeson said.

She said those with Asperger's tend to focus on rules and be very law-abiding.

"There's something more to this," she said. "We just don't know what that is yet."

After much debate, the term Asperger's is being dropped from the diagnostic manual used by the nation's psychiatrists. In changes approved earlier this month, Asperger's will be incorporated under the umbrella term "autism spectrum disorder" for all the ranges of autism.

__

AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Asperger's information: http://1.usa.gov/3tGSp5

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Newtown students to return to classes

NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) - The schools of Newtown, which stood empty in the wake of a shooting rampage that took 26 of their own, will again ring with the sounds of students and teachers on Tuesday as the bucolic Connecticut town struggles to return to normal.

But among the normal sounds of a school day - teachers reading to children, the scratch of pencil on paper - students will hear new ones, including the murmur of grief counselors and the footsteps of police officers.

Four days after 20-year-old Adam Lanza strode into Sandy Hook Elementary school and gunned down a score of 6- and 7-year-olds, in addition to six faculty and staff, that school will remain closed. It is an active crime scene, with police coming and going past a line of 26 Christmas trees that visitors have decorated with ornaments, stuffed animals and balloons in the school colors of green and white as a memorial to the victims.

The massacre - one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history - shocked Americans, prompting some lawmakers to call for tighter restrictions on guns and causing school administrators around the country to assess their safety protocols.

Newtown police plan to have officers at the six schools scheduled to reopen on Tuesday, trying to offer a sense of security to the students and faculty, many of whom spent the weekend in mourning. Newtown Police Lieutenant George Sinko acknowledged it may be difficult to ease the worries of the roughly 4,700 returning students and their families.

"Obviously, there's going to be a lot of apprehension. We just had a horrific tragedy. We had babies sent to school that should be safe and they weren't," Sinko said. "You can't help but think ... if this could happen again."

DAY FOR 'HEALING'

Newtown High School Principal Charles Dumais, in an e-mail to parents, said schools in the district would open two hours later than usual, with counselors available to students and their families.

"This is a day to start healing," Dumais said.

While school officials have not yet decided when Sandy Hook students will resume their studies, the building that they will move into - the unused Chalk Hill School in the nearby town of Monroe - already showed signs of preparation.

On a fence opposite the building, a green sign with white lettering proclaimed "Welcome Sandy Hook Elementary!"

In Washington, the massacre prompted U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday to call a White House meeting with advisors to discuss ways to respond, a first step toward fulfilling the pledge he made a day earlier in Newtown. The administration's plans to curb violence include but are not limited to gun-control measures, a spokesman said.

Police have warned it could take months for them to finish their investigation into the attack, which started when Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, at home, before driving to the school armed with a Bushmaster AR 15 rifle and two handguns. After shooting 26 people at the school, he turned his gun on himself when he heard police approaching.

In total, 28 people died in the incident.

Many of the students and faculty of Sandy Hook and its neighbors will still have funerals to attend.

The first two victims, Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto, both 6, were buried on Monday, with the boys' bodies laid out in white coffins. Jack was dressed in a New York Giants jersey with his favorite player's number, while mourners left a teddy bear outside Noah's service.

More funerals were expected on Tuesday, for victims including James Mattioli and Jessica Rekos. Each was 6 years old.

"It's still not real that my little girl, who was so full of life and who wants a horse so badly and who's going to get cowgirl boots for Christmas isn't coming home," Krista Rekos, Jessica's mother, told ABC News on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Peter Rudegeair and Edward Krudy; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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Video suggests N. Korea's first lady has baby bump

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — The wife of North Korea's young leader might be pregnant, judging by video that shows her with what appears to be a baby bump.

In the video aired on state TV, Ri Sol Ju is shown walking slowly next to her husband, Kim Jong Un, at the mausoleum where his late father's body was unveiled Monday.

There is no official word from Pyongyang about a pregnancy. In addition, Ri is shown wearing a billowing traditional Korean dress in black that makes it difficult to know for sure.

North Koreans are reluctant to discuss details of the Kim family that have not been released by the state. Still there are rumors even in Pyongyang about whether the country's first couple is expecting.

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Google could emerge unscathed from federal web search probe – WSJ

(Reuters) – Google may not face any major repercussions from the Federal Trade Commission‘s (FTC) two-year-old anti-trust investigation into its web search business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The FTC might drop the investigation sometime this week based on voluntary changes Google will make to its search practices, rather than making the company sign a formal settlement called a consent decree, the Journal said.

The web search investigation examined whether Google tweaks its search results to disadvantage rivals in travel, shopping and other specialized searches.

Google will probably still be required to sign a consent decree for a separate federal investigation into the licensing of mobile-technology patents it acquired when it took over phone maker Motorola Mobility, the Journal said.

An end to the federal probe into Google’s search business would allow the company to avoid getting mired in anti-trust investigations like rival Microsoft Corp endured in the early 2000s.

The European Commission, which is also probing Google, is expected to announce a decision next month.

The FTC declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal and could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular business hours. Google could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular business hours.

(Reporting by Tej Sapru in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Hollywood hacker honed his skills for years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Long before Christopher Chaney made headlines by hacking into the email accounts of such stars as Scarlett Johansson and Christina Aguilera, two other women say he harassed and stalked them online.

The women, who both knew Chaney, say their lives have been irreparably damaged by his actions. One has anxiety and panic attacks; the other is depressed and paranoid. Both say Chaney was calculated, cruel and creepy: he sent nude photos they had taken of themselves to their family members.

Their accounts as cybervictims serve as a cautionary tale for those, even major celebrities, who snap personal, and sometimes revealing photos.

Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Fla., is set to be sentenced Monday and could face up to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to nine felony counts, including wiretapping and unauthorized access to a computer, for hacking into email accounts of Aguilera, Johansson and Mila Kunis.

Aguilera said in a statement that although she knows that she's often in the limelight, Chaney took from her some of the private moments she shares with friends.

"That feeling of security can never be given back and there is no compensation that can restore the feeling one has from such a large invasion of privacy," Aguilera said.

Prosecutors said Chaney illegally accessed the email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry between November 2010 and October 2011. Aguilera, Kunis and Johansson agreed to have their identities made public with the hopes that the exposure about the case would provide awareness about online intrusion.

The biggest spectacle in the case was the revelation that nude photos taken by Johansson herself and meant for her then-husband Ryan Reynolds were taken by Chaney and put on the Internet. The "Avengers" actress is not expected to attend the hearing, but she has videotaped a statement that may be shown in court.

Some of Aguilera's photos appeared online after Chaney sent an email from the account of her stylist, Simone Harouche, to Aguilera asking the singer for scantily clad photographs, prosecutors said.

Chaney forwarded many of the photographs to two gossip websites and another hacker, but there wasn't evidence he profited from his scheme, authorities said.

For the two women, who were only identified in court papers by their initials, their encounters with Chaney went from friendly to frightening.

One of the women, identified by the initials T.B., said she first met Chaney online in 1999 when she was 13 years old. She began talking with a girl named "Jessica" that later turned out to actually be Chaney.

Chaney figured out his victims' email passwords and security questions and set a feature to forward a copy of every email they received to an account he controlled.

The woman said that in February 2009 her friends contacted her and let her know that several nude photos of her were uploaded to a public gallery. A year later, Chaney sent a link to a photo-sharing website he created and had her nude pictures sent to her father.

She said she spends several hours a week monitoring the Internet for her personal information and breaks into a sweat whenever she receives a Google alert email notifying her that her name has been mentioned online.

In her letter to U.S. District Judge S. James Otero, she said she thinks Chaney won't stop and she still feels like he has control over her reputation, relationships and career.

Chaney was arrested in October 2011 as part of a yearlong investigation of celebrity hacking that authorities dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi." Chaney's computer hard drive contained numerous private celebrity photos and a document that compiled their extensive personal data, according to a search warrant.

Chaney has since apologized for what he has done, but prosecutors are recommending a nearly six-year prison sentence for him. They also want him to pay $150,000 in restitution, including about $66,000 to Johansson.

The second woman, identified in court papers only as T.C., said she was a close friend of Chaney's for more than a decade. As early as 2003 she noticed her passwords were being reset and email she hadn't looked at had been read by someone. She also said Chaney forwarded an invitation to an online photo gallery to her brother, who eventually saw naked pictures of her.

The woman said the night before she got married, Chaney deleted her email account and she was unable to correspond with a notary until she created a new email address.

In her letter to the judge, the woman said she's been broken by the physical and emotional toll and can no longer recall what it was like to have a private life.

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Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence

NEW YORK (AP) — While an official has said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut school shooting had Asperger's syndrome, experts say there is no connection between the disorder and violence.

Asperger's is a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness.

"There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior," said psychologist Elizabeth Laugeson, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Little is known about Adam Lanza, identified by police as the shooter in the Friday massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. He fatally shot his mother before going to the school and killing 20 young children, six adults and himself, authorities said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's.

High school classmates and others have described him as bright but painfully shy, anxious and a loner. Those kinds of symptoms are consistent with Asperger's, said psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's, but has no knowledge of Lanza's case.

Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population, he said.

"But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown," he said in an email.

"These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles," he added.

Autism is a developmental disorder that can range from mild to severe. Asperger's generally is thought of as a mild form. Both autism and Asperger's can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. Unlike classic autism, Asperger's does not typically involve delays in mental development or speech.

Experts say those with autism and related disorders are sometimes diagnosed with other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"I think it's far more likely that what happened may have more to do with some other kind of mental health condition like depression or anxiety rather than Asperger's," Laugeson said.

She said those with Asperger's tend to focus on rules and be very law-abiding.

"There's something more to this," she said. "We just don't know what that is yet."

After much debate, the term Asperger's is being dropped from the diagnostic manual used by the nation's psychiatrists. In changes approved earlier this month, Asperger's will be incorporated under the umbrella term "autism spectrum disorder" for all the ranges of autism.

__

AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Asperger's information: http://1.usa.gov/3tGSp5

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