'Always smiling': Portraits of Connecticut victims

Most died at the very start of their young lives, tiny victims taken in a way not fit for anyone regardless of age. Others found their life's work in sheltering little ones, teaching them, caring for them, treating them as their own. After the gunfire ended Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the trail of loss was more than many could bear: 20 children and six adults at the school, the gunman's mother at home, and the gunman himself.

A glimpse of some of those who died:

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Charlotte Bacon, 6, student

They were supposed to be for the holidays, but finally on Friday, after much begging, Charlotte Bacon's mother relented and let her wear the new pink dress and boots to school.

It was the last outfit the outgoing redhead would ever pick out. Charlotte's older brother, Guy, was also in the school but was not shot.

Her parents, JoAnn and Joel, had lived in Newtown for four or five years, JoAnn's brother John Hagen, of Nisswa, Minn., told Newsday.

"She was going to go some places in this world," Hagen told the newspaper. "This little girl could light up the room for anyone."

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Olivia Engel, 6, student

The images of Olivia Engel will live far beyond her short lifetime. There she is, visiting with Santa Claus, or feasting on a slice of birthday cake. There's the one of her swinging a pink baseball bat, and another posing on a boat. In some, she models a pretty white dress; in others, she makes a silly face.

Dan Merton, a longtime friend of the girl's family, says he could never forget the child, and he has much to say when he thinks of her.

"She loved attention," he said. "She had perfect manners, perfect table manners. She was the teacher's pet, the line leader."

On Friday, Merton said, she was simply excited to go to school and then return home and make a gingerbread house.

"Her only crime," he said, "is being a wiggly, smiley 6-year-old."

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Dawn Hochsprung, 47, principal

Dawn Hochsprung's pride in Sandy Hook Elementary was clear. She regularly tweeted photos from her time as principal there, giving indelible glimpses of life at a place now known for tragedy. Just this week, it was an image of fourth-graders rehearsing for their winter concert; days before that, the tiny hands of kindergartners exchanging play money at their makeshift grocery store.

She viewed her school as a model, telling The Newtown Bee in 2010 that "I don't think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day." She had worked to make Sandy Hook a place of safety, too, and in October, the 47-year-old Hochsprung shared a picture of the school's evacuation drill with the message "safety first." When the unthinkable came, she was ready to defend.

Officials said she died while lunging at the gunman in an attempt to overtake him.

"She had an extremely likable style about her," said Gerald Stomski, first selectman of Woodbury, where Hochsprung lived and had taught. "She was an extremely charismatic principal while she was here."

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Madeleine Hsu, 6, student

Dr. Matthew Velsmid was at Madeleine's house on Saturday, tending to her stricken family. He said the family did not want to comment.

Velsmid said that after hearing of the shooting, he went to the triage area to provide medical assistance but there were no injuries to treat.

"We were waiting for casualties to come out, and there was nothing. There was no need, unfortunately," he said. "This is the darkest thing I've ever walked into, by far."

Velsmid's daughter, who attends another school, lost three of her friends.

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Catherine Hubbard, 6, student

A family friend turned reporters away from the house, but Catherine's parents released a statement expressing gratitude to emergency responders and for the support of the community.

"We are greatly saddened by the loss of our beautiful daughter, Catherine Violet and our thoughts and prayers are with the other families who have been affected by this tragedy," Jennifer and Matthew Hubbard said. "We ask that you continue to pray for us and the other families who have experienced loss in this tragedy."

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Chase Kowalski, 7, student

Chase Kowalski was always outside, playing in the backyard, riding his bicycle. Just last week, he was visiting neighbor Kevin Grimes, telling him about completing — and winning — his first mini-triathlon.

"You couldn't think of a better child," Grimes said.

Grimes' own five children all attended Sandy Hook, too. Cars lined up outside the Kowalskis' ranch home Saturday, and a state trooper's car idled in the driveway. Grimes spoke of the boy only in the present tense.

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Nancy Lanza, 52, gunman's mother

She once was known simply for the game nights she hosted and the holiday decorations she put up at her house. Now Nancy Lanza is known as her son's first victim.

Authorities say her 20-year-old son Adam gunned her down before killing 26 others at Sandy Hook. The two shared a home in a well-to-do Newtown neighborhood, but details were slow to emerge of who she was and what might have led her son to carry out such horror.

Kingston, N.H., Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. said Nancy Lanza once lived in the community and was a kind, considerate and loving person. The former stockbroker at John Hancock in Boston was well-respected, Briggs said.

Court records show Lanza and her ex-husband, Peter Lanza, filed for divorce in 2008. He lives in Stamford and is a tax director at General Electric. A neighbor, Rhonda Cullens, said she knew Nancy Lanza from get-togethers she had hosted to play Bunco, a dice game. She said her neighbor had enjoyed gardening.

"She was a very nice lady," Cullens said. "She was just like all the rest of us in the neighborhood, just a regular person."

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Jesse Lewis, 6, student

Six-year-old Jesse Lewis had hot chocolate with his favorite breakfast sandwich — sausage, egg and cheese — at the neighborhood deli before going to school Friday morning.

Jesse and his parents were regulars at the Misty Vale Deli in Sandy Hook, Conn., owner Angel Salazar told The Wall Street Journal.

"He was always friendly; he always liked to talk," Salazar said.

Jesse's family has a collection of animals he enjoyed playing with, and he was learning to ride horseback.

Family friend Barbara McSperrin told the Journal that Jesse was "a typical 6-year-old little boy, full of life."

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Ana Marquez-Greene, 6, student

A year ago, 6-year-old Ana Marquez-Greene was reveling in holiday celebrations with her extended family on her first trip to Puerto Rico. This year will be heartbreakingly different.

The girl's grandmother, Elba Marquez, said the family moved to Connecticut just two months ago, drawn from Canada, in part, by Sandy Hook's sterling reputation. The grandmother's brother, Jorge Marquez, is mayor of a Puerto Rican town and said the child's 9-year-old brother also was at the school but escaped safely.

Elba Marquez had just visited the new home over Thanksgiving and is perplexed by what happened. "What happened does not match up with the place where they live," she said.

A video spreading across the Internet shows a confident Ana hitting every note as she sings "Come, Thou Almighty King." She flashes a big grin and waves to the camera when she's done.

Jorge Marquez confirmed the girl's father is saxophonist Jimmy Greene, who wrote on Facebook that he was trying to "work through this nightmare."

"As much as she's needed here and missed by her mother, brother and me, Ana beat us all to paradise," he wrote. "I love you sweetie girl."

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James Mattioli, 6, student

The upstate New York town of Sherrill is thinking of Cindy Mattioli, who grew up there and lost her son James in the school shooting in Connecticut.

"It's a terrible tragedy, and we're a tight community," Mayor William Vineall told the Utica Observer-Dispatch. "Everybody will be there for them, and our thoughts and prayers are there for them."

James' grandparents, Jack and Kathy Radley, still live in the city, the newspaper reported.

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Anne Marie Murphy, 52, teacher

A happy soul. A good mother, wife and daughter. Artistic, fun-loving, witty and hardworking.

Remembering their daughter, Anne Marie Murphy, her parents had no shortage of adjectives to offer Newsday. When news of the shooting broke, Hugh and Alice McGowan waited for word of their daughter as hours ticked by. And then it came.

Authorities told the couple their daughter was a hero who helped shield some of her students from the rain of bullets. As the grim news arrived, the victim's mother reached for her rosary.

"You don't expect your daughter to be murdered," her father told the newspaper. "It happens on TV. It happens elsewhere."

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Emilie Parker, 6, student

Quick to cheer up those in need of a smile, Emilie Parker never missed a chance to draw a picture or make a card.

Her father, Robbie Parker, fought back tears as he described the beautiful, blond, always-smiling girl who loved to try new things, except foods.

Parker, one of the first parents to publicly talk about his loss, expressed no animosity for the gunman, even as he struggled to explain the death to his other two children, ages 3 and 4. He's sustained by the fact that the world is better for having had Emilie in it.

"I'm so blessed to be her dad," he said.

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Noah Pozner, 6, student

The way Noah Pozner's parents saw it, no schools in New York could compare with those in Newtown, a relative told Newsday. So they moved their family — Noah, his twin sister and his 8-year-old sister.

"At this stage, two out of three survived. ... That's sad," said Noah's uncle Arthur Pozner, of New York City's Brooklyn borough. "The reason they moved to that area is because they did not consider any school in New York state on the same level. That's one of the reasons they moved, for safety and education."

Noah's siblings were also students there but were not hurt. Noah's uncle recalled him as "extremely mature."

"When I was his age, I was not like him," Pozner told the newspaper. "Very well brought up. Extremely bright. Extremely bright."

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Lauren Gabrielle Rousseau, 30, teacher

Lauren Rousseau had spent years working as a substitute teacher and doing other jobs. So she was thrilled when she finally realized her goal this fall to become a full-time teacher at Sandy Hook.

Her mother, Teresa Rousseau, a copy editor at the Danbury News-Times, released a statement Saturday that said state police told them just after midnight that she was among the victims.

"Lauren wanted to be a teacher from before she even went to kindergarten," she said. "We will miss her terribly and will take comfort knowing that she had achieved that dream."

Her mother said she was thrilled to get the job.

"It was the best year of her life," she told the newspaper.

Rousseau has been called gentle, spirited and active. She had planned to see "The Hobbit" with her boyfriend Friday and had baked cupcakes for a party they were to attend afterward. She was born in Danbury, and attended Danbury High, college at the University of Connecticut and graduate school at the University of Bridgeport.

She was a lover of music, dance and theater.

"I'm used to having people die who are older," her mother said, "not the person whose room is up over the kitchen."

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Mary Sherlach, 56, school psychologist

When the shots rang out, Mary Sherlach threw herself into the danger.

Janet Robinson, the superintendent of Newtown Public Schools, said Sherlach and the school's principal ran toward the shooter. They lost their own lives, rushing toward him.

Even as Sherlach neared retirement, her job at Sandy Hook was one she loved. Those who knew her called her a wonderful neighbor, a beautiful person, a dedicated educator.

Her son-in-law, Eric Schwartz, told the South Jersey Times that Sherlach rooted on the Miami Dolphins, enjoyed visiting the Finger Lakes, relished helping children overcome their problems. She had planned to leave work early on Friday, he said, but never had the chance. In a news conference Saturday, he told reporters the loss was devastating, but that Sherlach was doing what she loved.

"Mary felt like she was doing God's work," he said, "working with the children."

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Victoria Soto, 27, teacher

She beams in snapshots. Her enthusiasm and cheer was evident. She was doing, those who knew her say, what she loved.

And now, Victoria Soto is being called a hero.

Though details of the 27-year-old teacher's death remained fuzzy, her name has been invoked again and again as a portrait of selflessness and humanity among unfathomable evil. Those who knew her said they weren't surprised by reports she shielded her first-graders from danger.

"She put those children first. That's all she ever talked about," said a friend, Andrea Crowell. "She wanted to do her best for them, to teach them something new every day."

Photos of Soto show her always with a wide smile, in pictures of her at her college graduation and in mundane daily life. She looks so young, barely an adult herself. Her goal was simply to be a teacher.

"You have a teacher who cared more about her students than herself," said Mayor John Harkins of Stratford, the town Soto hailed from and where more than 300 people gathered for a memorial service Saturday night. "That speaks volumes to her character, and her commitment and dedication."

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Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie, Mark Scolforo, Allen Breed and Danica Coto contributed to this report.

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Connecticut school shooting: Officials ask why

The FBI is in at least three states interviewing relatives and friends of the elementary school gunman who killed 20 children, seven adults and himself, trying to put together a better picture of the shooter and uncover any possible explanation for the massacre, ABC News has learned.

The authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview relatives of Adam Lanza, 20, and his mother, who was one of Lanza's shooting victims.

The victims died Friday when Lanza invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and sprayed staff and students with bullets, officials said. Lanza also was found dead in the school.

Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children died in the school and two more died later in a hospital.

Six adults also were slain, bringing the total to 26. Among them was the school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, multiple sources told ABC News. Another adult victim was teacher Vicki Soto, his cousin confirmed.

In addition to the casualties at the school, Lanza's mother, Nancy Lanza, was killed in her home, federal and state sources told ABC News.

According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a semi-automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.

READ: Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

Lanza then drove to the elementary school and continued his rampage, authorities said.

It appeared that Lanza died from what was believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The rifle was found in his car.

"Evil visited this community today," Gov. Dan Malloy said at a news conference Friday evening.

CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.

In the early confusion surrounding the investigation, federal sources initially identified the suspect as Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24. Identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the shooting scene, federal sources told ABC News.

Ryan Lanza soon took to Facebook to say he was alive and not responsible for the shooting. He later was questioned by police.

During the rampage, first-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class bathroom and listened to "tons of shooting" until police came to help.

"It was horrific," Roig said. "I thought we were going to die."

She said that the terrified kids were saying, "I just want Christmas. ... I don't want to die. I just want to have Christmas."

A tearful President Obama said Friday that there was "not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."

The president had to pause to compose himself after saying these were "beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10."

As he continued with his statement, Obama wiped away tears from each eye. He has ordered flags flown as half staff.

It is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself. The carnage in Connecticut exceeded the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.

Friday's shooting came three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.

The Connecticut shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles east of Danbury, Conn.

The massacre prompted the town of Newtown to lock down all its schools and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said.

State Police received the first 911 call at 9:41 a.m. and immediately began sending emergency units from the western part of the state. Initial 911 calls said multiple students were trapped in a classroom, possibly with a gunman, according to a Connecticut State Police source.

Vance said on-duty and off-duty officers swarmed to the school and quickly checked "every door, every crack, every crevice" in the building looking for the gunman and evacuating children.

Soon, state police from across western Connecticut would be there. And they would be joined by FBI SWAT and evidence teams as well as members of the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

A photo from the scene showed a line of distressed children being led out of the school.

Three patients were taken to Danbury Hospital, which also went on lockdown, according to the hospital's Facebook page.

ABC News' Michael S. James contributed to this report.

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With Rice out, is Kerry a lock for secretary of state?

So, it's official: Ambassador Susan Rice will not be Secretary of State — she's withdrawn and President Obama has accepted, and John McCain is twisting his face in pleasure somewhere. Which means... John Kerry, right? Well, yes, probably — all the conservatives just love him now. But speculation also puts some other options in front of the president between now and whenever Hillary Clinton steps down — including, but not limited to, her husband.

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The Long Shot

Name: Richard Berman

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Credentials: 15 terms in Congress; served on important security committees; reputation for being discreet. 

RELATED: Huntsman: The Candidate Who Couldn't

Source of Speculation: A bunch of people talking about it to reporters. But not in a "we hear that Obama's thinking..." kind of way. Berman just lost re-election after his district in California was re-zoned, and the guy who beat him said he thought he might be good for the job — and so it went from there. 

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Likelihood of Actually Getting It: Slim. Berman doesn't even have the kind of national profile necessary for such an international job, and no White House officials are leaking his name. It's all good-will consolation prize quotes from his teammates after he just lost his job. 

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The Really Long Shot

Name: Bill Clinton

Credentials: Served two terms as President; former Gov. of Arkansas; is insanely popular; Obama owes him a favor for helping to save his campaign with his legendary, mostly-improvised convention speech. 

Source of Speculation: Joe Nocera thinks it's a good idea, and a New York Post report from June said Clinton might be angling for the Secretary of State job under a potential Ander Cuomo Presidency if Hillary does decide not to run in 2016. "I think everyone who knows Bill Clinton knows he'd love to be secretary of state because he's so smart and because he knows so much about the world," an 'insider' told the Post.

Likelihood of Actually Getting It: Dream on.

The Fool-Me-Twice Shot

Name: Jon Huntsman

Credentials: Former Utah Gov, former Ambassador to China and Singapore, former Republican presidential candidate. 

Source of Speculation: An Associated Press report that said "officials" were looking at him for the job. 

Likelihood of Actually Getting It: Slim, for different reasons. Namely that he'd probably never accept the appointment. Huntsman was the Republican Obama's team was most scared of in the last election, and the President named him his Ambassador to China, so it's clear Obama thinks highly of him. But Huntsman has dreams of potentially running for the Big Job again, potentially against Hillary in 2016, and this would make it pretty hard — if not impossible — to get Republican support for that. 

The Safe Bet

Name: William Burns

Credentials: Current Deputy Secretary of State.

Source of Speculation: The same report that named Huntsman as a candidate. 

Likelihood of Actually Getting It: Good, if not great. He's Hillary's current number two, and he's getting good buzz with "insiders," apparently. The report that floated his name left things a bit unspectacular, though. Burns, "is a career diplomat who has no political baggage and would be unlikely to stir significant opposition among lawmakers." So, basically, he's an unsexy pick that wouldn't garner any headlines. 

The Safest Bet

Name: John Kerry

Credentials: He's getting it. 

Source of Speculation: He's getting it.

Likelihood of Actually Getting It: Guys, it's going to be Kerry. Just stop. 

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Why more didn't die in Ore. mall shooting

Citizens' coolheadedness and individual preparation for coping with gunfire in public settings may have curtailed the casualty count from Tuesday's shooting at a Portland, Ore., shopping mall, law officers suggested on the day after the tragedy.

Two people died and one was critically wounded before the shooter, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts of Portland, killed himself a few minutes after running into the food court at the Clackamas Town Center mall. Officials say Mr. Roberts, wearing camouflage and a white hockey mask, had methodically fired "multiple" rounds from an assault-style rifle at random shoppers.

Most of the 10,000 Christmas shoppers at the mall appeared nearly as ready and able as police to deal with a gunman appearing suddenly in their midst, Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said on Wednesday.

"Many people have asked me why there were so few victims during this incident," said Sheriff Roberts. He listed the fact that Mr. Roberts's AR-15 semiautomatic rifle intermittently jammed and noted a well-practiced mall lockdown procedure. But he also credited "10,000 people in the mall who at one time kept a level head, got themselves out of the mall, helped others get out, secured themselves in stores.… It was really about a whole group of people coming together to make a difference."

RECOMMENDED: A Second Amendment quiz

Law officers said during a Wednesday press conference that they did not know whether any member of the public carrying a concealed weapon had counterattacked Roberts. But they said they are certain that Roberts died by his own hand after fleeing down a stairwell from the mall's upper level.

The death rate from mass shootings has ticked up slightly in recent years, even as deaths in single-victim incidents have decreased, according to a recent analysis of FBI crime data by the Huffington Post. The worst recent mass shooting came in July in Aurora, Colo., where a gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 during a midnight screening of a new "Batman" movie.

Gun-control advocates seized on the mall shooting as a possible result of the expiration in 2004 of a national ban on assault weapons.

"Santa Claus could have been shot in the mall," said Penny Okamoto, executive director of Ceasefire Oregon, in an interview with the Portland Tribune. "If you're sick of this, you should call your legislators to tell them to fix the laws so that assault weapons don't end up in the hands of felons."

Many versions of the AR-15 were banned under the assault weapons law, but it's not known if the gun used in the Clackamas mall shooting was one of them.

Police said Roberts had no criminal record and had stolen the AR-15 from "someone he knew."

Does the collected response by shoppers at the Clackamas Town Center indicate that Americans are becoming less daunted by senseless violence and, perhaps, better ready to react? Those who back broad gun rights under the Constitution's Second Amendment suggest a shift may be under way in people's readiness to respond.

In blocking Illinois's ban on concealed weapons, the last such law in the nation, Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner on Tuesday implied that self-defense readiness in public is not only protected by the US Constitution, but may be good social policy. An awareness "that many law-abiding citizens are walking the streets armed may make criminals timid," he wrote in his ruling.

"As far as a social shift, I think people are getting more intelligent and appropriate in their reactions to shooters," says Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank in Golden, Colo. "Police training has changed in significant ways since the Columbine [High School] shooting [in 1999], where they no longer wait for the SWAT team to arrive but go in immediately with … the army they have. There's also an awareness [among police and the public] that if you're trying to stop a gangster from robbing a liquor store, you may have a [heck] of a fight on your hands, but that these publicity-seeking guys with mental illness, they basically crumble at first opposition."

The upshot, says Mr. Kopel: "Lying down and cowering doesn't seem to work very well, so law enforcement has gotten smarter and civilians have gotten smarter."

In Clackamas County, Sheriff Roberts said local law-enforcement personnel had trained earlier this year for a shooting scenario at Clackamas Town Center, an exercise that involved both police and retailers. On Tuesday, arriving police, in keeping with evolving police tactics nationwide, formed small teams and quickly entered the mall to pursue the shooter. Police could not say Wednesday whether any officers saw the shooter before he killed himself.

Dennis Curtis, the mall's general manager, noted that police officers told him that they were amazed "how many stores were secured and people were locked in place" upon entering the mall to look for the shooter.

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Gunman kills 2, then self at Oregon mall

A masked gunman opened fire today at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two people, injuring one, and then killing himself.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound," Lt. James Rhodes of the Clackamas County, Ore., Sheriff's Department said today. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families. The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital.

Rhodes described the shooter as an adult male.

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man in a white hockey mask and bulletproof vest tore through the Macy's, food court, and mall hallways firing rounds at shoppers beginning around 3:30 p.m. PT today.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the busy mall full of holiday shoppers after the shooting began.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

The gunman entered the mall through a Macy's store, ran through the upper level of Macy's and opened fire near the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after another, with what is believed to be a black, semiautomatic rifle, according to witness reports.

Amber Tate said she was in the parking lot of the mall when she saw the shooter run by, wearing a mask and carrying a machine gun, headed for the Macy's.

"He looked like a teenager wearing a gun, like a bullet-proof vest and he had a machine, like an assault rifle and a white mask and he looked at me," she said.

Witnesses described the shooter as being on a mission and determined, looking straight ahead. He then seemed to walk through the mall toward the other end of the building, shooting along the way, according to witness reports.

Those interviewed said that Macy's shoppers and store employees huddled in a dressing room to avoid being found.

"I was helping a customer in the middle of the store, her and her granddaughter and while we were looking at sweatshirts we heard five to seven shots from a machine gun fire just outside my store," Jacob Rogers, a store clerk, told ABC affiliate KATU-TV in Portland.

"We moved everyone into the back room where there's no access to outside but where there's a camera so we can monitor what's going on out front," Rogers said.

Evan Walters, an employee at a store in the mall, told ABC News Radio that he was locked in a store for his safety and he saw two people shot and heard multiple gunshots.

"It was over 20, and it was kind of surreal because we hear pops and loud noises," he said. "We're next to the food court here and we hear pops and loud noises all the time, but we don't -- nothing like that. It was very definite gunshots."

Police are tracing the weapon used in the shooting.

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Right-to-work debate heats up ahead of Michigan vote

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Even with the outcome considered a foregone conclusion, the heated battle over right-to-work legislation in the traditional union bastion of Michigan shows no sign of cooling.

Authorities in Lansing were bracing for an onslaught of demonstrators Tuesday at the Michigan Capitol as the Legislature reconvenes for what could be final votes on bills.

If it is passed and signed into law, Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state, banning requirements that nonunion employees pay unions for negotiating contracts and other services.

Democratic lawmakers and union backers concede they have little chance of stopping tide, given the Republican-dominated Legislature and GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, who has pledged to sign the measure into law.

But foes of the law, including President Barack Obama, are trying to keep the spotlight on this latest battleground in the war over union rights.

In other states, similar battles were drawn-out affairs lasting weeks. But Snyder, a business executive-turned-governor, and the Republican-dominated Legislature used their political muscle to rapidly introduce and ramrod legislation through the House and Senate in a single day last week. Demonstrators and Democrats howled in protest, but the cries couldn't stop the train.

A victory in Michigan, a cradle of organized labor, would give the right-to-work movement its strongest foothold yet in the Rust Belt, where the 2010 election and tea party movement produced assertive Republican majorities that have dealt unions one body blow after another.

For all the shouting, the actual benefit or harm of such laws is not clear. Each camp has pointed to studies bolstering their claims, but one labor expert said the conclusions are, well, inconclusive.

"Very little is actually known about the impact of right-to-work laws," Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Massachusetts, said Monday. "There's a lot of assumptions that they create or destroy jobs, but the correlation is not definite."

Democrats contend Republicans, who lost five House seats in the November election, wanted to act before a new legislature takes office next month. In passionate floor speeches last week, they accused the majority of ignoring the message from voters and bowing to right-wing interest groups.

Criticism of the legislation has come from all the way up the Democratic food chain.

"These so-called right-to-work laws, they don't have anything to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics," Obama told cheering workers Monday during a visit to an engine plant in Redford, Mich. "What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money."

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and members of the state's U.S. House delegation met with Snyder on Monday in Detroit and urged him to veto the legislation or amend it to allow a statewide referendum. Levin said the governor pledged to "seriously consider" the requests.

In Lansing, leaders of the Democratic minority in the state House acknowledged there was little they could do to stop the fast-moving legislation in the waning days of the session. However, they vowed to vote against other legislation as a form of protest.

Ari Adler, spokesman for Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger, chided those in Washington for "trying to tell Republicans in Michigan to slow down and not do our job in Lansing while they fail to resolve the nation's fiscal cliff crisis or even approve a budget."

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Associated Press writers Tom LoBianco in Indianapolis, Ed White in Detroit and Ben Feller in Redford, Mich., contributed to this story.

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Obama, Boehner meet face-to-face on 'fiscal cliff'

For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face today at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."

Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic a couple weeks ago, said he likes what he's hearing.

"Any time you have two guys in there tangoing, you have a chance to get it done," Bowles said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

The White House afternoon talks, conducted without cameras or any announcement until they were over, came as some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president's demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff -- a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.

"Let's face it. He does have the upper hand on taxes. You have to pass something to keep it from happening," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said on "FOX News Sunday."

This comes after the White House moderated one of its demands about tax rate increases for the wealthy.

The administration was demanding the rate return to its former level of 39.6 percent on income above $250,000. The so-called Bush tax cut set that rate at 35 percent. But Friday, Vice President Joe Biden signaled that rate could be negotiable, somewhere between the two.

"So will I accept a tax increase as a part of a deal to actually solve our problems? Yes," said Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn on ABC's "This Week."

The problems the senator was referring to are the country's entitlement programs. And there was some progress on that front, too.

A leading Democrat said means testing for Medicare recipients could be a way to cut costs to the government health insurance program. Those who make more money would be required to pay more for Medicare.

"I do believe there should be means testing, and those of us with higher income and retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

But Durbin said he would not favor raising the eligibility age from 65 years old to 67 years old, as many Republicans have suggested.

The White House and the speaker's office released the exact same statement about the negotiating session. Some will see that as a sign of progress, that neither side is talking about what was said behind closed doors.

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North Korea considers delaying controversial rocket launch

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea may postpone the controversial launch of a long-range rocket that had been slated for liftoff as early as this week, state media said Sunday, as international pressure on Pyongyang to cancel the provocative move intensified.

Scientists have been pushing forward with final preparations for the launch from a west coast site, slated to take place as early as Monday, but are considering "readjusting" the timing, an unidentified spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology told North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

It was unclear whether diplomatic intervention or technical glitches were behind the delay. A brief KCNA dispatch said scientists and technicians were discussing whether to set new launch dates but did not elaborate.

Word of a possible delay comes just days after satellite photos indicated that snow may have slowed launch preparations, and as officials in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow and elsewhere urged North Korea to cancel a liftoff widely seen as a violation of bans against missile activity.

Commercial satellite imagery taken by GeoEye on Dec. 4 and shared Friday with The Associated Press by the 38 North and North Korea Tech websites showed the Sohae site northwest of Pyongyang covered with snow. The road from the main assembly building to the launch pad showed no fresh tracks, indicating that the snowfall may have stalled the preparations.

However, analysts believed rocket preparations would have been completed on time for liftoff as early as Monday.

North Korea announced earlier this month that it would launch a three-stage rocket mounted with a satellite from its Sohae station southeast of Sinuiju sometime between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22. Pyongyang calls it a peaceful bid to send an observational satellite into space, its second attempt this year.

The launch announcement captured global headlines because of its timing: South Korea and Japan hold key elections this month, President Barack Obama begins his second term next month and China has just formed a new leadership. North Koreans also have begun a mourning period for late leader Kim Jong Il, who died on Dec. 17, 2011.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was "deeply concerned" about the launch, and urged foreign ministers from NATO and Russia to demand that Pyongyang cancel its plans.

U.S. and others said the launch would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions banning North Korea from nuclear and missile activity because the rocket shares the same technology used for firing a long-range missile.

North Korea has unveiled missiles designed to target U.S. soil and has tested two atomic bombs in recent years, but has not shown yet that it has mastered the technology for mounting a nuclear warhead to a long-range missile. Six-nation negotiations to offer North Korea much-needed aid in exchange for nuclear disarmament have been stalled since 2009.

China, the North's main ally and aid provider, noted its "concern" after North Korea declared its plans. It acknowledged North Korea's right to develop its space program but said that had to be harmonized with restrictions including those set by the U.N. Security Council.

In Seoul, officials at the Defense Ministry, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Foreign Ministry said Sunday they couldn't immediately find what might be behind the possible delay.

North Korea may hold off if Washington actively engages Pyongyang in dialogue and promises to ship stalled food assistance to the country, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul's Dongguk University.

In February, the U.S. agreed to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid to North Korea in exchange for a freeze in nuclear and missile activities. The deal collapsed after North Korea attempted to launch a long-range rocket in April. That rocket broke up seconds after liftoff.

Analyst Baek Seung-joo of the South Korean state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul said China must have sent a "very strong" message calling for the North to cancel the launch plans.

"North Korea won't say it would delay the launch due to foreign pressure so that's why they say scientists and technicians are considering delaying it," he said.

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Supreme Court: Both sides in gay marriage debate voice optimism

Both sides of the contentious debate over same-sex marriage in America are expressing optimism over the news Friday that the US Supreme Court has agreed to take up two potential landmark gay rights cases.

The high court announced it would hear arguments in a case testing the constitutionality of California’s Prop. 8 ban on same-sex marriage.

It also said it would hear the case of an elderly New York City woman who claims the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates her right to have her same-sex marriage recognized and respected by the federal government on the same terms as marriages of opposite-sex couples.

Gay marriage laws around the globe

DOMA restricts receipt of federal spousal benefits to marriages comprised of one man and one woman. Same-sex spouses who are legally married in their home states are nonetheless barred from receiving federal benefits under the 1996 law.

The high court action comes a month after voters in three states – Maryland, Washington, and Maine – agreed to join six other states and the District of Columbia in embracing same-sex marriages.

“With our wins at the ballot box last month and the fight for marriage equality reaching our nation’s highest court, we have reached a turning point in this noble struggle,” said Chad Griffin, president of the gay rights group, Human Rights Campaign.

“Today’s announcement gives hope that we will see a landmark Supreme Court ruling for marriage this term,” he said in a statement.

Kate Kendell, of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, sounded similarly optimistic.

“We are confident the Supreme Court will strike down DOMA once and for all next year, and, after four long years, will finally erase the stain of Proposition 8 and restore marriage equality to California couples,” she said.

“The day is now clearly in sight when the federal government, the state of California, and every state will recognize that same-sex couples and their children are entitled to the same respect and recognition as every other family,” Ms. Kendell said.

At the same time, those defending the traditional definition of marriage – as the union of one man and one woman – also viewed the court’s action as a step forward toward legal vindication of their position.

John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, said the court’s decision to take up the Prop. 8 case suggests an intent by the justices to reinstate California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

“We believe it is a strong signal that the court will reverse the lower courts and uphold Proposition 8,” Mr. Eastman said.

“Had the Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts’ decisions invalidating Proposition 8, it could simply have declined to grant … the case,” Eastman said. “It’s a strong signal that the justices are concerned with the rogue rulings that have come out of San Francisco.”

Eastman added that the Prop. 8 appeals court decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhart. “It’s worth noting that Judge Reinhart is the most overruled judge in America. I think this case will add to his record.”

Others disagreed.

Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, said the high court action opens the way for a civil rights breakthrough for same-sex spouses.

“Gay and lesbian couples in California – and indeed all over this country – now look to the Supreme Court to affirm that the Constitution does not permit states to strip something as important as the freedom to marry away from one group of Americans,” he said.

Mr. Wolfson urged the justices to move quickly to affirm the 10 federal court judges who have ruled in recent years that DOMA is unconstitutional.

“When it comes to the whole federal safety net that accompanies marriage – access to Social Security survivorship, health coverage, family leave, fair tax treatment, family immigration, and over 1,000 other protections and responsibilities – couples who are legally married in the states should be treated by the federal government as what they are: married,” Wolfson said.

Others viewed the high court’s task in broader terms.

“Today, the Supreme Court has put itself on the path of deciding the most contentious civil rights issue of our day,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

“By taking both cases, the court is boldly asserting its role in same-sex marriage,” he said.

Professor Cohen said the justices have a choice to either follow the example of prior courts that have ruled to expand civil rights or those that ruled in ways that contracted civil rights. Given shifting public opinion in support of gay rights and same-sex marriage, the professor says it is unlikely that the court will rule against a broader conception of marriage.

Jim Campbell, a lawyer with the conservative group, Alliance Defending Freedom, stressed that Americans have a right to preserve the traditional definition of marriage. He said the institution forms a “fundamental building block of civilization.”

“Marriage between a man and a woman is a universal good that diverse cultures and faiths have honored throughout the history of Western civilization,” he said. “Marriage expresses the truth that men and women bring distinct, irreplaceable gifts to family life.”

Gay marriage laws around the globe

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Strong earthquake hits off NE Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) - A strong earthquake centered off the coast of northeastern Japan shook buildings as far away as Tokyo on Friday and triggered a one-meter tsunami in an area devastated by last year's Fukushima disaster.

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.3, the U.S. Geological Survey said, adding that there was no risk of a widespread tsunami. There were no immediate reports of death or injury.

The March 2011 earthquake and following tsunami killed nearly 20,000 people and triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years when the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was destroyed, leaking radiation into the sea and air.

Workers at the plant were ordered to move to higher ground after Friday's quake. Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, reported no irregularities at its nuclear plants.

The quake measured a "lower 5" in Miyagi prefecture on Japan's scale of one to seven, meaning there might be some damage to roads and houses that are less quake resistant.

The scale measures the amount of shaking and in that sense gives a better idea of possible damage than the magnitude. The quake registered a 4 in Tokyo.

The one-meter tsunami hit at Ishinomaki, in Miyagi, at the center of the devastation from the March 2011 disaster. All Miyagi trains halted operations and Sendai airport, which was flooded by the tsunami last year, closed its runway.

Narita airport outside Tokyo was back in action after a brief closure for safety checks.

Last year's quake, which measured 9.0, triggered fuel-rod meltdowns at Fukushima, causing radiation leakage, contamination of food and water and mass evacuations. Much of the area is still deserted.

The government declared in December that the disaster was under control.

"Citizens are now escaping to designated evacuation centers and moving to places on higher ground," office worker Naoki Ara said in Soma, 30 km (18 miles) from the Fukushima-Daiichi plant.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda canceled campaigning in Tokyo ahead of a December 16 election and was on his way back to his office, but there was no immediate plan to hold a special cabinet meeting.

Public spending on quake-proofing buildings is a big election issue.

Japanese were posting photos of their TV screens with tsunami warnings on Facebook, asking each other whether they're safe, confirming their whereabouts.

"It shook for a long time here in Tokyo, are you guys all all right?" posted Eriko Hamada, enquiring about the safety of her friends.

Phone lines were overloaded and it was difficult to contact residents of Miyagi.

"Owing to the recent earthquake, phone lines are very busy, please try again later," the phone operator said.

The yen rose against the dollar and the euro on the news, triggering some safe-haven inflows into the Japanese currency.

(Additional reporting by Tomasz Janowski; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Ken Wills)

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U.S software tycoon John McAfee arrested in Guatemala

Eccentric software tycoon John McAfee, wanted in Belize for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor, has been arrested in Guatemala for entering the country illegally, his Guatemala attorney told ABC News.

Before McAfee's arrest, he told ABC News in an exclusive interview he would be seeking asylum in Guatemala. McAfee was arrested by the Central American country's immigration police and not the national police, said his attorney, who was confident his client would be released within hours.

"Thank God I am in a place where there is some sanity," said McAfee, 67, before his arrest. "I chose Guatemala carefully."

McAfee said that in Guatemala, the locals aren't surprised when he says the Belizean government is out to kill him.

"Instead of going, 'You're crazy,' they go, 'Yeah, of course they are,'" he said. "It's like, finally, I understand people who understand the system here."

But McAfee added he has not ruled out moving back to the United States, where he made his fortune as the inventor of anti-virus software, and that despite losing much of his fortune he still has more money than he could ever spend.

In his interview with ABC News, a jittery, animated but candid McAfee called the media's representation of him a "nightmare that is about to explode," and said he's prepared to prove his sanity.

McAfee has been on the run from police in Belize since the Nov. 10 murder of his neighbor, fellow American expatriate Greg Faull.

During his three-week journey, said McAfee, he disguised himself as handicapped, dyed his hair seven times and hid in many different places during his three-week journey.

He dismissed accounts of erratic behavior and reports that he had been using the synthetic drug bath salts. He said he had never used the drug, and said statements that he had were part of an elaborate prank.

Investigators said that McAfee was not a suspect in the death of the former developer, who was found shot in the head in his house on the resort island of San Pedro, but that they wanted to question him.

McAfee told ABC News that the poisoning death of his dogs and the murder just hours later of Faull, who had complained about his dogs, was a coincidence.

McAfee has been hiding from police ever since Faull's death -- but Telesforo Guerra, McAfee's lawyer in Guatemala, said the tactic was born out of necessity, not guilt.

"You don't have to believe what the police say," Guerra told ABC News. "Even though they say he is not a suspect they were trying to capture him."

Guerra, who is a former attorney general of Guatemala, said it would take two to three weeks to secure asylum for his client.

According to McAfee, Guerra is also the uncle of McAfee's 20-year-old girlfriend, Samantha. McAfee said the government raided his beachfront home and threatened Samantha's family.

"Fifteen armed soldiers come in and personally kidnap my housekeeper, threaten Sam's father with torture and haul away half a million dollars of my s***," claimed McAfee. "If they're not after me, then why all these raids? There've been eight raids!"

Before his arrest, McAfee said he would hold a press conference on Thursday in Guatemala City to announce his asylum bid. He has offered to answer questions from Belizean law enforcement over the phone, and denied any involvement in Faull's death.

False Report of McAfee Arrest on Mexico Border

Over the weekend, a post on McAfee's blog claimed that he had been detained on the Belizean/Mexico border.

On Monday, a follow-up post said that the "John McAfee" taken into custody was actually a "double" who was carrying a North Korean passport with McAfee's name.

That post claimed that McAfee had already escaped Belize and was on the run with Samantha and two reporters from Vice Magazine.

McAfee did not reveal his location in that post, and a spokesman for Belize's National Security Ministry, Raphael Martinez, told ABC News on Monday that no one by McAfee's name was ever detained at the border and that Belizean security officials believed McAfee was still in their country.

However, a photo posted by Vice magazine on Monday with their article, "We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers," apparently had been taken on an iPhone 4S and had location information embedded in it that revealed the exact coordinates where the photo was taken -- in the Rio Dulce National Park in Guatemala -- as reported by Wired.com.

A subsequent blog post on McAfee's site confirmed that the photo had mistakenly revealed his location, and said that Monday was "chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters.

"We made it to safety in spite of this handicap," the post read. "I had to cancel numerous interviews with the press yesterday because of this and I apologize to all of those affected.

"I apologize for all of the misdirections over the past few days . ... It was not easy to exit Belize and required many supporters in many countries."

Belizean authorities said there was no manhunt, and have questioned McAfee's sanity.

"He is extremely paranoid. I would go far as to say even bonkers," said Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow, circling his index finger.

But now, all the misdirection may be coming to any end. Asked if he feels safe, McAfee told ABC News, "Oh, absolutely. I feel like I've come home."

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Obama firm on 'fiscal cliff' amid GOP disarray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama held his ground on the "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, while Republicans showed increasing disarray over how far they should go to compromise with Obama's demands.

With less than a month left to confront the budget cuts and tax increases that will begin taking effect in January unless Congress acts, Obama dangled the possibility of lowering tax rates as part of a broad U.S. tax code revamp in 2013.

But he again insisted, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, that tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers must rise in any deal by the end of the year to avert the assorted measures known as the fiscal cliff.

Obama, a Democrat, may face resistance from his own party if and when he's forced to be specific about how he would cut the cost of entitlements, such as the Medicare health insurance program for seniors.

For the moment, however, the overall political picture Tuesday reflected a relatively solid front of Democrats versus an increasingly shaky group of Republicans.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, even avoided endorsing the negotiating position of his House of Representatives ally, Speaker John Boehner.

"I think it is important that the House Republican leadership has tried to move the process forward," McConnell told reporters trying to get his views on a proposal Boehner and the House Republican leadership sent to Obama on Monday.

Outside the capital, concern mounted about how and when - not to mention if - the politicians might put their disagreements behind them and deal conclusively with an issue that economists say could trigger another recession.

Corporate chief executives were scheduled to meet with Obama later on Wednesday. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for corporations, has arranged the meetings. In addition to prompt action on the fiscal cliff, the group is seeking tax cuts for their companies.

Boeing Co. CEO Jim McNerney, who chairs the group, said its members want "a balanced solution to the nation's fiscal cliff and long-term deficit and debt issues ... including meaningful and comprehensive tax and entitlement reforms."

The manufacturing sector contracted in November and posted its weakest performance in three years, a report showed on Monday. Companies taking part in the survey said uncertainty over the negotiations in Washington was a factor.

U.S. stocks slipped on Tuesday as investors fretted about Washington's ability to avoid a year-end budget crisis.

REPUBLICAN DISARRAY

On Capitol Hill, conservative South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint attacked Boehner, a fellow Republican, over Monday's fiscal cliff offer, which included $800 billion in revenue increases from overhauling the tax code, along with spending cuts and entitlement revisions, as part of a deficit reduction deal.

That amount, which Boehner informally accepted during previous debt-ceiling negotiations in 2011, was not enough to satisfy Obama. But it was too much for DeMint and other Republicans who have made opposition to tax increases of any kind a central part of their politics for many years.

"Speaker Boehner's $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more," DeMint said in a statement on Tuesday.

Signaling some worry about fragmented sentiment in the House, Republican leaders took the unusual step of removing two hard-line Tea Party conservatives, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan, from the House Budget Committee, where elements of a fiscal cliff deal are likely to be considered.

A few House Republicans, such as Mike Simpson of Idaho and Steve King of Iowa, have said tax increases on the wealthiest may be tolerable under certain conditions.

OBAMA PRESSES ADVANTAGE

The president pressed his agenda on Tuesday, reiterating his openness to unspecified reforms in entitlement programs.

He repeated that as part of any deal, low tax rates on 98 percent of taxpayers should be extended, but that taxes on the top 2 percent should rise. "Let's let those go up," Obama said, referring to a "down payment" for future negotiations.

"And then let's set up a process with a time certain, at the end of 2013 or the fall of 2013, where we work on tax reform, we look at what loopholes and deductions both Democrats and Republicans are willing to close, and it's possible that we may be able to lower rates by broadening the base at that point."

Fueling concerns among some Republicans about resisting compromise are surveys, like one released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday, which showed that about 53 percent of those polled said they would hold Republicans more responsible than Democrats for going over the cliff; 27 percent said they would hold Obama responsible.

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon, Rachelle Younglai, Fred Barbash; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Beech)

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U.S., allies weighing military options if Syria uses WMD

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and its allies are weighing military options to secure Syria's chemical and biological weapons, after U.S. intelligence reports show the Syrian regime may be readying those weapons and may be desperate enough to use them, U.S. officials said Monday.

President Barack Obama, in a speech at the National Defense University on Monday, pointedly warned Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use his arsenal.

"Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching," Obama said. "The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, said she wouldn't outline any specifics.

"But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur," Clinton said.

Options now being considered range from aerial strikes to limited raids by regional forces to secure the stockpiles, according to one current U.S. official, and one former U.S. official, briefed on the matter. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

The administration remains reluctant to dispatch U.S. forces into Syria, but a U.S. special operations training team is in neighboring Jordan, teaching troops there how to safely secure such sites together with other troops from the region, the officials said.

The warnings to Syria come after U.S. intelligence detected signs the Syrian regime was moving the chemical weapons components around within several of Syria's chemical weapons sites in recent days, according to a senior U.S. defense official and two U.S. officials speaking on Monday. The activities involved movement within the sites, rather than the transfer of components in or out of various sites, two of the officials said.

But they were activities they had not seen before, that bear further scrutiny, one said.

Another senior U.S. official described it as "indications of preparations" for a possible use of the chemical weapons. The U.S. still doesn't know whether the regime is planning to use them, but the official says there is greater concern because there is the sense that the Assad regime is under greater pressure now.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.

U.S. intelligence officials also intercepted one communication within the last six months they believe was between Iran's infamous Quds Force, urging Syrian regime members to use its supplies of toxic Sarin gas against rebels and the civilians supporting them in the besieged city of Homs, a former U.S. official said. That report was not matched by other intelligence agencies, and other intelligence officials have said Iran also does not want the Syrians to use their chemical weapons.

The Assad regime insists it would not use such weapons against Syrians, though it carefully does not admit to having them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government "would not use chemical weapons — if there are any — against its own people under any circumstances." The regime is party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical weapons in war.

The Syrian assurances did not placate the White House.

"We are concerned that in an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be considering the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people," said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

"Assad has killed so many of his people, I just wouldn't be surprised if he turned these weapons on them," added Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, after intelligence briefings Monday.

An administration official said the trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical weapons, or movement with the intent to use them, or the intent to provide them to a terrorist group like Hezbollah. The U.S. is trying to determine whether the recent movement detected in Syria falls into any of those categories, the official said. The administration official was speaking on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward Israel in an act of desperation by Syria.

Syria has some 75 sites where weapons are stored, but U.S. officials aren't sure they have tracked down all the locations, and fear some stockpiles may have already been moved. Syria is believed to have several hundred ballistic surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying chemical warheads, plus several tons of material stored in either large drums, or in artillery shells, which become deadly once fired.

"In Syria, they have everything from mustard agent, Sarin nerve gas, and some variant of the nerve agent VX," according to James Quinlivan, a Rand Corp. analyst who specializes in the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

A primary argument against sending in U.S. ground troops is that whoever takes possession of the chemical weapons will be responsible for destroying them, as part of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Destroying Syria's stockpiles could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and take more than a decade, Quinlivan said.

Syria's arsenal is a particular threat to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled out the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier this year as a potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war. Up to now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing arms support to Syria's rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.

Activity has been detected at Syrian weapons sites before.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian government had moved some of its chemical weapons in order to protect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.

Asked Monday if they were still considered secure, Pentagon press secretary George Little declined to comment about any intelligence related to the weapons.

Senior lawmakers were notified last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity related to Syria's chemical and biological weapons, said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meetings. All congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from the intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being kept informed.

"I can't comment on these reports, but I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria's stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced conventional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles," said House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

"We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world," he added.

The U.S. and Jordan share the same concern about Syria's chemical and biological weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in Syria collapse and lose control of them.

___

Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper in Prague, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji in Damascus and Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

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Boehner 'flabbergasted' at 'fiscal cliff' talks

President Obama and his White House team appear to have drawn a line in the sand in talks with House Republicans on the "fiscal cliff."

Tax rates on the wealthy are going up, the only question is how much?

"Those rates are going to have to go up," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner flatly stated on ABC's "This Week." "There's no responsible way we can govern this country at a time of enormous threat, and risk, and challenge ... with those low rates in place for future generations."

But the president's plan, which Geithner delivered last week, has left the two sides far apart.

In recounting his response today on "Fox News Sunday," House Speaker John Boehner said: "I was flabbergasted. I looked at him and said, 'You can't be serious.'

"The president's idea of negotiation is: Roll over and do what I ask," Boehner added.

The president has never asked for so much additional tax revenue. He wants another $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, including returning the tax rate on income above $250,000 a year to 39.6 percent.

Boehner is offering half that, $800 billion.

In exchange, the president suggests $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and other programs. House Republicans say that is not enough, but they have not publicly listed what they would cut.

Geithner said the ball is now in the Republicans' court, and the White House is seemingly content to sit and wait for Republicans to come around.

"They have to come to us and tell us what they think they need. What we can't do is to keep guessing," he said.

The president is also calling for more stimulus spending totaling $200 billion for unemployment benefits, training, and infrastructure projects.

"All of this stimulus spending would literally be more than the spending cuts that he was willing to put on the table," Boehner said.

Boehner also voiced some derision over the president's proposal to strip Congress of power over the country's debt level, and whether it should be raised.

"Congress is not going to give up this power," he said. "It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone."

The so-called fiscal cliff, a mixture of automatic tax increases and spending cuts, is triggered on Jan. 1 if Congress and the White House do not come up with a deficit-cutting deal first.

The tax increases would cost the average family between $2,000 and $2,400 a year, which, coupled with the $500 billion in spending cuts, will most likely put the country back into recession, economists say.

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Report: At least three dead after Japan tunnel collapse

TOKYO (Reuters) - A tunnel on a major highway in central Japan collapsed on Sunday, killing at least three people and starting a blaze, Japanese media reported.

Attempts to rescue those still trapped inside the smashed tunnel, which began spewing smoke after concrete ceiling panels fell onto the road, have been interrupted for fear they might trigger another collapse.

Three bodies have been found so far, television networks Fuji and Asahi said.

The fire service earlier said at least seven people were unaccounted for in the 4.7 km (2.8-mile) tunnel in Yamanashi prefecture, about 80 km (50 miles) west of Tokyo on the Chou Expressway, a main road connecting the capital to western Japan.

"Dense smoke was coming out as if it covers the entire mountain," witness Kiyoko Toyomura told Japanese news agency Kyodo.

The fire service said the blaze was extinguished about 11 a.m. - some three hours after the accident occurred.

The operator of the highway, Central Nippon Expressway, said a 50-60 meters (165 feet) long section of ceiling panels fell to the road, and it was looking into the cause of the accident.

Motorists described narrow escapes from falling debris, and a long walk through the darkness after abandoning their cars.

"When I was driving in the tunnel, concrete pieces fell down suddenly from the ceiling," a man in his 30s told public broadcaster NHK. "I saw a crushed car catching fire. I was frightened, left my car and walked for about an hour to get out of the tunnel."

In 1996 a tunnel in Hokkaido, northern Japan, collapsed and falling rocks crushed cars and a bus, killing 20 people.

NHK reporter Yoshio Goto, caught in Sunday's accident, hit the accelerator and managed to drive out.

"But it was a bit too late and pieces of ceiling fell on my car. I kept pressing the pedal and managed to get out," he said. "Then when I looked around, I saw half of the car ceiling was crushed."

(Reporting by Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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Why Obama is pushing for stimulus in 'fiscal cliff' deal

How about a little government economic stimulus?

That may sound incongruous considering the budget deficit and the push from Republicans to cut government spending.

But President Obama’s first offer to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff" holds out the hope of at least some stimulus. This would include extending the 2 percentage point Social Security payroll tax cut, boosting a tax incentive to businesses, establishing a $50 billion bank for long-term infrastructure projects, and extending unemployment benefits.

RECOMMENDED: 'Fiscal cliff' 101: 5 basic questions answered

The total bill: about $255 billion out of the federal government's pocket – an amount the GOP would likely say needs to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere.

The argument in favor of such stimulus? The tax measures, at least, could minimize the drag on the economy from Mr. Obama's proposed tax increases on the wealthy.

“The increases in the top two income tax brackets would put a drag on consumption, so I think, from the Obama point of view, the spending or tax cuts are designed to offset that drag to consumption,” says Michael Brown, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C.

But to some budget experts, Obama’s list seems more like an opening round of negotiations, where he has asked for a lot more than he will get.

“It looks to me like these are bargaining chips,” says Pete Davis of Davis Capital Ideas, which advises Wall Street firms. “Even most Democrats had given up on the prospect of getting the payroll tax cut extended.”

Mr. Davis considers the odds of most of the stimulus proposals passing Congress “very low.”

What's needed most, say others, is just buckling down and negotiating an end to the fiscal cliff. “Cancelling the fiscal cliff is economic stimulus,” says Stan Collender, a budget expert and partner at Qorvis Communications in Washington.

If Obama's stimulus were passed, however, here is a look at the impact the four elements might have.

SOCIAL SECURITY PAYROLL TAX CUT

The largest chunk of the Obama plan is the extension of the payroll tax cut. This is the money that comes out of an individual’s paycheck as a contribution to Social Security. Two years ago, in an effort to stimulate the economy, Congress decreased the individual contribution from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The employer’s contribution of 6.2 percent remained unchanged.

The Obama administration estimates extending the cuts would cost the government as much as $115 billion in revenue.

The argument for extending the tax cut is that it helps lower-income workers who live paycheck to paycheck. “The difference in the paycheck might be the ability to pay the electric bill for someone or the chance to go to a sit-down restaurant once a month,” says Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS in Lexington, Mass.

The argument against continuing the cut is that it is weakening the Social Security Trust Fund. In order to make up for the loss of contributions, the government taps the general tax revenues, says Pamela Tainter-Causey, a spokeswoman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“It sets up Social Security to compete for funding from the general fund,” she says. “It’s a perfect set up for people who are gunning for the program and claim we can’t afford it now.”

BUSINESS TAX INCENTIVE

The second largest program proposed by Obama would be the extension of accelerated depreciation for business, which would cost the US Treasury about $65 billion in fiscal year 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Two years ago, business was allowed to accelerate the write-off of 100 percent of its spending on certain capital equipment. Capital spending on equipment and computer software soared by 18.3 percent in 2011.

Then, this year, the benefit to business was cut in half to 50 percent. Capital spending sank in the third quarter by 2.7 percent compared with the same quarter the prior year. With business interest in using the tax break diminishing, economist Gregory Daco of IHS says “it’s a goner.”

INFRASTRUCTURE BANK

Obama has also proposed a $50 billion infrastructure bank. The idea is to fund roads, bridges, tunnels and other large projects that last for a long period of time. “At the moment the funding is done on a cash basis – you have to pay for it as you build it,” says Mr. Collender.

Democrats have been trying to get Congress to fund the bank for the past 10 years, he says. “It does not have a chance of getting through the House," which is controlled by the Republicans, says Mr. Collender.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

And, finally, Obama wants to extend unemployment benefits, which would cost about $30 billion.

Under current law, if Congress does nothing, the maximum number of weeks in which an individual could receive jobless will drop to 26 from the current 73 weeks for states with unemployment over 9 percent and 63 weeks for states with unemployment over 7 percent.

If Congress does nothing about the program during the lame-duck session, some 2.1 million jobless will lose their benefits in the first week of January, says Judy Conti, a federal advocacy coordinator at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in Washington. By the end of the March, she says, another 900,000 people will lose their benefits.

“Forty percent of the unemployed are long term unemployed,” she says. “They have been out of the workforce for over six months.”

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U.N. vote recognizes state of Palestine

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the world body to issue its long overdue "birth certificate."

The U.N. victory for the Palestinians was a diplomatic setback for the United States and Israel, which were joined by only a handful of countries in voting against the move to upgrade the Palestinian Authority's observer status at the United Nations to "non-member state" from "entity," like the Vatican.

Britain called on the United States to use its influence to help break the long impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Washington also called for a revival of direct negotiations.

There were 138 votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions. Three countries did not take part in the vote, held on the 65th anniversary of the adoption of U.N. resolution 181 that partitioned Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Thousands of flag-waving Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip set off fireworks and danced in the streets to celebrate the vote.

The assembly approved the upgrade despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinians by withholding funds for the West Bank government. U.N. envoys said Israel might not retaliate harshly against the Palestinians over the vote as long as they do not seek to join the International Criminal Court.

If the Palestinians were to join the ICC, they could file complaints with the court accusing Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious crimes.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the vote "unfortunate and counterproductive," while the Vatican praised the move and called for an internationally guaranteed special status for Jerusalem, something bound to irritate Israel.

The much-anticipated vote came after Abbas denounced Israel from the U.N. podium for its "aggressive policies and the perpetration of war crimes," remarks that elicited a furious response from the Jewish state.

"Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel," Abbas told the assembly after receiving a standing ovation.

"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded quickly, condemning Abbas' critique of Israel as "hostile and poisonous," and full of "false propaganda.

"These are not the words of a man who wants peace," Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office. He reiterated Israeli calls for direct talks with the Palestinians, dismissing Thursday's resolution as "meaningless."

ICC THREAT

A number of Western delegations noted that Thursday's vote should not be interpreted as formal legal recognition of a Palestinian state. Formal recognition of statehood is something that is done bilaterally, not by the United Nations.

Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full U.N. membership - something the Palestinians failed to achieve last year. But it does have important legal implications - it would allow them access to the ICC and other international bodies, should they choose to join.

Abbas did not mention the ICC in his speech. But Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told reporters after the vote that if Israel continued to build illegal settlements, the Palestinians might pursue the ICC route.

"As long as the Israelis are not committing atrocities, are not building settlements, are not violating international law, then we don't see any reason to go anywhere," he said.

"If the Israelis continue with such policy - aggression, settlements, assassinations, attacks, confiscations, building walls - violating international law, then we have no other remedy but really to knock those to other places," Maliki said.

In Washington, a group of four Republican and Democratic senators announced legislation that would close the Palestinian office in Washington unless the Palestinians enter "meaningful negotiations" with Israel, and eliminate all U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it turns to the ICC.

"I fear the Palestinian Authority will now be able to use the United Nations as a political club against Israel," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the sponsors.

Abbas led the campaign to win support for the resolution, which followed an eight-day conflict this month between Israel and Islamists in the Gaza Strip, who are pledged to Israel's destruction and oppose a negotiated peace.

The vote highlighted how deeply divided Europe is on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At least 17 European nations voted in favor of the Palestinian resolution, including Austria, France, Italy, Norway and Spain. Abbas had focused his lobbying efforts on Europe, which supplies much of the aid the Palestinian Authority relies on. Britain, Germany and many others chose to abstain.

The traditionally pro-Israel Czech Republic was unique in Europe, joining the United States, Israel, Canada, Panama and the tiny Pacific Island states Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia in voting against the move.

'HOPE SOME REASON WILL PREVAIL'

Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world. There are 4.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

After the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice called for the immediate resumption of peace talks.

"The Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed save that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded," she said.

She added that both parties should "avoid any further provocative actions in the region, in New York or elsewhere."

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said he hoped all sides would use the vote to push for new breakthroughs in the peace process.

"I hope there will be no punitive measures," Fayyad told Reuters in Washington, where he was attending a conference.

"I hope that some reason will prevail and the opportunity will be taken to take advantage of what happened today in favor of getting a political process moving," he said.

Britain's U.N. ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, told reporters it was time for recently re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama to make a new push for peace.

"We believe the window for the two-state solution is closing," he said. "That is why we are encouraging the United States and other key international actors to grasp this opportunity and use the next 12 months as a way to really break through this impasse."

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington, Noah Browning in Ramallah, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Robert Mueller in Prague, Gabriela Baczynska and Reuters bureaux in Europe and elsewhere; Editing by Eric Beech and Peter Cooney)

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