Storm that buried Plains slams Great Lakes region

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm that buried the U.S. Plains and left at least three people dead moved on Tuesday into the southern Great Lakes region, where it snarled the evening commute in Chicago and Milwaukee, created near-whiteout conditions and forced hundreds of flight cancellations.

Much of the region was under either a winter storm warning or a winter weather advisory, according to the National Weather Service, as the system's potent blend of wet snow, sleet and strong winds bore down on north central Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Ohio.

The most intense snowfall and greatest accumulations were expected through Tuesday night, the NWS said. With winds gusting up to 35 mph, near-whiteout conditions were reported in some rural areas, the agency said.

More than 500 flights were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare International and Midway airports alone, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. Those flights that managed to take off or land faced delays of up to an hour.

The Illinois Tollway agency, which maintains nearly 300 miles of highway around Chicago, deployed its fleet of more than 180 snowplows to keep the roads clear.

As the afternoon rush hour began in Chicago, blowing snow reduced visibility and created treacherous driving conditions, doubling average travel times in and out of the city on major expressways, according to Traffic.com.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation warned that much of Interstate 94 between the Illinois state line and Milwaukee was ice covered.

In Chicago, the city's public school system, the third-largest school district in the country, canceled all after-school sporting events, including six state regional basketball games.

The snowstorm may have discouraged some voters in Chicago and its suburbs from voting in a special election primary to replace indicted Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned the seat in November citing health concerns.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service said the storm would continue to move eastward, dumping 3 to 5 inches of wet snow on Detroit overnight and into Wednesday morning.

It is then expected to move slowly into the Northeast, largely avoiding the cities of New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., but bringing snow to parts of New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, said Brian Korty, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"It's going to linger for a long time over portions of the Northeast," Korty said.

Parts of New York and Pennsylvania could get a "sloppy mix" of snow, ice and rain. Already, ice accumulations were causing sporadic power outages across higher terrains of western Maryland, eastern West Virginia and far western Virginia, said Erik Pindrock, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.

"It's a very multi-faceted storm," Pindrock said. "It's a whole potpourri of wintry weather."

In Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, where the storm hit earlier, residents were digging out.

Highways in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and parts of Kansas remained closed because of heavy and drifting snow.

Amarillo, Texas, saw 19 inches of snow Sunday night into Monday, the third-largest snowfall ever in that city, Pindrock said.

The storm contributed to at least three deaths, two in Kansas and one in Oklahoma.

A woman died and three passengers were injured Monday night on Interstate 70 when their pickup truck rolled off the icy roadway in Ellis County, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said. Earlier Monday, a man was killed when his car veered off the interstate in Sherman County near the Colorado border, he said.

"We urge everyone to avoid travel and be extremely cautious if you must be on the roads," said Ernest Garcia, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol.

In northern Oklahoma, one person died when the roof of a home partially collapsed in the city of Woodward, said Matt Lehenbauer, the city's emergency management director.

"We have roofs collapsing all over town," said Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill Jr. "We really have a mess on our hands."

Kansas City was also hard hit by the storm, which left snowfalls of 7 to 13 inches in the metro region on Tuesday, said Chris Bowman, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. Another 1 to 3 inches is forecast for Tuesday evening and nearly two-thirds of the flights at Kansas City International Airport Tuesday afternoon were canceled.

In addition to the winter storm, National Weather Service forecasters on Tuesday issued tornado watches across central Florida and up the eastern coast to South Carolina.

(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Missouri, David Bailey in Minneapolis, James B. Kelleher in Chicago and Corrie MacLaggan in Texas; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Barbara Goldberg, Nick Zieminski, Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz and Eric Walsh)

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Senate panel delays CIA nominee Brennan's confirmation vote

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate intelligence committee on Wednesday postponed until next week a vote on the confirmation of White House aide John Brennan to be CIA director, dashing hopes of Democratic leaders who had hoped to have a vote on Thursday.

The committee's Republican vice chairman, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, said the panel expects to hold the vote on Tuesday.

No explanation for the delay was immediately available. However, the Obama administration has been at odds with members of the committee's Democratic majority over White House unwillingness to disclose some highly classified legal documents related to "targeted killings," including the use of lethal drone strikes against suspected militants.

While the administration allowed members of the intelligence committee to review copies of four such documents, it has refused to turn over what Senate officials believe are at least seven related memos.

On Wednesday, administration officials met with intelligence committee members to discuss the contents of the disputed documents. Copies of the material were not turned over to the committee, however, said a source familiar with the matter.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a key committee Democrat who had indicated earlier his preference that the vote not be held until the administration made additional disclosures, said late on Wednesday he was still not satisfied with what the White House had provided.

"Americans have a right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them, and that's what getting these documents" is about, Wyden said.

"I've made it very clear to the White House that we need those legal analyses before we vote," Wyden said. But he added: "There is certainly additional time to work this out."

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Warren Strobel, Stacey Joyce and Paul Simao)

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Biden says Chicago vote a sign that voters want action on guns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gun control supporter's victory in a Chicago Democratic congressional primary election is a sign that voters want tougher gun laws and are turning against the powerful gun lobby, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.

Robin Kelly, a former Illinois state representative, won the election Tuesday to run for the U.S. House seat of former Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.

It was the first U.S. electoral test since gun control rose to the top of the political agenda after a gunman killed 26 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December.

"For the first time since Newtown, voters sent a clear unequivocal signal," Biden told a group of state attorney generals, who were meeting in Washington.

Kelly beat Debbie Halvorson, a former congresswoman who was rated highly by the National Rifle Association, a prominent gun-rights group. Halvorson opposed a U.S. ban on military-style assault weapons.

"The voters sent a message last night, not just to the NRA, but to the politicians all around the country. There will be a moral price as well as a political price to be paid for inaction," Biden said.

Biden made his comments on a day when the Senate Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing on reviving a 1994 ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004, one of several measures he and Obama recommended lawmakers pursue.

Democrats in the Senate have split the proposals into four bills in an effort to get at least some of the less controversial measures - such as expanded background checks for gun buyers - passed into law.

The split is an implicit acknowledgement by Democrats that a ban on military-style "assault" weapons is unlikely to clear Congress.

Biden devoted very little time in his 45-minute speech to the proposed ban, spending more time discussing less-controversial measures such as improved background checks for people who want to buy guns, and an increase in mental health research and services.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Cynthia Osterman)

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Victim's father makes case for U.S. assault weapons ban

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The father of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the shooting massacre at a Connecticut school made a dramatic appeal on Wednesday for President Barack Obama's uphill bid to ban sales of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Testifying before a divided U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse Lewis was murdered in the December 14 shootings that killed 20 children and six adults, joined an emergency room doctor in recalling the damage done by such a weapon. Heslin held up a picture of his son during his testimony and at times his voice choked with emotion.

"I'm not here for sympathy. I'm here to speak up for my son," Heslin said. Lewis, hit twice in the head, "lost his life ... because of a gun that nobody needs and nobody should have a right to have," Heslin said.

Dr William Begg told the panel that each child who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, had three to 11 bullet wounds.

"The gun legislation that you are considering will make a difference," Begg said. "It could prevent future tragedies like Newtown."

The Democrat-led committee is expected to approve, on a party line vote of 10-8, a bill to outlaw military-style semi-automatic rifles and magazines with more than 10 bullets.

But the measure, one of four gun-control bills inspired by Sandy Hook, is likely to face a bipartisan roadblock on the floor of the Democrat-led Senate.

Most Republican lawmakers, along with several Democrats from rural states who strongly support gun rights, have lined up against the bill. They say its restrictions would amount to a violation of their constitutional right to bear arms.

Backers of the bill contend that although Americans have a right to own a gun, the U.S. government has a responsibility to protect citizens from undue risks.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have separated Obama's four gun control bills in an effort to get at least some of the less controversial measures, such as expanded background checks for all gun buyers, implemented.

The four bills would require improved background checks, ban assault weapons, crackdown on illegal gun trafficking and improve school safety.

The committee could vote on the measures as early as Thursday, though any member of the panel may ask that consideration of the bills be delayed for a week.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who oversaw Wednesday's hearing, is chief sponsor of the bill that would renew a 10-year ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004.

Feinstein said that such firearms have been used in several mass slayings in recent years, including Newtown as well as Aurora, Colorado, Tucson, Arizona, and Blacksburg, Virginia.

"We cannot allow the carnage I have described to continue without taking action," Feinstein said.

Critics of her bill cited studies that found no evidence that the previous decade-long ban had any impact on the U.S. homicide rate.

Senator Charles Grassley, the panel's top Republican, said, "when something has been tried and not found to work, we should try different approaches rather than re-enacting that which failed."

Grassley and other Republicans in Congress have said increased treatment of the mentally ill and improved efforts to prevent such people from getting guns would be a more effective way of curbing gun-related violence.

(Editing by David Lindsey and Stacey Joyce)

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Small U.S. printers face hit from government spending cuts: official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Private printing presses are among the businesses that will be hit hard if Washington goes ahead with $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts, a government official said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Government Printing Office, the printing press for official documents, uses about 16,000 private vendors to carry out most of its work, which is due to shrivel if the "sequestration" cuts kick in on Friday.

"Some vendors may have as much as 80 or 90 percent (government business)," Davita Vance-Cooks, the acting GPO director, told lawmakers on Wednesday. "It is entirely possible they will see a reduction in their revenue. They may even close."

The automatic spending cuts will take a modest bite out of the GPO budget, but about 84 percent of the agency's business comes from other agencies - such as printing passports - so its bottom line is expected to take a hit as the federal government pulls back.

About $48 million in GPO spending went to Maryland last year, Vance-Cooks said, while Virginia sees $11 million and Florida some $12 million.

The Department of Defense is the largest client for the GPO, but Vance-Cooks said she thought the Pentagon - which may have to put most of its 800,000 civilian employees on unpaid leave for 22 days - would have other priorities.

"I think that they're involved in looking at other things beyond printing," she told a congressional panel. "I think printing will be probably the last thing they start to look at."

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

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Explore Housing Options for International Community College Students

International students looking to attend community college in the United States may have one greater challenge than their peers headed to four-year institutions: housing.

Two-year schools aren't generally known for a wide variety of housing options. It's typical for U.S. students who attend community colleges to live with their parents or commute from their own homes.

"Community colleges are starting to identify on-campus or close-by housing as an important marketing advantage for recruiting international students," says Ross Jennings, associate vice president of international programs for Green River Community College in Washington.

At many community colleges with a large international population, a housing program exists with options ranging from host family accommodations to traditional university dorms.

[Discover more about studying in the United States.]

"Many more rural community colleges have had housing for many years, either on-campus provided by the colleges themselves, or nearby, provided by private owners," he says.

Many international students desire an environment with more English speakers, even if dorms or apartments are readily available, Jennings notes. Interaction with native speakers in their residences helps students pick up or improve their English skills faster.

Green River offers a homestay program with 400 active families, he says. In a homestay program, international students pay a fee to stay in a private room of the home of a host family or individual. Programs are available with and without meal options.

[Find out how to be successful in community college.]

Staying with a family helps the student transition to living in the United States and allows the student's family to feel more comfortable about sending their children abroad, he says.

Green River student Erin Qiao, from China, chose the homestay program and said her first consideration when choosing where to study abroad was not a school's academics, but how much it cares about its students. She wanted "to make sure that I can survive at a strange country first," she says, noting that her homestay program helped her adjust.

[Explore ways to make cross-cultural friendships.]

However, student Lynn Shi, also from China, chose to live on campus in order to speed up her adjustment to American life. Compared with staying in a host family, she found living on campus more challenging and exciting "because it meant that I have to live independently and develop the ability to manage my life," she says.

Cynthia Fox, owner of International Housing Placement Service, finds homestay opportunities for international students across the country in locations from San Francisco to Boston. Not all hosts are families; some are individuals or couples. But all have committed to not just providing a place for international students to live but also to "participate in cultural exchange and open up their lives to them," she says.

To make both parents and students feel comfortable, hosts go through extensive screening with home visits, background checks, and reference checks. Students should ask services about their prescreening procedures, as well as the following questions about housing options:

1. Is it guaranteed I'll find housing? This question is especially important in rural areas, Fox says. She has no problem finding hosts for students in Boston, but finding housing in a small New Jersey town was much more difficult.

At Green River Community College, dorms are available for 340 students, enough for more than 20 percent of the college's fall 2012 international student population.

2. What is the maximum distance from campus? Especially in rural areas without a lot of public transit, host families should live very close to campus. This is also important with any off-campus rental a student chooses. International students need to know if their housing is close to campus or public transportation.

3. Is there a cost for meals? Homestay programs can come with or without meals, just like many on-campus housing programs. It's important for students to ask if meals are included and how many. For instance, International Housing Placement Service offers homestay pricing that ranges from no meals to two meals per day.

4. What if a host family and student don't get along? Not all homestay programs allow a student to transfer between hosts, Fox says, but her company has a policy of allowing students the ability to switch once. She says 95 percent of host family placements for students work out well.

"A student needs to know they have a support system and a way out of a situation where they're uncomfortable or unhappy for any reason," she says. "Students need to feel secure in their new homes."

For more international student tips and news, explore the Studying in the United States center.

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Pope legacy: Teacher who returned to church roots

VATICAN CITY (AP) — On Monday, April 4, 2005 a humble priest walked up to the Renaissance palazzo housing the Vatican's doctrine department and asked the doorman to call to the official in charge: It was the first day of business after Pope John Paul II had died, and the cleric wanted to get back to work.

The office's No. 2, Archbishop Angelo Amato, answered the phone and was stunned: this was no ordinary priest asking permission to go upstairs. It was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his boss, who under the Vatican's arcane rules had technically lost his job when John Paul died.

"It tells me of the great humility of the man, the great sense of duty, but also the great awareness that we are here to do a job," said Bishop Charles Scicluna, who worked with Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In resigning, Scicluna said, Benedict is showing the same sense of humility and duty and service that he showed on that day after the Catholic Church lost its last pope.

"He has done his job."

___

When Benedict flies off into his retirement by helicopter on Thursday, he will leave behind a church in crisis — one beset by sex scandal, internal divisions and dwindling numbers. But the pope can count on a solid legacy: While his most significant act was to resign, Benedict — in his quiet and humble way — also set the church back on a conservative, tradition-minded path. Benedict was guided by the firm conviction that many of the ills afflicting it today could be traced to a misreading of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

He insisted that the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world were not the radical break from the past as some liberals painted it but rather a continuation of the best traditions of the 2,000-year-old church.

Benedict was the teacher pope, a theology professor who turned his Wednesday general audiences into weekly master classes about the Catholic faith and the history, saints and sinners that contributed to it.

In his teachings he sought to boil Christianity down to its essential core. He didn't produce volumes of encyclicals like his predecessor, just three: on charity, hope and love. (He penned a fourth, on faith, but retired before finishing it.)

Considered by many to be the greatest living theologian today, he authored more than 65 books, stretching from the classic "Introduction to Christianity" in 1968 to the final installment of his triptych on "Jesus of Nazareth" last year — considered by some to be his most important contribution to the church. In between he produced the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" — essentially a how-to guide to being a Catholic.

Benedict spent the bulk of his early career in the classroom, as a student and then professor of dogmatic and fundamental theology at universities in Bonn, Muenster, Tuebingen and Regensburg, Germany.

"His classrooms were crowded," recalled the Rev. Joseph Fessio, a theology student of Ratzinger's at the University of Regensburg from 1972-74 and now the English-language publisher of his books. "I don't recall him having notes, but he would stand at the front of the class, and he wasn't looking at you, not with eye contact, but he was looking over you, almost meditating."

It's a style that he's kept for 40 years.

"If you hear him give a sermon, he's speaking not from notes, but you can write it down and print it," Fessio said. "Every comma is there. Every pause."

___

Benedict never wanted to be pope and he didn't take easily to the rigors of the job. Elected April 19, 2005 after one of the shortest conclaves in history, Benedict was at 78 the oldest pope elected in 275 years and the first German one in nearly a millennium.

At first he was stiff.

Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of the pope's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, recalled that in the early days Benedict used to greet crowds with an awkward victory gesture "as if he were an athlete."

"At some point someone told him that wasn't a very papal gesture," Vian said. Benedict changed course, opting instead for an open-armed embrace or an almost effeminate twinkling of his fingers on an outstretched hand as a way of connecting with the crowd.

"No one is born a pope," Vian said. "You have to learn to be a pope."

And slowly Benedict learned.

Crowds accustomed to a quarter-century of superstar John Paul II, grew to embrace the soft-spoken, scholarly Benedict who had an uncanny knack of being able to absorb different points of view and pull them together in a perfect, coherent whole.

He traveled, though less extensively than John Paul and presided over Masses that were heavy on Latin, Gregorian chant and the silk brocaded vestments of his pre-Vatican II predecessors.

Benedict seemed genuinely surprised sometimes by the popular reception he would receive — and similarly surprised when things went wrong, as they did when he removed the excommunication of a bishop who turned out to be a Holocaust-denier.

For a theologian who for decades had worked toward theological reconciliation between Catholics and Jews, the outrage directed at Benedict was fierce and painful; he was let down by his aides who hadn't done the simple research to discover the true nature of the bishop.

Benedict was also burdened by what he called the "filth" of the church: the sins and crimes of its priests.

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict saw first-hand the scope of sex abuse as early as the 1980s, when he tried unsuccessfully to convince the Vatican legal department to let him remove abusive priests quickly.

But it took him until 2001 to finally step in, ordering all abuse cases sent to his office for review.

Scicluna, who was Ratzinger's sex crimes prosecutor from 2002-2012, said Ratzinger did undergo a steep learning curve but that he immediately grasped that men who would sexually assault children were not worthy of the priesthood.

"We used to discuss the cases on Fridays; he used to call it the Friday penance," Scicluna recalled.

But to this day, Benedict hasn't sanctioned a single bishop for covering up abuse.

"Unfortunately, Pope Benedict's legacy in the abuse crisis is one of mistaken emphases, missed opportunities, and gestures at the margin, rather than changes at the center," said Terrence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, an online resource of abuse documentation.

He praised Benedict for meeting with victims, and acknowledged the strides the Vatican has made under his leadership. But he said Benedict ignored the problem for too long, "prioritizing concerns about dissent over the massive evidence of abuse that was pouring into his office."

"He acted as no other pope has done when pressed or forced, but his papacy has been reactive on this central issue," McKiernan said in an email.

Benedict also gets poor grades from liberal Catholics who felt abandoned by a pope who seemed to roll back the clock on the modernizing reforms of Vatican II and launched a crackdown on Vatican nuns, deemed to have strayed too far from his doctrinal orthodoxy.

Some priests are now living in open rebellion with church teaching, calling for a rethink on everything from homosexuality to women's ordination to priestly celibacy.

"As Roman Catholics worldwide prepare for the conclave, we are reminded that the current system remains an 'old boys club' and does not allow for women's voices to participate in the decision of the next leader of our church," said Erin Saiz Hanna, head of the Women's Ordination Conference, a group that ordains women in defiance of church teaching.

The group plans to raise pink smoke during the conclave "as a prayerful reminder of the voices of the church that go unheard."

___

But Benedict won't be around at the Vatican to see it. His work is done. "Mission Accomplished," Vian said.

And as the pope himself told 150,000 people Wednesday in his final speech as pope: "To love the church is to have the courage to make difficult, painful choices, always keeping in mind the good of the church, not oneself."

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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Low-key departure as pope steps down and hides away

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict slips quietly from the world stage on Thursday after a private last goodbye to his cardinals and a short flight to a country palace to enter the final phase of his life "hidden from the world".

In keeping with his shy and modest ways, there will be no public ceremony to mark the first papal resignation in six centuries and no solemn declaration ending his nearly eight-year reign at the head of the world's largest church.

His last public appearance will be a short greeting to residents and well-wishers at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence south of Rome, in the late afternoon after his 15-minute helicopter hop from the Vatican.

When the resignation becomes official at 8 p.m. Rome time (1900 GMT), Benedict will be relaxing inside the 17th century palace. Swiss Guards on duty at the main gate to indicate the pope's presence within will simply quit their posts and return to Rome to await their next pontiff.

Avoiding any special ceremony, Benedict used his weekly general audience on Wednesday to bid an emotional farewell to more than 150,000 people who packed St Peter's Square to cheer for him and wave signs of support.

With a slight smile, his often stern-looking face seemed content and relaxed as he acknowledged the loud applause from the crowd.

"Thank you, I am very moved," he said in Italian. His unusually personal remarks included an admission that "there were moments ... when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping".

CARDINALS PREPARE THE FUTURE

Once the chair of St Peter is vacant, cardinals who have assembled from around the world for Benedict's farewell will begin planning the closed-door conclave that will elect his successor.

One of the first questions facing these "princes of the Church" is when the 115 cardinal electors should enter the Sistine Chapel for the voting. They will hold a first meeting on Friday but a decision may not come until next week.

The Vatican seems to be aiming for an election by mid-March so the new pope can be installed in office before Palm Sunday on March 24 and lead the Holy Week services that culminate in Easter on the following Sunday.

In the meantime, the cardinals will hold daily consultations at the Vatican at which they discuss issues facing the Church, get to know each other better and size up potential candidates for the 2,000-year-old post of pope.

There are no official candidates, no open campaigning and no clear front runner for the job. Cardinals tipped as favorites by Vatican watchers include Brazil's Odilo Scherer, Canadian Marc Ouellet, Ghanaian Peter Turkson, Italy's Angelo Scola and Timothy Dolan of the United States.

BENEDICT'S PLANS

Benedict, a bookish man who did not seek the papacy and did not enjoy the global glare it brought, proved to be an energetic teacher of Catholic doctrine but a poor manager of the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy that became mired in scandal during his reign.

He leaves his successor a top secret report on rivalries and scandals within the Curia, prompted by leaks of internal files last year that documented the problems hidden behind the Vatican's thick walls and the Church's traditional secrecy.

After about two months at Castel Gandolfo, Benedict plans to move into a refurbished convent in the Vatican Gardens, where he will live out his life in prayer and study, "hidden to the world", as he put it.

Having both a retired and a serving pope at the same time proved such a novelty that the Vatican took nearly two weeks to decide his title and form of clerical dress.

He will be known as the "pope emeritus," wear a simple white cassock rather than his white papal clothes and retire his famous red "shoes of the fisherman," a symbol of the blood of the early Christian martyrs, for more pedestrian brown ones.

(Reporting By Tom Heneghan; editing by Philip Pullella and Giles Elgood)

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Time to step in? U.S. weighs direct aid to Syrian rebels

PARIS (AP) — The Obama administration is for the first time considering supplying direct assistance to elements of the Free Syrian Army as they seek to ramp up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down.

Officials in the United States and Europe said Tuesday that the administration is nearing a decision on whether to provide non-lethal assistance to carefully vetted fighters opposed to the Assad regime in addition to what it is already supplying to the political opposition.

The officials say a decision is expected by Thursday when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend an international conference on Syria in Rome.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the shift in strategy has not yet been finalized and still needs to be coordinated with European nations.

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Montreal's populist former archbishop says Canadian pope a possibility

MONTREAL - Montreal's populist former archbishop says Quebecers will be proud if one of their own becomes the new pontiff.

Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte is keeping his voting intentions to himself, although he says he'd be proud if Marc Cardinal Ouellet emerged as the new head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Turcotte is leaving for Rome tonight and will be among the cardinals who participate in the conclave to choose a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI.

The pontiff steps down officially on Thursday and no specific date has been set for the beginning of the vote.

Ouellet is among the favourites. The native of the Quebec town of La Motte is head of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, which vets bishop nominations worldwide.

In total, three Canadians will vote on the next pope — Turcotte, Ouellet and Thomas Cardinal Collins of Toronto.

Turcotte told a news conference in Montreal today that the former archbishop of Quebec City isn't the only possibility and that several candidates fit the bill.

Cardinals will meet before the conclave and Turcotte says the discussion is likely to centre on problems facing the church — notably the erosion of the clergy in North America and Europe as well as the scandals that continue to plague the institution.

Turcotte is participating in his second conclave.

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Ohio court spars with lawyers in school Bible case

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) —

An Ohio school board lawyer says a now-fired public school science teacher waved a Bible at his students, handed out religious pamphlets and espoused creationism in his evolution lessons.

The attorney for ex-teacher John Freshwater says such accounts are exaggerated and that Freshwater was simply exercising his academic freedom to explore controversial ideas.

Attorneys for Freshwater and the Mount Vernon School Board have left the Ohio Supreme Court with competing accounts on whether the teacher unconstitutionally inserted his personal religious beliefs into the classroom.

Justices sparred with both lawyers during hour-long oral arguments Wednesday.

Freshwater was dismissed in 2011 after investigators reported he preached Christian beliefs in class when discussing topics such as evolution and homosexuality and was insubordinate in failing to remove the Bible from his classroom.

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Senate approves Lew as new Treasury chief

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday backed President Barack Obama's nominee to head the U.S. Treasury, Jack Lew, despite some concerns about his perks from previous employers, clearing the way for a confirmation vote in the full Senate.

With the 19-5 vote, about half the panel's 11 Republicans opposed Lew's nomination. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he was hoping to consider Lew's nomination on Wednesday, but was still seeking agreement with Republicans.

Five Republicans on the committee also voted against Timothy Geithner, the previous Treasury secretary, who left last month.

Some Republicans hold deep reservations about the nomination and it is unclear whether they will throw up procedural hurdles to the vote. Nevertheless, Lew is expected eventually to win confirmation in the Senate, where Democrats hold a 53-45 majority.

Senate approval would pitch Lew into the heated budget battle between the White House and congressional Republicans. Both sides oppose the estimated $85 billion in across-the-board government spending cuts set to take effect on Friday, but disagree about alternatives.

Previously Obama's chief of staff and budget director for both Obama and former President Bill Clinton, Lew is a policy wonk who has spent much of his career in public service in Washington. But some observers have questioned his financial expertise and international credentials.

'NOT ANOTHER ACOLYTE'

The top Republican on the Finance Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch, said he supports Lew as head of the Treasury Department in deference to Obama, but has "serious reservations" about him.

"I hope we end up with the Jack Lew of the Clinton administration, not just another acolyte of the Obama White House," Hatch said before the panel vote.

At a hearing on his nomination earlier this month, Republicans also grilled Lew about an investment he once held in a fund linked to the Cayman Islands and a nearly $1 million dollar bonus he received from Citigroup in 2009 just before the bank got a taxpayer-funded bailout.

In addition, Senator Charles Grassley, the No. 2 Republican on the Finance Committee, said he was unsatisfied with Lew's response to questions about a $1.4 million loan he received while working as an executive with New York University.

"If Mr. Lew will not answer our questions now, why should we on this committee expect him to answer any questions if he's confirmed?" Grassley said before voting against Lew.

TAX PRIORITIES

Lew has said revamping the U.S. tax code would be a top priority if he wins confirmation. The tax system was last fully overhauled in 1986, though prospects for achieving tax reform are clouded by Washington's constant fiscal fights and conflict over whether new revenue is needed to cut budget deficits.

He will also deal with implementing new financial regulations, China's growing economic clout and winding down government-controlled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In addition, he may have to start paying more attention to Europe, where financial markets are on edge over election results in Italy that some analysts fear could exacerbate the euro zone's debt crisis.

Lew answered at least 444 written questions from the senators on the Finance Committee on these matters and others. Geithner was required to answer fewer than half that number when he was seeking confirmation.

While a few lawmakers, including Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, plan to vote against Lew when his confirmation gets to the full Senate, Senate Democrats believe they have the requisite 60 votes to get Lew through the process even if some hurdles are raised.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Large shark kills man in New Zealand; beach closed

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — A shark has killed a man off a New Zealand beach that was closed after the rare attack there.

Police said the man was found dead in the water Wednesday afternoon after being "bitten by a large shark." Police and surf lifesavers recovered the man's body. The police statement said Muriwai Beach near the city of Auckland has been closed.

Witness Stef McCallum told Fairfax Media that about 200 people were at the beach at the time, during the Southern Hemisphere summer. She said she saw a police officer go out in a surf lifesaving boat and fire multiple shots into the water at the shark.

Fatal shark attacks are relatively rare in New Zealand. Fairfax reports 14 deaths since record-keeping began in the 1830s.

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Second Republican says he passes threshold for Massachusetts Senate race

BOSTON (Reuters) - A second Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate reported on Tuesday that he had collected enough signatures for a spot in the race to vie for the seat previously held by John Kerry, setting the stage for two competitive party primaries in April.

Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL and private equity executive, said his campaign had gathered 25,000 signatures of registered voters, exceeding the 10,000 names required by state law and matching the total claimed by rival Republican Dan Winslow, a state representative.

"Our campaign against crushing debt (and) gridlock starts Thursday," Gomez said via his Twitter feed.

The signature requirement was seen as a higher hurdle for Winslow and Gomez, a political newcomer, than for Democratic contenders Edward Markey and Stephen Lynch, two U.S. congressmen with large existing campaign organizations.

All four candidates, as well as former Boston U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, a Republican, face a Wednesday deadline to submit 10,000 signatures of registered voters to win a place on the ballot in the April 30 primary.

The special election to fill the seat that came open when John Kerry was named secretary of state has been scheduled for June 25.

Markey and Lynch have called on all candidates in the race to sign a "People's Pledge" that would have candidates reject third-party advertisements and mailings in support of their campaigns.

Outside-funded ads, often used to attack rival candidates, have become a major force in U.S. elections and of particular concern in races like the upcoming Massachusetts race, which falls outside the normal November voting cycle.

Both candidates in last year's Massachusetts Senate election, in which Democrat Elizabeth Warren ousted incumbent Republican Scott Brown, agreed to reject outside ads.

So far in this race, Republican Winslow has refused to sign the pledge, saying he had no reason to reject outside support - and noting that both Markey and Lynch already had well-funded campaign machines. Gomez so far has not made a decision on whether to abide by the pledge, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

Republicans currently hold 45 seats in the U.S. Senate.

Following Kerry's appointment to the Cabinet, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, appointed his former chief of staff, William Cowan, to the seat until a successor is picked. Cowan said he would not run in the special election.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Von Ahn)

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Which Minority Passes More AP Math Tests?

The number of minority high school students taking Advanced Placement classes has risen fourfold in a decade, but college aspirants of color, especially from low-income families, continue to significantly lag white students.

Asians, however, continue to outperform all students in math.

Source: College Board

More than twice as many U.S. teens took the advanced-level classes than a decade ago, the College Board reported in its annual assessments of tests that allow students to take the rigorous classes that typically prepare them better for college success. That number was near 57 percent for youth hailing from poorer families.

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However, while 954,000 public-school grads of the class of 2012 (about a third) took AP classes, the College Board estimates that 300,000 students — mostly low-income minorities — with “AP potential” are likely to have passed both the course and the exam, had they taken at least one of the exams.

In 2012, non-low-income students took nearly 2.2 million exams, with a mean score of 3.00. The average number of tests taken by an individual was 3.9, the College Board reports.

There are several factors that can prevent students from enrolling in an advanced class or go on to take the examt:

• Fees: Each test costs $89, although in 2012 the College Board lowered the cost to $61 for some 439,000 low-income students, EdWeek reports. Passing an AP test, however, would trim the cost of such a course in college.
• Availability: Not all U.S. schools offer AP courses, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.
• Support: Some students may not receive information or encouragement to take the AP courses.
• Poverty has been shown to be an obstacle to learning.

Among the report’s findings:

• 253,775 low-income public-school graduates took at least one exam.
• 120,254 low-income public high school grads passed an exam.
• Most popular subjects by race, excluding foreign languages:
  Whites: Government and politics (63.7%); European history (63.3%); and calculus A/B (60.4%)
  Hispanics: Art history (17%); English language and composition (16.6%); and environmental studies (14.9%)
  Blacks: Human geography (11.5%), English language and composition, and English literature (tied, at 9.8%); and biology (7.5%)
  Asians: Government and Politics and computer science (tied at 29%); calculus A/B (28.7%); and biology (19.4%).

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Pope praying, packing ahead of move out of Vatican

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict will keep the honorific title of "His Holiness" after he abdicates this week and will be known as "pope emeritus," the Vatican said on Tuesday.

He will wear a "simple white cassock" and his papal ring of office will be destroyed according to Vatican tradition, a spokesman told a briefing.

He will lay aside the red "shoes of the fisherman" that have been part of his papal attire and wear brown loafers given to him by shoemakers during a trip to Mexico last year.

Benedict on Thursday will become the first pope in some six centuries to resign instead of ruling for life.

Given the rarity of the occasion, Vatican officials have had to decide what he will be called and how he will dress.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said he will be known as either "pope emeritus Benedict XVI" or "Roman Pontiff emeritus Benedict XVI", be addresses as "Your Holiness," and be referred to as "His Holiness".

The spokesman said Benedict had made the decisions concerning his titles after consulting with Vatican officials.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by James Mackenzie)

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Shooting at South Carolina university wounds one: school

(Reuters) - A shooting took place at a university residence hall in South Carolina on Tuesday, and students and faculty at the school were urged to stay indoors, the university reported in an alert on its website.

The alert from Coastal Carolina University provided no information on injuries in the incident, but said police were on the scene.

(Reporting By Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Greg McCune)

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Clinton: Nigerian poverty fuels religious violence

ABEOKUTA, Nigeria (AP) -- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that Nigeria must do more to alleviate the extreme poverty across the nation's predominantly Muslim north in order to halt the wave of bombings, shootings and kidnappings by Islamic extremists there.

Clinton's comment comes as Islamic terror groups have claimed the kidnappings of foreigners in recent days from the region and Nigeria's weak central government appears unable to contain the spreading violence. He said that poverty remains the main driver for the attacks and needs to be addressed by strong local and federal government programs.

Extremists from a radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram killed at least 792 people last year in Nigeria, according to an Associated Press count. Fighters who said they belong to Boko Haram claimed responsibility Monday for the kidnapping of seven French tourists in northern Cameroon. Ansaru, which analysts believe is a splinter group from Boko Haram, has claimed the kidnappings of seven foreigners — a British citizen, a Greek, an Italian, three Lebanese and one Filipino — all employees of a Lebanese construction company named Setraco.

"You have to somehow bring economic opportunity to the people who don't have it," Clinton said Tuesday. "You have all these political problems — and now violence problems — that appear to be rooted in religious differences and the all the rhetoric of the Boko Harams and others, but the truth is the poverty rate in the north is three times of what it is in Lagos," Nigeria's largest city.

Clinton said that oil-rich Nigeria, which earns billions of dollars from its oil industry and is a major supplier to the U.S., must not take a "divide the pie" approach toward attacking poverty. That appeared to be a subtle reference to the endemic corruption that envelopes government and private industry in the country.

"It's a losing strategy," the former president said. "You have to figure out a way to have a strategy that will have share prosperity."

Poverty is endemic in Nigeria, and corruption has siphoned away billions in oil earnings since the country began exporting crude more than 50 years ago. Government statistics show that in Nigeria's northwest and northeast, regions besieged by Islamic insurgents, about 75 percent of the people live in poverty.

Analysts say that poverty, despite decades of military rule by leaders from the north, coupled with a lack of formal education has driven the region's exploding youth population toward extremism. Those attacks also have strained relations between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.

Clinton spoke Tuesday in Abeokuta as part of an awards ceremony put on by ThisDay newspaper and its flamboyant publisher Nduka Obaigbena, who has invited the former president several times to Nigeria, along with other celebrities. The event, put on by a newspaper publisher sometimes accused by his staff of not paying them from months at a time, was also attended by former Nigeria military ruler and President Olusegun Obasanjo.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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Benedict to be called 'emeritus pope,' wear white

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Two pontiffs, each wearing white and each called "pope" living a few yards (meters) apart, with the same archbishop serving both.

The Vatican's announcement Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI will be known as "emeritus pope" in his retirement, called "Your Holiness" as an honorific and continue to wear the white cassock associated with the papacy fueled renewed questions about potential conflicts arising from the peculiar reality soon to face the Catholic Church: having one reigning and one retired pope.

Benedict's title and what he would wear have been a major source of speculation ever since the 85-year-old pontiff stunned the world by announcing he would resign, the first pope to do so in 600 years.

There has been good reason why popes haven't stepped down over past centuries, given the possibility for divided allegiances and even schism. But the Vatican insists that while the situation created by Benedict's retirement is certainly unique, no major conflicts should result.

"Knowing Benedict XVI, it won't be a problem," Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said in an interview. "According to the evolution of Catholic doctrine and mentality, there is only one pope. Clearly it's a new situation, but I don't think there will be problems."

Critics aren't so sure. Some Vatican-based cardinals have privately grumbled about the decision, saying it will make it more difficult for the next pope with Benedict still around.

Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, Benedict's onetime colleague-turned-critic, went even further: "With Benedict XVI, there is a risk of a shadow pope who has abdicated but can still indirectly exert influence," he told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine last week.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday that Benedict himself decided on his name and wardrobe choice in consultation with others, settling on "Your Holiness Benedict XVI" and either "emeritus pope" or "emeritus Roman pontiff."

Lombardi said he didn't know why Benedict had decided to drop his other main title: bishop of Rome.

In the two weeks since Benedict's resignation announcement, Vatican officials had suggested that Benedict would likely resume wearing the traditional black garb of a cleric and would use the title "emeritus bishop of Rome" to avoid creating confusion with the future pope.

Adding to the concern is that Benedict's trusted secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, will be serving both pontiffs — living with Benedict at the monastery being converted for him inside the Vatican while keeping his day job as prefect of the new pope's household.

Asked about the potential for conflicts given the existing divisions within the Vatican bureaucracy, Lombardi was defensive, saying the decisions had been clearly reasoned and were likely chosen for the sake of simplicity.

"I believe it was well thought out," he said.

Benedict himself has made clear he is retiring to a lifetime of prayer and meditation "hidden from the world." However, he still will be very present in the tiny Vatican city-state, where his new home is right next door to the Vatican Radio transmitter and has a lovely view of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

Kueng said it was a mistake for Gaenswein to serve both men and for Benedict to remain so close to the center of action.

"No priest likes it if his predecessor sits next to the rectory and watches everything he does," Kueng was quoted as saying by Der Spiegel. "And even for the bishop of Rome, it is not pleasant if his predecessor constantly has an eye on him."

However, others reasoned that Benedict's retirement plans and title were in keeping with those of other retired heads of state.

"I was somewhat surprised that Benedict would still be called 'His Holiness' and would wear white, but it's akin to the former U.S. presidents being addressed as 'Mr. President,'" said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit writer and editor. "It's a mark of respect for the former office he once held."

"Overall, I don't think that after the conclave there will be any doubt about who the pope is, or who is in charge," he said.

While Benedict will no longer wear his trademark red shoes, he has taken a liking to a pair of hand-crafted brown loafers made for him by artisans in Leon, Mexico, and given to him during his 2012 visit. He will wear those in retirement, Lombardi said.

Lombardi also elaborated on the College of Cardinals meetings that will take place after the papacy becomes vacant — crucial gatherings in which cardinals will discuss the problems facing the church and set a date for the start of the conclave to elect Benedict's successor.

The first meeting isn't now expected until Monday, Lombardi said, since the official convocation to cardinals to come to Rome will only go out on Friday — the first day of what's known as the "sede vacante," or the vacancy between papacies.

In all, 115 cardinals under the age of 80 are expected in Rome for the conclave to vote on who should become the next pope; two other eligible cardinals have already said they are not coming, one from Britain and another from Indonesia. Cardinals who are 80 and older can join the College meetings but won't participate in the conclave or vote.

Benedict on Monday gave the cardinals the go-ahead to move up the start date of the conclave — tossing out the traditional 15-day waiting period. But the cardinals won't actually be able to set a date for the conclave until they begin meeting officially Monday.

Lombardi also further described Benedict's final 48 hours as pope: On Tuesday, he was packing, arranging for documents to be sent to the various archives at the Vatican and separating out the personal papers he will take with him into retirement.

On Wednesday, Benedict holds his final public general audience in St. Peter's Square — an event that has already seen 50,000 ticket requests. He won't greet visiting prelates or VIPs as he normally does at the end but will greet some visiting leaders — from Slovakia, San Marino, Andorra and his native Bavaria — privately afterwards.

On Thursday, the pope meets with his cardinals in the morning and then flies by helicopter at 5 p.m. to Castel Gandolfo, the papal residence south of Rome. He will greet parishioners there from the palazzo's balcony — his final public act as pope.

And at 8 p.m., the exact time at which his retirement becomes official, the Swiss Guards standing outside the doors of the palazzo at Castel Gandolfo will go off duty, their service protecting the head of the Catholic Church finished.

Benedict's personal security will be assured by Vatican police, Lombardi said.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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IBM, NY to create new technical education programs

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- IBM and New York are teaming up to create 10 new technical education programs, one each at public schools in different regions of the state.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and IBM say Tuesday the goal is to train students for skilled jobs in technology, manufacturing, health care and finance to support economic growth and development.

Armonk-based IBM will provide guidance, mentoring, internships and other support at two of the schools and will help recruit companies to do the same at the eight others.

Students will enter the six-year programs starting in ninth grade and can graduate with associate's degrees.

Cuomo's budget proposal includes $4 million more for the Early College High School program to help support the schools and other ECHS programs.

The other participants will be announced in coming months.

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Gun control supporter backed by New York mayor wins Chicago vote

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Gun control supporter and former Illinois state Representative Robin Kelly on Tuesday won the Democratic primary to replace indicted former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. in a race that highlighted the national debate over gun violence.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a champion of tighter restrictions on weapons, poured more than $2 million into the Chicago race. He backed Kelly and attacked her main opponent, Debbie Halvorson, who was supported by the gun rights lobby.

A little over an hour after the polls closed, Halvorson called Kelly to concede defeat, saying that Bloomberg's television attack ads had affected the race.

The ads highlighted Halvorson's support from the powerful gun rights lobby, the National Rifle Association, and her opposition to a ban on assault weapons.

"There was $2.3 million minimum spent against me," Halvorson told supporters after she conceded defeat. "That's the way it is. I can't help it."

Gun control vaulted to the top of the U.S. political agenda after the December 14 killing of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. The Chicago election on Tuesday was the first major test of the political potency of the gun control issue since the shooting.

The city's murder rate has risen because of what police say is a surge of gang violence in poor neighborhoods. The shootings have claimed the lives of dozens of young people including Hadiya Pendleton, a high school student who was killed just over a week after she performed at President Barack Obama's inauguration.

Obama has pushed Congress to pass restrictions on guns and Bloomberg has used his business fortune to battle the money and clout of the NRA.

Bloomberg issued a statement after Kelly was declared the winner saying that the Illinois vote showed Americans want change in Washington.

"As Congress considers the president's gun package, voters in Illinois have sent a clear message: We need common sense gun legislation now. Now it's up to Washington to act," he said.

Kelly favors an assault weapons ban and highlighted a rash of gun violence in Chicago, including some parts of the congressional district that stretches from the city to the southern suburbs.

The special election was to fill the seat of Jackson, who resigned in November citing health problems, and pleaded guilty in federal court last week to using campaign funds for personal enrichment.

Jackson was a reliable vote in Congress for gun control. Until Bloomberg elbowed into the race, polls had shown that Halvorson could win the Democratic primary.

Turnout was light in the special election in part because of a snowstorm that hit the Chicago area on Tuesday, making travel treacherous.

The winner of the Democratic primary is likely to be elected to the seat in the general election on April 9 because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic.

(Reporting by Renita Young, writing by Greg McCune, editing by Doina Chiacu)

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New Jersey Governor Christie snubbed by conservative conference

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The most popular Republican governor in the United States has not been invited to the country's most important gathering for conservative activists, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

As things stand, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a brash politician who clocked a 74-percent approval rating from state residents in a recent Quinnipiac poll, will not be among dozens of officeholders to address the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington next month, the source said.

The fact that Christie is not expected at the large gathering of conservatives shows how difficult it will be for him to win over an important group of activists should he decide to seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Other potential 2016 candidates, such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, are expected at the CPAC conference.

Christie, who is up for reelection this year in his Democrat-leaning home state, rankled some Republicans during the 2012 presidential campaign.

And some conservatives did not approve when he pushed for a multi-billion-dollar government payout to fund the costs of recovery in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. They considered the move not fiscally prudent at a time of $1 trillion budget deficits.

Christie raised eyebrows with his keynote speech at the Republican Party's national convention last year that some Republicans thought focused too heavily on his own accomplishments and too lightly on those of the party's presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

His praise of Democratic President Barack Obama for his handling of Hurricane Sandy as Election Day neared last November also did him no favors with Republicans, who felt he was giving Romney's opponent a boost at the worst possible time.

Conservative press baron Rupert Murdoch said then on Twitter that Christie should "re-declare" his support for Romney "or take blame for next four dire years."

In June, before both incidents, Christie addressed a CPAC conference in Chicago.

The schedule for CPAC, set to begin on March 14, has not been finalized, spokesperson Laura Keehner Rigas said.

CPAC, run by the 49-year-old American Conservative Union, often gives a leading platform for current and future Republican leaders to provide their vision for the party. Christie will be the rare exclusion among Republican officeholders tapped to be potential White House contenders in 2016.

This year, Romney will address the conference, giving his first public speech since his failed presidential bid in November. It was at CPAC last year that Romney, locked in the final months of a primary battle where opponents painted him as too moderate, proclaimed himself to be "severely conservative."

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has faded from the national spotlight with her recent exit from Fox News, will also address the crowd after a gap of a year.

Political observers often look to who has been left out of the conference as a sign of fissures within the conservative movement. This year, leading conservative gay rights groups GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans will not be participating.

A representative for Christie did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

(Reporting by Samuel P. Jacobs; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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Sex, power scandals to loom over Vatican pre-vote talks

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The sex and power scandals haunting the Catholic Church look set to play a big role in meetings before next month's papal election after two senior cardinals called on Tuesday for more internal debate about them.

A leading support group for victims of clerical sexual abuse also made what it called a "last-ditch plea" to Pope Benedict to use his authority before resigning on Thursday to discipline bishops who have protected predatory priests in their dioceses.

The abuse issue took on new urgency after Scotland's Cardinal Keith O'Brien, accused of improper behavior with young priests, quit as Edinburgh archbishop on Monday and pulled out of the Sistine Chapel conclave to elect a new pope.

A Scottish Catholic Media Office spokesman has said O'Brien was taking legal advice and contested the "anonymous and non specific" allegations against him.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, now the only British prelate due to attend pre-conclave talks among cardinals at the Vatican next week, said in London the sexual abuse of children was the most serious scandal in the Church.

"That will be one of the main things the cardinals will be discussing," said Murphy-O'Connor, who cannot vote because he is over 80 years old but can join the cardinal electors in their closed-door discussions about the challenges for the next pope.

French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran said in a newspaper interview that the cardinal electors, who number 115 after O'Brien stepped down, should also be informed about a secret report on Vatican corruption prepared for Pope Benedict.

The retiring pontiff has decided to reserve the report for his successor, but the three cardinals over 80 years old who drew it up will be allowed to inform the cardinal electors about some of its findings during next week's consultations.

ASKING TO NAME NAMES

"The cardinal electors cannot decide to choose this or that name to vote for if they don't know the contents of this dossier," Tauran told La Repubblica newspaper.

"If it's necessary, I don't see why they should not ask for names," said Tauran, a former Vatican foreign minister who now heads its department for interreligious dialogue.

Italian newspapers have been speculating for days about conspiracies and alleged sexual scandals inside the Vatican that may have influenced Benedict to become the first pope in some six centuries to step down rather than die in office.

The Vatican has accused these newspapers of spreading "false and damaging" rumors in an attempt to influence the cardinals who are starting to arrive in Rome for the pope's farewell meeting with them on Thursday.

Two directors of the United States-based abuse victims' network SNAP arrived in Rome on Tuesday to draw attention to their demands for tougher Church policies.

"We're here to make a last ditch plea to Pope Benedict to use the remaining hours of his papacy to take decisive action to protect kids," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

He acknowledged that Benedict had met some abuse victims and made some strong statements condemning the molestation of minors by priests, but said he only acted under public pressure.

"We long for the day when Church officials announce that this cardinal or this bishop is being demoted because Church officials have found proof of wrongdoing and Church officials want to clean things up," he told journalists.

SNAP saw no papal candidates ready to fire bishops for shielding wrongdoers, he said, but added: "It's hard to believe there aren't some cardinals who are grabbing their colleagues by the lapels and saying 'We simply have to do better'."

CATHOLICS CRITICAL OF ABUSE HANDLING

Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, one of the three who drew up the secret report for Benedict, echoed the Vatican attack on the media in an interview on Monday with the daily El Pais.

"This wanting to see snake pits, warring mafias, internal hatreds - all this is absolutely false," he said.

Because conclaves are such secretive events, it is hard to see what effect the heightened public pressure over the abuse issue might have on the cardinals who will elect the next leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics around the globe.

Italian newspapers, which dedicate several pages a day to the papal story, have begun mentioning Cardinal Sean O'Malley as a possible "clean hands" candidate because he was sent to Boston to deal with abuse scandals that erupted there in 2002.

But other factors could lead them to choose a man whose main strengths lie elsewhere, such as an aptitude to promote its "new evangelization" drive, aimed at rekindling the faith in Europe and boost it in other regions.

Recent polls in two important national churches, in the United States and Germany, show that Catholics give their leaders low marks for their handling of the abuse crisis.

A Pew Forum poll last week showed U.S. Catholics have become increasingly critical, with those saying Benedict has done a poor job rising from 40 percent in 2008 to 63 percent now.

A survey in January for the weekly Die Zeit showed that only 28 percent of German Catholics polled believed the Church really wanted to clean up the mess the scandals have caused.

(Reporting By Tom Heneghan; Editing by Will Waterman)

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California couple feared missing in Peru turn up on safe on river boat

LIMA (Reuters) - A young California couple feared by family to have been abducted while on a cycling trip through Peru have safely surfaced on a river boat headed for Ecuador, surprised to learn they were subjects of an international search, the Peruvian government said on Tuesday.

"The American tourists are continuing to enjoy their trip in the Peruvian Amazon," the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism said in a statement, adding that a national police official had spoken with the couple and found them to be "in good health."

Garrett Hand and his girlfriend, Jamie Neal, both 25, had last been heard from by friends and relatives about a month ago, according to co-workers and a statement issued on Monday by the U.S. Embassy in Lima, the Peruvian capital.

The embassy said then that Peruvian authorities had mounted a search for the pair, who are residents of Oakland, California.

The couple were said to have vanished while en route to Lima from Cusco, in the mountainous southeastern Peruvian interior near the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, an area where U.S. citizens have been warned by the embassy of kidnapping risks.

That advisory last month was widely interpreted as linked to efforts by a remnant band of Maoist Shining Path rebels to repel a government push to regain control of jungle valleys that are rife with coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking.

Friends and family of Hand and Neal said they worried the pair had been abducted and that their bank accounts had remained idle since they disappeared.

But a day after relatives and co-workers went public with efforts to organize a search for the couple, the Peruvian government said national police had caught up with the duo in the northern village of Angoteros along the Napo River.

SURPRISED BY CONCERN

The tourism ministry said the couple were passengers on a boat headed up the river, a tributary of the Amazon, to a town on the border with Ecuador.

The couple "were surprised by the concern generated by family, friends and the international community after the cessation of their communications in late January," a ministry statement said.

It added that the pair had been traveling overland by bicycle, bus and river boat through remote areas where access to telephones and the Internet was limited.

Meanwhile, Hand's mother, Francine Fitzgerald, posted a message on Facebook saying she had been informed by U.S. Embassy and Peruvian authorities that the couple were spotted in a remote village and were now on a river boat.

She gave few other details but said she would not be satisfied until receiving "proof of life" from her son.

"Proof of life is my son's voice on the phone and a picture of him holding the missing poster," she wrote.

ABC News reported on Tuesday that the tourism ministry was sending a crew with video cameras to the location where the couple's boat is scheduled to dock on Wednesday to show they are alive and well.

The U.S. Embassy issued a separate statement saying it was aware of "reports that the missing U.S. citizens have been located," adding, "we are working with local authorities to confirm those reports."

The location of the couple in northern Peru was reinforced by previous accounts from police and officials of an ecological community in the Amazonian region of Iquitos. They had told Reuters earlier this week that Hand and Neal were seen embarking on an upriver boat trip toward Ecuador on February 16, three weeks after their families had last heard from them.

(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in San Francisco; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bernard Orr and Eric Walsh)

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In separating gun-control bills, Democrats reveal strategy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats in the Senate have spread his gun-control proposals across four bills in an effort to get at least some of the less controversial measures - such as expanded background checks for gun buyers - passed into law.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote as early as Thursday on the bills, which together amount to an acknowledgement by Democrats that a ban on military-style "assault" weapons is unlikely to clear Congress.

The proposed ban on assault weapons makes up one of the four gun-control bills, all of which are likely to be approved by the Democrat-led Judiciary Committee and be considered by the full Senate, congressional aides said Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, will decide how to package the measures for a vote on the Senate floor.

By breaking Obama's gun-control agenda into pieces, supporters hope to avoid having a less popular proposal such as the assault weapons ban contribute to the rejection of other proposals, aides said.

The proposed ban, introduced by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, has drawn opposition from Republicans and some Democrats. It will be the focus of a Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

"We are taking a pragmatic approach that is designed to maximize our options," a senior Democratic aide said.

The four bills now before the Judiciary Committee include one introduced by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's chairman, that would crack down on illegal gun trafficking.

Another bill, by California Senator Barbara Boxer, is designed to increase school safety.

A bill, still being finalized, would call for "universal" background checks for all prospective gun buyers. Currently, only about 40 percent of buyers are screened for previous crimes or mental illness.

Feinstein's proposal, targets assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips like those used in the December 14 massacre at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children and six adults dead - and inspired the current action on gun control.

'NO WAY' ON ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN

Wednesday's hearing is likely be the latest in a series of dramatic Capitol Hill hearings to reflect the passion surrounding the debate over gun control.

Those scheduled to testify include the father of one of the students killed in Newtown, and a doctor who was in a local emergency room when victims of the shootings were brought in.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Democrats "are trying to create political theater" with the hearing, and that there is no way an assault weapons ban will become law.

"It faces bipartisan opposition," he said.

Even so, all four of the gun-control bills are widely expected to sent to the full Senate on party-line votes of 10-8, Senate aides said.

But to clear procedural roadblocks from Republicans on the Senate floor, the measures will need 60 votes in the 100-member Senate, where Democrats and independents who support them account for 55 seats and Republicans hold 45.

There have been calls from those in both parties for expanded background checks in an effort to keep firearms out of the hands of convicted criminals and the mentally ill.

But a bipartisan deal has not yet been struck despite weeks of talks among four senators - Democrats Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mark Kirk of Illinois.

"It is the one thing we think can really pass, and we don't yet have an agreement on it," a Senate aide said.

On Tuesday, Coburn said, "We're still talking."

(Editing by David Lindsey and Cynthia Osterman)

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UNC responds to sexual assault retaliation allegations

(UNC.edu/Flickr)

The University of North Carolina has formally responded to allegations that an honor code violation was brought against a student as a form of retaliation for her speaking out about an alleged rape.

"The Carolina community cares deeply about all of our students, including both students in this specific matter," UNC chancellor Holden Thorpe said in a statement released late Tuesday. "If we are to achieve the ultimate goal of eliminating sexual assault and violence from this campus, we must all work together.”

The university released its own statement after several media outlets (including Yahoo! News) reported that Landen Gambill—a sophomore who last spring reported being raped by a student she says is still on the school's Chapel Hill campus—was recently notified of the charge by the UNC Honor Court.

If found guilty, Gambill faces a range of sanctions, including probation, suspension or even expulsion.

[Related: UNC student faces possible expulsion for speaking out about alleged sexual assault]

Last month, a group of current and former UNC students including Gambill and Melinda Manning—the school's former assistant dean of students—filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, alleging that school officials had pressured Manning into underreporting sex offense cases.

Here's the school's full statement given to Yahoo! News:

The University’s Honor System has been the subject of Internet commentary and media attention and some of its student members have received threats to their personal safety. Sexual assault evokes passionate responses and concerns. But it is important, particularly in a higher education community, to avoid judgment based upon speculation.

Here are facts. This University works hard to encourage students to come forward and report instances of sexual violence. No student has ever been disciplined for reporting a sexual assault or any Honor Code violation. Further, no University administrator filed or encouraged the filing of charges in this case; there is no retaliation by the University.

Because of concern for our students and their privacy we cannot discuss specifics of this or any student Honor Court case. This includes allegations involving a student who has made a claim about a fellow student.

The University has a long and cherished tradition of student government, led by students for the benefits and welfare of students. We can tell you that the Student Attorneys General, and for many years have had, the authority to decide which cases to consider independent of administrators. Further, administrators may not encourage or prevent the Student Attorneys General from filing charges. When a member of the University community reports an Honor Code violation, the Student Attorneys General determine if the evidence warrants a hearing before the Honor Court under campus policies and procedures. In deciding to charge a student with an alleged violation, the Student Attorneys General carefully consider all available evidence. Because of faculty interest in strengthening the Honor System process, the University established–with Chancellor Thorp’s support–a faculty advisory committee to be available to the Student Attorneys General for consultation in difficult cases.

Throughout a student’s involvement with the student-led Honor System, an accused student receives a number of procedural rights, including the presumption of innocence, the presentation of evidence, and a fair and impartial hearing. After the hearing, if a student is found guilty of the charge, sanctioning decisions are made by the Honor Court after a thorough consideration of all of the evidence.

The Student Attorneys General, who have been involved with the Honor System for over two years, have been trained on making appropriate charge decisions in accordance with University procedures. We are confident in our students’ professionalism and commitment.

In January, the University retained Gina Smith, a nationally recognized lawyer and consultant on sexual misconduct issues, to help guide an open and transparent conversation about how the issue of sexual assault affects the campus and culture that is focusing on education and engagement. Smith, a former prosecutor, educator and consultant, has guided other campuses including Amherst on issues related to handling sexual assault complaints.

The work ahead of us is hard and the responsibility to get it right is daunting. We are committed to eliminating sexual assault and violence from our community. We encourage you to visit our website (http://campusconversation.web.unc.edu/) and to participate in the University’s efforts to engage students, faculty, staff and alumni on these issues.

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