Australia a Model for Successful Gun Control?

If there is one country that best represents the possibility of cutting gun crime by increasing gun control, it is Australia.

In 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant finished his lunch in a café in the seaside resort of Port Arthur and pulled out a semi-automatic rifle. In the first 15 seconds of his attack, he killed 12 and wounded 10. In all, he shot more than 50 people in six locations, killing 35. The worst mass shooting in Australia's history capped a violent decade of mass shootings that killed nearly 100 – and Australians had had enough.

Only 12 days later, Prime Minister John Howard – a conservative who had just been elected with the help of gun owners – pushed through not only new gun control laws, but also the most ambitious gun buyback program seen in recent memory.

The laws banned assault rifles, tightened gun owner licensing, and created national uniform registration standards. Howard knew they might be unpopular among some of the same voters who helped put him into office -- during one particularly hostile public town hall, he wore a bulletproof vest.

But something extraordinary happened: the laws tapped into public revulsion at the shooting and became extremely popular. And they became extremely effective.

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

In the last 16 years, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia has fallen by more than 50 percent. The national rate of gun homicide is one-thirtieth that of the United States. And there hasn't been a single mass shooting since Port Arthur.

"It's not that we are a less violent people and that you are a more violent people," says Philip Alpers, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Sydney who runs GunPolicy.org, which tracks gun violence and gun laws across the world. "It's that you have more lethal means at your disposal."

But it wasn't just the new laws that made Australia safer. The gun buyback program collected nearly 650,000 assault weapons and 50,000 additional weapons – about one sixth of the national stock. Fewer guns on the street helped severely reduce the likelihood that guns could be used for a mass shooting.

"Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of gun owners simply, voluntarily gave up guns that they did not need to give up," Alpers told ABC News. "You could not be a gun owner during that period and not feel terribly persecuted, terribly under threat from public opinion. The commentaries were vicious."

Gun advocates hold up Australia's example as a reason to try similar laws in the United States, following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But Australians' willingness to give up their guns suggests a fundamental difference between Australia and the United States' gun cultures – and why Australia could be looked at for inspiration, rather than a model.

In the U.S., the founding fathers wrote gun ownership into the country's bedrock documents. Gun owners have long seen their weapons as a sign of freedom.

"But Australians are predisposed toward not having guns," Alpers argues. "We take it for granted that you license the gun owner and you register the firearm. Just as you do with a car. In the United States, everything went in the different direction."

So gun control advocates urge the Obama administration to look at certain steps Australia took – but not necessarily reproduce them.

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Park set to win South Korean presidential election

SEOUL (Reuters) - The daughter of a former military ruler took a commanding lead in South Korea's presidential election on Wednesday, putting her on track to become the country's first woman head of state.

A win for 60-year old conservative Park Geun-hye would see her return to the presidential palace where she served as her father's first lady in the 1970s, after Park's mother was assassinated by a North Korean-backed gunman.

With more than 70 percent of the votes counted, Park led with 51.6 percent to 48 percent for her left-wing challenger, human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in.

Her raucous, jubilant supporters braved sub-zero temperatures to chant her name and wave South Korean flags outside her house.

An elated Park reached into the crowd to grasp hands.

Park will take office for a mandatory single, five-year term in February and will face an immediate challenge from a hostile North Korea and have to deal with an economy in which annual growth rates have fallen to about 2 percent from an average of 5.5 percent in the past 50 years.

She is unmarried and has no children, saying that her life will be devoted to her country.

The legacy of her father, Park Chung-hee, who ruled for 18 years and transformed the country from the ruins of the 1950-53 Korean War into an industrial power-house still divides Koreans.

For many conservatives, he is South Korea's greatest president and the election of his daughter would vindicate his rule. His opponents dub him a "dictator" who trampled on human rights and stifled dissent.

"I trust her. She will save our country," said Park Hye-sook, 67, who voted in an affluent Seoul district, earlier in the day.

"Her father ... rescued the country," said the housewife and grandmother, who is no relation to the candidate.

For younger people, the main concern is the economy and the creation of well-paid jobs in a country where income inequalities have grown in recent years.

"Now a McDonald's hamburger is over 5,000 Korean won ($4.66) so you can't buy a McDonald's burger with your hourly pay. Life is hard already for our two-member family but if there were kids, it would be much tougher," said Cho Hae-ran, 41, who is married and works at a trading company.

Park has spent 15 years in politics as a leading legislator in the ruling Saenuri party, although her policies are sketchy.

She has a "Happiness Promotion Committee" and her campaign was launched as a "National Happiness Campaign", a slogan she has since changed to "A Prepared Woman President".

She has cited former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a tough proponent of free markets, as her role model as well as Angela Merkel, the conservative German chancellor who is Europe's most powerful leader.

NEGOTIATE WITH NORTH

One of those who voted on Wednesday was Shin Dong-hyuk, a defector from North Korea who is the only person known to have escaped from a slave labor camp there.

He Tweeted that he was voting "for the first time in my life", although he didn't say for whom.

Park has said she would negotiate with Kim Jong-un, the youthful leader of North Korea who recently celebrated a year in office, but wants the South's isolated and impoverished neighbor to give up its nuclear weapons program as a precondition for aid, something Pyongyang has refused to do.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after an armistice ended their conflict. Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the North's current leader, ordered several assassination attempts on Park's father, one of which resulted in her mother being shot to death in 1974.

Park herself met Kim Jong-un's father, the late leader Kim Jong-il, and declared he was "comfortable to talk to" and he seemed to be someone "who would keep his word".

The North successfully launched a long-range rocket last week in what critics said was a test of technology for an intercontinental ballistic missile and has recently stepped up its attacks on Park, describing her as holding a "grudge" and seeking "confrontation", code for war.

Park remains a firm supporter of a trade pact with the United States that and looks set to continue the free-market policies of her predecessor, although she has said she would seek to spread wealth more evenly.

The biggest of all the chaebol, Samsung Group, which produces the world's top selling smartphone as well as televisions, computer chips and ships, has sales equivalent to about a fifth of South Korea's national output.

(Additional reporting by Jumin Park, Seongbin Kang, Narae Kim, SoMang Yang; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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TIME magazine names Obama 2012 person of the year

NEW YORK: Time magazine on Wednesday named the recently re-elected US President Barack Obama as its person of the year for 2012 -- the second time it has accorded him this honor.

The venerable American news magazine said the United States is in the midst of huge cultural and demographic changes and Obama is "both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America."

The magazine noted that Obama was the first president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to win more than 50 per cent of the vote in two straight elections and the first since 1940 to be re-elected despite a jobless rate above 7.5 per cent.

Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney soundly in November's election to win a second four year term.

"In 2012, he found and forged a new majority, turned weakness into opportunity and sought, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union," said Time, which named Obama person of the year in 2008 when he became America's first black president.

- AFP/ck

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Bank official gets three years in jail for Rs 20,000 bribe

NEW DELHI: An official of Indian Overseas Bank was sentenced to three years in jail by a Visakhaptnam court for demanding a bribe of Rs 20,000 from another employee to help him get a transfer.

The Special Judge for CBI cases in Visakhaptnam sentenced V M M V Nagendra Rao, Special Cadre Assistant with the bank's Seetharampuram Branch in Vijayawada, to three years of simple imprisonment and also slapped a fine Rs 20,000.

According to the CBI chargesheet against Rao, the accused had demanded a bribe of Rs 20,000 from a Clerk-cum-Cashier when he requested for a transfer to Kothagudem Branch on personal grounds, a CBI release said here today.

Rao, who was also Assistant General Secretary, All Indian Overseas Bank's Employees Union Vijayawada Region told the person that he can get it done by using his influence and demanded the bribe, the CBI said.

The complainant got a transfer to Kothagudem Branch in the second week of December 2007 after which Rao again demanded the bribe and warned that if he didn't get the money then he will get him transfred to a remote place, it said.

CBI laid a trap and allegedly caught the accused red handed while accepting a bribe of Rs 15,000 from the complainant.

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.

Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?

For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.

But after the grief and fear fades, psychiatrists say most of Newtown's young survivors probably will cope without long-term emotional problems.

"Kids do tend to be highly resilient," said Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

And one way that younger children try to make sense of trauma is through play. Youngsters may pull out action figures or stuffed animals and re-enact what they witnessed, perhaps multiple times.

"That's the way they gain mastery over a situation that's overwhelming," Biel explained, saying it becomes a concern only if the child is clearly distressed while playing.

Nor is it unusual for children to chase each other playing cops-and-robbers, but now parents might see some also pretending they're dead, added Dr. Melissa Brymer of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

Among the challenges will be spotting which children are struggling enough that they may need professional help.

Newtown's tragedy is particularly heart-wrenching because of what such young children grappled with — like the six first-graders who apparently had to run past their teacher's body to escape to safety.

There's little scientific research specifically on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in children exposed to a burst of violence, and even less to tell if a younger child will have a harder time healing than an older one.

Overall, scientists say studies of natural disasters and wars suggest most children eventually recover from traumatic experiences while a smaller proportion develop long-term disorders such as PTSD. Brymer says in her studies of school shootings, that fraction can range from 10 percent to a quarter of survivors, depending on what they actually experienced. A broader 2007 study found 13 percent of U.S. children exposed to different types of trauma reported some symptoms of PTSD, although less than 1 percent had enough for an official diagnosis.

Violence isn't all that rare in childhood. In many parts of the world — and in inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., too — children witness it repeatedly. They don't become inured to it, Biel said, and more exposure means a greater chance of lasting psychological harm.

In Newtown, most at risk for longer-term problems are those who saw someone killed, said Dr. Carol North of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has researched survivors of mass shootings.

Friday's shootings were mostly in two classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has about 450 students through fourth-grade.

But those who weren't as close to the danger may be at extra risk, too, if this wasn't their first trauma or they already had problems such as anxiety disorders that increase their vulnerability, she said.

Right after a traumatic event, it's normal to have nightmares or trouble sleeping, to stick close to loved ones, and to be nervous or moody, Biel said.

To help, parents will have to follow their child's lead. Grilling a child about a traumatic experience isn't good, he stressed. Some children will ask a lot of questions, seeking reassurance, he said. Others will be quiet, thinking about the experience and maybe drawing or writing about it, or acting it out at playtime. Younger children may regress, becoming clingy or having tantrums.

Before second grade, their brains also are at a developmental stage some refer to as magical thinking, when it's difficult to distinguish reality and fantasy. Parents may have to help them understand that a friend who died isn't in pain or lonely but also isn't coming back, Brymer said.

When problem behaviors or signs of distress continue for several weeks, Brymer says it's time for an evaluation by a counselor or pediatrician.

Besides a supportive family, what helps? North advises getting children back into routines, together with their friends, and easing them back into a school setting. Studies of survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found "the power of the support of the people who went through it with you is huge," she said.

Children as young as first-graders can benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Georgetown's Biel said. They can calm themselves with breathing techniques. They also can learn to identify and label their feelings — anger, frustration, worry — and how to balance, say, a worried thought with a brave one.

Finally, avoid watching TV coverage of the shooting, as children may think it's happening all over again, Biel added. He found that children who watched the 9/11 clips of planes hitting the World Trade Center thought they were seeing dozens of separate attacks.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

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Siblings of Sandy Hook Victims Face Survivor's Guilt

Six-year-old Arielle Pozner was in a classroom at Sandy Hook school when Adam Lanza burst into the school with his rifle and handguns. Her twin brother, Noah, was in a classroom down the hall.

Noah Pozner was killed by Lanza, along with 19 other children at the school, and six adults. Arielle and other students' siblings survived.

"That's going to be incredibly difficult to cope with," said Dr. Jamie Howard, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York. "It is not something we expect her to cope with today and be OK with tomorrow."

READ: Two Adult Survivors of Connecticut School Shooting Will be Key Witnesses

As the community of Newtown, Conn., begins to bury the young victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting today, the equally young siblings of those killed will only be starting to comprehend what happened to their brothers and sisters.

"Children this young do experience depression in a diagnosable way, they do experience post-traumatic stress disorder. Just because they're young, they don't escape the potential for real suffering," said Rahil Briggs, a child psychologist and professor at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Arielle and other survivor siblings could develop anxiety or other emotional reactions to their siblings' death, including "associative logic," where they associate their own actions with their sibling's death, Howard said.

"This is when two things happen, and (children) infer that one thing caused the other. (Arielle) may be at risk for that type of magical thinking, and that could be where survivor's guilt comes in. She may think she did something, but of course she didn't," Howard said.

CLICK HERE for photos from the shooting scene.

Children in families where one sibling has died sometimes struggle as their parents are overwhelmed by grief, Howard noted. When that death is traumatic, adults and children sometimes choose not to think about the person or the event to avoid pain.

Interested in How to Help Newtown Families?

"With traumatic grief, it's really important to talk about and think about the children that died, not to avoid talking and thinking about them because that interferes with grieving process, want their lives to be celebrated," Howard said.

Children may also have difficulty understanding why their deceased brother or sister is receiving so much, or so little, attention, according Briggs.

"I think one of the most challenging questions we can be faced with as parents is how to 'appropriately' remember a child that is gone. So much that can go wrong with that," Briggs said. "You have the child who is fortunate enough to escape, who thinks 'Why me? Why did my brother go?' But if you don't remember the sibling enough the child says 'it seems like we've forgotten my brother.'"

"They may even find themselves feeling jealous of all the attention the sibling seems to be receiving," Briggs said.

Parents and other adults in the family's support system need to be on alert, watching the child's behavior, she said. Children could show signs of withdrawing, or seeming spacy or in a daze. They could also seem jumpy or have difficulty concentrating in the wake of a traumatic event.

"For kids experiencing symptoms, and interfering with ability to go to school, they may be suffering from acute stress disorder, and there are good treatments," Howard said.

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Egypt opposition to protest against "invalid" constitution

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's opposition will hold new protests on Tuesday against an Islamist-backed draft constitution that has divided the nation but which looks set to be approved in the second round of a referendum next weekend.

Islamist President Mohamed Mursi obtained a 57 percent "yes" vote for the constitution in a first round of the referendum on Saturday, state media said, less than he had hoped for.

The result is likely to embolden the opposition, which says the law is too Islamist. But they are unlikely to win this Saturday's second round, to be held in districts seen as even more sympathetic towards Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood.

Protesters broke out into cheers when the public prosecutor Mursi appointed last month announced his resignation late on Monday. Further signs of opposition emerged when a judges' club urged its members not to supervise Saturday's vote. But the call is not binding on members and balloting is expected to go ahead.

If the constitution passes next weekend, national elections can take place early next year, something many hope will help end the turmoil that has gripped Egypt since the fall of Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago.

The main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, said there were widespread voting violations in the first round of the referendum and urged organizers to ensure that the second round was properly supervised.

It has called for protests across Egypt on Tuesday "to stop forgery and bring down the invalid draft constitution" and wants organizers to re-run the first round of voting.

The Ministry of Justice said it was appointing a group of judges to investigate allegations of voting irregularities around the country.

DEMONSTRATIONS

In Cairo, the Front planned to hold demonstrations at Tahrir Square, cradle of the revolution that toppled Mubarak, and outside Mursi's presidential palace, still ringed with tanks after earlier protests.

"Down with the constitution of the Brotherhood," the Front said in a statement. "Down with the constitution of tyranny."

A protester at the presidential palace, Mohamed Adel, 30, said: "I have been camping here for weeks and will continue to do so until the constitution that divided the nation, and for which people died, gets scrapped."

The build-up to the first round of voting saw clashes between supporters and opponents of Mursi in which eight people died. Recent demonstrations in Cairo have been more peaceful, although rival factions clashed on Friday in Alexandria, Egypt's second biggest city.

On Monday evening, more than 1,300 members of the General Prosecution staff gathered outside the office of Public Prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim to demand that he leave his post.

Hours later, Ibrahim announced he had resigned and the crowd cheered, "God is Great! Long live justice!" and "Long live the independence of the judiciary!" witnesses said.

The closeness of the first-round referendum vote and low turnout give Mursi scant comfort as he seeks to assemble support for difficult economic reforms to reduce the budget deficit.

He will hold a further round of national unity talks with political leaders on Tuesday, but the National Salvation Front is expected to stay away, as it has in the past.

OPPOSITION BOOST

The lack of a big majority in the plebiscite so far has complicated matters for Mursi, strengthening the fractious opposition and casting doubt on the credibility of the constitution, political analysts believe.

"This percentage ... will strengthen the hand of the National Salvation Front and the leaders of this Front have declared they are going to continue this fight to discredit the constitution," said Mustapha Kamal Al-Sayyid, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

Mursi would be likely to become more unpopular with the introduction of planned austerity measures, polarizing society further, Sayyid told Reuters.

To tackle the budget deficit, the government needs to impose tax rises and cut back fuel subsidies. Uncertainty surrounding economic reform plans has already forced the postponement of a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The Egyptian pound has fallen to eight-year lows against the dollar.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is needed to move Egypt's democratic transition forward. Opponents say the document is too Islamist and ignores the rights of women and of minorities, including Christians who make up 10 percent of the population.

Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly dominated by his Islamist allies and boycotted by many liberals.

The referendum has had to be held over two days because many of the judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest. In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those voting.

(Additional reporting by Tamim Elyan and Edmund Blair; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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SMRT Alpha appointed to operate retail space at S'pore Sports Hub

SINGAPORE: The Singapore Sports Hub has appointed SMRT Alpha to lease and operate 41,000 square metres of commercial retail space at the Singapore Sports Hub.

This new joint venture is a partnership between subsidiaries of SMRT and NTUC FairPrice.

The retail mall and waterfront area will feature a variety of indoor and alfresco food and beverage outlets.

For shoppers, the mall will offer a wide range of stores and amenities.

Tenants will also include a FairPrice Xtra hypermarket at the mall, providing affordable daily essentials and groceries, as well as sportswear and sporting equipment, catering to the needs of the residents and shoppers in the area.

The Singapore Sports Hub will be opened and fully operational in April 2014.

- CNA/lp

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General Bikram Singh headed for Sri Lanka to bolster bilateral military ties

NEW DELHI: Continuing with the upward trajectory in bilateral military ties with Sri Lanka, General Bikram Singh will be leaving for Colombo on Wednesday. Apart from top political and defence officials, the Army chief will also meet Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa during his four-day visit. Gen Singh will also be the chief guest at the passing out parade of the Sri Lankan Military Academy at Diyatalawa on December 22, apart from visiting other military establishments.

The last visit by the Indian Army chief to the island nation was in September 2010. The Indian government is trying to strike a fine balance between larger strategic considerations, in the backdrop of China making steady inroads into Sri Lanka, and domestic political considerations because discrimination against Sri Lankan Tamils by the majority Sinhalese in the island nation continues to be a hugely emotive issue in Tamil Nadu. Earlier this year, the UPA-II government had been forced to shift 27 Sri Lankan military personnel being trained at the Tambaram airbase near Chennai to neighbouring Karnataka after political parties in Tamil Nadu had kicked up a ruckus.

Though India trains soldiers from several countries, ranging from Maldives, Mauritius and Mongolia to Botswana, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the facilities extended to Sri Lanka are much more. Around 800 to 900 Sri Lankan military personnel are trained in different Indian military establishments every year. The Indian Military Academy at Dehradun, for instance, has even run 'special courses' to train hundreds of 'gentlemen cadets'' from Sri Lanka.

India has trained thousands of Sri Lankan personnel over the last several years at its military institutions ranging from Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte (Mizoram) to School of Artillery at Devlali (Maharashtra), apart from providing specialised naval courses in gunnery, navigation, communication and anti-submarine warfare. Even when the Sri Lankan forces were earlier battling the LTTE, India had provided some largely defensive military equipment like L-70 guns, battle-field surveillance radars, Indra-II radars and mine-protected vehicles to Sri Lanka.

The two nations had also cooperated in intelligence sharing and undertaken 'coordinated' naval patrolling. Continuing with this diplomatic and military engagement, India and Sri Lanka in September-November last year had also held their first major naval combat exercise SLINEX-11'' in six years, with a total of 16 warships off Trincomalee. The Indian Navy, in recent times, has also done hydrographic surveys and salvage operations for Sri Lanka.

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Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

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Online:

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

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