Cliffhanger: 'Major Setback' For Budget Talks

With less than two days remaining for Congress to reach a budget agreement that would avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," ABC News has learned that negotiations have reached a "major setback."

According to Democratic sources the row was sparked when the GOP offered a proposal that included a new method of calculating entitlement benefits with inflation. Called the "chained consumer price index," or Chained CPI, the strategy has been criticized by some Democrats because it would lower cost of living increases for Social Security recipients.

"We thought it was mutually understood that it was off the table for a scaled-back deal," an aide said. "It's basically a poison pill."

President Obama has floated chained CPI in the past as part of a grand bargain, despite opposition from the AARP and within his own party.

Also in the Republican plan brought today: An extension of the current estate tax and no increase in the debt ceiling. Higher income earners would see their taxes increase, but at levels "well above $250,000," the sources said.

That "major setback" in the talks was evident on the floor of the Senate this afternoon.

"I'm concerned about the lack of urgency here, I think we all know we are running out of time," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, "I want everyone to know I am willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner."

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

McConnell said he submitted the Republican's latest offer to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., at 7:10 pm last night and was willing to work through the night. Reid promised to get back to him at 10 this morning, but has yet to do so.

Why have the Democrats not come up with a counteroffer? Reid admitted it himself moments later.

"At this stage we're not able to make a counteroffer," Reid said noting that he's had numerous conversations with Obama, but the two parties are still far apart on some big issues, "I don't have a counteroffer to make. Perhaps as the day wears on I will be able to."

McConnell said he believes there is no major issue that is the sticking point but rather, "the sticking point appears to be a willingness, an interest, or frankly the courage to close the deal."

Reid said the fiscal cliff negotiations are getting "real close" to falling apart completely.

"At some point in the negotiating process, it appears that there are things that stop us from moving forward," he said. "I hope we're not there but we're getting real close and that's why I still hold out hope that we can get something done. But I'm not overly optimistic but I am cautiously optimistic that we can get something done."

Reid said there are serious difference between the two sides, starting with Social Security. He said Democrats are not willing to cut Social Security benefits as part of a smaller, short-term agreement, as was proposed in the latest Republican proposal.

"We're not going to have any Social Security cuts. At this stage it just doesn't seem appropriate," he said. "We're open to discussion about entitlement reforms, but we're going to have to take a different direction. The present status will not work."

Reid said that even 36 hours before the country could go over the cliff, he remains "hopeful" but "realistic," about the prospects of reaching an agreement.

"The other side is intentionally demanding concessions they know we are not willing to make," he said.

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Body of India rape victim cremated in New Delhi

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The body of a woman, whose gang rape provoked protests and rare national debate about violence against women in India, arrived back in New Delhi on Sunday and was cremated at a private ceremony.

Scuffles broke out in central Delhi between police and protesters who say the government is doing too little to protect women. But the 2,000-strong rally was confined to a single area, unlike last week when protests raged up throughout the capital.

Riot police manned barricades along streets leading to India Gate war memorial - a focal point for demonstrators - and, at another gathering point - the centuries-old Jantar Mantar - protesters held banners reading "We want justice!" and "Capital punishment".

Most sex crimes in India go unreported, many offenders go unpunished, and the wheels of justice turn slowly, according to social activists, who say that successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women.

The unidentified 23-year-old victim of the December 16 gang rape died of her injuries on Saturday, prompting promises of action from a government that has struggled to respond to public outrage.

The medical student had suffered brain injuries and massive internal injuries in the attack and died in hospital in Singapore where she had been taken for treatment.

She and a male friend had been returning home from the cinema, media reports say, when six men on a bus beat them with metal rods and repeatedly raped the woman. The friend survived.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, police figures show. Reported rape cases rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011, according to government data.

Six suspects were charged with murder after her death and face the death penalty if convicted.

In Kolkata, one of India's four biggest cities, police said a man reported that his mother had been gang-raped and killed by a group of six men in a small town near the city on Saturday.

She was killed on her way home with her husband, a senior official said, and the attackers had thrown acid at the husband, raped and killed her, and dumped her body in a roadside pond.

Police declined to give any further details. One officer told Reuters no criminal investigation had yet been launched.

"MISOGYNY"

The leader of India's ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, was seen arriving at the airport when the plane carrying the woman's body from Singapore landed and Prime Minister Mannmohan Singh's convoy was also there.

A Reuters correspondent saw family members who had been with her in Singapore take her body from the airport to their Delhi home in an ambulance with a police escort.

Her body was then taken to a crematorium and cremated. Media were kept away but a Reuters witness saw the woman's family, New Delhi's chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, and the junior home minister, R P N Singh, coming out of the crematorium.

The outcry over the attack caught the government off guard. It took a week for the prime minister to make a statement, infuriating many protesters. Last weekend they fought pitched battles with police.

Issues such as rape, dowry-related deaths and female infanticide rarely enter mainstream political discourse.

Analysts say the death of the woman dubbed "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure", by some Indian media could change that, though it is too early to say whether the protesters can sustain their momentum through to national elections due in 2014.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon added his voice to those demanding change, calling for "further steps and reforms to deter such crimes and bring perpetrators to justice".

Commentators and sociologists say the incident earlier this month has tapped into a deep well of frustration many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social issues.

Newspapers raised doubts about the commitment of both male politicians and the police to protecting women.

"Would the Indian political system and class have been so indifferent to the problem of sexual violence if half or even one-third of all legislators were women?" the Hindu newspaper asked.

The Indian Express said it was more complicated than realizing that the police force was understaffed and underpaid.

"It is geared towards dominating citizens rather than working for them, not to mention being open to influential interests," the newspaper said. "It reflects the misogyny around us, rather than actively fighting for the rights of citizens who happen to be female."

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin and Diksha Madhokin New Delhi and Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Obama "modestly optimistic" for fiscal deal

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said Friday he was "modestly optimistic" a deal could be agreed with Republicans to head off a "fiscal cliff" crisis that could trigger a recession and rock global markets.

Obama said after meeting top congressional leaders that Senate Democrats and Republicans would work overtime this weekend to try to head off a $500 billion time bomb of tax hikes and spending cuts before a January 1 deadline.

"We had a constructive meeting today," Obama said. "I'm modestly optimistic that an agreement can be achieved."

Obama said that Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell would try to seal a deal on shielding the middle class from higher taxes due to come into force on Tuesday.

But he warned that if they failed, he would demand a vote in Congress on his own suggestion, to raise taxes on all American families earning over $250,000 a year and for an extension of unemployment insurance for two million people.

Such a scenario would leave Republicans in a tough political spot as if they refuse, it would be easy for the White House to blame them for the economy toppling over the cliff.

Obama also vented frustration that America's dysfunctional political system meant a slog through the Christmas and New Year vacation after it failed to come up with a deal until just before Tuesday's deadline.

"Ordinary folks, they do their jobs. They meet deadlines. They sit down and they discuss things and then things happen.

"The notion that our elected leadership can't do the same thing is mind-boggling to them. It needs to stop."

McConnell said after the talks, also involving Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic House minority leader Nancy Pelosi that he was "hopeful and optimistic."

An aide to Boehner said the talks focused on "potential options and components for a plan that could pass both chambers of Congress" and said the speaker told Obama that the Senate must go first, before the House acts.

Earlier, Wall Street picked up pessimistic signs before Obama's talks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 158.20 points or 1.21 percent, as Washington's perennial gridlock threatened to deal what Obama described as a "politically self-inflicted wound" to the economy.

If no deal is reached by January 1, all Americans will face a tax hike and massive and automatic budget cuts will come into force which budget experts say could trigger a new US recession and cause a spike in unemployment.

It is not clear whether the Obama plan would avert the massive automatic spending cuts or deal with his separate request to raise the $16 trillion ceiling on government borrowing.

Republicans want to extend George W. Bush-era tax cuts due to expire on Tuesday for everyone and accuse the president of failing to offer meaningful spending cuts in a bargain in return for them agreeing to raise revenues.

Some top lawmakers clung to hope.

Republican Senator Bob Corker earlier complained Obama and Democrats in Congress had balked at cutting spending on social programs weighing on the budget and inflating the deficit.

"We're going to end up with a small, kick-the-can-down-the-road bill that creates another fiscal cliff to deal with this fiscal cliff. How irresponsible is that?" Corker told reporters.

Retiring Democratic Senator Ben Nelson had warned: "If this meeting is not successful in achieving a proposal, I think you need to get a parachute."

Obama broke off his vacation in Hawaii in search of a last-minute deal and Boehner called the House back to work on Sunday.

It is questionable if any package could pass the House as restive conservatives last week rebuked Boehner by rejecting his fallback plan that would have raised taxes on people earning $1 million.

While each side must for the sake of appearances be seen to be seeking a deal, the easiest way out of the mess might be to allow the economy to go over the cliff, but to fix the problem in the first few days of next year.

In that scenario, Republicans, who are philosophically opposed to raising taxes, could back a bill to lower the newly raised rates on almost all Americans, thus sidestepping the stigma of raising taxes.

Recent polls show a majority of Americans back Obama's handling of the crisis, and would blame Republicans for a failure to fix it, so the president could get a short-term political boost from an early deal next year.

Should the stalemate linger however, the crisis would cloud the early months of Obama's second term, would dent his popularity and could detract from his key political goals like immigration reform and gun control.

-AFP/ac

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Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer
Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions about managing custom services in OS X, RAM prices for MacBook systems falling dramatically over the past year, and resetting a forgotten administrator password without admin access and without an OS X installer or recovery disc. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Managing custom services in OS X
MacFixIt reader Francis asks:

I have followed the guidance in this [article on making an OS X service for sending documents], and it works as described, however it is not quite what I am trying to achieve.

Is there a way to undo an Automator service that I have created?

Answer:
To remove any unwanted services that you have created, in the Finder hold the Option key and choose "Library" from the Go menu. Then go to the Services folder in here and locate and remove the custom service you created, which should appear as an Automator workflow if created in this program.

Question: RAM prices for MacBook systems falling
MacFixIt reader calebj22 asks:

I read your article from Oct 2011 about upgrading RAM in a Macbook Pro to 16 gigs. I have a 2.2 Ghz Intel Cor i7 that I bought in early 2012. My question is this. In your article you suggested the price would be $600 ish. On cricial and on Other World, the price in now under $100. Does this seem right? Have prices come down this much?

Answer:
The price of RAM is always fluctuating and generally falling. When I wrote that article, the RAM prices were quite high, but since then prices have significantly fallen. Now you can purchase a 16GB RAM upgrade for around $80 on average.

Question: resetting an administrator password with limited resources
MacFixIt reader Dean asks:

I am new to Macs. I just purchased a 2nd hand
Macbook pro with 10.8.1 running. The previous owner reset the user name and password but has forgotten them. I am locked out of some functions. I tried the Command-R and also option but see that it has no Recovery Partition. I am on dial-up but have a USB flash drive with 10.8.2 complete with installation files. How do I install this onto the HD without using internet or another Mac computer.

Answer:
First be sure you have a backup of your system.

Hopefully all the previous owner did was forget her password, but you can log in and force her password to be reset. To do this, reboot the system into Single User mode by holding Command-S at startup. You will be dropped to a text-based command line interface, where you should perform the following steps:

1. Run the following command to make the hard drive writable for editing:

   mount -uw /



2. Get a list of the current "short" usernames for accounts on the system:

   ls /Users



3. Identify the account in the list that is the previous "admin" account.


4. With the admin account short name identified, reset its password with the following command:

   passwd SHORTNAME

Enter the new password to use when prompted, and you should be good to go. Now type "reboot" and then supply the same short username and new password you just configured, and you should be able to log in to the admin account. At this point, go to the System Preferences and at least promote your user account to have administrative privileges, but also consider out of a courtesy to remove her old account (after you have admin privileges and have logged back in to your account).

A final word of advice is to avoid using an OS installation from a previous owner, and instead use a freshly formatted one for yourself. Granted in your situation you do not have the resources to do this effectively, but I recommend it ASAP when you do get the chance.

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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Report: FAMU ignored rules before hazing death

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. The findings from a year-long investigation show that Florida A&M University officials failed to follow state laws and regulations on hazing.

A 32-page report released Friday concludes that the school lacked internal controls to prevent or detect hazing.

The report comes from the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system.

It ordered the investigation after the death of FAMU band drum major Robert Champion 13 months ago.

Champion died after he was beaten by fellow members of FAMU's famed Marching 100 band during a hazing ritual aboard a charter bus.

The report comes the same month that a regional accrediting organization placed the school on probation for 12 months. The university has one year to prove it is turning itself around or could have its accreditation revoked.

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'Mom' Loses Russian Girl Weeks From Adoption

After a roller coaster week, Kendra Skaggs sat down to vent on her blog. She had used that space to document her 13 month journey of adopting a young girl named Polina from Russia. But now, with that dream just weeks away from fulfillment, she described her frustration, fear and anger as she watched it being snatched away.

"I have no control. I'm on the other side of the world and I can't hold and comfort my daughter as I wait to hear if we will forever be separated," she wrote in a passionate entry

Her writing seemed to speak for hundreds of American parents whose hopes of adopting a Russian orphan were dashed today when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a controversial ban on adoptions to the United States. The move is part of Russia's retaliation for a set of human rights sanctions passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Obama earlier this month. Critics, including the U.S. State Department, say the adoption ban is playing politics with the lives of children.

Russia is the third most popular country for Americans to adopt from, but in recent years the issue has become a political football in Russia. Americans have adopted over 60,000 Russian children since the fall of the Soviet Union, but Russian officials have seized on the cases of 19 children who died after being adopted by Americans.

Soccer Player Kick-Starts New Career After Viral Video Watch Video

In 2010, a 7-year-old adopted boy named Artyom was put on a plane back to Russia alone by his adoptive mother from Tennessee with little more than a note saying she did not want him anymore. The case touched off a wave of fury in Russia and adoptions to the United States were nearly halted.

The Many Adventures of Vladimir Putin

Just a week ago Kendra and her husband visited Polina at her orphanage outside Moscow. The bubbly 5-year-old suffers from spina bifida, a condition that has left her numb from the waist down and unable to walk. They showed Polina photos of her new bedroom and told her about her new family. They played together, hugged each other, and promised to see each other soon when they returned in January to bring her home to Arkansas.

The adoption ban legislation, meanwhile, had just been introduced by Russian lawmakers. Kendra had hoped their case, which was nearly completed, would sneak in under the wire. She held out hope again after a Moscow court approved her adoption on Monday. All that was needed was a 30 day waiting period before they could bring Polina home.

It appears even that was too late. The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, but Russian officials have said even cases of 52 children who are within weeks of traveling to the United States are now frozen. Authorities have pledged to find new homes for them in Russia.

For the Skaggs family, it is agonizing to be so close to bringing her home, yet so far. Kendra fears Polina will think she was abandoned again.

"It's the fear of what she is going to think, that we forgot her," she said in an interview with ABC News.

"She's out there and I can't take care of her," she said, crying softly. "I can't help her. I can't tell her I love her. So it's really hard."

She also worries what will happen to Polina in Russia, a country with scarce accommodations for the handicapped.

"Russia really isn't set up for people with disabilities. You can't get into the metro even to get around because it's just levels and levels of stairs that you have to go up and down and there's no handicapped access to the buildings," Kendra said.

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Syria opposition leader rejects Moscow invitation

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's opposition leader has rejected an invitation from Russia for peace talks, dealing another blow to international hopes that diplomacy can be resurrected to end a 21-month civil war.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's main international protector, said on Friday it had sent an invitation for a visit to Moaz Alkhatib, whose six-week-old National Coalition opposition group has been recognized by most Western and Arab states as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

But in an interview on Al Jazeera television, Alkhatib said he had already ruled out such a trip and wanted an apology from Moscow for its support for Assad.

"We have clearly said we will not go to Moscow. We could meet in an Arab country if there was a clear agenda," he said.

"Now we also want an apology from (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov because all this time he said that the people will decide their destiny, without foreign intervention. Russia is intervening and meanwhile all these massacres of the Syrian people have happened, treated as if they were a picnic."

"If we don't represent the Syrian people, why do they invite us?" Alkhatib said. "And if we do represent the Syrian people why doesn't Russia respond and issue a clear condemnation of the barbarity of the regime and make a clear call for Assad to step down? This is the basic condition for any negotiations."

With the rebels advancing steadily over the second half of 2012, diplomats have been searching for months for signs that Moscow's willingness to protect Assad is faltering.

So far Russia has stuck to its position that rebels must negotiate with Assad's government, which has ruled since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

"I think a realistic and detailed assessment of the situation inside Syria will prompt reasonable opposition members to seek ways to start a political dialogue," Lavrov said on Friday.

That was immediately dismissed by the opposition: "The coalition is ready for political talks with anyone ... but it will not negotiate with the Assad regime," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told Reuters. "Everything can happen after the Assad regime and all its foundations have gone. After that we can sit down with all Syrians to set out the future."

BRAHIMI TO MOSCOW

Russia says it is behind the efforts of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, fresh from a five-day trip to Damascus where he met Assad. Brahimi, due in Moscow for talks on Saturday, is touting a months-old peace plan for a transitional government.

That U.N. plan was long seen as a dead letter, foundering from the outset over the question of whether the transitional body would include Assad or his allies. Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, quit in frustration shortly after negotiating it.

But with rebels having seized control of large sections of the country in recent months, Russia and the United States have been working with Brahimi to resurrect the plan as the only internationally recognized diplomatic negotiating track.

Russia's Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who announced the invitation to Alkhatib, said further talks were scheduled between the "three B's" - himself, Brahimi and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

Speaking in Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government with "all the powers of the state", a phrase interpreted by the opposition as potentially signaling tolerance of Assad remaining in some ceremonial role.

But such a plan is anathema to the surging rebels, who now believe they can drive Assad out with a military victory, despite long being outgunned by his forces.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told reporters at his headquarters there.

Oqaidi said the rebels want Assad and his allies tried in Syria for crimes. Assad himself says he will stay on and fight to the death if necessary.

In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up cartoons showing Brahimi speaking to a news conference with toilet bowls in front of him, in place of microphones. Banners denounced the U.N. envoy with obscenities in English.

DIPLOMATS IMPOTENT

Diplomacy has largely been irrelevant to the conflict so far, with Western states ruling out military intervention like the NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year, and Russia and China blocking U.N. action against Assad.

Meanwhile, the fighting has grown fiercer and more sectarian, with rebels mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority battling Assad's government and allied militia dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Still, Western diplomats have repeatedly touted signs of a change in policy from Russia, which they hope could prove decisive, much as Moscow's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Bogdanov said earlier this month that Assad's forces were losing ground and rebels might win the war, but Russia has since rowed back, with Lavrov last week reiterating Moscow's position that neither side could win through force.

Still, some Moscow-based analysts see the Kremlin coming to accept it must adapt to the possibility of rebel victory.

"As the situation changes on the battlefield, more incentives emerge for seeking a way to stop the military action and move to a phase of political regulation," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Meanwhile, on the ground the bloodshed that has killed some 44,000 people continues unabated. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, 150 people were killed on Thursday, a typical toll as fighting has escalated in recent months.

Government war planes bombarded the town of Assal al-Ward in the Qalamoun district of Damascus province for the first time, killing one person and wounding dozens, the observatory said.

In Aleppo, Syria's northern commercial hub, clashes took place between rebel fighters and army forces around an air force intelligence building in the Zahra quarter, a neighborhood that has been surrounded by rebels for weeks.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Dominic Evans in Beirut and Steve Gutterman and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Egypt's Mubarak back in hospital as health worsens

CAIRO: Egypt's state prosecutor on Thursday ordered imprisoned former dictator Hosni Mubarak transferred to a military hospital after his health deteriorated, a source at the prosecutor's office said.

Mubarak, serving a life sentence over the killings of protesters, was briefly taken to hospital on December 19 for scans after he fell in his prison bathroom and hurt his head.

Mubarak, 84, will be returned to prison after he is treated, the source said.

A court sentenced the veteran strongman to life in June for failing to prevent the killings of protesters during the 18-day revolt that ended his three-decade rule in February 2011. Some 850 people died in the uprising.

Since his fall from power, Mubarak's health has appeared to deteriorate significantly, and he has suffered repeated health scares.

He spent nearly a month in hospital after he fell unconscious on June 19, with state media declaring him clinically dead on arrival. Medical sources however said he appeared to have fallen into a temporary coma.

During his time in power, the subject of his health was very much off-limits.

In 2004, he underwent surgery in Germany for a slipped disc, and he returned to Germany in March 2010 for the removal of his gall bladder and a growth on the small intestine.

During his time in power, he survived 10 attempts on his life.

-AFP/ac

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BlueStacks for Mac quietly moves to beta

(Credit:
BlueStacks)

After launching to public alpha back in June of this year, BlueStacks for Mac today advances to beta. This means that
Mac users are one step closer to accessing a chunk of Google Play's
Android-apps catalog on their Apple-made desktops and laptops.

Earlier this year, BlueStacks made headlines when it won the Best of CES software award for bringing its powers to
Windows 8. The program successfully showcased a swathe of Android apps on Microsoft's newest OS and was even announced to come pre-installed on select Windows 8 machines.

BlueStacks Beta for Mac is available now for free download.

Related stories

• BlueStacks ports Android apps to Mac


• BlueStacks goes Metro with Windows 8


• Latest BlueStacks ARMs your PC

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Free gun training offered to 200 Utah teachers

(CBS/AP) SALT LAKE CITY - Gun rights advocates plan to offer gun training for 200 Utah teachers Thursday, saying that classroom teachers could stop school shootings by carrying concealed weapons.

The Utah Shooting Sports Council said it would waive its $50 fee for concealed-weapons training for the teachers. Instruction featuring plastic guns is set to begin at noon Thursday inside a conference room at Maverick Center, a hockey arena in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Valley.

It's an idea gaining traction in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shooting. In Ohio, the Buckeye Firearms Association said it was launching a test program in tactical firearms training for 24 teachers initially.

Educators say Utah legislators left them with no choice but to accept some guns in schools. State law forbids schools, districts or college campuses from trying to impose their own gun restrictions. Utah is among few states that let people carry licensed concealed weapons into public schools without exception, the National Conference of State Legislatures said in a 2012 compendium of state gun laws.

"Schools are some of the safest places in the world, but I think teachers understand that something has changed -- the sanctity of schools has changed," said Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, the state's leading gun lobby. "Mass shootings may still be rare, but that doesn't help you when the monster comes in."

Gun-rights advocates say teachers can act more quickly than law enforcement in the critical first few minutes to protect children from the kind of shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. In Arizona, Attorney General Tom Horne has proposed amending state law to allow one educator in each school to carry a gun.

"We're not suggesting that teachers roam the halls" for an armed intruder, Aposhian said. "They should lock down the classroom. But a gun is one more option if the shooter" breaks into a classroom.

He said a major emphasis of the safety training is that people facing deadly threats should announce they have a gun and retreat or take cover before trying to shoot.

Utah educators say they would ban guns if they could and have no way of knowing how many teachers are armed. Gun-rights advocates estimate that 1 percent of Utah teachers or 240 are licensed to carry concealed weapons. It's not known how many pack guns at school.

"It's a terrible idea," said Carol Lear, a chief lawyer for the Utah Office of Education, who argues teachers could be overpowered for their guns or misfire or cause an accidental shooting. "It's a horrible, terrible, no-good, rotten idea."

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