China moves to right wrongs in city Bo once ruled

BEIJING (AP) — With China's new leaders freshly installed in power, authorities are turning their attention to tying up loose ends in the sprawling, scandal-ridden city once ruled by populist politician Bo Xilai before his downfall buffeted the leadership transition.

In the past two weeks, authorities in Chongqing released a village official who had been sent to a labor camp for criticizing Bo. A lawyer disbarred after being convicted of having one of his clients lie in court has filed a petition for wrongful imprisonment. Meanwhile, a newspaper reported that hundreds of police officers who had been dismissed, demoted or otherwise punished were being quietly reinstated.

While the acts are being done piecemeal — the authoritarian government dislikes setting precedents — they show the leadership's determination to quietly redress excesses of Bo's four years in power in the southwestern metropolis.

Many in Chongqing are breathing easier too after Bo's rocky reign, which won praise for an organized crime crackdown and promotion of communist culture and then widespread scorn as his career unraveled in seamy accusations of murder and corruption.

"I feel that this redress is necessary," Wang Kang, an outspoken scholar in Chongqing, said in a phone interview. "This was a burden that was left in Chongqing. This burden must be removed so that Chongqing can breathe a sigh of relief."

Chongqing, a breathtaking city of skyscrapers hugging steep hills along the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, has been portrayed as rife with cover-ups, power abuse and corruption under Bo and his police chief, Wang Lijun, in court documents. Since their removal, Bo's wife has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a British businessman and Wang given 15 years for corruption and covering up the murder. Bo awaits trial after the Communist Party purged him for obstruction of justice, corruption and sexual liaisons with numerous women.

The scandal exacerbated already divisive politicking for spots in the new Communist leadership, which culminated at a party congress last month. A new party secretary was chosen for Chongqing, a former agriculture minister known as a consensus-builder. In widely quoted remarks just days into his post, Sun Zhengcai said he was "resolutely opposed to the vulgar, extravagant, degenerate and depraved way of life."

Bo brooked no dissent when in charge. He and Wang used the anti-gang crusade not only to go after organized crime but, according to victims, to cashier critics in the bureaucracy, jail rivals and pressure businessmen into steering deals toward Bo's supporters. A campaign to sing revolutionary songs also intimidated critics, reminding many of the radical excesses of Mao Zedong's rule when he was worshipped as a god.

"Wang Lijun was a law unto himself. If he didn't like the way you looked he would arrest you on the spot," Li Zhuang, the disbarred lawyer, said in remarks posted on the website of the state-run Global Times.

Li, a defense attorney known for his toughness, was jailed for 1 ½ years after his mafia boss client claimed Li told him to say police tortured him. Li's prosecution marked a turning point when many educated Chinese began to suspect that Bo's anti-mafia efforts had gone too far.

Li submitted a petition to Chongqing court authorities demanding a thorough investigation of his case. Last week, officials from the court and city prosecutor's office met with him for informal discussions about his petition, Li said in a phone interview.

Ren Jianyu, an official in a village on Chongqing's outskirts, criticized the Maoist revival campaign on the Internet and then was sentenced without trial to two years in a labor camp. Among the 1,000 other inmates in the labor camp were about a half-dozen like him, in for political crimes.

But then late last month, 15 months into his sentence, Ren was released; no reason given.

"Now that we are no longer living under such a state of high pressure, for us who have been attacked and persecuted, things are comparatively better," Ren said. He has filed an appeal against his sentence to clear his name.

Meanwhile, the Southern Weekend newspaper reported that police in Chongqing were quietly rehabilitating and making restitution to around 900 police officers in Chongqing who had been fired, demoted or otherwise unjustly treated. Li, the former attorney, said Wang wanted to make sure only officers he could trust remained in the force and so purged anyone suspect.

A Chongqing police spokesman who would only give his surname, Deng, said police have been handling such appeals on the basis of "seeking truth from facts."

"Mistakes must be corrected," said Deng, who refused to provide any other details and repeatedly hung up when further questions were asked.

How far authorities will go to redress the wrongs of the Bo period remain to be seen. In the past, the government has been reluctant to offer wholesale amnesties. Although the crime of counter-revolution was dropped from the criminal code in the '90s, those serving time did not receive a blanket release.

Ren, the former village official, said he would only believe real change had come if his appeal against his sentence was successful.

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Four Things Google’s Nexus 4 Has in Common with the iPhone 4

Besides being each company’s flagship smartphone (and having the number 4 in their names), Google‘s new Nexus 4 and the 2010 iPhone 4 have a fair bit in common with each other.

This could be a good thing, if you remember just how popular the iPhone 4 was. Unfortunately, in this case it’s more of a bad thing, and hearkens back to “Antennagate” and the iPhone 4′s other problems. Do any of these features remind you of anything?

​A glass back

With the iPhone 5, Apple finally moved from a crack- and scratch-prone glass backplate to a solid, aluminum unibody construction. Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the former may have been a bad idea, however, and the Nexus 4 has a sparkly glass back surface.

While sparkly things obviously have their fans, the Nexus 4′s chassis also seems to lean towards the brittle side. Joshua Topolsky, who reviewed the Nexus 4 for The Verge, managed to crack the glass when he accidentally knocked his phone off the table. Meanwhile, Droid-Life’s Kellex found that setting the phone on a stone countertop caused its glass back to fracture in two.

​No 4G

Even Topolsky’s glowing review of the Nexus 4 said “It feels slow,” and “There’s simply no way to ignore this deficit.” That’s because, like the iPhone 4, the Nexus 4 lacks a 4G radio (even though it has the chip to support one if it had it).

The iPhone 4, however, was released in 2010, when 4G was still a new thing and the Android “superphones” which supported it had enormous screens and horrible battery life. Today, even the iPhone has 4G. Possibly because of bad blood between Google and the wireless carriers, which appear to resent Google’s selling phones unsubsidized and sans “customizations,” the Nexus 4 does not.

​Selling out fast

Every one of Apple’s iPhone models has sold out faster, and more dramatically, than the one before. Google’s Android devices, in contrast, haven’t tended to do so … although the new Nexus smartphones and tablets are starting to have this problem.

How bad is it? After Google finally got a new wave of Nexus 4s up for sale, they sold out in about a half-hour. Google claims that it hasn’t actually sold out, but even if you spotted the Nexus 4 on Google Play, chances are you ran into technical glitches which kept it out of your shopping cart. Tipster “Syko Pompos” told the Android Police blog how to get around this and place your order, but expect to wait months to receive it.

​Public relations nightmares

It hasn’t quite reached Antennagate levels yet, perhaps partly because the Nexus brand isn’t as well-known as the iPhone (the iPhone 4′s antenna problems were actually shared by many smartphones). But most of the press coverage of the Nexus 4 lately has been about how you can’t get one. Or else, how if you want one you’ll have to either buy it on contract or pay a lot more to get it unsubsidized from T-Mobile.

On the plus side (for the Nexus), this problem is only partly caused by the Google Play store’s technical errors. The biggest reason it’s taking so long to get out to people is, like with the iPhone 4, simply how popular it is.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Additional copies of 'Lincoln' headed to theaters

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Lincoln" is marching to more movie theaters.

Disney, which distributed the DreamWorks film, is making additional prints of director Steven Spielberg's historical saga starring Daniel Day-Lewis to meet an unexpected demand that has left some moviegoers in Alaska out in the cold.

"To say that we're encouraged by the results to date or that they've exceeded our expectations is an understatement," said Dave Hollis, head of distribution at the Walt Disney Co. "We're in the midst of making additional prints to accommodate demand and will have them available to our partners in exhibition by mid-December for what we hope will be a great run through the holiday and awards corridor."

The film, which opened in wide release Nov. 9 and has earned $83.6 million in North America so far, has been unavailable at some smaller venues, such as the Gross Alaska theaters in Juneau.

But the extra prints are coming a little too late to fit the movie into the five-screen Glacier Cinemas theater during the holiday season, said Kenny Solomon-Gross, general manager of the Gross Alaska, which runs two theaters in Juneau and one in Ketchikan, Alaska.

"When we had the room for 'Lincoln,' Disney didn't have a copy for us," Solomon-Gross said Monday.

His film lineup is pretty booked through the end of the year, and he probably can't screen "Lincoln" until after the first of the new year. Yes, the excitement over the film will have dimmed, but then the Academy Awards season will be stirring up, he said. That should kick up the buzz.

In the meantime, Solomon-Gross plans to head to Las Vegas this week and catch the film there.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang . Associated Press writer Rachel D'Oro in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://www.thelincolnmovie.com

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Fossil fuel subsidies in focus at climate talks

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Hassan al-Kubaisi considers it a gift from above that drivers in oil- and gas-rich Qatar only have to pay $1 per gallon at the pump.

"Thank God that our country is an oil producer and the price of gasoline is one of the lowest," al-Kubaisi said, filling up his Toyota Land Cruiser at a gas station in Doha. "God has given us a blessing."

To those looking for a global response to climate change, it's more like a curse.

Qatar — the host of U.N. climate talks that entered their final week Monday — is among dozens of countries that keep gas prices artificially low through subsidies that exceeded $500 billion globally last year. Renewable energy worldwide received six times less support — an imbalance that is just starting to earn attention in the divisive negotiations on curbing the carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet.

"We need to stop funding the problem, and start funding the solution," said Steve Kretzmann, of Oil Change International, an advocacy group for clean energy.

His group presented research Monday showing that in addition to the fuel subsidies in developing countries, rich nations in 2011 gave more than $58 billion in tax breaks and other production subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. figure was $13 billion.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has calculated that removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 percent by 2050.

Yet the argument is just recently gaining traction in climate negotiations, which in two decades have failed to halt the rising temperatures that are melting Arctic ice, raising sea levels and shifting weather patterns with impacts on droughts and floods.

In Doha, the talks have been slowed by wrangling over financial aid to help poor countries cope with global warming and how to divide carbon emissions rights until 2020 when a new planned climate treaty is supposed to enter force. Calls are now intensifying to include fossil fuel subsidies as a key part of the discussion.

"I think it is manifestly clear ... that this is a massive missing piece of the climate change jigsaw puzzle," said Tim Groser, New Zealand's minister for climate change.

He is spearheading an initiative backed by Scandinavian countries and some developing countries to put fuel subsidies on the agenda in various forums, citing the U.N. talks as a "natural home" for the debate.

The G-20 called for their elimination in 2009, and the issue also came up at the U.N. earth summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. Frustrated that not much has happened since, European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Monday she planned to raise the issue with environment ministers on the sidelines of the talks in Doha.

Many developing countries are positive toward phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, not just to protect the climate but to balance budgets. Subsidies introduced as a form of welfare benefit decades ago have become an increasing burden to many countries as oil prices soar.

"We are reviewing the subsidy periodically in the context of the total economy for Qatar," the tiny Persian gulf country's energy minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, told reporters Monday.

Qatar's National Development Strategy 2011-2016 states it more bluntly, saying fuel subsides are "at odds with the aspirations" and sustainability objectives of the wealthy emirate.

The problem is that getting rid of them comes with a heavy political price.

When Jordan raised fuel prices last month, angry crowds poured into the streets, torching police cars, government offices and private banks in the most sustained protests to hit the country since the start of the Arab unrest. One person was killed and 75 others were injured in the violence.

Nigeria, Indonesia, India and Sudan have also seen violent protests this year as governments tried to bring fuel prices closer to market rates.

Iran has used a phased approach to lift fuel subsidies over the past several years, but its pump prices remain among the cheapest in the world.

"People perceive it as something that the government is taking away from them," said Kretzmann. "The trick is we need to do it in a way that doesn't harm the poor."

The International Energy Agency found in 2010 that fuel subsidies are not an effective measure against poverty because only 8 percent of such subsidies reached the bottom 20 percent of income earners.

The IEA, which only looked at consumption subsidies, this year said they "remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, where momentum toward their reform appears to have been lost."

In the U.S., environmental groups say fossil fuel subsidies include tax breaks, the foreign tax credit and the credit for production of nonconventional fuels.

Industry groups, like the Independent Petroleum Association of America, are against removing such support, saying that would harm smaller companies, rather than the big oil giants.

In Doha, Mohammed Adow, a climate activist with Christian Aid, called all fuel subsidies "reckless and dangerous," but described removing subsidies on the production side as "low-hanging fruit" for governments if they are serious about dealing with climate change.

"It's going to oil and coal companies that don't need it in the first place," he said.

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Associated Press writers Abdullah Rebhy in Doha, Qatar, and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report

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Karl Ritter can be reached at www.twitter.com/karl_ritter

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GOP moves on fiscal cliff, WH dismisses it

WASHINGTON—Fiscal negotiations in Washington moved forward Monday as Republicans offered a new proposal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. The White House dismissed the proposal as an unbalanced effort that would hurt the middle class.

The GOP plan included $800 billion in new government revenue by eliminating tax code write-offs while extending current tax rates for all income levels. President Barack Obama has insisted that tax rates for high earners must be hiked.

Republicans estimated they could save $300 billion by cutting discretionary spending, $600 billion in "health savings," $200 billion in changes to the consumer price index and another $300 billion in mandatory spending.

"This is another attempt to jump-start substantive, good-faith negotiations toward a bipartisan solution that can be enacted soon, a stark contrast to the unserious proposal the White House put forward last week," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement accompanying the proposal's release.

Boehner based his proposal on a plan former President Bill Clinton's chief of staff Erskine Bowles presented last year to Congress' Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. But Bowles rejected the comparison Monday, saying in a statement that when he presented a plan to the committee he "simply took the mid-point of the public offers put forward during the negotiations to demonstrate where I thought a deal could be reached at that time."

Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a plan to Capitol Hill on behalf of the White House calling for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years plus $400 billion in savings in entitlement programs. The proposal was flatly rejected by Republicans, who oppose any effort to end tax cuts for the nation's highest earners and advocate deeper spending cuts, particularly in entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

[Political junkie? Sign up for the Yahoo! News Daily Ticket newsletter today]

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer slammed the GOP proposal.

"The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill," Pfeiffer said in a statement Monday. "Their plan ... provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve."

The president took to Twitter on Monday to boost grass-roots support for his plan to end George W. Bush-era tax cuts for high-income earners—families who annually earn $250,000 or more.

"High end tax cuts do least for economic growth & cost almost $1T," Obama tweeted during Monday's chat in response to a question about why the president doesn't favor maintaining low tax rates for everyone. "Extending middle class cuts boosts consumer demand & growth," the president added.

Both parties have been engaging in a public campaign to pressure each other as Congress is forced to come to an agreement before the Jan. 1 deadline when automatic spending cuts and tax increases will go into effect. Each side has accused the other of holding up a potential deal.

Chris Moody and Olivier Knox contributed to this story.

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Pakistani Hindus protest destruction of temple

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani Hindus Sunday protested the destruction of a Hindu temple in the southern port city of Karachi. The temple was razed, along with some nearby homes, by a builder.

Minority Hindus have complained of increasing harassment and discrimination in Muslim-dominated Pakistan in recent years, including the destruction or desecration of their places of worship.

Residents and members of the Hindu community said Sunday a builder with a police escort razed the small temple in one of the older neighborhoods of Karachi, along with some surrounding buildings.

The outer walls and roof of the temple were demolished, and rubble was strewn about the area. Local residents told an AP reporter on the scene that authorities took statues and artifacts out of the building before it was destroyed.

One of the longtime residents, 75-year-old Kali Das, said he was born in the area and remembers when the temple, called Sri Rama Peer Naval, was built. He said more than a hundred families lived nearby and prayed at the temple.

Residents protested at the Karachi Press Club on Sunday, demanding compensation as well as the return of religious materials they said were taken during the incident.

Ramesh Kumar Vankwani from the Pakistan Hindu Council said there is a long-running legal dispute between the builder and residents over the land, but it belongs to the Hindu residents.

Zeenat Ahmad, who runs the department in charge of military land, said a court order allowed some of the buildings to be razed. A Pakistani police officer, Parvez Iqbal, denied anything was taken.

The military owns vast tracts of land in Karachi and other parts of the country.

Vankwani said the incident was another example of the problems Hindus are facing in Pakistan. Hindus complain that girls are forcibly converted to Islam, there is no legal recognition for Hindu marriages, and Hindus are discriminated against when it comes to access to government jobs or schooling.

"Every month there is an incident, like taking property of Hindu people or forced conversion of Hindu girls," he said.

During partition in 1947, the violent separation of Pakistan and India into separate countries, hundreds of thousands of Hindus decided to migrate to India, where Hinduism is the dominant religion. Those who remained and their descendants now make up a tiny fraction of Pakistan's estimated 190 million citizens. Most live in Sindh province in the southern part of the country.

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Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Islamabad contributed.

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Here’s How to Turn Nicki Minaj into Jay-Z

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: It’s Sort of Fun Watching Pippa Middleton Squirm

This is silly, but it’s Friday and a unicorn lair has been found in North Korea, rendering all other silliness moot. But the folks over at Reddit seem to dig the idea of slowing down Nicki Minaj’s songs so much that they sound like an over-enunciating Jay-Z. And well, it’s oddly relaxing: 

RELATED: ‘Roseanne’ Predicted Internet Addiction; A Weather Alert from Hell

RELATED: The Honey Boo Boo Nature Special; Everyone’s Favorite Sleepwalking Mom

Another week has passed by and we still haven’t figured out the Fiscal Cliff situation. Let’s fix it—and not just because we want to avoid getting downgraded (again). Because honestly, we just don’t think CNBC’s Rick Santelli can make it another two weeks: 

RELATED: Cookie Monster Takes a Bite Out of ‘Call Me Maybe’

RELATED: Paul Ryan Was In a Band Called Steak Baby

James Lipton, let’s hang out: 

Finally, it’s Friday. What are you still doing here?  Go enjoy the weekend or something or … watch this video of a husky which sort of sounds like Dame Edna at time imitating a baby until 6 p.m. rolls around: 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Young down by boardwalk for benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young said Sunday that he couldn't see performing in the area devastated by Superstorm Sandy without doing something to help people who were affected by it.

Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, will hold a benefit concert for the American Red Cross' storm relief effort Thursday at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. The New Jersey coastline areas were hit hard by the storm in late October.

People in the New York area who suffered damage in the storm have been supporting him for 40 years, he said.

"I couldn't see coming back here and just playing and have it be business as usual," he said. Young is touring in the area, with concerts scheduled for Monday in Brooklyn and Tuesday in Bridgeport, Conn.

Minimum ticket prices for the standing-room show in Atlantic City will be $75 and $150, although Young notes there's no maximum. He hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Red Cross.

Young said he was invited to join the Dec. 12 benefit at New York's Madison Square Garden that will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Who, Kanye West and others, but had other obligations. Besides, there's enough star power there, he said.

"It wasn't going to make much difference whether I was there or not, so I decided to go someplace where I could make a difference," he said.

Young performed at a televised benefit in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, memorably covering John Lennon's "Imagine."

Fans can expect a two-hour plus rock show on Thursday with opening band Everest. No special guests are planned, although Young issued an invitation to "anyone who wants to come in and play with us that we know and we know can play."

It's hard to resist wondering whether Young's epic "Like a Hurricane" will make it onto the set list, given the occasion.

"Anything's possible," Young said. "We have the equipment."

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Asperger's dropped from revised diagnosis manual

CHICAGO (AP) — The now familiar term "Asperger's disorder" is being dropped. And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD. But "dyslexia" and other learning disorders remain.

The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the diagnostic guide used by the nation's psychiatrists. Changes were approved Saturday.

Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.

This diagnostic guide "defines what constellations of symptoms" doctors recognize as mental disorders, said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor. More important, he said, it "shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care."

Olfson was not involved in the revision process. The changes were approved Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., by the psychiatric association's board of trustees.

The aim is not to expand the number of people diagnosed with mental illness, but to ensure that affected children and adults are more accurately diagnosed so they can get the most appropriate treatment, said Dr. David Kupfer. He chaired the task force in charge of revising the manual and is a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

One of the most hotly argued changes was how to define the various ranges of autism. Some advocates opposed the idea of dropping the specific diagnosis for Asperger's disorder. People with that disorder often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on narrow subjects but lack social skills. Some who have the condition embrace their quirkiness and vow to continue to use the label.

And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services.

But the revision will not affect their education services, experts say.

The new manual adds the term "autism spectrum disorder," which already is used by many experts in the field. Asperger's disorder will be dropped and incorporated under that umbrella diagnosis. The new category will include kids with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, as well as those with milder forms.

Kelli Gibson of Battle Creek, Mich., who has four sons with various forms of autism, said Saturday she welcomes the change. Her boys all had different labels in the old diagnostic manual, including a 14-year-old with Asperger's.

"To give it separate names never made sense to me," Gibson said. "To me, my children all had autism."

Three of her boys receive special education services in public school; the fourth is enrolled in a school for disabled children. The new autism diagnosis won't affect those services, Gibson said. She also has a 3-year-old daughter without autism.

People with dyslexia also were closely watching for the new updated doctors' guide. Many with the reading disorder did not want their diagnosis to be dropped. And it won't be. Instead, the new manual will have a broader learning disorder category to cover several conditions including dyslexia, which causes difficulty understanding letters and recognizing written words.

The trustees on Saturday made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several work groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses.

The revised guidebook "represents a significant step forward for the field. It will improve our ability to accurately diagnose psychiatric disorders," Dr. David Fassler, the group's treasurer and a University of Vermont psychiatry professor, said after the vote.

The shorthand name for the new edition, the organization's fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is DSM-5. Group leaders said specifics won't be disclosed until the manual is published but they confirmed some changes. A 2000 edition of the manual made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994.

Olfson said the manual "seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 ... there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders."

Catherine Lord, an autism expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York who was on the psychiatric group's autism task force, said anyone who met criteria for Asperger's in the old manual would be included in the new diagnosis.

One reason for the change is that some states and school systems don't provide services for children and adults with Asperger's, or provide fewer services than those given an autism diagnosis, she said.

Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said small studies have suggested the new criteria will be effective. But she said it will be crucial to monitor so that children don't lose services.

Other changes include:

—A new diagnosis for severe recurrent temper tantrums — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Critics say it will medicalize kids' who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings and affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums.

—Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner .

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Indefinite strike: Egypt's anti-Morsi rebellion of judges is complete

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's rebellion of the judges against President Mohammed Morsi became complete on Sunday with the country's highest court declaring an open-ended strike on the day it was supposed to rule on the legitimacy of two key assemblies controlled by allies of the Islamist leader.

The strike by the Supreme Constitutional Court and opposition plans to march on the presidential palace on Tuesday take the country's latest political crisis to a level not seen in the nearly two years of turmoil since Hosni Mubarak's ouster in a popular uprising.

Judges from the country's highest appeals court and its sister lower court were already on an indefinite strike, joining colleagues from other tribunals who suspended work last week to protest what they saw as Morsi's assault on the judiciary.

The last time Egypt had an all-out strike by the judiciary was in 1919, when judges joined an uprising against British colonial rule.

The standoff began when Morsi issued decrees on Nov. 22 giving him near-absolute powers that granted himself and the Islamist-dominated assembly drafting the new constitution immunity from the courts.

The constitutional panel then raced in a marathon session last week to vote on the charter's 236 clauses without the participation of liberal and Christian members. The fast-track hearing pre-empted a decision from the Supreme Constitutional Court that was widely expected to dissolve the constituent assembly.

The judges on Sunday postponed their ruling on that case just before they went on strike.

Without a functioning justice system, Egypt will be plunged even deeper into turmoil. It has already seen a dramatic surge in crime after the uprising, while state authority is being challenged in many aspects of life and the courts are burdened by a massive backlog of cases.

"The country cannot function for long like this, something has to give," said Negad Borai, a private law firm director and a rights activist. 'We are in a country without courts of law and a president with all the powers in his hands. This is a clear-cut dictatorial climate," he said.

Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, a rights lawyer, said the strike by the judges will impact everything from divorce and theft to financial disputes that, in some cases, could involve foreign investors.

"Ordinary citizens affected by the strike will become curious about the details of the current political crisis and could possibly make a choice to join the protests," he said.

The Judges Club, a union with 9,500 members, said late Sunday that judges would not, as customary, oversee the national referendum Morsi called for Dec. 15 on the draft constitution hammered out and hurriedly voted on last week.

The absence of their oversight would raise more questions about the validity of the vote. If the draft is passed in the referendum, parliamentary elections are to follow two months later and they too may not have judicial supervision.

The judges say they will remain on strike until Morsi rescinds his decrees, which the Egyptian leader said were temporary and needed to protect the nation's path to democratic rule.

For now, however, Morsi has to contend with the fury of the judiciary.

The constitutional court called Sunday "the Egyptian judiciary's blackest day on record."

It described the scene outside the Nile-side court complex, where thousands of Islamist demonstrators gathered since the early morning hours carrying banners denouncing the tribunal and some of its judges.

A statement by the court, which swore Morsi into office on June 30, said its judges approached the complex but turned back when they saw the protesters blocking entrances and climbing over its fences. They feared for their safety, it added.

"The judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court were left with no choice but to announce to the glorious people of Egypt that they cannot carry out their sacred mission in this charged atmosphere," said the statement, which was carried by state news agency MENA.

Supporters of Morsi, who hails from the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, claim that the court's judges remain loyal to Mubarak, who appointed them, and accuse them of trying to derail Egypt's transition to democratic rule.

In addition to the high court's expected ruling Sunday on the legitimacy of the constitution-drafting panel, it was also expected to rule on another body dominated by Morsi supporters, parliament's upper chamber.

Though Morsi's Nov. 22 decrees provide immunity to both bodies against the courts, a ruling that declares the two illegitimate would have vast symbolic significance, casting doubt on the standing of both.

The Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, sought to justify the action of its supporters outside the court as a peaceful protest. It reiterated its charge that some members of the judiciary were part and parcel of Mubarak's autocratic policies.

"The wrong practices by a minority of judges and their preoccupation with politics ... will not take away the respect people have for the judiciary," it said.

Its explanation, however, failed to calm the anger felt by many activists and politicians.

"President Morsi must take responsibility before the entire world for terrorizing the judiciary," veteran rights campaigner and opposition leader Abdel-Halim Kandil wrote in his Twitter account about the events outside the constitutional court.

Liberal activist and former lawmaker Amr Hamzawy warned what is ahead may be worse.

"The president and his group (the Muslim Brotherhood) are leading Egypt into a period of darkness par excellence," he said. "He made a dictatorial decision to hold a referendum on an illegal constitution that divides society, then a siege of the judiciary to terrorize it."

Egypt has been rocked by several bouts of unrest, some violent, since Mubarak was forced to step down in the face of a popular uprising. But the current one is probably the worst.

Morsi's decrees gave him powers that none of his four predecessors since the ouster of the monarchy 60 years ago ever had. Opposition leaders countered that he turned himself into a new "pharaoh" and a dictator even worse than his immediate predecessor Mubarak.

Then, following his order, the constituent assembly rushed a vote on the draft constitution in an all-night session.

The draft has a new article that seeks to define what the "principles" of Islamic law are by pointing to theological doctrines and their rules. Another new article states that Egypt's most respected Islamic institution, Al-Azhar, must be consulted on any matters related to Shariah law, a measure critics fear could lead to oversight of legislation by clerics.

Rights groups have pointed out that virtually the only references to women relate to the home and family, that the new charter uses overly broad language with respect to the state protecting "ethics and morals" and fails to outlaw gender discrimination.

At times the process appeared slap-dash, with fixes to missing phrasing and even several entirely new articles proposed, written and voted on in the hours just before sunrise.

The decrees and the vote on the constitution draft galvanized the fractured, mostly secular opposition, with senior leaders setting aside differences and egos to form a united front in the face of Morsi, whose offer on Saturday for a national dialogue is yet to find takers.

The opposition brought out at least 200,000 protesters to Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday and a comparable number Friday to press demands that the decrees be rescinded. The Islamists responded Saturday with massive rallies in Cairo and across much of Egypt.

The opposition is raising the stakes with plans to march on Morsi' palace on Tuesday, a move last seen on Feb. 11, 2011 when tens of thousands of protesters marched from Tahrir Square to Mubarak's palace in the Heliopolis district to force him out. Mubarak stepped down that day, but Morsi is highly unlikely to follow suit on Tuesday.

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