Danny Puff

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) Fans clamoring for the video game "BioShock Infinite," the highly anticipated spiritual successor to the landmark "BioShock," will have to wait a bit longer, but it should be worth the wait.

At a media preview of the game this past week at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, creative director Ken Levine said "Infinite" is now scheduled for release on March 26, 2013, so the developers can do further polishing. It had initially been set for release in October, then delayed to Feb. 26.

Just like the original, "Infinite" begins at a lighthouse. The video game's protagonist, an ex-Pinkerton agent named Booker DeWitt, ascends the beacon in 1912 before he's transported through the sky to the city of Columbia, a floating World's Fair that looks like a twisted version of a Norman Rockwell painting. DeWitt's been sent to this American haven to rescue a young woman named Elizabeth.

While "Infinite" very much handles like the original 2007 game, it's simultaneously feels different.

After spending a few hours with the beginning of "Infinite" and talking with Levine, it's evident the developers at Irrational Games have labored over forging a new path with "Infinite," all the while staying true to what helped make the original "BioShock" sell more than 5 million copies and achieve critical acclaim.

Here are five ways "Infinite" will be different from its predecessor:

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SKY'S THE LIMIT

Unlike the claustrophobic undersea enclave of Rapture, the richly detailed setting of the first two "BioShock" games, Columbia is drastically more open, requiring new tactics for players to take down foes with a combination of guns and powers called "vigors." One named "Devil's Kiss," for instance, can transform DeWitt's hand into a grenade launcher.

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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Before he's permitted to enter Columbia, DeWitt must submit to a baptism in a watery church by the believers of Father Comstock, the bearded ultra-nationalist leader of Columbia who is revered as a prophet by much of the city's population. Columbia's religious overtones are in stark contrast to Rapture's boozy confines.

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TALKING HEADS

DeWitt and Elizabeth aren't strong silent types. Unlike the mostly mum protagonists of the previous "BioShock" games, these two continually converse with both each other and other characters. Levine said the most challenging part of crafting "Infinite" was writing all that dialogue, so much so that he had to hire other writers to work on the game.

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REVITALIZATION

There are no Vita-Chambers to resurrect DeWitt when he bites it. Instead, he'll have to step through the front door of a dreamy rendition of his office back home to return to Columbia. Once he rescues Elizabeth, she'll attempt to keep her new protector healed with medical supplies and jab him with a needle when he goes down in battle to save him from death.

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RACE RELATIONS

Equality isn't lifting up Columbia. There's restrooms marked for blacks and Irish, and at the beginning of "Infinite," when De Witt is first infiltrating the city in the clouds, he must choose whether he goes along with a hostile crowd and attack an interracial couple, stand up for them simply do nothing. If he assists, the pair will help him out later in the game.

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Online:

http://www.bioshockinfinite.com

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

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CAIRO (AP) Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets after Friday midday prayers in rival rallies and marches across Cairo, as the standoff deepened over what opponents call the Islamist president's power grab, raising the specter of more violence.

President Mohammed Morsi responded to bloody clashes outside his palace with a fiery speech denouncing his opponents, deepening the crisis. The opposition turned down his appeal for talks, saying the president had not fulfilled their conditions for beginning negotiations.

Protesters are demanding that Morsi rescind decrees that give him almost absolute power and push an Islamist-friendly constitution to a referendum on Dec. 15. The decrees sparked a crisis that has boiled for more than two weeks. Demonstrations have reached the size and intensity of those that brought down President Hosni Mubarak early last year.

In a televised address late Thursday, an angry Morsi refused to call off the vote on the disputed constitution. He accused some in the opposition of serving remnants of Mubarak's regime and vowed he would never tolerate anyone working for the overthrow of his government.

He also invited the opposition to a dialogue starting Saturday at his palace, but he gave no sign that he might offer any meaningful concessions. Morsi's opponents replied they would not talk until Morsi cancels his decrees.

The president's remarks were his first comments to the public after bloody clashes outside his palace on Wednesday, when thousands of his backers from the Muslim Brotherhood fought with the president's opponents. Six people were killed and at least 700 injured.

The speech brought shouts of "the people want to topple the regime!" from the crowd of 30,000 Morsi opponents gathered outside his palace the same chant heard in the protests that brought down Mubarak.

Since the crisis erupted, the opposition has tried to forge a united front. The squabbling groups created a National Salvation Front to bring them together, naming Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the country's top reform campaigner, as its leader.

Speaking on the new umbrella group's behalf, ElBaradei responded to Morsi's speech in his own televised remarks, saying that Morsi's government showed reluctance in acting to stop Wednesday night's bloodshed outside the palace. He said this failure has eroded the government's legitimacy and made it difficult for his opposition front to negotiate with the president.

ElBaradei said Morsi has not responded to the opposition group's attempts to "rescue the country" and that the president had "closed the door for dialogue" by "ignoring the demands of the people."

After Friday prayers, protesters began marching to the palace from several different directions.

The April 6 movement, which played a key role in sparking the uprising against Mubarak, called its supporters to gather at mosques in Cairo and the neighboring city of Giza to march to the palace. They termed Friday's march a "red card" for Morsi, a reference to a football referee sending a player off the field for a serious violation.

Egypt's military intervened on Thursday for the first time, posting tanks around the palace and stringing barbed wire.

Also on Friday morning, thousands of Brotherhood members gathered in Cairo outside the mosque of Al-Azhar, Egypt's most respected Islamic institution, for the funeral of two members of the fundamentalist group who were killed during Wednesday's clashes.

During the funeral, thousands Islamist mourners chanted, "with blood and soul, we redeem Islam," pumping their fists in the air. "Egypt is Islamic, it will not be secular, it will not be liberal," they chanted as they walked in a funeral procession that filled streets around Al-Azhar mosque.

Ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis are organizing their own rally Friday against what they say is biased coverage of the crisis by private Egyptian satellite TV channels.

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Additional reporting from Associated Press writer Maggie Michael.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Prince William's pregnant wife Kate left the King Edward VII hospital in central London on Thursday where she had spent four days being treated for acute morning sickness.

Accompanied by her husband, Kate, 30, appeared at the steps of the hospital smiling and holding a bouquet of yellow flowers. Neither she nor William spoke to waiting reporters before being driven way.

Kate, who married the second-in-line to the throne in April last year, has been suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum, an acute morning sickness which causes severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients.

There has been no announcement about when the baby is due, although the prince's spokesman has said Kate is less than 12 weeks pregnant.

Kate, known formally as the Duchess of Cambridge, will now recuperate at Kensington Palace, a royal residence in west London, her husband's office said.

"She is feeling better but now requires a period of rest," a royal spokeswoman said. "Their royal highnesses would like to thank the staff at the hospital for the care and treatment the duchess has received," the spokeswoman added.

The onset of the severe sickness and the need for Kate to go to hospital brought forward the announcement of her pregnancy, sparking a frenzy in the British media and even taking by surprise her grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, according to reports.

Bookmakers have been quick off the mark to lay odds on a name for the unborn baby, who will be third in line to the British throne after William and his father Charles.

The government is passing legislation in time for the birth to change historic rules of succession so that males no longer have precedence over a female sibling.

There has even been speculation that Kate could be carrying twins, as the acute sickness she is suffering is slightly more common in twin pregnancies.

World leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama were swift to follow British Prime Minister David Cameron in sending their congratulations.

(Reporting by Tim Castle and Stephen Addison, editing by Paul Casciato)

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SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics squared off again in court on Thursday, as the iPhone maker tried to convince a U.S. district judge to ban sales of a number of the South Korean company's devices and defended its $1.05 billion jury award.

Apple scored a sweeping legal victory in August at the conclusion of its landmark case against its arch-foe, when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad and awarded it damages.

Both sides re-convened on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh listened to a range of arguments on topics from setting aside the jury's findings on liability to alleged juror misconduct and the requested injunction.

The hearing concluded with Koh promising to rule at a later date.

Twenty-four of Samsung's smartphones were found to have infringed on Apple's patents, while two of Samsung's tablets were cleared of similar allegations.

Koh began by questioning the basis for some of the damages awarded by the jury, putting Apple's lawyers on the defensive.

"I don't see how you can evaluate the aggregate verdict without looking at the pieces," Koh said.

Samsung's lawyers argued the ruling against it should be "reverse engineered" to be sure the $1.05 billion was legally arrived at by the jury and said that on that basis, the amount should be slashed. Apple countered that the ruling was reasonable.

"Assuming I disagree with you, what do I do about Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, and Gem?" Koh asked Apple's lawyers, referring to the jury's calculation of damages regarding some of Samsung's devices.

FIERCEST RIVAL

Samsung is Apple's fiercest global business rival and their battle for consumers' allegiance is helping shape the landscape of the booming smartphone and tablet industry -- a fight that has claimed several high-profile victims, including Nokia.

While the trial was deemed a resounding victory for Apple, the company has since seen its market value shrink as uncertainty grows about its ability to continue fending off an assault by Samsung and other Google Inc Android gadgets on its home turf.

Apple's stock has nosedived 18 percent since the August 24 verdict, while Samsung's has gained around 16 percent.

Most of the devices facing injunction are older and, in some cases, out of the market.

Such injunctions have been key for companies trying to increase their leverage in courtroom patent fights.

In October, a U.S. appeals court overturned a pretrial sales ban against Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone, dealing a setback to Apple's battle against Google Inc's increasingly popular mobile software.

Some analysts say Apple's willingness to license patents to Taiwan's HTC could convince Koh it does not need the injunction, as the two companies could arrive at a licensing deal.

Apple is also attempting to add more than $500 million to the $1 billion judgment because the jury found Samsung willfully infringed on its patents. A Samsung lawyer argued against willful damages and said the base amount for calculating any potential willful damages should be just $10 million.

Samsung wants the verdict overturned, saying the jury foreman did not disclose that he was once in litigation with Seagate Technology, a company that Samsung has invested in.

"He should have been excused for cause," said Samsung lawyer Charles Verhoeven. "Such a juror was a juror in name only."

The juror misconduct charge is "unlikely to have much traction," said Christopher Carani, a partner at Chicago-based intellectual property law firm McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd.

Both Apple and Samsung have filed separate lawsuits covering newer products, including the Samsung Galaxy Note II. That case is pending in U.S. District Court in San Jose and is set for trial in 2014.

(Reporting By Noel Randewich; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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The spike in concern over Syrias stockpile of chemical weapons stems in part from worries that an increasingly desperate President Bashar al-Assad might use them against advancing rebel forces in the countrys 21-month-old civil war.

But Mr. Assad also might be sending a different signal to the US and the international community, analysts say. By ordering activity at chemical weapons sites, Assad could be reminding the international powers demanding his departure that his fall would likely be followed by chaos in which radical Islamists could get their hands on Syrias weapons of mass destruction.

By far the greater threat is that the state collapses, with the threat of terrorists getting their hands on these weapons, says Charles Blair, an expert at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington.

Are you smarter than a US diplomat? Take our Foreign Service Exam.

US officials claim that the Syrian military has gone as far as loading precursor chemicals for the nerve gas sarin into bombs, NBC News reported Thursday. Their use would have serious consequences for the Assad regime. President Obama repeated this week that any use of the weapons by Syria is a red line for the United States.

The fate of Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons is something that concerns the US. Earlier this year, a Pentagon report concluded that it would take 70,000 troops to find and secure Syria's known stockpiles, Mr. Blair notes.

Publicly, Syrian officials maintain that the Assad regime would never use chemical weapons against the Syrian people. On Thursday, one member of the regime, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Maqdad, told Lebanese television that the United States and some European States were fabricating the chemical-weapons scare to create a pretext for intervention in the conflict.

US officials have to consider all the possible motivations behind Assads actions, military experts say. But some are confident the US would act preemptively if it was convinced that Assad was on the verge of launching a chemical attack.

If [the US] had knowledge of them loading these weapons onto planes, theyd go in and take them out right away, Id expect to see that, says Lawrence Korb, a defense analyst at the Center for American Progress in Washington. The problem is that youd have to have very good intelligence on where to go to get them.

But Blair says he can envision a range of ways the US might respond to a chemical attack.

The fast route, he says, would be to launch a punitive strike in retaliation and to try to take out Assad. The longer route, he adds, might be to return to the United Nations Security Council to get support for international intervention support Russia and China have denied so far.

Theres such a taboo against chemical-weapons use that youd have to assume that Russia and China would no longer block UN action, he says.

Another question is what the international community would do to aid the victims of an attack. Blair says treatment does exist for the effects of some of the chemical agents Syria is thought to possess depending on the severity of the impact. But nobody knows for sure that Syria has chemical weapons, or exactly what they have if they do possess them, he says.

The most treatable victims would be those that had quick access to international assistance in other words, the victims of an attack near one of Syrias borders. But Blair adds that such a step would almost certainly lead to outside intervention, starting with the country for example, Turkey whose border was affected by the attack.

Still, Blair is far from convinced that Assad would ever use the weapons saying that doing so would be suicidal, something Syrian officials acknowledge.

Assad may be up to something else altogether, Mr. Korb says: He might be using this as a bargaining chip to win himself free passage out of the country.

Are you smarter than a US diplomat? Take our Foreign Service Exam.

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Are you smarter than a US diplomat? Take our Foreign Service Exam. How deadly would chemical weapons in Syria be? Syria: first state with WMDs to topple? (+video) Syrian rebels riding momentum to Damascus Read this story at csmonitor.com

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Facebook has sent all its users an email this week about a vote on its proposed changes to Data Use Policy - the site's term for its privacy policy. The dry, quietly worded email is more significant than it sounds.Unless 300 million people (a third of Facebooks users) vote against by Monday 8pm GMT, the networking giant will no longer allow users to vote on policy changes.The move has caused concern among privacy groups, who say its impossible for 300 million to vote in the time period, and that users are worried that their voices will no longer be heard.

[Related: Apple shares plunge - 22B wiped off value] So far, the vote stands at less than half a million, but is around six to one against the new Statement of Rights and Data Usage Policy. The wording of the vote itself is not a simple 'Yes' or 'No' to vote against, users have to select, Existing Documents: The current SRR and Data Use Policy, as opposed to Proposed Documents: The proposed SRR and Data Use PolicyThe voting page is here.Privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation's Activism Director Rainey Reitman says, "The voting system currently in place doesn't work; it is simply impossible to get 30% of the users (300 million individuals) to vote on anything on Facebook within 30 days.The overwhelming majority of users participating in the vote right now are voting against removing the voting system.""We believe this shows that Facebook users are concerned that their voices will not be heard, and do not want to lose the ability have a say in site governance. While the vote may never end up binding Facebook, voters are sending a message about a serious concern, and one we hope Facebook respects and responds to.Facebook claims that the change is to streamline 'voting' in favour of a system that allows "meaningful feedback".Elliot Schrage, Vice-President of Communications said, "Were proposing to end the voting component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement."The site says, "Voting will end on December 10 at 8:00PM. If more than 30% of all active registered users vote, the results will be binding. If turnout is less than 30%, the vote will be advisory."

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WASHINGTON (AP) A month after the bitterly fought election, President Barack Obama has his highest approval ratings since the killing of Osama bin Laden, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll, and more Americans say the nation is heading in the right direction now than at any time since the start of his first term.

Obama's approval rating stands at 57 percent, the highest since May 2011, when U.S. Navy SEALs killed the terror leader, and up 5 percentage points from before the election. And 42 percent say the country is on the right track, up from 35 percent in January 2009.

A majority think it's likely that the president will be able to improve the economy in his second term.

"Compared to the alternative, I'm more optimistic about government and the economy with him in office," said Jack Reinholt, an independent from Bristol, R.I., who backed Obama in 2008 and again in 2012. "I feel he has the better path laid out."

Still, four years of partisan conflict in Washington have taken a toll on the president's image.

"I'm less enthusiastic about him than the first time he was elected," Reinholt added.

Americans are divided on what kind of president Obama has been, with 37 percent saying he's been above average or outstanding and 36 percent describing his tenure as below average or poor. Another quarter say he's been just average.

Obama held much stronger numbers on this measure at the start of his first term, with two-thirds expecting an above-average presidency. And the public's take on Obama's relative performance has bounced back and forth over his four years in office, moving higher following the death of bin Laden, after declining in the summer of 2010, a few months before the GOP took back control of the House.

Looking ahead to Obama's final four years, most Americans doubt he can reduce the federal budget deficit. But almost 7 in 10 say he will be able to implement the health care law passed in March 2010 and remove most troops from Afghanistan. And most think he'll be able to improve the economy and boost race relations in his final term, though both those figures are down significantly from January 2009.

About a quarter say the economy is in good shape in the new poll, similar to pre-election poll results, but optimism about the economy has dipped since before the election. In October, 52 percent of Americans said they expected the economy to get better in the next year; now, that stands at 40 percent. Among Republicans, the share saying the economy will improve in the coming year has dropped sharply since before the election, from 42 percent in October to 16 percent now.

"The economy, if left alone, will gradually improve because of our people wanting to better themselves and make more money," said Bobby Jordan, 76, a Romney voter from Green Valley, Ariz. "They're going to be doing things to improve their own position, which will collectively mean the economy will gradually get a little better. But (Obama's) not doing anything to improve the economy."

Overall, the public gives Democrats the advantage on handling the economy, 45 percent saying they trust the president's party to do a better job on it, 39 percent favoring Republicans.

As Obama took office four years ago, Republicans were mostly optimistic about his chances for improving the economy, with nearly 7 in 10 saying it was likely the new president could improve it in his first four years in office. Now, just 21 percent of Republicans feel the next four years are that promising. Independents, too, have grown skeptical about Obama's ability to turn around the economy. About three-quarters thought he could fix it in 2009; just a third do now.

Those sharp partisan divides in expectations are represented in the president's approval ratings. About 9 in 10 Democrats say they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, compared with just 2 in 10 Republicans. That gap approaches the 82-point partisan gap in George W. Bush's approval ratings according to Gallup polling in December 2004.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 3 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,002 adults nationwide. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

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EDITOR'S NOTE Jennifer Agiesta is director of polling for The Associated Press.

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Associated Press News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writer Stacy A. Anderson contributed to this report.

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Online:

AP-GfK Poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) In Claus Guth's haunting new production of Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande," the characters move as if in a trance between two worlds both of them unrelentingly bleak.

The French composer's only completed opera, starring baritone Christian Gerhaher and soprano Christiane Karg in the title roles, was seen Thursday night in the seventh of eight performances by the Frankfurt Opera this fall. The final one is Saturday night.

The story, adapted by Maurice Maeterlinck from his own symbolist play, sounds straightforward when reduced to its elements: Golaud, grandson of King Arkel, meets a mysterious, much younger woman, marries her and brings her home to his family's castle. She and his half-brother, Pelleas, fall in love, and Golaud's suspicions that they are having an affair (apparently unfounded) lead him to murder his rival. Melisande dies after giving birth to Golaud's child.

But in Maeterlinck's world nothing is quite what it seems, and as the characters wander through the story, their words, feelings and motivations are often impossible to pin down. Debussy captures this atmosphere of dreamy uncertainty and shifting reality with a score whose chromaticism continually eludes the musical resolution of traditional key structure.

Guth, a German director known for his radical reinterpretations of operatic texts, has conceived the action as split between the concrete world of the castle and an abstract world beyond its walls.

Set designer Christian Schmidt turns Castle Allemonde into a modern two-story mansion, tastefully furnished but cold and charmless. Indoor scenes alternate with those that take place outdoors, represented as darkest night on a bare stage, with only the singers and shadowy figures faintly visible in the background, along with a silvery glitter that intermittently falls from the sky.

Inside the castle, we're often viewing as many as four rooms at once, with characters drifting through the dwelling like zombies. Sometimes the castle revolves slowly on a turntable, opening up even more space and leading the characters into the dark void outside.

This allows Guth to achieve some brilliant effects, as in the chilling scene in which Golaud forces his young son, Yniold, to spy on his wife and brother. Typically this scene is played at the base of a tower with Melisande's window visible up high. But Guth starts the action with Golaud and his son in the dining room, while Melisande is alone in her bedroom above them, gazing out her window.

As Golaud becomes insistent that Yniold tell him what he knows, Pelleas enters the house and goes upstairs to join Melisande. Then the set revolves to take us outdoors, and all that's left of the lovers is their shadow visible through the window. It's this image that Yniold reports seeing when Golaud lifts him up on his shoulders and the fact that we see it too and have watched it taking shape lends it an extra measure of creepiness and makes us feel almost like voyeurs.

Guth perhaps gives way to a touch of sentimentality when, after Melisande dies, her spirit leaves the house and walks outside through a suddenly sun-drenched open door. But the revolving set soon shows her plunged back into darkness, just like those shadowy figures we have seen earlier. One of them emerges toward her and it's the ghost of Pelleas but the two don't embrace or even touch, just pass each other slowly, his arm extended toward her as the opera ends.

Gerhaher, a noted lieder singer, has just added Pelleas to his short list of operatic roles, and it's a terrific fit. Diffident and bespectacled at the start, he removes his glasses and pours out his love for Melisande in his final scene with achingly beautiful tone. Karg, petite and stealing puffs from a cigarette whenever she can, is a provocative Melisande, and her plaintive, slightly tremulous soprano adds to her enigmatic air.

Bass-baritone Paul Gay makes the tormented Golaud a figure both terrifying and pitiable, and he sings with commanding vehemence, though a few high notes test his upper range. Contralto Hilary Summers brings rich tone and incisive delivery to the role of his mother, Genevieve, while bass Alfred Reiter is a sonorous Arkel (who kisses Melisande with a lot more than grandfatherly affection). The orchestra, under conductor Friedemann Layer, plays the long, difficult score with delicacy and depth of feeling.

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SEATTLE (AP) Hundreds of same-sex couples across Washington state started picking up marriage licenses Thursday as a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage took effect.

King County, the state's largest, opened the doors to its auditor's office in Seattle just after midnight to start distributing licenses. But hundreds of people had lined up hours earlier, snaking around the building on a chilly December night. The county said it issued 489 marriage licenses Thursday, mostly to same-sex couples, breaking a previous daily record of 212. On average, King County issues 75 to 100 marriage licenses a day.

The mood in Seattle was festive in the overnight waiting line.

"We waited a long time. We've been together 35 years, never thinking we'd get a legal marriage. Now I feel so joyous I can't hardly stand it," said 85-year-old Pete-e Petersen, who with her partner, 77-year-old Jane Abbott Lighty, were the first to get a license.

After meeting 35 years ago on a blind date in Sacramento, Lighty and Petersen plan to get married Sunday. The couple has been out buying shoes and clothes for the wedding.

Washington state now joins several other states that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed. Gov. Chris Gregoire and Secretary of State Sam Reed certified the election results of Referendum 74 on Wednesday afternoon, and the law took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

R-74 had asked voters to either approve or reject the state law legalizing same-sex marriage that legislators passed earlier this year. That law was signed by Gregoire in February but was put on hold pending the outcome of the election. Nearly 54 percent of voters approved the measure.

The law doesn't require religious organizations or churches to marry gay or lesbian couples.

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday. Same-sex couples who previously were married in another state that allows gay marriage, like Massachusetts, will not have to get remarried in Washington state. Their marriages became valid here Thursday, when the law took effect.

Vicky Dalton, the Spokane County auditor, was designated as a point person for all of the counties preparing for same-sex marriage licenses. She said that as of 4 p.m. Thursday, more than 760 marriage licenses had been issued statewide to same-sex couples, with more than half of them being issued in King County.

At the Thurston County courthouse Thursday morning, Deb Dulaney, 54, and Diane McGee, 64, both of Olympia, arrived just before 9 a.m. The couple have been together for 16 years and moved to Washington state in 2005 from California, where they were registered as domestic partners.

McGee said they wanted to get married there but were unable to before voters passed 2008's Proposition 8, the amendment that outlawed gay marriage after it had been approved by court ruling. A federal court has since struck down Prop. 8, but an appeal on that case is still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dulaney and McGee registered as domestic partners in Seattle in 2005, and then through the state when the state's domestic partnership law passed in 2007. Now they wanted to take that final step of marriage. They haven't set a wedding date but said a simple service is planned within the 60 days that their license is valid.

"I feel much more moved by it than I thought I would," Dulaney said. "I thought we were just going to come here, get the paperwork and go home. But now, it's like, 'whoa.'"

"It's for real now," McGee told her.

Last month, Washington, Maine and Maryland became the first states to pass same-sex marriage by popular vote. They joined six other states New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia, which had already enacted laws or issued court rulings permitting same-sex marriage.

Couples in Maryland also started picking up marriage licenses Thursday, though their licenses won't take effect until Jan. 1.

"I really imagined my life as being just with a partner and never having a wife, so to have this day come about and to be a part of it, it means everything to me," said Kim Hinken, who was the first person to get a marriage license in Anne Arundel County, Md.'s Circuit Court. The 52-year-old Edgewater resident said she has waited nearly 10 years to become legally married to Adrianne Eathorne.

Maine's law takes effect Dec. 29. There's no waiting period in Maine, and people can start marrying just after midnight.

In addition to private ceremonies that will start taking place across Washington state this weekend, Seattle City Hall will open for several hours Sunday, and several local judges are donating their time to marry more than 140 couples starting at 10 a.m. In Olympia, a group of local judges has offered to perform wedding ceremonies just after midnight on Sunday at the Thurston County courthouse.

Washington state has had a domestic partnership law in place since 2007. The initial law granted couples about two dozen rights, including hospital visitation and inheritance rights when there is no will. It was expanded a year later, and then again in 2009, when lawmakers completed the package with the so-called "everything but marriage" law that was ultimately upheld by voters later that year.

This year, lawmakers passed the law allowing gay marriage, and Gregoire signed it in February. Opponents gathered enough signatures for a referendum, putting the law on hold before it could take effect.

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La Corte reported from Olympia. Associated Press Brian Witte also contributed from Annapolis, Md.

Follow La Corte at http://www.twitter.com/RachelAPOly or http://www.facebook.com/news.rachel and Manuel Valdes at https://twitter.com/ByManuelValdes .

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WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) Actor Stephen Baldwin was charged Thursday with failing to pay New York state taxes for three years, amassing a $350,000 debt.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Baldwin, of Upper Grandview, skipped his taxes in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was freed without bail. His lawyer, Russell Yankwitt, said Baldwin should not have been charged.

"Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crimes, and he's working with the district attorney's office and the New York State Tax Department to resolve any differences," Yankwitt said.

The district attorney said Baldwin could face up to four years in prison if convicted. The actor is due back in court on Feb. 5.

Zugibe said Baldwin owes more than $350,000 in tax and penalties.

"We cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes," the district attorney said. "The defendant's repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years contributes to the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and in our schools."

Thomas Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said, "It is rare and unfortunate for a personal income tax case to require such strong enforcement measures."

Baldwin, 46, starred in 1995's "The Usual Suspects" and appeared in 1989's "Born on the Fourth of July." He is scheduled to appear in March on NBC's "The Celebrity Apprentice."

His brothers Alec, William and Daniel are also actors.

A bankruptcy filing in 2009 said Stephen Baldwin owed $1.2 million on two mortgages, $1 million in taxes and $70,000 on credit cards.

In October, Baldwin pleaded guilty in Manhattan to unlicensed driving and was ordered to pay a $75 fine. Earlier this year, he lost a $17 million civil case in New Orleans after claiming that actor Kevin Costner and a business partner duped him in a deal related to the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The actors and others had formed a company that marketed devices that separate oil from water.

Baldwin co-hosts a radio show with conservative talk figure Kevin McCullough.

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