Danny Puff

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) The mother of a gunman who fatally shot five people in Santa Monica once said the shooter's father had threatened to kill her at least twice during years of turmoil in the family, according to court records obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

"'If I had a gun it would be over,'" Randa Abdou quoted her husband in a 1998 document seeking a temporary restraining order.

The mother of John Zawahri also said her husband had threatened to take their two young sons to Canada after the couple separated, and that he once punched her and stole her jewelry, purse, and unfiled divorce papers.

Authorities said the gunman, John Zawahri, 23, shot his 55-year-old father, Samir Zawahri, and his 25-year-old brother, Christopher Zawahri, on Friday, leaving their home in flames before shooting at strangers in cars and on the Santa Monica College campus during a 15-minute rampage.

The former student at the school was heavily armed and carried a duffel bag with 1,300 rounds of ammunition when officers killed him in the campus library.

Randa Abdou cut short a visit with family in Lebanon to return to Los Angeles on Sunday and had spoken with investigators who hoped she could provide clues to what sparked the violence.

Neighbor Beverly Meadows said she spoke with Abdou on the phone on Monday and was told Abdou was in mourning and concerned about those who were hurt.

"She is very, very fragile right now, and at this point in time, everybody else is gone," Meadows said.

Abdou has not spoken to the media.

"Please respect the fact that this woman is devastated," Meadows said. "She is absolutely overwhelmed and she doesn't know how to process it. She sounds like she's done nothing but cry. ... She still feels like maybe she should have done something."

Santa Monica College reopened on Monday for final exams and for students to recover backpacks, cars and other items left behind when they fled the violence. Extra security and counselors were on hand but the library where Zawahri was shot by police remained closed.

Zawahri enrolled at Santa Monica College in winter 2009 and last attended in fall 2010, sporadically taking classes in the entertainment technology program, which involves game design, animation and computer skills for digital media, the college said.

A statement said the college had no disciplinary issues with Zawahri.

Zawahri killed his father and brother at a home near the campus then opened fire on strangers as he made his way to the college, where police fatally shot him in the library.

Investigators were still trying to determine what prompted the attack and if it might have involved some type of mental illness.

Zawahri's parents married in 1985, and his father brought his family to the neighborhood of small homes and apartment buildings tucked up against Interstate 10 in the mid-1990s, according to property records.

When Zawahri was 9, his now-separated mother sought the restraining order.

In the 1998 document, Abdou said she left Lebanon and joined her husband in the U.S. five years after their wedding, and the couple "have had marital troubles ever since."

Her estranged husband had been "verbally abusive and controlling," she stated, adding that she was afraid he might do something "drastic because he seems to become increasingly angry and frustrated over our separation."

Abdou said her husband has "followed me, struck me, taken the children without telling me, and entered my apartment without my permission and removed photographs."

He once came to the apartment and told her that he was going to take the children to Canada, she said.

"The defendant said that he would do anything to make my life miserable and that he could kill me and no restraining order can stop him," she said.

Her husband waited for her at work once, and when she pulled up in a car with a friend, he struck her in the arm, pulled her hair, took gold bracelets, her purse and unfiled divorce papers, she said.

She was afraid to press charges, she added, because he scared her and she didn't want to enrage him further. "The defendant has told me that life means nothing to him if we are not together," she said.

Abdou asked the court to order the return of her property, including her green card, and to grant her custody of the couple's two sons pending a court hearing.

However, her request for a restraining order was dismissed when she missed the hearing.

She wrote that she was afraid to notify him of the restraining order, saying "I do not know how he would react to the notice."

Court records indicated that Samir Zawahri filed for divorce in 1993, but it was never finalized.

Five years later, when Abdou filed court papers for the restraining order, she noted that no divorce was pending, but she indicated that she had been in the process of filling out divorce papers. It's unclear if the couple ever divorced.

Public records show that Abdou had sold her portion of the family home to Samir Zawahri in 2002. The sale was finalized the following year.

Thomas O'Rourke, a neighbor of Samir Zawahri, said the couple did divorce, with one son living with each parent.

A candlelight vigil for victims was planned Monday evening outside the library.

Earlier, campus police Chief Albert Vasquez identified a woman fatally shot outside the library as Margarita Gomez, 68, of Santa Monica, a non-student who was known for collecting recyclables at the site.

Kelly Williams, 19, said she was nervous about coming to campus to take a psychology final but felt better once she saw a police car parked outside.

"It's kind of scary because it just happened and you don't know if it will happen again," she said.

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Associated Press writers Anthony McCartney and Robert Jablon contributed to this story.

Tami Abdollah can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/latams

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Microsoft has its head in the cloud with Xbox One.

The company focused on how cloud computing will make games for its next-generation Xbox One console more immersive during its Monday presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming industry's annual trade show. Microsoft announced last week that the successor to the Xbox 360 must be connected to the Internet every 24 hours to operate, and the system would ideally always be online.

"The platform features and capabilities exclusive to Xbox One allow developers to push the boundaries of creativity and take gaming in completely new directions," Microsoft Vice President Phil Harrison told the crowd at University of Southern California's Galen Center.

The upcoming console's cloud computing capabilities were demonstrated by fleshing out dense environments in third-person open-world games like the zombie-fighting sequel "Dead Rising 3" and cartoony shooter "Sunset Overdrive." The racing simulator "Forza MotorSport 5" introduced a feature called "drivatar," which mimics players' driving styles and allows their "drivatars" to play for them offline.

"There's ability to put things in the cloud that you want to have computed, so you can take some of the computing capability that you might require locally or used to require locally and then have CPUs in the cloud that actually do some background work for the game," explained Phil Spencer, Microsoft Studios' vice president. "You're actually augmenting the power of the box that's sitting right in your living room."

Microsoft revealed the console, which it has billed as an "all-in-one" entertainment solution for living rooms, will be released in November and cost $499. The company debuted the console earlier this year at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. The initial reactions to the device have been mixed.

Other games coming to Xbox One include the historical third-person game "Ryse: Son of Rome," hard-knuckled brawler "Killer Instinct," a bigger edition of "Minecraft," terra-forming simulator "Project Spark" and a new installment of the sci-fi shooter series "Halo."

Monday's flashy event concluded with the debut of the mech-heavy multiplayer shooter "Titanfall," the first game from Respawn Entertainment, which was founded by "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" creators Vince Zampella and Jason West.

The company said it was doing away with its Microsoft points system for online purchases with its Xbox Live online service, opting instead for local currency.

Microsoft didn't address concerns at Monday's event over connectivity, used games and privacy issues with the Xbox One, which will feature a new version of its camera-based Kinect sensor. In a blog post on Microsoft's site Thursday ahead of E3, the company outlined more details about the console, including restrictions on how previously played or used games could be shared and how frequently the Xbox One must be online.

"For people who are in a completely disconnected state, I think (Xbox) 360 is definitely a great content base for them and a great console, and we'll continue to invest in that," Spencer said after the event.

Microsoft Corp. kicked off Monday's presentation by revealing the Xbox 360 is getting a makeover with a design inspired by the Xbox One.

Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's vice president of marketing and strategy, said the updated Xbox 360 is "smaller, sleeker and as quiet as ever." He added it would be available beginning Monday.

The company boasted that hundreds of new games are still coming to Xbox 360, which was originally released eight years ago as the high-definition successor to the Xbox. Microsoft's Xbox 360 has outsold rivals like the Wii and PlayStation 3 from Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. for the past two years. It has sold more than 76 million Xbox 360 units.

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AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this report. Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang .

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Online:

http://www.xbox.com

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Apple is throwing out most of the real-world graphical cues from its iPhone and iPad software, like the casino-green "felt" of its Game Center app, in what it calls the biggest update since the iPhone's launch in 2007.

The new operating system, called iOS 7, strives for a clean, simple, translucent look. Apple is redesigning all its applications and icons to conform to the new look, driven by long-time hardware design chief Jony Ive.

Apple demonstrated the new software at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The new design direction was widely expected and will show up on iPhones, iPad and iPod Touches this fall, the company said.

The software strives for a multi-layered look, with translucent panels. On the main screen, the background image moves subtly with the movement of the phone, creating an illusion of depth. Other screens are padded out with plenty of white space.

The software has "a whole new structure that is coherent and is applied across the entire system," Ive said in a recorded presentation. "The design recedes, and in doing so, elevates your content."

While design modifications could help Apple distinguish its devices from rival phones and tablets, they risk alienating longtime users.

Microsoft's radical makeover of the Windows operating system in October was meant to give the company a stronger presence on tablet computers, but it ended up confusing many people who had become accustomed to using the old operating system on traditional desktops and laptops. Research firm IDC blamed Windows 8 for accelerating a decline in PC sales.

Among other changes, Apple's new iOS system will update apps automatically. It will store Web passwords online in Apple's syncing service, iCloud, making them available across devices. The AirDrop feature will allow sharing of big files with Apple-equipped people in the same room.

Apple took a jab at its rival, Samsung Electronics Co., which had been touting its Galaxy phones as better than iPhones because they sport near-field communication chips that allow people to share files by bumping phones together.

"No need to wander around the room bumping your phone with others," said Craig Federighi, senior vice president for software engineering.

The company also stepped up its rivalry with Google, maker of the Android software on Samsung and other phones. Apple said the Siri virtual assistant will use searches from Microsoft's Bing, Google's rival. Apple also is bringing its mapping service to desktops and laptops to compete with Google Maps and others.

The Cupertino, Calif., company is also launching a Pandora-like Internet radio service, iTunes Radio. It will be built into the Music app and stream music for free. There will be advertising, except for people who pay $25 a year for the iTunes Match online music storage.

Apple was a pioneer of online music sales and is still a leader in that field, but streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify have emerged as popular alternatives to buying. Pandora relies on its users being connected to the Internet at all times and plays songs at random within certain genres for free.

Last month, rival Google Inc. started an on-demand subscription music service called All Access that gives subscribers the ability to pick and choose specific songs and albums from a catalog of millions for playback on computers, tablets and smartphones in exchange for a monthly fee.

Apple updates its iOS operating system every year and doesn't charge for the updates. The new operating system will be available for the iPhone 4 and later models, and on the iPad 2 and later models, including the Mini. The launch of the new software traditionally coincides roughly with the launch of the year's new iPhone model.

Also at the conference, which runs through Friday, Apple revealed that it's switching from its more than decade-long practice of naming its Mac operating system updates after big cats. Instead, it's paying homage to the geography of its home state. Federighi says the next version of Mac OS X will be called Mavericks, after an undersea rock formation that produces big waves near Half Moon Bay, Calif.

The new operating system will extend battery life and shorten boot-up times, Federighi told the audience of software developers. The system improves support for multiple displays and imports the tab concept from Web browsers to the Finder file-organizer.

The software update will include iBooks for the first time, giving people who buy e-books from Apple a way to display them on the computer screen in addition to the iPhone and iPad. Competing e-book vendors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble have cross-platform applications already.

There have been nine OS X versions named after big cats. The latest was Mountain Lion, released last year.

"We do not want to be the first software release in history to be delayed by a lack of cats," Federighi joked.

He said the new software will be out in the fall.

Apple also revealed a complete revamp of the Mac Pro, the boxy desktop model that's the work horse of graphics and film professionals. The new model is a black cylinder, one eighth the volume of the old box.

The current Mac Pro is the only Mac with internal hardware that can easily be modified and expanded by the user, but that possibility disappears with the new model. The company is adopting the same compact, one-piece design present in the Mac Mini and iMac.

The new Mac Pro will be the first Mac to be assembled in the U.S. in many years. CEO Tim Cook promised last year that the company would start a production line in the U.S., but didn't say where. Apple said the new computer will launch later this year.

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Peter Svensson reported from New York.

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Online:

Apple: http://www.apple.com

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WASHINGTON (AP) A 29-year-old intelligence contractor who claims to have worked at the National Security Agency and the CIA allowed himself to be revealed Sunday as the source of disclosures about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs, risking prosecution by the U.S. government.

The leaks have reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy concerns versus heightened measure to protect against terrorist attacks, and led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation into the leaks.

The Guardian, the first paper to disclose the documents, said it was publishing the identity of Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, at his own request.

"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," Snowden told the newspaper.

Stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post published over the last week revealed two surveillance programs, and both published interviews with Snowden on Sunday.

One of them is a phone records monitoring program in which the NSA gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records each day, creating a database through which it can learn whether terror suspects have been in contact with people in the U.S. The Obama administration says the NSA program does not listen to actual conversations.

Separately, an Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, allows the NSA and FBI to tap directly into nine U.S. Internet companies to gather all Internet usage audio, video, photographs, emails and searches. The effort is designed to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

Snowden said claims the programs are secure are not true.

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of those sensor networks and the authority that that analyst is empowered with," Snowden said, in accompanying video on the Guardian's website. "Not all analysts have the power to target anything. But I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."

He told the Post that he would "ask for asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy" in an interview from Hong Kong, where he is staying.

"I'm not going to hide," Snowden told the Post. "Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."

The Post declined to elaborate on its reporting about Snowden.

The spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, Shawn Turner, said intelligence officials are "currently reviewing the damage that has been done by these recent disclosures," adding that "Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law."

He referred further comment to the Justice Department.

"The Department of Justice is in the initial stages of an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by an individual with authorized access," said Nanda Chitre, Justice Department spokeswoman. "Consistent with longstanding department policy and procedure and in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, we must decline further comment."

In a statement, Booz Allen confirmed that Snowden "has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii." The statement said if the news reports of what he has leaked prove accurate, "this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct," and the company promised to work closely with authorities on the investigation.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has decried the revelation of the intelligence-gathering programs as reckless and said it has done "huge, grave damage." In recent days, he took the rare step of declassifying some details about them to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by the government.

Snowden told The Guardian that he lacked a high school diploma and enlisted in the U.S. Army until he was discharged because of an injury, and later worked as a security guard with the NSA.

He later went to work for the CIA as an information technology employee and by 2007 was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, where he had access to classified documents.

During that time, he considered going public about the nation's secretive programs but told the newspaper he decided against it, because he did not want to put anyone in danger and he hoped Obama's election would curtail some of the clandestine programs.

He said he was disappointed that Obama did not rein in the surveillance programs.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he told The Guardian. "I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

Snowden left the CIA in 2009 to join a private contractor, and spent last four years at the NSA, as a contractor with consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton and, before that, Dell.

The Guardian reported that Snowden was working in an NSA office in Hawaii when he copied the last of the documents he planned to disclose and told supervisors that he needed to be away for a few weeks to receive treatment for epilepsy.

Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, who filed the initial news reports on the programs, declined comment Sunday when contacted in a Hong Kong hotel lobby by The Associated Press.

"I'm not going to talk to you, and I don't have any information to give you," he said.

A sign advertising Century 21 realtor Kerri Jo Heim sits on the grass outside the blue-and-white house where Snowden and his girlfriend lived in a quiet neighborhood in Waipahu, West Oahu.

Heim says the couple moved out on May 1, leaving nothing behind. She said last Wednesday police came by asking where they went, but she didn't know.

Snowden left for Hong Kong on May 20 and has remained there since, according to the newspaper. Snowden is quoted as saying he chose that city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed it was among the spots on the globe that could and would resist the dictates of the U.S. government.

"I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets," Snowden told The Guardian, which said he asked to be identified after several days of interviews.

Iceland's International Modern Media Institute, a free press group, said it had yet to hear from Snowden directly. But in a statement the institute said it would do what it could to help the former intelligence worker find asylum and was already working to set up a meeting with Iceland's newly appointed interior minister.

Snowden could face decades in a U.S. jail for revealing classified information if he is successfully extradited from Hong Kong, said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who represents whistleblowers. Hong Kong had an extradition treaty with the United States that took force in 1998, according to the U.S. State Department website.

"If it's a straight leak of classified information, the government could subject him to a 10 or 20 year penalty for each count," with each document leaked considered a separate charge, Zaid said.

Hong Kong, though part of China, is partly autonomous and has a Western-style legal system that is a legacy from the territory's past as a British colony. A U.S.-Hong Kong extradition treaty has worked smoothly in the past. Hong Kong extradited three al-Qaeda suspects to the U.S. in 2003, for example.

But the treaty comes with important exceptions. Key provisions allow a request to be rejected if it is deemed to be politically motivated or that the suspect would not receive a fair trial. Beijing may also block an extradition of Chinese nationals from Hong Kong for national security reasons.

Snowden told the newspaper he believes the government could try to charge him with treason under the Espionage Act, but Zaid said that would require the government to prove he had intent to betray the United States, whereas he publicly made it clear he did this to spur debate.

The government could also make an argument that the NSA leaks have aided the enemy as military prosecutors have claimed against Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who faces life in prison under military law if convicted for releasing a trove of classified documents through Wikileaks.

"They could say the revelation of the (NSA) programs could instruct people to change tactics," Zaid said. But even under the lesser charges of simply revealing classified information, "you are talking potentially decades in jail, loss of his employment and his security clearance."

Officials said the revelations were dangerous and irresponsible. House intelligence committee member Peter King, R-NY, called for Snowden to be "extradited from Hong Kong immediately...and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," in an interview with The Associated Press Sunday.

"I believe the leaker has done extreme damage to the U.S. and to our intelligence operations," King said, by alerting al-Qaida to U.S. surveillance, and by spooking U.S. service providers who now might fight sharing data in future with the U.S. government, now that the system has been made public.

King added that intelligence and law enforcement professionals he'd spoken to since the news broke were also concerned that Snowden might be taken into custody by Chinese intelligence agents and questioned about CIA and NSA spies and policies.

"To be a whistleblower, there would have to be a pattern of him filing complaints through appropriate channels to his supervisors," said Ambassador John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, in an interview with the AP Sunday. "For me, it's just an outright case of betrayal of confidences and a violation of his nondisclosure agreement."

President Barack Obama, Clapper and others have said the programs are authorized by Congress and subject to strict supervision of a secret court.

"It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," Obama said. "We're going to have to make some choices as a society."

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Associated Press reporters Phillip Elliot in Washington, Anita Hofschneider in Waipahu, Hawaii, Gillian Wong in Beijing, Rafael Wober in Hong Kong and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

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Follow Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier or at http://bigstory.ap.org/tags/kimberly-dozier

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SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) Debra Fine lived to tell of her encounter with a heavily armed gunman who killed five people and wounded her and others in a Santa Monica rampage.

Though the attacker had spiky hair, black clothing and a ballistics vest, what she remembers most were the eyes cold, hard, intense.

"No hesitation, no flick of a muscle, nothing. Just absolutely staring and going onto the next step," Fine recalled. "I just simply got in his way. And he needed to kill me. That was it."

She recognized the eyes in a 2006 high school yearbook photo of John Zawahri shown to her by The Associated Press.

Investigators trying to determine why Zawahri planned the shooting spree focused on a deadly act of domestic violence that touched off the mayhem. They were also looking into whether he had a mental health issue.

Police said he fatally shot his father and older brother at a home that went up in flames before taking the violence to the streets, which lasted less than 15 minutes until he was shot to death in a chaotic scene at the Santa Monica College library by police.

Investigators were hoping his mother, who returned early from a trip abroad and was interviewed Sunday by police, could help provide clues about what triggered the violence.

"A big piece of the puzzle just came home," Sgt. Richard Lewis said.

The killing began as a domestic violence incident when Zawahri killed his father, Samir, 55, and brother, Christopher, 24, in their home near Interstate 10 in a working-class part of town a few miles from the beachside attractions that draw tourists year-round.

The gunman, carrying a duffel bag with 1,300 rounds of ammo, fired shots in the neighborhood and took his rampage on the road.

Fine was the first stranger shot by Zawahri. She was using side streets after her singing lesson to avoid traffic from President Barack Obama's visit three miles away when the gunman motioned at the car of the woman in front of her with his rifle, telling her to pull over.

Fine thought the man was providing security for the president's visit. Then he pointed the rifle at the woman and started to yell.

Upset that he would yell at someone who cooperated, Fine accelerated.

"He looked right at me," Fine said. "Stared right at me and then shot. No hesitation."

Zawahri then walked toward her, shooting again. Fine was hit in the shoulder, arm and ear, and she lay on the passenger seat, pretending to be dead. Zawahri, meanwhile, carjacked the woman he'd stopped and directed her to Santa Monica College, firing at bystanders along the way and shooting up a city bus.

At the college, he blasted a Ford Explorer driven by Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, killing the driver and his daughter, Marcela Franco, 26, who died Sunday. The father was a longtime groundskeeper at the college and was taking his daughter to buy textbooks for summer classes.

On foot, Zawahri headed for the library, spraying gunfire around campus as students, who were in the middle of final exams, took cover in classrooms or bolted for their lives. He fatally shot one woman in the head and then casually strolled past a cart of books into the library where he fired 70 shots without striking anyone.

In a shootout with three police officers, Zawahri was struck multiple times. His body was taken outside, where he was pronounced dead.

A small cache of ammunition was found in a room of the burned down house.

The elder Zawahri brought his family to the neighborhood of small homes and apartment buildings tucked up against Interstate 10 in the mid-1990s, according to property records.

Not long after arriving on Yorkshire Avenue, Zawahri and his wife Randa Abdou, 54, went through a difficult divorce and split custody of their two boys, said Thomas O'Rourke, a neighbor. When the sons got older, one went to live with his mother while the other stayed with the father.

Public records show Abdou, who lives in an apartment a couple miles away, was the ex-wife of Samir Zawahri and former co-owner of the house where the first shooting took place.

John Zawahri had a run-in with police seven years ago, but Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks wouldn't offer more details because he was a juvenile at the time. She said the gunman was enrolled at Santa Monica College in 2010.

Home from the hospital on Sunday, Fine recalled the moments after she was shot. Neighbors had come to help her, one holding towels to her wounds. Fifteen minutes later paramedics arrived. Her husband Russell Fine said he rushed to her side by using the family GPS tracking feature on his phone to pinpoint her location.

"When I got ... into the trauma room and I heard one of the doctors say, 'Two more have arrived but they're DOA,' that's when I realized that this was part of something bigger, and that his intent had been to kill people," Fine said. "I'm just, I feel very, very lucky to be here."

"I've always been right in the middle on the gun control issue, and I'm not anymore," she added. "When are we going to get the guns out of the hands of the people who are mentally ill, or when is there enough proof that it's very dangerous to have those types of weapons out there?"

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Associated Press writer Christopher Weber contributed to this story. Tami Abdollah can be reached at: http://www.twitter.com/latams

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By John Ruwitch

RANCHO MIRAGE, California (Reuters) - China's photogenic "first lady" Peng Liyuan played steel drums in Trinidad, strolled hand-in-hand with a coffee farmer's daughter in Costa Rica and snapped pictures with her iPhone in the shadow of Mayan ruins in Mexico.

But the glamorous and popular wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping stepped out of the spotlight for two days in California while her husband held unprecedented informal talks with U.S. President Barack Obama at a lush retreat in the desert on the last leg of a four-country trip.

Peng, a singer who many Chinese say was far more famous than Xi before he became a top leader, has decisively broken the mold of Chinese first wives who have kept an intentionally low profile since the 1970s.

Many in China expected to see more of her in California and hoped that she would have a chance to interact with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, potentially adding a fresh dimension to the nascent relationship between their presidential husbands.

But Mrs. Obama's decision to stay in Washington with her daughters rather than meet the Chinese first couple sidelined Peng to some extent.

U.S. officials said it had been made clear to the Chinese side early on that a scheduling conflict would prevent Mrs. Obama from the summit at the Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs.

But the U.S. first lady did make a gesture.

"Mrs. Obama wrote a letter to Madame Peng welcoming her to the United States. The First Lady said she regretted missing her this weekend but hopes to have the chance to visit China and meet Madame Peng sometime soon," a White House official said.

Still, Michelle Obama's absence set the Chinese blogosphere and some Chinese media outlets alight with speculation, anger, pride and more than a few jokes.

It was an "arrogant show of fear of inferiority" which caused Michelle Obama not to meet Peng, and an insult to the Chinese people, an opinion piece carried by the semi-official China News Service said. The article appeared to have later been removed from the service's website but it was widely circulated on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog.

'DISRESPECT AND RUDENESS'

"Even if Xi's wife doesn't care, many Chinese believe this is a show of disrespect and rudeness towards the Chinese leader," it said.

Michelle Obama has had cordial interactions with other foreign leaders' wives who have visited the White House as well as with those she has met abroad. But lacking any major diplomatic role in the administration, she has shown few signs of forging close personal bonds with her foreign counterparts.

On Weibo, several commentators took their own stabs as to why Michelle avoided California.

"She was afraid of Mama Peng's charm. How shameful that the aura of the First Lady of the world's superpower can't beat that of the First Lady of developing China," wrote a user with the handle Chiki_Wang.

Another wrote: "Michelle decided to hide before being humbled. She was afraid that after dinner the two couples would sing karaoke and so she said she needed to be with her daughters - one of the most common excuses, even in China."

Peng stepped into the limelight in her new role as first lady in March, the same month that Xi became president, when she accompanied him to Russia and Africa. She became an instant internet sensation back home.

Images of her wearing a fashionable, made-in-China wardrobe have been popular back home - a parallel she shares with Michelle Obama, who Vogue magazine said in its April cover story had "inspired a modern definition of effortless American chic."

Chinese first wives have occasionally appeared in photographs when traveling abroad with their husbands. Most have appeared frumpy and awkward, though, and none of Peng's predecessors stretching back to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 could be described as glamorous.

All have kept a low profile because of the experience of Jiang Qing, the widow of the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong. Jiang was the leader of the "Gang of Four" that wielded supreme power during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. She was given a suspended death sentence in 1981 for the deaths of tens of thousands during that period of chaos.

By contrast, Peng's easy, casual and fun demeanor were on full display once again on the earlier leg of Xi's trip, which took in Trinidad, Costa Rica and Mexico. She has also been trying out her English, which sources with ties to the leadership told Reuters she has been learning.

In California, Palm Springs' local newspaper, the Desert Sun, snapped photos of her visiting the Palm Springs Art Museum on Friday afternoon. Almost no other media were present.

And Peng joined Obama and Xi for tea on Saturday before the Chinese first couple departed, U.S. national security adviser Thomas Donilon said. It lasted about a half hour.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in RANCHO MIRAGE and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Walsh)

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SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) The gunman who went on a chaotic rampage killing four people before being fatally shot by police at a college campus planned the attack and was capable of firing 1,300 rounds of ammunition, the police chief said Saturday.

"Any time someone puts on a vest, of some sort, comes out with a bag full of loaded magazines, has an extra receiver, has a handgun and has a semi-automatic rifle, carjacks folks, goes to a college, kills more people and has to be neutralized at the hands of the police, I would say that that's premeditated," said Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks.

The killer would have turned 24 on Saturday, but Seabrooks wouldn't identify him because his next of kin was out of the country. Police had an encounter with him seven years ago, but she wouldn't elaborate because he was a juvenile at the time.

The chief spoke near a display of weapons and ammo recovered from Santa Monica College where the killings ended Friday when police gunned him down in the library, where students were studying for finals.

Among items on display were surveillance photos of a man in black entering the library with an assault-style rifle by his side.

The gunman fatally shot one woman in the head outside the library before entering the building and opening fire as students ran for cover.

Students hid into what Seabrooks called a "safe room" in the library and barricaded the door for safety.

"They stacked items found in the safe room against the door, hunkered down and avoided shots fired through the drywall at them while they were in that room," she said.

The violence, which lasted little more than 10 minutes, started about a mile away when the gunman began shooting at a house, and it caught on fire. Two bodies were later found inside.

Two officials told The Associated Press that the killings began as a domestic violence incident and the victims in the home were the gunman's father and brother. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

As flames rose from the house, the man, wearing what appeared to be a ballistic jacket, he shot a woman passing by in a car and carjacked another woman at gunpoint. He directed her to drive to the college campus, having her stop so he could shoot along the way, police said.

He fired on a city bus where three women were left with minor injuries. One had shrapnel-type injuries and the two others had injuries not related to gunfire. They were treated at a hospital and released.

The gunman also fired on police cars, bystanders and pedestrians, police said.

From there, the chaos shifted to the college, a two-year school with about 34,000 students located among homes and strip malls more than a mile inland from the city's famous pier, promenade and expansive, sandy beaches.

In a faculty parking lot on the edge of campus, he fired on two people in a red Ford Explorer that crashed through a block wall. The driver was killed, police said, and a passenger was in critical condition after undergoing surgery UCLA Medical Center, doctors said. On Saturday, authorities identified the driver as Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, of West Los Angeles, who worked at the school.

College employee Joe Orcutt was in the lot and said the gunman looked calm and composed as he fired at him. Orcutt jumped out of the way.

"He's just standing there, like he's modeling for some ammo magazine," Orcutt said, "seeing who he could shoot, one bullet at a time, like target practice."

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Associated Press writers Greg Risling and Sarah Parvini contributed to this story. Tami Abdollah can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/latams

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STOCKHOLM (AP) Swedish Princess Madeleine fell in love in the Big Apple. Now she has said "yes" to New York banker Christopher O'Neill in a lavish and emotional wedding ceremony in Stockholm.

Madeleine, 30, was wearing a stunning silk organza dress with a lace top and four-meter (13-foot) trail, designed by Valentino Garavani, when she tied the knot with British-American O'Neill on Saturday. Around 470 European royals, top New York socialites and celebrities were in attendance.

The 38-year-old O'Neill fought back tears as the princess walked down the aisle with her father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, to a traditional Swedish wedding march performed by a children's choir. The bride and groom were visibly moved as the ceremony proceeded with hymns in both Swedish and English, and performances by Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson and Broadway's "Phantom of the Opera" star Peter Joback.

With a smile on her face, Madeleine read out the wedding vows in Swedish while O'Neill read his in English in the Royal Chapel, decorated with typical Swedish summer flowers. After the wedding, the couple kissed on the steps of the palace in front of a cheering crowd of several thousand who had gathered in the sunshine waving Swedish flags.

"We hope she will be very happy in the future, the princess Madeleine," Julia Huelsman, who had traveled from Munich, Germany, for the occasion, said.

Later, the newlyweds travelled in a procession through the crowded streets of the capital in a special horse and carriage. They then sailed to the royal residence and UNESCO World Heritage site Drottningholm Palace, 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of the city center, where a private wedding reception will be held.

Madeleine is the youngest of Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia's three children and fourth in line to the throne. She became known as Sweden's party princess in her early 20s, when she was frequently spotted at Stockholm's high-end nightclubs, and has attracted widespread attention for her stylish clothes.

But her life hasn't always been a fairytale. Madeleine's extravagant lifestyle has often been criticized by Swedes, who prefer the down-to-earth attitude of her sister, Crown Princess Victoria, who married a commoner. And in 2010, she fled to New York after breaking off her first engagement to Swedish attorney Jonas Bergstrom amid media reports that he had cheated on her.

Since then, Madeleine has held a lower profile, working for the nonprofit World Childhood Foundation in New York, where she met O'Neill through mutual friends. The couple was first spotted together having lunch at the Central Park Boathouse in January 2011 and they announced their engagement in October 2012.

O'Neill was born into a wealthy family. His late father, Paul O'Neill, set up the European head office of Oppenheimer & Co. in London in the 1960s and his mother, Eva Maria O'Neill, is involved in several charities. He studied at a boarding school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from Boston University and a master's degree from Columbia Business School in New York.

O'Neill, who holds dual American and British citizenship, has declined a royal rank in Sweden, which would have required him to become a Swedish citizen. He has chosen to continue working and the newlyweds are expected to move back to their apartment in Manhattan.

Guests at the wedding included the U.K.'s Earl and Countess of Wessex, Prince Edward and Sophie; Princess Takamado of Japan and princes and princesses from Norway, Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg and Monaco.

O'Neill had also invited many of his super-rich friends, such as Opel heir Georg von Opel, Cadbury chocolate heir Joel Cadbury, Colombian billionaire Alejandro Santo Domingo, and Aidan and Fizzy Barclay. Other well-known invitees were Duran Duran band member John Taylor, the CEO of fashion retailer H&M, Karl-Johan Persson, and golfer Jesper Parnevik.

The marriage is the latest in a series of glamorous royal weddings that have mesmerized Europe in the past few years. In June 2010, Madeleine's older sister Crown Princess Victoria wed her personal trainer Daniel Westling in a grand ceremony in Stockholm and the year after, Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton tied the knot in extravagant fashion in front of an estimated 2 billion television viewers. Also in 2011, Prince Albert II of Monaco wed Charlene Lynette Wittstock and in 2012, Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg united with Belgian Countess Stephanie de Lannoy.

The Swedish royal family has only ceremonial duties, such as attending award ceremonies, promoting Swedish businesses abroad and supporting charities. As the head of state, the king also receives foreign dignitaries on formal visits to Sweden.

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AP Television Producer Yesica Fisch contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK (AP) The great comedian W.C. Fields is credited with the line, "Never work with children or animals." He would have had trouble on Broadway this season.

There were kids at every turn "Motown: The Musical," ''Kinky Boots," ''Annie," ''Matilda the Musical," ''A Christmas Story, the Musical" and "Pippin." And animals? Dogs in "Annie," ''Pippin" and "A Christmas Story, the Musical," a cat in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," a dead crow in "Macbeth" and even a live vulture in "The Testament of Mary."

But now that it's Tony Awards time, it's the moment for the adults to shine. No kids or pets made it through the nomination process, so only grown-ups will emerge victorious Sunday night.

BEST MUSICAL

Will win: "Kinky Boots." Should win: "Matilda the Musical."

Though it's been a horse race between "Kinky Boots" and the import "Matilda the Musical" both coincidentally having actors adopting British accents and both featuring men in dresses the consistently high marks for all aspects of "Matilda" should sweep it to victory, but won't. "Kinky" is unabashedly sentimental with a classic message of acceptance, while "Matilda" is rebellious and edgy, a place Tony voters don't naturally feel comfortable.

BEST PLAY

Will win: "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike." Should win: "The Assembled Parties."

Christopher Durang's comical "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike," which takes characters and themes from Anton Chekhov and sets them in present-day Pennsylvania, is sly and funny and lovely. But Richard Greenberg's "The Assembled Parties," a meditation on time and family, leaves a lasting impression.

REVIVAL-PLAY

Will win: "The Trip to Bountiful." Should win: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."

The Cicely Tyson-led revival of Horton Foote's play is lovely and well done. You walk out hopeful and sunny the opposite of what the revival of Edward Albee's play felt like. Superbly acted and directed, it was a cage-match with intellectuals. But Tony voters like sunny and inspirational.

REVIVAL-MUSICAL

Will win: "Pippin." Should win: "Pippin."

"Annie" is pretty good, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" was rollicking, "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella" is sweet and smart, but "Pippin" is thoroughly thrilling, rebuilt with a circus inside. Diane Paulus rides the Big Top theme fire jugglers, teeterboards, knife throwing and contortionists but she also teases out the wandering nature of the mysterious players and zooms up the physicality of the story. Magic.

ACTOR-PLAY

Will win: Tom Hanks. Should win: Tracy Letts.

Everybody loves Tom Hanks. He is just so darn lovable. In "Lucky Guy," he gets to be funny and poignant and noble while dying. What kind of monster are you if you don't like Tom Hanks?

But, speaking of monsters, Tracy Letts showed a hint of one in the seemingly weak-willed history professor George in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" ''He was savage and sad, allowing years of pain and frustration to seep out of a semi-broken man." Hanks, David Hyde Pierce and Nathan Lane turned in fine performances, but nothing touched Letts, an actor at the top of his game.

ACTRESS-PLAY

Will win: Cicely Tyson. Should win: Laurie Metcalf.

Cicely Tyson's return to Broadway for the first time in 30 years to be in Horton Foote's "The Trip to Bountiful" has been met by deserved high praise. But Laurie Metcalf was simply astonishing as she went from a snippy, bossy scientist to a broken, confused intruder wolfing down Chinese food on the floor in "The Other Place." The other three women in this category Amy Morton, Kristine Nielsen and Holland Taylor also are admirable, but Metcalf was soul-stirring.

ACTOR-MUSICAL

Will win: Bertie Carvel. Should win: Billy Porter.

Both men are deserving of the honor and, believe us, both actors look sensational in skirts, but Billy Porter in "Kinky Boots" bares his heart a little more and pushes his poor body a little more than his rival in "Matilda the Musical." Bertie Carvel won the Oliver Award Britain's equivalent of the Tony in the role of Miss Trunchbull and brought his terrifying skill to Broadway without being cartoonish, but Porter can make tears fall down your cheeks.

ACTRESS-MUSICAL

Will win: Patina Miller. Should win: Patina Miller.

While Laura Osnes from "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella" is perfectly cast as a princess-to-be and sings beautifully, Patina Miller is a muscular creature with a hat and cane, a grimace plastered to her face, who dances tough Bob Fosse steps and does tricks on a trapeze while singing in Diane Paulus' retelling of "Pippin." Miller is fierce and that always beats cute.

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Mark Kennedy can be reached at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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by Virginia Heffernan | @YahooTechI've been wearing Google Glass, Google's wearable Internet contraption, since Friday. (You can read the first entry in my Glass Menagerie journal here, the second entry here and the most recent entry here.)So far, groovy Brooklynites seem to see Google's pricey headgear the way they see Gucci loafers like something for showoffs and chumps. It's sorta pathetic. I was hoping we could share in some good old American excitement over new technology. But they're ignoring me. Anyway, Glass wasn't a hit when I wore it to Smith Canteen, my usual coffee shop, so yesterday I decided to go somewhere seemingly more hospitable to technology: Momofuku Milk Bar. Hip people love cookies? Maybe I was grasping at straws. I definitely was grasping at straws. So here's the video I made, from my head, when I cravenly sought attention yesterday at Momofuku Milk Bar. Watch especially the snub by the cool-looking chick at the end. Sigh.

Transcript: "Since the people are using technology here, like a laptop, maybe they won't really hate this thing because they're not quite as steampunk as they are at Smith Canteen. But I'm still alone. And I'm still talking to myself. So let's face it. Oh, and I still have this hair. . .[unintelligible]. They have yoga mats and instruments. They're just like healthy, hearty people. Brooklynites. Without a care in the world. No straws, though. Ah, straws! That's like a person that would work at Momofuko. They just don't say anything. I feel like I'm a really low-level forgotten has-been reality contestant? who everyone just wants to avert their eyes from. Well, at least I found a straw. I can't believe I used to fit in here."

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