A spokesman for the North’s General Department of Atomic Energy said that scientists will begin work at a uranium enrichment plant and a graphite-moderated 5 megawatt reactor, which generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium and is the core of the Nyongbyon nuclear complex.

The unidentified spokesman said the measure is part of efforts to resolve the country’s acute electricity shortage but also for “bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity,” according to a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February, prompting a new round of U.N. sanctions that have infuriated its leaders and led to a torrent of threatening rhetoric. The United States has sent nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets to participate in annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine but that Pyongyang claims are invasion preparations.

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Conn. lawmakers tout bipartisanship, unveil response to Newtown shooting; vote planned Wed

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — With an announcement of sweeping proposals to curb gun violence, Connecticut lawmakers said they are hoping to send a message to Congress and other state legislators across the country: A bipartisan agreement on gun control is possible.

Legislative leaders on Monday revealed proposals spurred by the Dec. 14 Newtown school shooting following weeks of bipartisan, closed-door negotiations. A vote is expected Wednesday in the General Assembly, where Democrats control both chambers, making passage all but assured.

“Democrats and Republicans were able to come to an agreement on a strong, comprehensive bill,” said Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., a Democrat from Brooklyn, who called the proposed legislation the strongest, most comprehensive bill in the country. “That is a message that should resound in 49 other states and in Washington, D.C. And the message is: We can get it done here and they should get it done in their respective states and nationally in Congress.”

The massacre reignited the gun debate in the country and led to calls for increased gun control legislation on the federal and state levels. While some other states, including neighboring New York, have strengthened their gun laws, momentum has stalled in Congress, whose members were urged by President Barack Obama last week not to forget the shooting and to capitalize on the best chance in years to stem gun violence.

The Connecticut deal includes a ban on new high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children and six educators dead. There are also new registration requirements for existing magazines that carry 10 or more bullets, something of a disappointment for some family members of Newtown victims who wanted an outright ban on the possession of all high-capacity magazines and traveled to the state Capitol on Monday to ask lawmakers for it.

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Is Obama’s reluctance to arm Syrian rebels a strategy to curb Iran nuclear program?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s reluctance to give military aid to Syrian rebels may be explained, in part, in three words: Iranian nuclear weapons.

For the first time in years, the United States has seen a glimmer of hope in persuading Iran to curb its nuclear enrichment program so it cannot quickly or easily make an atomic bomb. Negotiations resume this week in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where encouraging talks in February between six world powers and the Islamic Republic ended in what Iranian diplomat Saeed Jalili called a “turning point” after multiple thwarted steps toward a breakthrough.

But Tehran is unlikely to bend to Washington’s will on its nuclear program if it is fighting American-supplied rebels at the same time in Syria. Tehran is Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chief backer in the two-year civil war that, by U.N. estimates, has left at least 70,000 people dead. Iranian forces are believed to be fighting alongside the regime’s army in Syria, and a senior commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard force was killed outside Damascus in February.

Russia also is supplying Assad’s forces with arms. And the U.S. does not want to risk alienating Russia, one of the six negotiating nations also seeking to limit Iran’s nuclear program, by entering what would amount to a proxy war in Syria.

The White House has at least for now put the nuclear negotiations ahead of intervening in Syria, according to diplomats, former Obama administration officials and experts. Opposition forces in Syria are in disarray and commanded in some areas by a jihadist group linked to al-Qaida. Preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb remains a top priority for the Obama administration, which has been bent on ending wars — not opening new military fronts.

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High-skilled visa requests likely to exceed available supply faster than in years past

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Homeland Security Department expects applications for high-skilled immigration visas to outpace the available supply in a matter of days, one of the fastest runs on the much-sought-after work permits in years and a sign of continued economic recovery amid new hiring by U.S. technology companies.

The urgent race for such visas — highly desired by Microsoft, Apple, Google and other leading technology companies — coincides with congressional plans to increase the number available to tech-savvy foreigners.

The race to secure one of the 85,000 so-called H-1B visas available for the 2014 budget year started Monday and requests will be accepted through at least Friday. If petitions outpace the availability in the first week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — for the first time since 2008 — will use a lottery to pick which companies get visas to award to prospective employees.

“It will be a frenzy, because the cap … is nowhere near high enough to meet demand,” said Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of the Software Alliance, a trade group for technology companies.

Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Christopher Bentley said the agency won’t know for certain whether a lottery is necessary until next week.

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New debris unearthed from WTC to be sifted for human remains of 9/11 victims

NEW YORK (AP) — Jim Riches pulled his son’s mangled body out of the rubble at the World Trade Center, but the phone calls still filtered in years afterward. The city kept finding more pieces of his son.

“They’ll call you and they’ll tell you, ‘We found a shin bone,'” Riches said. “Or: ‘We found an arm bone.’ We held them all together and then we put them in the cemetery.”

Those are the phone calls both dreaded and hoped for among the families of Sept. 11 victims. And as investigators began sifting through newly uncovered debris from the World Trade Center on Monday for the first time in three years, those anxieties were renewed more than a decade after the attacks. But there was also hope that more victims might yet be identified after tens of millions have been spent on the painstaking identification process.

“We would like to see the other 40 percent of the families who have never recovered anything to at least someday have a piece of their loved one,” Riches said. “That they can go to a cemetery and pray.”

About 60 truckloads of debris that could contain tiny fragments of bone or tissue were unearthed by construction crews that have been working on the new World Trade Center in recent years. That material is now being transported to a park built on top of the former Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, where investigators will attempt to identify any possible remains during the next 10 weeks, the city said.

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Man convicted in 1970 Arizona hotel fire that killed 29 expected to be released from prison

PHOENIX (AP) — Louis Taylor was just a teenager when he was convicted of starting a Tucson hotel fire that killed 29 people. He has since spent more than four decades in prison, consistently maintaining his innocence.

On Tuesday, Taylor is expected to be released as part of a deal with prosecutors that forces him to plead no contest in the case, but sets him free about a month after his 59th birthday.

Taylor was sentenced to 28 consecutive life sentences in the December 1970 fire at the Pioneer Hotel where employees of an aircraft company were celebrating at a Christmas party.

Many guests were trapped in their rooms as the blaze engulfed the building, and fire truck ladders were too short to reach the upper floors. Some people jumped to their deaths while others burned in their rooms. Most victims died from carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Taylor, who is black, contends he was wrongly convicted by an all-white jury after he says police failed to investigate other suspects. Reports at the time indicate Taylor was helping people escape the blaze before being arrested later that night. He was never charged in the death months later of a 29th victim from injuries sustained in the fire.

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Colorado officials to do review after mistaken release of man accused in prison chief slaying

DENVER (AP) — Colorado court officials have vowed to review procedures to ensure that a clerical mistake that allowed the early release of a prisoner — who then went on to allegedly shoot the state’s corrections director last month — doesn’t happen again.

Judicial officials acknowledged Monday that Evan Spencer Ebel’s previous felony conviction was inaccurately recorded and his release in January was an error.

In 2008, Ebel pleaded guilty in rural Fremont County to assaulting a prison officer. In the plea deal, Ebel was to be sentenced to up to four additional years in prison, to be served after he completed the eight-year sentence that put him behind bars in 2005, according to a statement from Colorado’s 11th Judicial District.

However, the judge didn’t say the sentence was meant to be “consecutive,” or in addition to, Ebel’s current one. So the court clerk recorded it as one to be served “concurrently,” or at the same time. That’s the information that went to the state prisons, the statement said.

So on Jan. 28, prisons officials saw that Ebel had finished his court-ordered sentence and released him. They said they had no way of knowing the plea deal was intended to keep Ebel behind bars for years longer.

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Foreign tourists kidnapped, 1 sexually assaulted inside public transport van in Rio

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A foreign man and woman studying Portuguese in Brazil were held for hours while the woman was sexually assaulted aboard a public transport van they boarded over the weekend in Rio de Janeiro’s showcase Copacabana beach neighborhood, police said in a statement.

Two men aged 20 and 22 were taken into custody and a third was being sought in connection with the attack, which saw the pair held for around six hours starting shortly after midnight on Saturday, police said.

The victims’ nationalities were not immediately released, but local media reports have said the woman is American.

The incident raises new questions about security in Rio, which has cracked down on once-endemic drug violence in preparation for hosting next year’s football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic games. The city will also be playing host to World Youth Day, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage expected to draw some 2 million people in late July.

The attack also drew comparisons with the fatal December beating and gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus. Six men beset a 23-year-old university student and male friend after they boarded a private bus, touching off a wave of protests across India demanding stronger protection for women.

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MTV ‘BUCKWILD’ reality star, 2 others found dead in W.Va. day after being reported missing

SISSONVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — Shain Gandee lived for the outdoors, often going on muddy, off-road thrill rides in the hills near his West Virginia home. A recent late-night escapade ended in tragedy for the MTV reality show cast member and two others.

The popular “BUCKWILD” cast member was found dead Monday inside a sport utility vehicle belonging to his family that was found partially submerged in a deep mud pit about a mile from his home near Sissonville, authorities said. Also inside were the bodies of his uncle and another man.

Kanawha County Sheriff’s Cpl. B.D. Humphreys said the red-and-white 1984 Ford Bronco’s muffler was below the surface and that mud covered the passenger side. No foul play is suspected.

Authorities said the cause of the deaths was still under investigation and they refused to speculate on what happened. If the muffler was submerged and the engine kept running, it’s possible the cabin of the vehicle could have filled with fatal carbon monoxide from the exhaust.

Shain, nicknamed “Gandee Candy” by fans, was a breakout star of the show that followed the antics of a group of young friends enjoying their wild country lifestyle. It was filmed last year, mostly around Sissonville and Charleston. Many of its rowdy exploits were his idea. In one episode, he turned a dump truck into a swimming pool.

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BracketRacket: Most unpredictable NCAA tournament ever? Here’s the statistical case

Welcome back to BracketRacket, your one-stop shop for all your NCAA tournament needs.

Today, we take stock of the appallingly low number of perfect Final Four picks, look back at how other underdogs have done in the national semifinals, and get John Beilein’s thoughts on postgame transportation.

But first, a statistical basis for declaring that this is indeed the most unpredictable NCAA tournament in recent memory:

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WILDEST. TOURNAMENT. EVER.