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ber of background checks for gun sales and permits to carry guns at the end of the year. After President Barack Obama's re-election, the horrific school shooting in Connecticut and Obama's promise to support new laws aimed at curbing gun violence, the number of background checks spiked. In Georgia, the FBI processed 37,586 requests during October and 78,998 requests in December; Alabama went from 32,850 to 80,576 during the same period.
• Nationally, there were nearly twice as many more background checks for firearms between November and December than during the same time period one year ago.
• "It's a fear there will be a crackdown," said Thomas Wright, who runs Hoover Tactical Firearms near Birmingham, Ala. Wright said he took on more employees to handle the sales crush after 20 children were killed in Newtown, Conn. "We used to have what was called our wall of guns. It's pretty much empty now." Every high-capacity magazine in Wright's store was sold out.
• The government's figures suggested far less interest in purchasing guns late in the year in Connecticut and Colorado, where background checks also increased but not nearly as much as most other states. Twelve people died in July in a shooting at a Colorado movie theater. The numbers of checks in Colorado rose from 35,009 in October to 53,453 in December; checks in Connecticut went from 18,761 to 29,246 during the same period. Only New Jersey and Maryland showed smaller increases than Colorado in December from one month earlier.
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• PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- The Google chairman wants a first-hand look at North Korea's economy and social media in his private visit Monday to the communist nation, his delegation said, despite misgivings in Washington over the timing of the trip.
• Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of one of the world's biggest Internet companies, is the highest-profile U.S. executive to visit North Korea -- a country with notoriously restrictive online policies -- since young leader Kim Jong Un took power a year ago. His visit has drawn criticism from the U.S. State Department because it comes only weeks after a controversial North Korean rocket launch; it has also prompted speculation about what the businessman hopes to accomplish.
• Schmidt arrived on a commercial Air China flight with former New Mexico Gov.

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