(Continued from page 14)

• From the governor to the state's congressional delegation and local university leaders, Hawaii has spared no effort in laying the groundwork for a potential library, gently pressing Obama's sister and close friends, and setting aside prime oceanfront real estate just in case Hawaii's favorite son chooses Oahu to host the monument to his legacy.
• But as the gears start to turn in the Obama machinery that will eventually develop the library, the focus has increasingly turned to Chicago, where Obama was first elected and came into his own as a national political figure. It is a place many of his advisers and staunchest supporters call home.
• Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is now Chicago's mayor. Obama's wife, Michelle, was born there, and her former chief of staff, Susan Sher, is leading a behind-the-scenes effort to lure the library to University of Chicago from her post in the university president's office. It's the same university where Obama once taught law and where his longtime senior adviser, David Axelrod, recently established a political institute.
• ___

• BANGKOK (AP) -- Gunmen killed an anti-government activist and wounded two others in the Thai capital on Saturday while protesters elsewhere blocked candidates from registering in upcoming elections, deepening a political crisis that threatens to derail democracy in this Southeast Asian nation.
• The registration was suspended in four of the country's 77 constituencies. All are in the south, a sign of the limited national appeal the protest movement seeking to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra enjoys outside of Bangkok.
• The events followed comments Friday by the powerful army chief in which he declined to rule out the possibility of a coup in the country, which is a major U.S. ally, Southeast Asia's second largest economy and a popular tourist destination.
• The long-running dispute between Thailand's bitterly divided political factions flared anew in November after Yingluck's elected government tried to introduce an amnesty for her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, to enable him to return to Thailand and escape a jail term for corruption.
• Yingluck called early elections as a way of diffusing the crisis, but the protesters are demanding she resign and hand over power to an unelected council to carry out reforms. They are trying to disrupt the polls, which most people believe will give her a strong mandate thanks to strong support in the north and northeast of the country.

(Continued on page 16)