UBS to pay $1.5B in fines for rate manipulation

Updated 4:30 a.m.

GENEVA Switzerland's UBS AG agreed Wednesday to pay some $1.5 billion in fines to international regulators following a probe into the rigging of a key global interest rate.

In admitting to fraud, Switzerland's largest bank became the second bank, after Britain's Barclays PLC, to settle over the rate-rigging scandal. The fine, which will be paid to authorities in the U.S., Britain and Switzerland, also comes just over a week after HSBC PLC agreed to pay nearly $2 billion for alleged money laundering.

The settlement caps a tough year for UBS and the reputation of the global banking industry. As well as being ensnared in the industry-wide investigation into alleged manipulations of the benchmark LIBOR interest rate, short for London interbank offered rate, UBS has seen its reputation suffer in a London trial into a multibillion dollar trading scandal and ongoing tax evasion probes.

As a result of the fines, litigation, unwinding of real estate investments, restructuring and other costs, UBS said it expects to post a fourth quarter net loss of between $2.2-2.7 billion.

Nevertheless, the Zurich-based bank maintained that it "remains one of the best capitalized banks in the world."

Other banks are expected to be fined for their involvement in the LIBOR scandal. LIBOR, which is a self-policing system and relies on information that global banks submit to a British banking authority, is important because it is used to set the interest rates on trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages and credit cards.

UBS characterized the probes as "industry-wide investigations into the setting of certain benchmark rates across a range of currencies."

The UBS penalty is more than triple the $450 million in fines imposed by American and British regulators in June on Barclays for submitting false information between 2005 and 2009 to manipulate the LIBOR rates. Those fines exposed a scandal that led to the departure of Chief Executive Bob Diamond and the announcement that Chairman Marcus Agius would step down at the end of the year.

In accepting the fines, UBS said some of its employees tried to rig the LIBOR rate in several currencies, but that its Japan unit, where much of the manipulation took place, entered a plea to one count of wire fraud in an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.

UBS said some of its personnel had "engaged in efforts to manipulate submissions for certain benchmark rates to benefit trading positions" and that some employees had "colluded with employees at other banks and cash brokers to influence certain benchmark rates to benefit their trading positions."

UBS added that "inappropriate directions" had been submitted that were "in part motivated by a desire to avoid unfair and negative market and media perceptions during the financial crisis."

Britain's financial regulator called the misconduct by UBS "extensive and broad" with the rate-fixing carried out from UBS offices in London and Zurich.

Different desks were responsible for different rate submissions. At least 2,000 requests for inappropriate submissions were documented -- an unquantifiable number of oral requests, which by their nature would not be documented, were also made, the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority said.

"Manipulation was also discussed in internal open chat forums and group emails, and was widely known," the FSA said. "At least 45 individuals including traders, managers and senior managers were involved in, or aware of, the practice of attempting to influence submissions."

Sergio Ermotti, who was appointed CEO of UBS AG in November 2012 in the wake of a major trading scandal, said the misconduct does not reflect the bank's values or standards.

"We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of the firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity," he said.

With more than $2.4 trillion in invested assets, UBS is one of the world's largest managers of private wealth assets. At last count, the bank had 63,745 employees in 57 countries. It has said it aims for a headcount of 54,000 in 2015.

Along with Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, UBS is on the list of the 29 "global systemically important banks" that the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements, the central bank for central banks, considers too big to fail.

It's not the first time that UBS has fallen afoul of regulators. Notably, in 2009, U.S. authorities fined UBS $780 million in 2009 for helping U.S. citizens avoid paying taxes.

The U.S. government has since been pushing Switzerland to loosen its rules on banking secrecy and has been trying to shed its image as a tax haven, signing deals with the United States, Germany and Britain to provide greater assistance to foreign tax authorities seeking information on their citizens' accounts.

In April, Ermotti called Switzerland's tax disputes with the United States and some European nations "an economic war" putting thousands of jobs at risk.

And in September 2011, the bank announced more than $2 billion in losses and blamed a 32-year-old rogue trader, Kweku Adoboli, at its London office for Britain's biggest-ever fraud at a bank.

Britain's financial regulator fined UBS, saying its internal controls were inadequate to prevent Adoboli, a relatively inexperienced trader, from making vast and risky bets. Adoboli has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

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Australia a Model for Successful Gun Control?

If there is one country that best represents the possibility of cutting gun crime by increasing gun control, it is Australia.

In 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant finished his lunch in a café in the seaside resort of Port Arthur and pulled out a semi-automatic rifle. In the first 15 seconds of his attack, he killed 12 and wounded 10. In all, he shot more than 50 people in six locations, killing 35. The worst mass shooting in Australia's history capped a violent decade of mass shootings that killed nearly 100 – and Australians had had enough.

Only 12 days later, Prime Minister John Howard – a conservative who had just been elected with the help of gun owners – pushed through not only new gun control laws, but also the most ambitious gun buyback program seen in recent memory.

The laws banned assault rifles, tightened gun owner licensing, and created national uniform registration standards. Howard knew they might be unpopular among some of the same voters who helped put him into office -- during one particularly hostile public town hall, he wore a bulletproof vest.

But something extraordinary happened: the laws tapped into public revulsion at the shooting and became extremely popular. And they became extremely effective.

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

In the last 16 years, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia has fallen by more than 50 percent. The national rate of gun homicide is one-thirtieth that of the United States. And there hasn't been a single mass shooting since Port Arthur.

"It's not that we are a less violent people and that you are a more violent people," says Philip Alpers, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Sydney who runs GunPolicy.org, which tracks gun violence and gun laws across the world. "It's that you have more lethal means at your disposal."

But it wasn't just the new laws that made Australia safer. The gun buyback program collected nearly 650,000 assault weapons and 50,000 additional weapons – about one sixth of the national stock. Fewer guns on the street helped severely reduce the likelihood that guns could be used for a mass shooting.

"Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of gun owners simply, voluntarily gave up guns that they did not need to give up," Alpers told ABC News. "You could not be a gun owner during that period and not feel terribly persecuted, terribly under threat from public opinion. The commentaries were vicious."

Gun advocates hold up Australia's example as a reason to try similar laws in the United States, following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But Australians' willingness to give up their guns suggests a fundamental difference between Australia and the United States' gun cultures – and why Australia could be looked at for inspiration, rather than a model.

In the U.S., the founding fathers wrote gun ownership into the country's bedrock documents. Gun owners have long seen their weapons as a sign of freedom.

"But Australians are predisposed toward not having guns," Alpers argues. "We take it for granted that you license the gun owner and you register the firearm. Just as you do with a car. In the United States, everything went in the different direction."

So gun control advocates urge the Obama administration to look at certain steps Australia took – but not necessarily reproduce them.

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Gun violence a 'national security issue'

An AR-15 style rifle is for sale at shop in Illinois. Peter Bergen says the founders did not envision weapons of this type while crafting the Second Amendment.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Peter Bergen: Gun violence is sometimes called a public health issue in the U.S.


• He says it also amounts to a national security issue, taking much larger toll than terrorism


• Civilians are more likely to get killed in some U.S. cities than Afghan civilians are, he says


• Bergen: Medical techniques taken from Afghan war being used to save civilians in U.S.

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst and author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad" and "The Longest War: America's Enduring Conflict with al-Qaeda."

(CNN) -- The proliferation of semiautomatic weapons in the hands of Americans of the types that were used in the Newtown massacre is sometimes framed as a public health issue in the United States.

There is considerable merit to the notion of treating gun violence as a public health matter. After all, homicides -- around 70% of which are accomplished with firearms in the United States according to an authoritative study by the United Nations -- are the 15th leading cause of death for Americans.

Peter Bergen

But framing gun control as a public health issue doesn't quite do justice to the problem. It's probably more or less inevitable that most Americans will die of cancer or a heart attack, but why is it even plausible that so many Americans in elementary schools, colleges, movie theaters and places of worship should die at the hands of young men armed with semiautomatic weapons?

Americans generally regard themselves as belonging to an exceptional nation. And in terms of living in a religiously tolerant and enormously diverse country, Americans can certainly take some justified pride.

That tolerant pluralism was on display Sunday night at the interfaith memorial service for the 27 victims in Newtown, which featured priests from several Christian denominations, clerics of the Muslim and Baha'i faiths as well as a rabbi, a memorial that was led by the country's first African American president. But there is another side to American exceptionalism that many Americans seem strangely unable to recognize: Americans kill each other with guns at rates that are unheard of in other advanced industrialized countries. Britain, with around a fifth of the population of the United States, had 41 gun murders in 2010 while the States had around 10,000.

The scale of this death toll really resembles a national security problem as much it does a public health issue.

Consider that jihadist terrorists have only been able to kill 17 Americans in the United States since 9/11. Meanwhile, some 88,000 Americans died in gun violence from 2003 and 2010, according to the U.N. study.

That means that in the past decade, an American residing in the United States was around 5,000 times more likely to be killed by a fellow citizen armed with a gun than by a terrorist inspired by Osama bin Laden.

Consider also that there are cities in the United States today that exact a higher death toll from violence than the civilian death toll in the war in Afghanistan.

Last year, some 3,000 Afghan civilians died in the Afghan War out of a population of 30 million, which makes the civilian death rate from the Afghan war 1 in 10,000.

Yet residents of New Orleans are being killed at a rate that is six times that of Afghan civilians killed in that war. New Orleans had 199 murders last year, or 6 for every 10,000 residents.

Washington, D.C., where I write this from, had 108 murders last year or 2 for every 10,000 residents, making it twice as deadly as the Afghan War is for civilians.

The numbers of Americans dying in homicidal gun violence would be even worse if it weren't for the fact that some of the techniques the U.S. military has learned on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have been imported into American hospitals. So while the number of gun-related violent incidents has actually almost doubled in the past decade, you are more likely to survive a gun shot today than would have been the case even a few years ago, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

The number of deaths caused by semiautomatic pistols and assault rifles are not broken out in tabulations of the total deaths caused by guns in the U.S., but a recent study by the magazine Mother Jones found that in the 62 mass shootings in the United States carried out during the past three decades the vast majority were carried out with semiautomatic pistols or assault rifles, most of which had been obtained legally.

Legislation to control the spread of deadly semiautomatic weapons will not, of course, eliminate such violence. Critics of efforts to tighten gun laws can point to Norway, which has very tough gun control laws, and yet Anders Breivik was able to acquire semiautomatic weapons and kill dozens of people in and around Oslo last year.

But Breivik was, in fact, an exceptional case and the murder rate in Norway is still eight times lower than in the U.S.

The Second Amendment is, of course, very much part of the American fabric. But the intent of the founders was that the amendment protected the rights of citizens to bear arms in a militia for their collective self-defense.

Today, we are not likely to need to organize local militias for our defense now we have something called the Pentagon.

Semiautomatic handguns and semiautomatic assault rifles that fire many rounds in a minute were not envisaged by the founders nor do they do much more to enhance self-defense than an ordinary pistol or rifle.

Such semiautomatic weapons also are not much use for hunting deer and the like. But they are very good for killing lots of Americans quickly.

If the murder of 20 small children in Newtown is not an opportunity for the country to challenge the theological position of the gun lobby that the Second Amendment allows pretty much any American to possess military-style weaponry, when will that day ever come?

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SMRT Alpha appointed to operate retail space at S'pore Sports Hub

SINGAPORE: The Singapore Sports Hub has appointed SMRT Alpha to lease and operate 41,000 square metres of commercial retail space at the Singapore Sports Hub.

This new joint venture is a partnership between subsidiaries of SMRT and NTUC FairPrice.

The retail mall and waterfront area will feature a variety of indoor and alfresco food and beverage outlets.

For shoppers, the mall will offer a wide range of stores and amenities.

Tenants will also include a FairPrice Xtra hypermarket at the mall, providing affordable daily essentials and groceries, as well as sportswear and sporting equipment, catering to the needs of the residents and shoppers in the area.

The Singapore Sports Hub will be opened and fully operational in April 2014.

- CNA/lp

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Schools reopening in Newtown

NEWTOWN, Conn. With security stepped up and families still on edge in Newtown, schools are opening for the first time since last week's massacre, bringing a return of familiar routines -- at least, for some -- to a grief-stricken town as it buries 20 of its children.

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Holiday week is full of funerals for Newtown, Conn.

Two 6-year-old boys were laid to rest Monday in the first of a long, almost unbearable procession of funerals. A total of 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S history.

While classes resume Tuesday for Newtown schools -- except for students at Sandy Hook -- some parents were likely to keep their children at home anyway. Local police and school officials have been discussing how and where to increase security, and state police said they will be on alert for threats and hoaxes.

Suzy DeYoung said her 15-year-old son is going back to the high school.

"I think he wants to go back," she said. "If he told me he wants to stay home, I'd let him stay home. I think going back to a routine is a good idea; at least that's what I hear from professionals."

On Monday, Newtown held the first two funerals of many the picturesque New England community of 27,000 people will face over the next few days, just as other towns are getting ready for the holidays. At least one funeral is planned for a student -- 6-year-old Jessica Rekos -- as well as several wakes, including one for teacher Victoria Soto, who has been hailed as a hero for sacrificing herself to save several students.

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Funerals begin for Conn. shooting victims

Two funeral homes filled Monday with mourners for Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto, both 6 years old. A rabbi presided at Noah's service, and in keeping with Jewish tradition, the boy was laid to rest in a simple brown wooden casket with a Star of David on it.

"I will miss your perpetual smile, the twinkle in your dark blue eyes, framed by eyelashes that would be the envy of any lady in this room," Noah's mother, Veronique Pozner, said at the service, according to remarks the family provided to The Associated Press. Both services were closed to the news media.

"Most of all, I will miss your visions of your future," she said. "You wanted to be a doctor, a soldier, a taco factory manager. It was your favorite food, and no doubt you wanted to ensure that the world kept producing tacos."

She closed by saying: "Momma loves you, little man."

Noah's twin, Arielle, who was assigned to a different classroom, survived the killing frenzy.

At Jack Pinto's Christian service, hymns rang out from inside the funeral home, where the boy lay in an open casket. Jack was among the youngest members of a youth wrestling association in Newtown, and dozens of little boys turned up at the service in gray Newtown Wrestling T-shirts.

Jack was a fan of New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz and was laid to rest in a Cruz jersey.

In the middle of town, an ever-growing memorial has become a pilgrimage site for strangers who want to pay their respect.

One man told CBS Station WCBS why he visited: "Because I'm a dad with four beautiful daughters, when I found out it broke my heart. It's hard to sleep, I don't know how to feel."

Authorities say the man who killed the two boys and their classmates, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot his mother, Nancy, at their home and then took her car and some of her guns to the school, where he broke in and opened fire. A Connecticut official said the mother, a gun enthusiast who practiced at shooting ranges, was found dead in her pajamas in bed, shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle.

Lanza was wearing all black, with an olive-drab utility vest with lots of pockets, during the attack.

As investigators worked to figure out what drove him to lash out with such fury -- and why he singled out the school -- federal agents said he had fired guns at shooting ranges over the past several years but that there was no evidence he did so recently as practice for the rampage.

Debora Seifert, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said both Lanza and his mother fired at shooting ranges, and also visited ranges together.

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"We do not have any indication at this time that the shooter engaged in shooting activities in the past six months," Seifert said.

Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack.

Whatever his motives, normalcy will be slow in revisiting Newtown.

Classes were canceled district-wide Monday, though other students in town were expected to return to class Tuesday.

Dan Capodicci, whose 10-year-old daughter attends the school at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, said he thinks it's time for her to get back to classes.

"It's the right thing to do. You have to send your kids back. But at the same time I'm worried," he said. "We need to get back to normal."

Gina Wolfman said her daughters are going back to their seventh- and ninth-grade classrooms tomorrow. She thinks they are ready to be back with their friends.

"I think they want to be back with everyone and share," she said.

Newtown police Lt. George Sinko said whether to send children to school is a personal decision for every parent.

"I can't imagine what it must be like being a parent with a child that young, putting them on a school bus," Sinko said.

The district has made plans to send surviving Sandy Hook students to Chalk Hill, a former middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe. Sandy Hook desks that will fit the small students are being taken there, empty since town schools consolidated last year, and tradesmen are donating their services to get the school ready within a matter of days.

"These are innocent children that need to be put on the right path again," Monroe police Lt. Brian McCauley said.

With Sandy Hook Elementary still designated a crime scene, state police Lt. Paul Vance said it could be months before police turn the school back over to the district.

The shooting has put schools on edge across the country.

Anxiety ran high enough in Ridgefield, Conn., about 20 miles from Newtown, that officials ordered a lockdown at schools after a person deemed suspicious was seen at a train station.

Two schools were locked down in South Burlington, Vt., because of an unspecified threat. A high school in Windham, N.H., was briefly locked down after an administrator heard a loud bang, but a police search found nothing suspicious.

Lanza is believed to have used a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, a civilian version of the military's M-16. It is similar to the weapon used in a recent shopping mall shooting in Oregon and other deadly attacks around the U.S. Versions of the AR-15 were outlawed in this country under the 1994 assault weapons ban, but the law expired in 2004.

The outlines of a national debate on gun control have begun to take shape. At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said curbing gun violence is a complex problem that will require a "comprehensive solution."

Carney did not offer specific proposals or a timeline. He said President Obama will meet with law enforcement officials and mental health professionals in coming weeks.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, flanked by shooting survivors and relatives of victims of gunfire around the country, pressed Mr. Obama and Congress to toughen gun laws and tighten enforcement after the Newtown massacre.

"If this doesn't do it," he asked, "what is going to?"

At least one senator, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, said Monday that the attack in Newtown has led him to rethink his opposition to the ban on assault weapons.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is an avid hunter and lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, said it's time to move beyond the political rhetoric and begin an honest discussion about reasonable restrictions on guns.

"This is bigger than just about guns," he added. "It's about how we treat people with mental illness, how we intervene, how we get them the care they need, how we protect our schools. It's just so sad."

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Siblings of Sandy Hook Victims Face Survivor's Guilt

Six-year-old Arielle Pozner was in a classroom at Sandy Hook school when Adam Lanza burst into the school with his rifle and handguns. Her twin brother, Noah, was in a classroom down the hall.

Noah Pozner was killed by Lanza, along with 19 other children at the school, and six adults. Arielle and other students' siblings survived.

"That's going to be incredibly difficult to cope with," said Dr. Jamie Howard, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York. "It is not something we expect her to cope with today and be OK with tomorrow."

READ: Two Adult Survivors of Connecticut School Shooting Will be Key Witnesses

As the community of Newtown, Conn., begins to bury the young victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting today, the equally young siblings of those killed will only be starting to comprehend what happened to their brothers and sisters.

"Children this young do experience depression in a diagnosable way, they do experience post-traumatic stress disorder. Just because they're young, they don't escape the potential for real suffering," said Rahil Briggs, a child psychologist and professor at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Arielle and other survivor siblings could develop anxiety or other emotional reactions to their siblings' death, including "associative logic," where they associate their own actions with their sibling's death, Howard said.

"This is when two things happen, and (children) infer that one thing caused the other. (Arielle) may be at risk for that type of magical thinking, and that could be where survivor's guilt comes in. She may think she did something, but of course she didn't," Howard said.

CLICK HERE for photos from the shooting scene.

Children in families where one sibling has died sometimes struggle as their parents are overwhelmed by grief, Howard noted. When that death is traumatic, adults and children sometimes choose not to think about the person or the event to avoid pain.

Interested in How to Help Newtown Families?

"With traumatic grief, it's really important to talk about and think about the children that died, not to avoid talking and thinking about them because that interferes with grieving process, want their lives to be celebrated," Howard said.

Children may also have difficulty understanding why their deceased brother or sister is receiving so much, or so little, attention, according Briggs.

"I think one of the most challenging questions we can be faced with as parents is how to 'appropriately' remember a child that is gone. So much that can go wrong with that," Briggs said. "You have the child who is fortunate enough to escape, who thinks 'Why me? Why did my brother go?' But if you don't remember the sibling enough the child says 'it seems like we've forgotten my brother.'"

"They may even find themselves feeling jealous of all the attention the sibling seems to be receiving," Briggs said.

Parents and other adults in the family's support system need to be on alert, watching the child's behavior, she said. Children could show signs of withdrawing, or seeming spacy or in a daze. They could also seem jumpy or have difficulty concentrating in the wake of a traumatic event.

"For kids experiencing symptoms, and interfering with ability to go to school, they may be suffering from acute stress disorder, and there are good treatments," Howard said.

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Year at helm, Kim Jong Un asserts will

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Kim Jong Un has ruled North Korea for one year


• His father, Kim Jong Il died of heart attack on December 17, 2011


• Younger Kim departs from his father's style, but repression, malnutrition remain

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- Kim Jong Un cut a somber figure Monday, marking the first anniversary of his father's death. North Korea said Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack from overwork on December 17, 2011.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers assembled outside the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang where the bodies of Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung lie.

Read more: North Korea silences doubters, raises fears with rocket launch

Accompanied by his wife, Ri Sol Ju, who appeared to be heavily pregnant, Kim Jong Un bowed to giant statues of the former leaders inside the mausoleum. Outside, he listened to a commemorative speech from Choe Ryong-hae, head of the military's political arm. Choe praised the achievements of the former leaders before declaring, "Kim Jong Un is North Korea's fate and future."

A lot has changed over the past year. Kim Jong Un has transformed from grieving son to a triumphant leader leading a controversial rocket launch this month.

The 20-something leader, who was suddenly thrust into the limelight last December was considered by many outside, and possibly even inside, North Korea to be ill-prepared for the responsibilities that lay ahead. But experts say it was soon clear that the younger Kim would not be emulating the style of his father.

"Kim Jong Il was rather low profile for a few years after the death of Kim Il Sung which is in accordance with even older Confucian practices," says John Delury assistant professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. "This is after all a dynastic system, but Kim Jong Un quickly proved by the spring that he was going to be quite public, quite active."

April 2012 brought with it one of the most significant dates on the North Korean calendar, as it marked the centenary of the birth of the country's founder Kim Il Sung, celebrations for which had been planned for years by the late Kim Jong Il. His son picked up the mantle and controversially launched a rocket in commemoration.

Following his father's example, Kim ignored international condemnation for what he called an attempt to put a working satellite into orbit. Washington, Seoul and others in the region saw the launch as a cover for testing ballistic missile technology.

Read more: Experts: Rocket launch bolsters North Korean leader

The rocket was a failure, made all the more public by the international media which had been invited into the country for the occasion. But disregarding the international embarrassment, Kim Jong Un continued with the celebrations.

"He actually performed quite well by the standard set for him," says Delury. "He spoke in public which is something his father did not and he projected a kind of confidence and energy, he really turned the young and experienced to his advantage."

The world and the people of North Korea heard the voice of the new leader for the very first time. Even more surprising was Kim's acknowledgment of his people's suffering. He told a gathering of hundreds of thousands, "Our Party is determined our people will not have to tighten their belts but will enjoy wealth and the honor of socialism."

Style-wise, Kim cuts a very different figure to his father. He is more personable and willing to interact with his people. He is often seen smiling and laughing and his wife has accompanied him on many field trips, which was unheard of during his father's reign.

Read more: Is Kim Jong Un's uncertainty driving the rockets?

"She's played a very surprising role in constructing this image of a looser, more relaxed, more open leader domestically," adds Delury.

But despite a softer side appearing on camera, little has improved for the people of North Korea. Aid groups say malnutrition is still rampant in the countryside, brutal labor camps still remain and defector groups in Seoul claim Kim has cracked down even harder on people trying to escape. They say the leader has threatened to imprison or even kill three generations of the family left behind. It's a claim CNN cannot independently confirm.

Kim has made his mark on the military, replacing some generals loyal to his father with those loyal to him.

"Certainly everyone has noticed a number of the key military figures, you know four who walked with Kim Jong Il's remains a year ago have sort of disappeared from the scene or have been reshuffled." But his statements on the South Korean or American leadership remain just as bellicose as during the his father's era and he frequently visits military barracks and installations.

Read more: What is life like inside North Korea?

Speculation about internal displeasure among some of those replaced by Kim Jong Un may be easing since last week's successful rocket launch, the second attempt in a year. "I think it earned him a lot of patriotic points," says Jasper Kim, founder of Asia-Pacific Global research Group. "So that will basically placate the military so this will give him extra room to maneuver in terms of making modernization efforts if that's his plan."

Kim Jong Un's use of the media has been a drastic departure from his father's time. Live broadcasts and televised public speeches are no longer so unusual.

Jasper Kim adds, "Kim Jong Un basically grew up on Google and his father grew up on letters and stamps. It's a new era and Kim Jong Un realizes the more he can kind of shape the narrative to the international community, the more it is to his benefit in terms of getting security and money and everything else that he wants for his country."

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Delhi rape highlights chronic women's safety issues in India

NEW DELHI: A weekend trip to the movies for a medical student in her twenties and her male friend ended in horrifying brutality on Sunday night.

She was harassed and then gang raped on a moving bus. Her friend tried to intervene but was beaten up with an iron rod. The two were later thrown from the vehicle, semi naked.

The woman is now in critical condition in a New Delhi hospital suffering from head injuries, cuts, as well as sexual assault wounds.

"Five to seven people started harassing her. The boy protested and made every effort to come to her aid, but some people caught hold of him. Then three to four people took her and gang raped her in the cabin of the bus," said D.K. Mishra, a relative of girl's male friend.

Whilst tragic and very disturbing, incidents such as this are becoming far too common in the Indian capital.

Reactions from politicians are also becoming increasingly similar.

Opposition politicians blamed the party in power for not doing enough to protect women, while the chief minister of Delhi said her government would do whatever it took to make sure such incidents do not happen again.

"The stringent actions required will be taken, not just in this incident but precautionary measures will also be taken to prevent such incidents from happening in the future," said Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit.

However that often-heard promise begins to sound hollow when the records of rape cases are analysed.

According to National Crime Records Bureau, 568 cases of rape were registered in New Delhi in 2011.

"If women are not safe here, then where ever in the country you can imagine a woman be safe? No parent can sleep in peace if this is the kind of situation which is developing in our capital," said Ranjana Kumari, Director of the Centre for Social Research.

India's other major cities are not far behind. Entertainment and financial hub Mumbai is second on the list with 218 cases.

One also has to bear in mind that these numbers are just cases which are registered. Many more cases in the cities and throughout the country are never registered.

There are laws to protect the rights of women but rape case statistics point to a very disappointing lack of enforcement borne out of deep-rooted social attitudes.

- CNA/jc

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NFL Week 15: The best photos

The Jacksonville Jaguars observe a moment of silence to honor the victims of the Connecticut school shooting before their game against the Miami Dolphins at Sun Life Stadium on Sunday, December 16. Check out the action from Week 15 of the NFL and then look back at the best photos from Week 14.

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