TULSA, Oklahoma (Reuters) - There was no doubt in Nora Guthrie's mind where the final repository of her famous musician father's legacy would be.

The Woody Guthrie Center opened on Saturday in Tulsa, allowing visitors to see the folk singer's handwritten lyrics to "This Land Is Your Land" and thousands of other lyric sheets, letters, postcards, artwork, photos, manuscripts and journals.

Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, about 60 miles from Tulsa, in 1912 and spent his early years there. He gained fame in the 1930s for ballads that drew attention to the plight of Dust Bowl refugees, migrant farmworkers and others dispossessed by the hard times of the Great Depression.

Guthrie's papers were stored in boxes for decades following his death from Huntington's disease in 1967, just after interest in his life and work had been rekindled by Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, and others during the 1960s folk music revival.

It was not until the early 1990s that Nora Guthrie started poking through the boxes that her mother, Guthrie's second wife, had carefully packaged.

She recalled pulling out the lyric sheet to "This Land Is Your Land" and asking an archivist what she should do to protect it. A cup of coffee was nearby, Nora Guthrie said, and the archivist carefully placed it and the lyrics a safe distance apart before explaining some of the basic points of archival storage.

The decision to move the archives from New York City to Oklahoma came about a decade ago. The Guthrie family had lost track of where Woody's mother, who died of Huntington's disease in 1930, was buried but rediscovered it in Oklahoma while a touring exhibit on the singer's life was visiting the state.

Family and friends gathered at the grave site, where Nora Guthrie said she was overcome with a feeling that her grandmother was telling her, "Thanks for bringing my boy back to me."

"It was a very powerful experience," she said. "There was some kind of strong pull to bring Woody back to Oklahoma. That was the catalyst."

GUTHRIE'S EX-WIFE

The George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa bought the archives two years ago and agreed to transform a brick warehouse into the Woody Guthrie Center.

On Friday, before the center was opened to the public, one of its first visitors was Guthrie's first wife, Mary Jennings Boyle, 96, of Riverside, California. Sitting in her wheelchair, she watched a multi-media presentation that depicted her marriage to Guthrie after they had met in the Texas panhandle town of Pampa.

She had no objections to be being part of a museum exhibit and said her memories remain fond despite Guthrie's wanderlust, which left her at home with their three kids.

"Our life was not like the normal life," she said. "It just wasn't in him to do that ... Woody wasn't one for doing what most people do."

Bob Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, calls Guthrie "one of the most important American songwriters."

"His relevancy today is as rich and vibrant today as when he was crisscrossing America writing songs about it," he said.

A variety of recording artists have been invited to browse the Guthrie archives to set his unpublished lyrics to their own music.

"That has never been done before," said Tiffany Colannino, the center's archivist. "Archives traditionally have been a repository for preservation."

The center also features a theater and a classroom for educational programs, but Guthrie's leftist political views will not be pushed on anyone, said Deana McCloud, an English teacher who has been hired as the center's executive director.

McCloud said students who come from tough economic circumstances can find inspiration from Guthrie, who grew up amid the poverty of the 1930s Dust Bowl, "but still had power because of his creativity."

"We're not trying to tell kids what to think," McCloud said. "We're just encouraging them to think."

(This story was fixed to correct spelling of Tiffany Colannino in paragraph 17)

(Editing By Brendan O'Brien, Greg McCune and Bill Trott)

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Qualcomm confirmed at a media event in Beijing on Friday that the next-generation Snapdragon 800 chipset will enter mass production in late May, Engadget reported. The company would not reveal which upcoming devices will utilize the high-end processor, however, nor did it allow journalists to run benchmark tests.

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Earlier reports suggested that while the Snapdragon 800 may deliver better battery life, it .

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Concert promoters AEG Live ignored red flags when it hired Dr. Conrad Murray to care for Michael Jackson, and should have been aware that the singer had addiction problems years before he agreed to perform a series of 2009 London comeback concerts, an attorney for Jackson's family told a Los Angeles jury on Monday.

Making his opening statement in what is expected to be an emotional, three-month long civil wrongful death trial, attorney Brian Panish said a combination of factors caused Jackson's death in June 2009 from an overdose.

"Michael Jackson, Dr. Conrad Murray and AEG Live each played a part in the ultimate result, the death of Michael Jackson," said Panish who is representing the singer's family.

The "Thriller" singer's mother Katherine is suing privately-held AEG Live, promoters of the never-realized series of London concerts, for negligence in hiring Dr. Conrad Murray.

Murray, convicted in 2011 for the involuntary manslaughter of Jackson, was caring for the singer as he rehearsed in Los Angeles for the series of 50 "This is It" shows in London that were due to start in July 2009.

Panish said AEG Live failed to do proper background checks on Murray, who asked for $5 million to care for the singer. Background checks would have revealed Murray was deeply in debt and was a cardiologist even though Jackson had no known heart issues, Panish said.

"`When a red flag comes up, do you turn away or do you look into it?" Panish said. "AEG ignored the obvious red flags and they hired Dr. Murray."

Katherine Jackson, 82, along with her children Randy and Rebbie, were among family members attending Monday's packed opening of the trial. Jackson's three children, who could be called as witnesses later, were not there.

Jackson, drowning in debt and seeking to rebuild a reputation damaged by his 2005 trial and acquittal on child molestation charges, died in Los Angeles of an overdose of the powerful surgical anesthetic propofol, supplied by Murray, and a cocktail of other sedatives in June 2009. The singer was 50 when he died.

YEARS OF ADDICTION ISSUES

Panish said Jackson had known problems with prescription drug addiction dating back to his use of the painkiller Demerol following a burn injury when he was shooting a Pepsi commercial in 1984.

"It was widely publicized Michael was dependent on pain killers," Panish said, adding that AEG Live should have been aware of the reports.

Jackson in 1993 announced he was canceling a world tour to seek treatment for his painkiller addiction.

AEG Live contends that it did not hire or supervise Murray, saying that a proposed contract with him was never executed. The concert promoters also have said they could not have foreseen that Murray posed a danger to Jackson.

Attorneys for AEG Live will make their opening statements later on Monday.

In the days before the trial began, Panish denied the Jackson family is seeking $40 billion in damages from AEG Live, as some media had reported this month.

The final amount will be determined by the jury should it hold AEG Live liable for negligence.

A handful of Jackson fans gathered outside the court on Monday, saying they were hoping for justice for the "King of Pop."

Jackson fan Julia Thomas, 40, an office worker from Colton, southern California, said she hoped the trial would demonstrate what she said were the wrongs AEG Live committed against Jackson and the demands they placed on him.

"They're about to be exposed because they bullied Michael, they stressed him into the grave to the point that he needed sedatives to sleep," Thomas told Reuters.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant, Andrew Hay and David Gregorio)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire faces a possible voter backlash along with critical ads from gun control advocates following her vote against President Barack Obama's bid to curb gun violence.

According to a survey by Public Policy Polling released Wednesday, Ayotte's approval rating stands at 44 percent, down 15 points since October when the organization last conducted a poll on her. The poll of 933 New Hampshire voters, from April 19 to April 21, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.

Fifty percent of those polled said Ayotte's vote against background checks legislation would make them less likely to support her for re-election. Seventy-five percent said they supported background checks.

The survey did not make clear how much, if any, of the decline in her approval rating over six months was attributable to her April 17 vote that helped defeat the bill expanding background checks for gun purchasers.

Still, gun control proponents seized on the poll as a sign of the dangers awaiting members of Congress who vote with the gun lobby against popular legislation like the defeated bill.

"I think we are at a turning point," Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said on Thursday at a breakfast roundtable with reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

"Lots of senators who thought it was safe to vote against it (gun control) ... aren't so sure anymore," Schumer said.

A gun-control group founded by former Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona, who was wounded in a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona, began airing radio ads this week in New Hampshire criticizing Ayotte.

The group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, is also sponsoring ads aimed at Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for helping defeat the bipartisan measure to expand background checks, which failed to advance in the U.S. Senate by a six vote margin.

"As Gabby said last week, if we can't keep our communities safe with the Congress we have, we will work to change Congress," said Pia Carusone, executive director of Giffords' group.

Ayotte, elected to the Senate with 60 percent of the vote in 2010, is not up for re-election until 2016.

McConnell faces re-election next year, and a Republican aide brushed off the ads against him.

"It is tough to be too pro-gun in Kentucky," the aide said.

Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, said, "New Hampshire is a good bellwether for fallout from the gun vote."

"There's serious backlash from voters toward Kelly Ayotte for how she handled this issue," he said.

EDITORIAL CRITICISM

Ayotte has also drawn editorial criticism in New Hampshire from the Portsmouth Herald, which ripped into the senator with an editorial on Sunday headlined, "If you want gun control, vote Ayotte out of office."

It is unclear what, if any, lasting political damage she has suffered.

Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, "I suspect this will be old news by 2016."

Ayotte's office noted she offered alternative legislation last week, including measures designed to help keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Ayotte, one of the few remaining Republican U.S. lawmakers from New England, was the only senator from the region to vote against the bipartisan measure.

"No matter what the system is, if we don't enforce it and prosecute it, then people will still try to violate it and felons will still try to get guns, so I think that's where our focus has to be," she said in an interview on WMUR-TV television station.

Senior Senate Democratic aides said it had been assumed by many in the party that Ayotte might vote for the proposal, but that they had received no assurances from her.

One aide said they expected her to possibly vote yes because veteran Senator John McCain of Arizona has been seen as a mentor of Ayotte, who is in her first term. McCain was among a handful of Senate Republicans who voted for the measure.

(Reporting By Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Fred Barbash and Mohammad Zargham)

More conservative members of Illinois' Republican Party have been trying to oust Pat Brady for months, largely because he took a position in favor of gay marriage when a bill to legalize it was before the Legislature earlier this year. About 50 party members attended Saturday's meeting of the GOP's State Central Committee to ask that Brady step down or that the committee fire him.

After a tense, hourslong session, Brady remained as the party's chairman. He said the committee did not take a vote on whether to fire him during a closed-door meeting Saturday.

"I think there are people in the party who don't necessarily agree with me, but the point is .... we're a party that welcomes all ideas," Brady said. "You don't have to be exactly a platform Republican to be welcome in the party, and that's the direction we're taking the party."

Besides Brady's stance on gay marriage, his detractors also point to Republican losses at the polls in November. Illinois Democrats won veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the Legislature and picked up seats in Congress.

"We need a leader people can rally around," said Mark Stern, a GOP township committeeman from DuPage County. "Pat Brady chose to focus on things that that are divisive rather than the 80 percent of things we all agree on. That's not leadership."

Tensions mounted when the committee went into the closed-door session without first taking public comment and remained behind closed doors for several hours. At one point, people gathered in a hallway outside the meeting began yelling and chanting, "Throw him out."

Brady said after the meeting that he does not plan to seek another term after his expires next year and that the committee agreed Saturday to begin working on a succession plan. He said that plan was something the party needed to do and was not a compromise to appease committee members who wanted him gone.

Brady also survived an attempt last month by some committeemen to vote him out. That effort failed amid concerns that getting rid of Brady would reflect poorly on a party that's trying to appeal more to young voters and minorities by being more inclusive.

Brady has the support of the state's ranking Republican, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, who announced earlier this month he also supports same-sex marriage. Both men have said they don't believe government has a place in deciding who should marry.

Saturday's conflict erupted during a meeting to discuss a preliminary analysis of what went wrong in the 2012 election and what it will take to do better at the polls in the future.

The report is expected to mirror one released by the Republican National Committee last month, which concluded that the party must be more open-minded and do more outreach to Hispanics, African-Americans, women and young voters if they are to be successful in future elections.

Brady and State Central Committeeman Mike Bigger, who's heading up the Illinois analysis, also said the state party needs to upgrade its database of voter information and improve communication and mentoring opportunities within the party.