In all the photos, taken by New York City artist Arne Svenson from his second-floor apartment, the faces are obscured or not shown. The people are unidentifiable.

But the residents of a glass-walled luxury residential building across the street had no idea they were being photographed and they never consented to being subjects for the works of art that are now on display and for sale in a Manhattan gallery.

"I don't feel it's a violation in a legal sense but in a New York, personal sense there was a line crossed," said Michelle Sylvester, who lives in the residential building called the Zinc Building, which stands out with its floor-to-ceiling windows in a neighborhood of cobblestone streets and old, brick warehouse buildings.

Svenson's apartment is directly across the street, just to the south, giving him a clear view of his neighbors by simply looking out his window.

"I think there's an understanding that when you live here with glass windows, there will be straying eyes but it feels different with someone who has a camera," Sylvester said.

Svenson's show, "The Neighbors," opened last Saturday at the Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea, where about a dozen large prints are on sale for up to $7,500. His exhibit is drawing a lot of attention, not for the quality of the work, but for the manner in which it was made.

Svenson did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but says in material accompanying the exhibit that the idea for it came when he inherited a telephoto lens from a friend, a birdwatcher who recently died.

"For my subjects there is no question of privacy; they are performing behind a transparent scrim on a stage of their own creation with the curtain raised high," Svenson says in the gallery notes. "The Neighbors don't know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs."

That explanation has done little to satisfy some residents of the Zinc Building, where a penthouse was once listed at nearly $6 million. In an email circulating among the building's owners and renters this week, a resident whose apartment was depicted in Svenson's photographs suggested legal recourse against the artist.

"I am not an expert in this area of the law, but I do think we may have some rights and the ability to stop this," the email reads. "I love art, but find this to be an outrageous invasion of privacy."

Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel said that according to New York civil rights law, there may be a way for Svenson's subjects to challenge him in court but the case will depend entirely on context.

"The question for the person who's suing is, if you're not identifiable, then where's the loss of privacy?" he said. "These issues are a sign of the times. How do you balance the right of privacy vis--vis the right of artistic expression?"

Linda Darcia, an exchange student from Colombia living with a family on the sixth floor facing Svenson's studio, said she had no idea whether or not she was depicted in any of the pieces but she was anxious to go to the gallery and find out.

"I'm not really upset about it because that's his job," she said. "But maybe he should have asked before the gallery opens. Everybody's talking about it."

The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most prominent theaters.

Officials of the Lutheran Church of Norway have stopped short of calling it a spiritual awakening, but they see the newfound interest in the Bible as proof that it still resonates in a country where only 1 percent of the 5 million residents regularly attends church.

"Thoughts and images from the Bible still have an impact on how we experience reality," said Karl Ove Knausgaard, one of several famous Norwegian authors enlisted to help with the translation.

Scholars aren't surprised at the success of the plays or the new Bible translation, explaining that faith is a deeply personal matter in this nation of taciturn Scandinavians who regularly withdraw from city life to spend holidays at remote cottages in the solitude of the mountains, fjords and forests.

"Church attendance is a poor measure of the Norwegian state of faith," said post-doctoral fellow Thorgeir Kolshus at the University of Oslo. "Religion is a very private thing for Norwegians."

Anne Veiteberg, publishing director of Norway's Bible Society, said that increased immigration also probably has been a factor.

More than 258,000 immigrants have settled in the country during the last six years alone, adding diversity of race and religion. The Church of Norway estimates that around 60 percent of immigrants are Christian, while the rest are Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

"Now that we're exposed to other faiths, Norwegians have gotten more interested in their own faith," Veiteberg said.

Released in October 2011 by the Norwegian Bible Society, the new translation replaces a 1978 edition, with the goal of improving readability and accuracy. For example, in the older version, Mary was called a "virgin." In the new translation she is referred to instead as a "young" woman. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also made this change in its latest Bible translation from 2011, saying the change didn't alter teaching about Mary, but was meant to address the possible different meanings of the Hebrew word "almah" in the text.

Norway's Bible Society promoted the new translation like a pop fiction novel, stirring anticipation by giving out teasers of biblical stories before its release.

It turned to poets and authors such as Knausgard to make the text sing and resonate for a new generation. And it was packaged in a variety of ways, targeting teenagers with pink leather or denim covers, and adults with bridal or sophisticated literary covers.

"It's easier to read," says Helga Haugland Byfuglien, presiding bishop for the Church of Norway. "There is no over-interpretation of the text."

It has sold nearly 160,000 copies and was Norway's best-selling book in 2012. Church officials concede that hefty marketing campaigns helped explain the strong sales.

Like many other European nations, Norwegians have experienced decades of secularization as religion has taken a back seat to other pursuits. They are fiercely committed to jamming weekends with skiing, hiking and other outdoor activities, leaving little time other than Christmas or Easter to fill the pews.

Last year, Parliament unanimously decided to end the Lutheran church's status as the official state religion.

Erik Ulfsby, artistic director at Det Norske Teatret, which staged the "Bibelen" play, said that even if Norwegians don't go to church, they still see the Bible as an important part of their literary heritage.

"The (church) wants you to agree with their interpretation but the theater gives you the chance to think out loud and discuss the Bible," he said.

The play, directed by Stein Winge, certainly offered a nontraditional interpretation.

For instance, rather than dying on a cross, Jesus was committed to a mental hospital and eventually executed via lethal injection. And, at the wedding at Cana, show-goers saw Jesus portrayed as being drunk when he changed water to wine.

"Bible" isn't the first religious production to have Norwegians at the edge of their seats. Renowned actor Svein Tindberg has staged three monologues based on the Bible, each more successful than the last.

In the mid-1990s, "Gospel of Mark" was slated to run for 20 nights but was such a hit that Tindberg performed 220 nights. His latest production, "Abraham's Children," opened last year and has sold 52,000 tickets, compared to expectations of 1,000 outselling "Evita" in Norway.

Despite the unorthodox artistic interpretations that are emerging, religious authorities in Norway are embracing the concept of experiencing religion through art.

"Even if you don't believe the core of the message, the Bible has rich, meaningful stories," Byfuglien said. "Culture breaks the religious shyness that people have in association with the church and it's a way for those who have distanced themselves to experience it in an interesting way."

Bob Dole says he couldn't make it as a Republican today - and a tilt toward more conservative voters in the key Iowa Republican caucuses may bear him out.

"Could people like Bob Dole, even Ronald Reagan - could you make it in today's Republican Party?" host Chris Wallace asked Dole on "Fox News Sunday."

"I doubt it," Dole said. "Reagan wouldn't have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn't have made it, because he had ideas and- We might have made it, but I doubt it."

The 1996 presidential nominee went further, saying his party should close up shop until it's figured things out.

"I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says 'closed for repairs' until New Year's Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas," Dole said.

The Republican National Committee has advertised a broad-based retooling after some tough years for Republicans. Despite their gains in 2010, Republicans lost the 2012 presidential race along with nearly every competitive Senate campaign. All that came after another crushing loss in 2008.

Dole's comments reflected concerns of other centrist Republicans forced out of the party by primaries or the threats of primaries as conservatives gained influence over the GOP during President Obama's tenure in the White House.

Is Dole right? A look at the changed demographics of Iowa Republicans suggests he might have lost the 1996 Iowa caucuses had today's Republicans judged him then.

Dole topped the 1996 Iowa GOP field with 27 percent of the caucus vote. His coalition was broad: He won 30 percent of "somewhat conservative" caucus-goers and 29 percent of moderates, according to entrance polls. His worst showing came among "very conservative" caucus-goers, from whom he gathered 21 percent of votes.

Pat Buchanan, the conservative former Nixon aide, finished second with 23 percent. He was the favorite of the "very conservative" bloc: Buchanan raked in 37 percent of their votes, while trailing Dole badly among the other categories - 22 percent of "somewhat conservative" and only seven percent of "moderate" caucus goers.

Iowa Republicans leaned more to the middle in 1996. According to polls of Republicans entering GOP caucus sites in 1996, 34 percent of caucus-goers were "very conservative," 41 percent "somewhat conservative," and 25 percent "moderate" or "liberal."

In 2012, when Rick Santorum narrowly topped Mitt Romney in Iowa, "very conservative" had climbed to 47 percent, an increase of 13 percentage points. "Somewhat conservative" accounted for 37 percent, a four-point drop; liberal/moderate caucus goers accounted for 17 percent, eight percentage points fewer than in 1996.

An analysis of the changing demographics of Iowa suggests Buchanan may have edged out Dole if the caucuses were held today, assuming the candidates held on to the same percentage of each category of voter from 1996 to 2012.

According to national exit polls, Dole's general-election coalition was just a shade more moderate than Romney's in 2012. In 1996, 57 percent of Dole's supporters self-identified as "conservative" (as opposed to liberal or moderate); last year, 60 percent of Romney's voters said they were "conservative." Those data have their limits, as exit polls aren't conducted in every state.

Of course, there are too many factors to predict a re-writing of history. It's impossible for the Dole of then to run today, as it's impossible for the Iowa voters of today to caucus then. Caucuses are social events, and the formation and spread of political opinions depends on too many things to simply plug one candidate into another year and assume the numbers can predict what would have happened.

If the Bob Dole of 1996 ran today, he could very well find a new appeal to voters. Especially running against different candidates, Dole's percentage of votes from liberals, moderates, and conservatives could vary drastically in a different landscape.

But in the 1996 primaries, strictly looking at changing voter demographics, Dole's first victory may not have been, had today's Republicans caucused.

Details about the changes are emerging nearly two months after the regime unveiled dual goals of building the economy and nuclear weapons in the first concrete economic policy laid out by leader Kim Jong Un since he took power in December 2011.

Farmers say they have begun working under the new policies, which are designed to boost production by giving managers and workers financial incentives. Foreign analysts say the moves to spur North Korea's moribund economy suggest Pyongyang is taking cues from Beijing on how to incorporate free market ideas within its rigid socialist system.

The North's policy enshrining its provocative push to build atomic weapons as a national goal has complicated efforts to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and dominated international discussion about the country. Pyongyang's economic priorities have drawn far less attention but some experts think important reforms could be unfolding.

Impoverished North Korea suffers chronic food and power shortages and has not released economic data for decades. South Korea's central bank estimates the North's gross national income, an indicator of the average standard of living, was $1,250 per person in 2011 compared with $23,400 in South Korea.

In the past, the North Korean state set workers' salaries. Under new measures announced April 1, the managers of farms, factories and other enterprises have been given leeway to set salaries and offer raises to workers who help drive up production.

"This is definitely significant," said John Delury, an assistant professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Providing material incentives and loosening central control over economic decision making are two key elements in the transition from a command economy to a market-based system, he said.

Also announced April 1: the reappointment of Pak Pong Ju as premier after his dismissal from the post in 2007. Pak was central to attempts at economic change more than a decade ago.

"You just wouldn't bring back Pak Pong Ju unless you were going to try readjusting economy policy. There would be no reason to do that," said Delury, calling it a strong sign of Kim Jong Un's interest in lifting living standards.

North Korea's policy changes find an echo in China's market reforms that have transformed it into a manufacturing powerhouse and the world's second-largest economy while also lifting several hundred million out of grinding poverty.

Beijing dismantled its centrally planned economy slowly. In the 1970s, it began allowing farmers to keep more of their harvests, giving them an incentive to grow more to sell on newly permitted free markets. Food production soared.

In the mid-'80s, the government gave state enterprises the authority to link bonuses and salaries to better performance. Those changes were mostly aimed at managers, but they cracked a communist-era preference for egalitarianism.

New rules in the early 1990s gave state enterprises full flexibility to set wages, widening the use of performance incentives. In that decade, China truly broke away from its centralized "iron rice bowl" system of guaranteed employment and state-set incomes.

Delury and others cautioned that if North Korea is intent on economic reform, it is likely to be a fitful process.

"We have to be careful not to say: Aha, it's all change, it's finally here," he said. "The point is, and we see this from the Chinese case, this is a process that unfolds over time and there are starts and stops, too. But this is a strong signal of a push."

The Associated Press reported last September that farmers were notified of upcoming management changes at collective farms that would put decision-making and responsibility for crops in the hands of local officials and give farmers the right to hold onto surpluses.

"Last year, we studied reasonable economic management methods in different fields of economic work, and introduced it to some units on a trial basis," Ri Ki Song, an economist from North Korea's Academy of Social Sciences, told AP this week.

North Korea formally announced the policy, and its expansion to include factories and other enterprises, a day after holding a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party. Rodong Sinmun, the party newspaper, called it part of a "new strategic line."

Ri, however, dismissed characterizations of the changes as reform.

What's new, he said, is allowing managers to dole out goods and cash as incentives. In addition, after paying back investments provided by the state, managers can set their employees' salaries and offer raises to those who help drive up production, he said.

The main goal: to encourage "greater profits" and solve North Korea's chronic food shortage, Ri said.

He said North Koreans work hard, but the new incentives give them motivation to work even harder. "They are saying that higher salaries and shares will improve their life."

Political and military expert Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Hawaii, noted that North Korea has rolled back past attempts at economic reform.

"The North Koreans have played reform games before and then just sort of pulled the rug out from under it," he said. Cossa cited international aid groups as saying the military is pressuring farmers to donate their portion to the army.

Last year, a farmer's wife in Sariwon, south of Pyongyang, told the AP she planned to donate any surplus harvest to the state as a token of her patriotism.

At the Tongbong farm in the eastern city of Hamhung, farmers are in the midst of a busy rice planting season after a long, cold winter.

This year, things are being managed differently, said Kim Jong Jin, deputy chairman of the farm's managing committee.

He said the state provided the farm with the rice seedlings, which farmers are now transplanting to paddies by hand. Farmers are on smaller teams that have direct responsibility over their plots.

After the rice is harvested, farmers must "repay" the state for the seeds. At Tongbong that means giving the state about 193 kilograms of rice as payback for every 140 kilograms of seedlings they received.

But any surplus can be kept by the team to sell, barter or distribute a change from past policies that required farmers to turn all harvests over to the state.

"This encourages enthusiasm for production and we get more of what's produced," Kim said.

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Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee, Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Kwang Hyon Kim in Pyongyang, North Korea; Charles Hutzler in Beijing; and Margie Mason in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP's Korea bureau chief, Jean H. Lee, at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

Authorities announced plans to impose a sweeping ban on many cars across the Iraqi capital starting early Friday in an apparent effort to thwart car bombings, as the United Nations envoy to Iraq warned that "systemic violence is ready to explode."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, was shown on state television visiting security checkpoints around Baghdad the previous night as part of a three-hour inspection tour, underscoring the government's efforts to show it is acting to curtail the bloodshed.

Iraqi security forces are struggling to contain the country's most relentless round of violence since the 2011 U.S. military withdrawal.

The rise in violence follows months of protests against the Shiite-led government by Iraq's Sunni minority, many of whom feel they've been marginalized and unfairly treated since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Tensions escalated sharply last month after a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest camp.

Sunni militants, including al-Qaida, have long targeted Iraq's Shiite majority and government security forces. But Sunni mosques and other targets have also been struck over the past several weeks, raising the possibility that Shiite militias are also growing more active.

Several members of the security forces were killed in Thursday's bombings. The attacks also included an assassination attempt by a suicide bomber targeting a provincial governor in the country's Sunni-dominated west.

"These daily patterns of car bomb attacks ... in Baghdad and some other cities (are) really unacceptable for the people of Iraq, who have suffered so much," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Thursday.

"It's the government's responsibility to redouble its efforts, to revise its security plans, to contain this wave, to prevent it from sliding into sectarian conflict and war," he added. "That should not happen again."

The spike in violence, which has gained momentum since the middle of the month, is raising worries that Iraq is heading back toward the widespread sectarian bloodletting that spiked in 2006 and 2007 and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

More than 500 people have been killed in May. The month before was Iraq's deadliest since June 2008, according to a United Nations tally that put April's death toll at more than 700.

"Iraq is a reactor that's overheating and there's little coolant available," said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Beirut-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies. "Iraq's nascent politics is not quipped to sustain the current dangerous levels of internal and external pressure. There needs to be an off-ramp to relieve some of the pressure."

The vehicle ban coming into effect Friday applies to cars bearing temporary black license plates. Those plates are common in post-war Iraq, where for years it was difficult to obtain new ones. They are typically on older-model vehicles and are more difficult to trace, and authorities say they are frequently used in car bombings.

Most of Thursday's blasts erupted in Baghdad.

Car bombs killed four in the northeastern Shiite neighborhood of Binouq, and three died in a bombing at a market selling spare car parts in central Baghdad, according to police. In Baghdad's eastern Shiite Ur neighborhood, a parked car bomb went off next to an army patrol, killing four and wounding 17, police said.

Police officials also said that a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in the largely Shiite central commercial district of Karradah, killing three people there. That explosion shattered glass on several storefronts and left the stricken police unit's modified Ford pickup truck charred and mangled.

"What have these innocent people done to deserve this?" asked witness Sinan Ali. "So many people were hurt. Who is responsible?"

In Baghdad's northern Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, a car bomb exploded in a commercial area, killing six civilians and wounding 17 others.

In the largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in the capital's north, a car bomb struck near a military convoy, killing three people, including two soldiers, according to police. Another 14 people were wounded in that attack.

A bomb hidden on a minibus killed three and maimed eight in the eastern mixed Sunni-Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood. And a police patrol was struck in the southern neighborhood of Saydiyah, wounding six.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualties.

In Anbar province, the provincial governor escaped an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into his convoy, his deputy Dhari Arkan said. The governor escaped unharmed, but four of his guards were wounded.

Anbar is a vast Sunni-dominated province west of Baghdad that for months has been the center of protests against the Shiite-led government.

In the former insurgent stronghold city of Mosul, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, a suicide bomber attacked a federal police checkpoint, killing three people, according to police.

And to the west of Mosul, a suicide attacker drove his explosives-packed car into a security checkpoint, killing two members of the security forces and two civilians, according to a police officer and a doctor. Eight other people were wounded in the attacks in the town of Tal Afar, they added.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media.

The United Nations envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, urged Iraqi leaders to do more to "pull the country out of this mayhem."

"Systemic violence is ready to explode at any moment," he said in a statement.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but blame for many of the attacks is likely to fall on al-Qaida's Iraq arm, which frequently carries out bombings against civilians and security forces in an effort to undermine faith in the Shiite-led government.

Other militant groups have also grown more active in recent months, including the Army of the Men of the Naqshabandi Order, which has ties to members of Saddam Hussein's now-outlawed Baath party.

The attacks began hours after bomb blasts tore through two Baghdad neighborhoods Wednesday evening, killing at least 30, including several members of a wedding party in the mixed Sunni-Shiite Jihad neighborhood.

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Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this story.

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Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

Though no EU country has any such plans now to send arms, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the decision "sends a very strong message from Europe to the Assad regime." He spoke after an all-day meeting of foreign ministers Monday that laid bare EU hesitation on feeding arms in a foreign conflict only months after the 27-member bloc won the Nobel Peace Prize.

"It is extremely important not to do anything to rock the boat. Start delivering weapons now would rock the boat. No one is intending to do that," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said.

But in a bid to force Syria to participate in good faith at the prospective "Geneva II" talks next month, the meeting in Brussels dangled the option of sending in weapons and military equipment as soon as Saturday, when the current sanctions regime ends.

The prospect of EU weapons for the rebels, while maintaining stiff economic sanctions against Assad's regime, also sends a message to Russia. Moscow has unabashedly sent weapons to Assad's regime and EU arms deliveries could partially re-balance the civil war when it comes to firepower.

Several EU ministers said arming the opposition would create a more level playing field that could force Assad into a negotiated settlement.

Britain and France the EU's biggest military powers had been pushing the bloc to lift its embargo on delivery of weapons into Syria to help the embattled opposition. But Austria, which has sent peacekeepers to the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, was vocally opposed one of several EU countries that argued that the region is already awash in weapons.

EU countries will individually examine their export license applications one by one and will not proceed "at this stage" with deliveries of military equipment, the joint declaration said, though it did not specify when that might change.

EU ministers agreed to revisit the issue before Aug. 1, but countries, based on previous EU guidelines, can now decide for themselves whether they want to arm the rebels.

The EU nations also agreed everything possible should be done to control any exports and make sure they do not fall into the hands of extremists or terrorists one of the thorniest issues for France and Britain in their calls to arm the rebels. Each country will require "adequate safeguards against misuse of authorizations (for export) granted," the EU text said.

Hague said Britain would only send in weapons "in company with other nations, in carefully controlled circumstances, and in compliance with international law."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius left the talks earlier Monday to return to Paris to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who are leading the effort to bring the two warring Syrian sides to the negotiating table.

Assad's government has agreed in principle to participate in peace talks in Geneva, but the exact date, agenda and participants still remain unclear.

In Paris, officials traveling with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had no comment on the EU arms decision.

A State Department official also said the department was aware of Sen. John McCain, a proponent of arming Syrian rebels, crossing into Syrian territory on Monday. Further questions were referred to McCain's office, which confirmed the unannounced trip but gave no details.

McCain met with anti-government fighters in Syria. The fierce critic of Obama administration policy in Syria has stopped short of backing U.S. ground troops there.

France added urgency to the EU arms debate Monday, with Fabius pointing to increasing signs that chemical weapons were being used in the conflict.

The EU nations have been steadfast opponents of Assad in the war and have steadily increased restrictive measures against his regime, including visa restrictions and economic sanctions. In February, the bloc amended the arms embargo to allow for non-lethal equipment and medicine to protect Syrian civilians. All those measures had been set to expire on May 31, but nearly all of the sanctions, including restrictions on exports and imports, visas, and funding for some Syrian companies, were extended for a year.

Washington has been reluctant to provide rebels with more sophisticated weapons for fear they might end up in the hands of the radical Islamic factions, including the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has been the most effective fighting force on the opposition side.

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Associated Press writer Bradley Klapper in Paris contributed to this report.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The head of the Catholic Church in Australia on Monday blamed a former culture of silence for the cover-up of child abuse by clergy, making it difficult to know the full extent of abuse, but added that the number of cases had dropped significantly since the church started taking stronger action.

Cardinal George Pell, an adviser to Pope Francis on Vatican reforms, told a parliamentary hearing the church had been slow to address the suffering of victims and again issued an apology.

"I am fully apologetic, and absolutely sorry," said Pell in a tense hearing marked by at times angry questioning over the church's compensation and investigations. Pell was questioned for more than four hours.

Pell said the number of reports of abuse by clergy members peaked in the 1970s and 80s, but had fallen as the church changed its approach.

"The evidence of misbehaving, crimes, has been significantly reduced. I hope the worst is behind us," Pell said, adding 300 people in Victoria had received compensation for abuse.

Child abuse scandals have haunted the Church for more than two decades in Australia, Europe and the United States, with Ireland shutting its embassy to the Vatican in 2011 due to strained relations over the abuse issue.

Pell was giving evidence to a Victorian state inquiry in Melbourne, in relation to his role as Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001 when he implemented protocols for dealing with abuse complaints.

Before a packed public gallery, with many in tears during his testimony, Pell issued another apology to the victims of sexual abuse, and said church leaders in the past had been reluctant to share information about accused priests.

"So I don't think many persons in the leadership of the Catholic church knew what a horrendous, widespread mess we were sitting on," he said.

But since the 1990s, the church was more open in dealing with the issue, and conducts stronger background checks on people joining the clergy, he said.

He also denied acting like "Pontius Pilate" in brushing aside claims and rejected accusations from MPs that his past references to the church being "bled to death" by abuse inquiries referred to concern about compensation payments.

"In my mind it was a secondary consideration, the financial consideration. Whatever the legislature decides is appropriate, we will pay," Pell said.

COVER UP

The parliamentary inquiry has heard child abuse by members of the church was covered up, and that the Catholic church was more concerned with protecting priests than protecting victims.

It has been told that Pell's predecessor as Archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, dealt with complaints confidentially, kept no records, and moved accused priests to new parishes where some continued to sexually abuse children.

Little died in 2008. But Pell acknowledged Little covered up the issue and did not discuss it with advisers or other bishops.

"He inherited a situation where there were no protocols, no procedures. And he never spoke to anybody about it. He didn't know how to deal with it," Pell said.

Pell has also been criticized by victim support groups for his decision to accompany an accused pedophile priest into court in 1993, but said the action was not meant as a slight against abuse victims.

The priest, Gerald Ridsdale, was convicted and jailed for 19 years for molesting and raping 40 children between 1961 and 1987. Pell said he was aware of the "terrible crimes" and knew Ridsdale was going to plead guilty, and his decision to walk with him to court was not meant as a sign that he did not support the victims of his crimes.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has set up a rare Royal Commission, the highest form of investigation in Australia, into how churches, government bodies and other organizations dealt with child sex abuse cases.

Pell has said the church would fully cooperate with the Royal Commission, which has yet to start hearing evidence and could run for several years.

The Catholic Church is Australia's largest, with 5.4 million followers, representing about one in four Australians.

(Additional reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Michael Perry)

NBC and Notre Dame said the extension would begin in 2016 and run through the 2025 season. Terms were not disclosed, though the current five-year contract is reportedly worth an average of $15 million annually.

NBC will have global media rights on all platforms to a minimum of seven Notre Dame home football games each year, with most airing on NBC. The deal also allows for games to be carried on the NBC Sports Network cable channel.

NBC has held Notre Dame football TV rights since 1991.

"Coming off one of Notre Dame's best and most dramatic seasons in decades, we could not be more proud to extend this historic partnership, which continues to be one of the most innovative in sports-media history," NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus said. "We are particularly excited that this extension offers enhanced rights that allow us to bring Notre Dame football to fans on more platforms than ever before."

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the addition of the NBC Sports Network will allow for greater exposure for the football team and other Notre Dame sports programs.

"We look forward to collaborating on additional projects and distribution strategies in seasons to come," Swarbrick said in a statement.

David Bank, a New York-based equity research analyst who specializes in sports rights fees for RBC Capital Markets, said the new contract probably will generate "meaningfully more" revenue for Notre Dame than the previous deal. He said he couldn't estimate how much more.

College sports TV rights fees have been going up and will continue to do so with the start of the Fox Sports 1 cable network in August, Bank said. He said he wasn't surprised at the announcement of the NBC-Notre Dame extension.

"Fox Sports 1 has NBC Sports playing defense," Bank said. "It's imperative to lock down content that is left."

Notre Dame's football team finished the regular season 12-0 last season and lost to Alabama in the BCS championship game.According to NBC Sports Group, the Irish averaged 4.4 million viewers and a 2.8 household rating for its seven games on NBC in 2012. That marked a 69 percent increase in viewers and 67 percent increase in household rating compared with 2011.

Notre Dame plans to continue using revenue from the contract to fund the school's financial-aid endowment for the general student body, not including athletes. The school said that since 1991, about 6,300 undergraduates have received nearly $80 million in aid from revenue generated through the NBC contract.

Notre Dame also uses NBC revenues to endow doctoral fellowships in its graduate school and MBA scholarships in its Mendoza College of Business.

The agri-processing company said diluted headline earnings per share for the year to end-March totalled 942.3 cents from 819.4 cents a year ago.

Total sugar output rose 9 percent to 1.254 million tonnes. Tongaat Hulett has interests in land management and property development, but its main business is sugar production and milling.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Ang Lee apparently isn't feeling very tyrannical anymore.

The "Life of Pi" director has dropped out of the FX pilot "Tyrant," which would have marked his television directorial debut.

The pilot, from "Homeland" producers Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff, along with Craig Wright ("Six Feet Under"), follows an unassuming American family drawn into the workings of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation. Raff created the pilot, which was developed by Gordon and Wright.

Raff handled writing duties for the pilot, which comes from Teakwood Lane, Gordon's production shingle with 20th Century Fox Television.