South Korea's suggestion that officials meet in a truce village straddling the heavily armed border between the countries came hours after Pyongyang said it favors holding talks in its border city of Kaesong.

South Korea on Thursday had suggested high-level talks Wednesday in Seoul, but North Korea said Friday it wanted lower-level talks first because the countries' "relations have been stalemated for years and mistrust has reached the extremity."

Two officials with Seoul's Unification Ministry, which deals with North Korea matters, said South Korea made the latest proposal through a cross-border Red Cross communications line newly reopened by the North. The South Korean officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office policy.

Pyongyang didn't immediately respond to Seoul's most recent offer, but even the restoration the Red Cross line in the truce village of Panmunjom signals an easing of tensions. The line, used for exchanging messages on humanitarian and other issues, was shut down by the North in March during a weekslong period of animosity marked by North Korean threats of war and South Korean vows of counterstrikes.

Friday's developments followed the countries' agreement a day earlier to hold talks on issues including reopening a jointly run industrial complex in Kaesong that had been the last symbol of inter-Korean cooperation before it closed this spring.

The news was welcomed on both sides of the world's most heavily fortified border.

Kwak Sok Gyong, a Pyongyang resident, told The Associated Press that the North's announcement "reflects what people want in both north and south. I think the relations between north and south should be improved as soon as possible." North Koreans interviewed by foreign media in Pyongyang often echo statements carried by the country's official state media.

In Seoul, Park Gyeong-hyun, a 17-year-old student, said the Koreas have many unresolved problems, such as families separated by the Korean War six decades ago. "So I view the talks as a positive thing because the relationship between the two Koreas will get better if the talks go well."

Officials in Seoul said it wasn't yet clear what Sunday's proposed talks will focus on, if they happen. Such meetings in the past have involved lower-level officials charged with ironing out administrative details and reporting back to their bosses. The next step would be higher-level talks.

The last government-level contact between the Koreas on their peninsula took place in February 2011 at Panmunjom, according to the South's Unification Ministry, which deals with North Korea issues.

The mood on the Korean Peninsula has been tense since North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died in December 2011 and his son, Kim Jong Un, took over. Pyongyang, which is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices, has committed a drumbeat of acts over the last year that Washington, Seoul and others deem provocative.

The proposed talks could represent a change in North Korea's approach, analysts said, or could simply be an effort to ease international demands that it end its development of nuclear weapons, a topic crucial to Washington but not a part of envisioned inter-Korean meetings.

Pyongyang understands that dialogue with Seoul is a precondition for any meaningful talks with the United States, and the North's latest overtures are aimed at creating a mood that could lead to U.S.-North Korea negotiations, said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at Korea University in South Korea.

Because Pyongyang needs talks with Washington to win aid and security guarantees, "realistically, the North doesn't have a choice" in pursuing talks with Seoul. "Its relations with the United States can't improve while its relations with South Korea remain tense," Yoo said.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday that Washington supports improved inter-Korean relations but cautioned that it doesn't signal progress on restarting talks on North Korea's nuclear program. For that to happen, North Korea has to abide by its previous commitments to abandon its nuclear weapons, she said.

If the Koreas meet Sunday, the talks will come on the heels of a high-profile summit Friday by Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama in which North Korea is expected to be a key topic. Xi is also scheduled to meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye later this month.

Beijing, which is Pyongyang's only major economic and political ally, has expressed growing frustration with its neighbor, tightening inspections on cross-border trade and halting business with North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank. But Beijing, worried about its own economy and a possible influx of refugees, also views stability in Pyongyang as crucial.

The proposals for dialogue by the Koreas follow a meeting late last month in Beijing by Xi and the North Korean military's top political officer, who reportedly expressed a willingness to "launch dialogue with all relevant parties."

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan's community colleges and universities could receive roughly 2 percent more in overall funding next fiscal year.

Republican-led conference committees approved the community college and higher education budgets Thursday. The education budget proposals now head to the House and Senate floor for final approval.

Under the higher education proposal, Michigan's universities would be expected to keep their tuition rate increases at or below 3.75 percent to receive performance funding for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder had originally proposed that tuition increases be held at 4 percent before universities would lose some of their state aid.

Performance funding is based on a number of factors, including research and development and completed degrees.

Lawmakers are aiming to pass the next budget by June.

The Michigan Democrat was a freshly elected 29-year-old on his first day on the job. Members like legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn all "the real giants" of the House, Dingell says were delivering tributes to his father, John Dingell Sr., who had died recently.

The younger Dingell had just won an election to replace him. Now it was his turn to speak.

"I had to go to the well of the House and express my appreciation," Dingell said in an interview. "Quite frankly, it was a highly emotional moment. It was quite hard to keep from crying."

From that unsteady beginning, Dingell assembled a record that epitomized the power of the legislative branch of government and the changes it has undergone over the last century. And his longevity testifies to the formidable willpower of a man nicknamed "Big John" for his 6-foot-3 stature and his sometimes imperious demeanor, as well as the skill of a politician who won elections in a state he had barely lived in since he was a child.

Few members, even House speakers, can claim the influence or breadth of Dingell, who on Friday will eclipse the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia as the person who served in Congress the longest.

He has reigned as a powerful committee chairman, putting his imprint on legislation in areas as varied as air quality, consumer protection, health care, energy and the auto industry. He earned a reputation as one of the sharpest government watchdogs in Washington, famous for his lacerating style of interrogation at committee hearings. And the loss of his chairmanship in recent years marked the end of an era in which senior members ruled Congress without challenge.

"It goes by like a blur," said Dingell, of the period in which he has served with 11 presidents. "This job is incredible. You put in so much, but you get so much more out of it."

Dingell says he has survived by taking the long view_trying never to be angry, even when projecting wrath at bureaucrats he considered dilatory or opponents he thought were wrong.

"John Dingell was the mighty chairman of Energy and Commerce everybody had a little fear and trepidation dealing with him," said former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Illinois.

Dingell first saw the House as a 6-year-old boy accompanying his father, a New Deal Democrat who held a seat that represented Detroit's growing auto industry. The younger Dingell joined his father on the floor when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan. After serving in the Army, he supervised elevator operators at the Capitol during college and law school.

After Dingell won election in 1955, one of his most fulfilling, but also politically dangerous, moments came when he supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which eliminated unequal voter registration requirements and outlawed racial segregation in schools, workplaces and public areas.

"Damn near lost an election over it," Dingell said, matter of factly. "The Wall Street Journal gave me a one in 15 chance of winning that race."

The black community took note, said Michigan Rep. John Conyers, who served on Dingell's staff before he was elected to Congress in 1964. "He was in the forefront," Conyers said.

As he gradually acquired seniority and clout, Dingell played a key role in the creation of the Medicare program in 1965, and wrote the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act and the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

He has also carefully protected his state's priorities helping secure bailout funds for the auto industry and angering environmentalists by fending off pressure for tougher emission standards.

"That's what's great about him," said Carl F. Brooks, a retired state employee from Ypsilanti Township, Mich., who had just seen Dingell at an Earth Day concert. "He's the kind of politician who's around if you need him."

Dingell, as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from 1981 to 1994, made the panel one of the most aggressive and wide-ranging in Congress.

The committee's investigations prompted the resignation of President Ronald Reagan's EPA Administrator, Anne Burford, over problems in the SuperFund program and former Stanford University President Donald Kennedy over questionable research expenses charged to the government. The panel laid the groundwork for the criminal conviction of one of President Ronald Reagan's top advisers, Michael Deaver, for lying under oath.

Dingell became known for sharply worded investigative letters dubbed "Dingell-grams" sent to agencies. And he brusquely dismissed witnesses if he didn't like what he was hearing. Nobel Prize winning scientist David Baltimore, a target of a Dingell investigation into his research, complained he felt "hounded" by his committee.

When former Vice President Al Gore testified in 2009 in support of so-called cap-and-trade legislation, Dingell snapped, "Cap and trade is a tax, and it's a great big one."

Dingell's tough style worked, said Republican Rep. Joe Barton, of Texas, who followed Dingell as chairman of the investigative subcommittee. Dingell "always had the most effective oversight in the House and the Senate," said Barton.

Dingell no longer holds such clout, having been dethroned by Democrats pressing for more environmental legislation. And age has taken a toll. Now 86, he walks with a cane or scoots around the Capitol in a motorized cart with a license plate that reads "the Dean," a reference to his status as the longest serving House member.

If Dingell has a reputation for being hard-nosed, he also maintains the old congressional tradition of cordiality with colleagues, friend and foe. He says he's sad that tradition seems to be dying.

"This place has become excessively partisan," he said, adding "there are so many internal pressures and external pressures that make it this way. They want to see angry people."

Dingell likes to regale visitors with stories about his hunting exploits his office is covered with big game trophies and his love of the ballet and classical music. His first date with his wife Debbie a prominent Democratic activist was to a ballet performance.

Dingell said he does not know how much longer he'll serve but he's not ready to leave yet.

"I'm not going to stay around here until people say, 'I knew him when he was a good man, now he's this doddering old fool," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Mike Householder in Ypsilanti, Mich., contributed to this report.

The latest in a string of celebrities to put their stamp on a prepaid card, Orman will likely avoid the criticism about high fees lobbed at earlier offerings, such as those of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and reality show stars the Kardashians. Orman's card costs $3 to obtain, and then just $3 a month, rivaling the hugely popular Walmart MoneyCard.

Although some will question how Orman will recoup the more than $1 million she has invested in the card when charging that little, the real twist isn't the low fee structure. Orman is working with credit reporting agency TransUnion to create a new kind of credit score for users of "The Approved" prepaid MasterCard, one that's based on their spending habits.

Right now, using debit cards both the prepaid kind and those tied to bank accounts does not influence an individual's credit score, which is calculated with data related to borrowing. If Orman's experiment is successful, this new type of score could be a game-changer for the estimated 60 million Americans who do most or all of their personal business in cash or with cash alternatives like prepaid cards.

The TV adviser said she approached several companies, urging them to agree to develop such a score, and TransUnion ultimately agreed to gather spending data for 18 to 24 months. It will use that data to try to come up with a formula that works as a way to predict whether the user is a good risk for lenders.

"This is truthfully a work in progress," said Orman.

Banks and other lenders are interested in creating ways to measure how prepaid cards are used, because of the huge market they represent. Consumers loaded an estimated $70.7 billion onto prepaid cards in 2011, up from $2.7 billion in 2005, according to consultancy Mercator Advisory Group.

Mercator projects the market will top $120 billion this year if adoption continues at the same pace.

In general, users can be divided into three groups. The first subset is those caught up in the economy people who had good credit until it was damaged by events like unemployment or foreclosure. Second are those who have not yet built credit histories, mainly the young and recent immigrants. The third group avoids banks, often because of negative experiences, such as racking up high overdraft fees.

"Wouldn't it be fabulous if, for the first time in history, people are literally rewarded for spending cash, versus penalized, in my opinion, for doing so?" Orman said.

The problem with traditional credit scores from FICO Inc. and its competitors is that they measure how well individuals keep up with their payments, but don't pay any attention to their overall financial health, she said. "Scoring doesn't question where the money is coming from to make payments."

Prepaid cards have already filled some of the void for those who don't use banks, especially because they can be used to receive paychecks via direct deposit. But because they don't contribute to credit scores, the cards can't help users get a mortgage, a car loan or a credit card.

Not having a credit score, or having a low one, also drives up the cost of living in other ways. Lower scores can mean higher car insurance rates, higher rent, difficulty getting a job and paying higher interest rates for any credit available. People with little credit history known as a "thin file" in the industry are also the most likely to use alternative services like payday lenders, check cashing stores and bill pay services. These are expensive options when compared with credit cards and banks.

FICO Inc. and other companies use data tied to borrowing to determine a score meant to measure the likelihood an individual will pay back future loans. FICO's 300-to-850 scale is based on an individual's history making payments on loans, the percentage of available credit that is being used and how long the individual has used credit, among other data.

Those with thin credit files have a better chance of having their creditworthiness reflected by FICO's "expansion score," which factors in data like utility bill payments and rent payments. FICO CEO Mark Greene said the expansion scores have shown that the population without traditional scores mirrors to the larger population in terms of credit risk. Other credit score providers are beginning to provide measures based on utility payments and other nontraditional data.

One big difference for developing a prepaid score, however, is that these alternatives still measure how well individuals meet obligations, not how they spend the rest of their income.

"Spending is not actually a great indicator of the thing that we're trying to measure, which is the likelihood you're going to pay your bill," Greene said. "We need to be careful about how we approach that issue."

Another issue a prepaid-linked score must address is the fact that the typical reloadable card is used for just three to four months, said Brian Riley, who analyzes the card market for the consultant The Tower Group.

That timeframe is likely to expand, however, because more users are beginning to have their paychecks deposited to reload prepaid cards. Adding rewards and services, and cutting fees, may also increase customer loyalty.

Orman is adamant that her card will carry only a $3-per-month fee for users who load at least $20 per month onto it. Fees will rise only if the user uses ATMs outside the network it is linked to when withdrawing cash. Consumers who use The Approved Card will also get daily text messages updating their balance, along with one after each purchase, and other free services like ID theft monitoring, credit monitoring and free credit reports from TransUnion.

The media star, whose new show on the Oprah Winfrey Network premieres Monday, said she knows creating the score will be an uphill battle, but believes that if successful, it will help both lenders and borrowers. "You've got to start it somewhere, and this is the beginning of that process."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell from record levels on Wednesday as investors continued to question the longevity of the Federal Reserve's stimulus program.

Supportive monetary policies from central banks around the world have lifted equity markets this year, with the S&P 500 up almost 16 percent. On Tuesday, stocks soared and the Dow closed at a record high after the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank reassured investors that policies designed to boost economic growth would stay in place.

Last week, indexes fell on concerns that the program may be scaled back sooner than expected, and strong economic data on Tuesday stirred speculation that the Fed may begin tapering off its program soon. The concerns sent U.S. Treasury debt yields to their highest levels in over a year and pulled equities back from session highs.

"(Tuesday) was the first time we saw rates spike on concerns about the Fed tapering, and if that spreads, it will have negative ramifications for the rest of the market," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.

While strong corporate earnings have also contributed to the equity market's surge in 2013, central bank stimulus has pushed investors to add to positions on market declines, limiting extended selloffs. Any change to the stimulus program may prompt a round of profit taking.

"There's still a question about how much we can grow without stimulus, and what will happen to the market when rates go up," Sarhan said.

The Dow Jones industrial averagewas down 96.15 points, or 0.62 percent, at 15,313.24. The Standard & Poor's 500 Indexwas down 10.24 points, or 0.62 percent, at 1,649.82. The Nasdaq Composite Indexwas down 18.15 points, or 0.52 percent, at 3,470.74.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was up 2/32, with the yield at 2.1599 percent.

Cyclical companies, closely tied to the pace of economic growth, have been volatile on uncertainty over the Fed's stimulus measures. U.S. Steel Corpfell 1.6 percent to $12.20 and Cliffs Natural Resourceslost 2.4 percent to $19.60.

In company news, Smithfield Foodssurged 24 percent to $32.30 after China's Shuanghui Group agreed to buy the company for $34 a share.

SLM Corpjumped 11 percent to $25.51 as the S&P's biggest percentage gainer after the student loan provider said it would split the company into two publicly traded entities and named John Remondi its chief executive officer.

Trina Solar Ltdslumped 9.6 percent to $6.19 after the company reported its seventh straight quarterly loss.

Apple IncChief Executive Tim Cook said late Wednesday he expected the tech giant to release "several more game changers," hinting that wearable computers could be among them. Shares edged 0.6 percent higher to $444.20.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)

Chevron also continues to talk with third-party gas suppliers for a potential expansion of its $29 billion Wheatstone LNG plant, Roy Krzywosinski, managing director of Chevron Australia, told reporters at an industry conference in Brisbane on Tuesday.

The Wheatstone plant in Australia is about 10 percent complete, he said.

The U.S. company's plans to continue pursuing LNG capacity expansion come amid concerns that Australia's high cost structure will discourage further investment in the $190 billion LNG industry.

Woodside Petroleumlast month shelved plans for its $45 billion Browse LNG project in Western Australia, saying it will consider a floating LNG plant after deciding the onshore development did not make economic sense.

Gorgon, which will have a capacity of 15.6 million tons of LNG per year, is currently on schedule to ship its first LNG cargo in early 2015. The expansion is expected to add another 5.2 million tons a year.

Chevron is building a plant with a capacity of 8.9 million tons at Wheatstone, but the site has government approval to grow to a 25 million-ton hub. Wheatstone is scheduled to ship its first cargo out in 2016.

Krzywosinski, however, warned that Australia's high costs could impact the company's investment decisions going forward.

"Nothing is a slam dunk... the issue of cost structure is a significant issue, especially if you have an international portfolio of competing priorities," he said.

"You're not going to dump more money into an existing investment if you have a better alternative."

Gorgon LNG, which has seen a 40 percent cost hike, has about 65 percent of its LNG sold under long-term contracts, short of the 80 to 90 percent that LNG producers typically aim to have sold under long-term contracts.

"The closer we get to first LNG, the more valuable the volumes are going to be, so we're confident that we'll be able to market those incremental volumes," Krzywosinski said.

(Reporting by Rebekah Kebede; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

(Reuters) - News Corp said on Friday it will write down the value of its Australian and U.S. publishing assets by up to $1.4 billion, as the company prepares to split its business between its newspaper and entertainment operations.

The company said the goodwill impairment charge was primarily for its Australia newspapers though it gave no more details. It also said it expected reduced cash flows in the future.

The charge will be taken in the quarter ending June 30 and could effectively wipe out News Corp's profit. Analysts were expecting News Corp to report a pretax profit of $1.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Earlier on Friday, News Corp said its board authorized a $500 million stock repurchase program for the publishing operation, partially answering the question of how the new News Corp will use $2.6 billion in cash it will have when the spinoff takes place, expected to occur on June 28.

News Corp is preparing to hive off its publishing assets as newspapers around the world face unprecedented challenges because of plunging advertising revenue and readers who increasingly prefer to read news on smartphones and tablets.

News Corp publishes 140 newspapers in Australia including The Australian. Its U.S. assets include the New York Post, Dow Jones' The Wall Street Journal and the coupon insert company News America Marketing and the book publisher HarperCollins.

The company had warned for several quarters that its Australian newspapers were facing punishing declines in advertising revenue.

Gabelli & Co analyst Brett Harriss forecast before the news of the goodwill charge that the newspapers in Australia have an estimated value of $1.8 billion, while Dow Jones's value is estimated at $1.5 billion.

Last quarter, News Corp reported a 35 percent drop in operating income for its publishing division because of lower advertising sales at its Australian newspaper.

In 2008, News Corp took a $2.8 billion non-cash charge on its purchase of Dow Jones.

POISON PILL DEFENSE

The board formally approved that current News Corp stakeholders will receive one share in the new publishing company - that will retain the News Corp name - for every four shares of the existing company they hold.

They will remain shareholders in the entertainment assets under the 21st Century Fox name, including the Fox broadcasting network, movie studio and lucrative equity stakes in pay-TV providers.

To prevent hostile takeovers, News Corp put in place a poison pill provision for one year after the split. It will be triggered if someone acquires more than 15 percent of the stock of either company.

News Corp has a history of potential takeovers. In 2004, Liberty Media Corp's John Malone had quietly snapped up a 20 percent voting stake in the company. The move prompted Murdoch to swap his stake in DirecTV and other assets for Malone's shares in News Corp.

The new News Corp will be an independent publicly traded company and 21st Century Fox will retain no ownership interest in News Corp, the company said.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson will give more details about the company at an investor day conference on May 28.

The company named current directors Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch to the board of the new News Corp. New additions to the board include Thomson; Ana Paula Pessoa, a partner at Brunswick Group; John Elkann, head of Exor SpA; and Masroor Siddiqui, head of investment firm Naya Management.

At 21st Century Fox, new board directors include Delphine Arnault, deputy general manager at Christian Dior Couture; Jacques Nasser of One Equity Partners; and Robert Silberman, executive chairman of Strayer Education Inc.

Rupert Murdoch will be chief executive of 21st Century Fox and chairman of both companies.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Lisa Von Ahn and Tim Dobbyn)

This Memorial Day weekend, the hulking metal come-ons are once again glinting and shimmering at night.

The Neon Museum, where Sin City's most iconic signs go to retire, has begun aiming more than 100 multicolored spotlights on its outdoor collection of 150 signs. It's also extending hours for nighttime tours, and a handful of signs have been fully restored with new bulbs.

Since October, visitors have been able to meander past the Silver Slipper, Aladdin's lamp, the Stardust marquee and dozens of other signs saved from the wrecking ball. But the museum closed at 5:30 p.m., meaning that tourists had to squint through the desert sun to glimpse the old guardians of this nighttime city.

For the first time Friday, visitors were able to behold the fully restored signs in all their luminescent glory. The dozens of other markers were bathed in custom-designed spotlights, like true Vegas showgirls.

"The skyline of Las Vegas is a nighttime skyline," said executive director Danielle Kelly, moments before the first afterhours tour came through.

"We stand among the architecture of this city. The notable architecture of this city is its signage. And their illumination is when they came alive," Kelly said.

In a town known for detonating buildings that are beyond their prime, Las Vegas' Neon Museum stands apart in its zeal for salvaging the blinking, glowing memories of the past.

Kelly says time has transformed the signs from commercial emissaries into objects of art.

The hour-long guided tours bend through the artfully cluttered 1.5-acre lot. The excursion offers an alternative to the mega-mall homogeny along the desert metropolis' revamped main drag.

Worn by the beating sun and twisted by desert winds, most of the marquees have lost their flash, some of their bulbs and much of their paint. They tilt toward each other like tombstones in an ancient cemetery. But taken together, they tell a story about the town's glitziest days.

There's the nouveau graveyard's oldest sign: a green and white 1930s relic that marked a restaurant where Hoover Dam construction workers bought fried chicken and bootleg whiskey.

One of the signs with working bulbs a vintage arrow pointing lovebirds to "Marriage Information" alludes to the town's role as the nation's elopement, and divorce, capital.

And the giant marquee that once sat astride the Stardust casino featuring a space-age, deep-red font and cascade of stylized diamonds recalls Nevada's embrace of its role as a test site for nuclear weapons

While only four of the kitschy relics are illuminated, the spotlights play up each sign's attributes and create a feel of pulsating energy.

On Friday, the flashing red lights and blue and purple shadows along with the errant stray cat gave the attraction the surreal, slightly creepy feel of a shuttered theme park.

The museum plans to turn on a few more signs, but facilities director Sam Reza said full wattage would be too dazzling.

"The purpose of the museum is never to have all of the signs fully illumined. We wanted to keep them in the state that they were taken down. To have all of these signs fully lighted up would be overwhelming," she said.

Funding is also a factor; it can cost $100,000 to bring back a single sign.

Art lovers founded the museum in 1996 in a sandy lot outside downtown Las Vegas a few miles north of the Strip as a way to rescue old signs when buildings were demolished or remodeled.

In 2012, curators had the bright idea to open it to the public and began working on a plan to light up the night once again.

Casino bosses began abandoning curlicues of neon in the desert several decades ago, beginning with Steve Wynn's remodel of the Golden Nugget.

Today, major hotel-casinos are built to advertise themselves. The facades and exterior entertainment do the heavy lifting, from the glossy, brown obelisk that is the Wynn Las Vegas, to the fountains that dance outside the Bellagio, to the condensed New York City skyline that frames New York New York.

When signs do crop up, neon has all but surrendered to computerized LED signs.

But most visitors still feel a connection to the town's glittery glory. Most anyone can visualize Vegas Vic, with his checked shirt, perpetually lit cigarette and extended thumb, in their mind's eye.

Sandra Chervinsky, who snapped dozens of pictures during the Neon Museum's inaugural twilight tour, demonstrated her love of vintage Vegas signage by getting full-color tattoo of the iconic "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign on her calf.

"When I saw the night tours, I was like, 'I got to do it,'" said Chervinsky, of Montreal. "The light is so perfect, and you're surrounded by all these different eras."

The new tours will run every half hour through 10 p.m., leaving visitors enough time to catch a late show or hit up one of the town's 24-hour bars before heading hotelward.

With the changes and expanded tour capacity, the museum hopes to welcome more than 50,000 visitors this year.

The lot can feel a bit macabre in this youth and novelty-obsessed town, but Kelly said the museum's latest iteration shows that the signs have become key players in a new kind of escapist vision.

"It's not a graveyard," Kelly said. "The signs haven't died. They're just in a new space. And they perform a new function. It's still a fantasy they're selling: the idea of a place."

___

Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier

include hurricanes and typhoons, storms that form in the world's tropical latitudes and spin ferociously around a center called an eye. Only eight named tropical cyclones hit Hawaii between 1979 and 2010, said scientists at the University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center. But the researchers' new model predicts a two-to-three-fold increase in such storms between 2075 and 2099. The study is detailed in the May 5 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.

The results illustrate how global warming can lead to strong regional climate differences, the researchers said. "Computer models run with global warming scenarios generally project a decrease in tropical cyclones worldwide. This, though, may not be what will happen with local communities," lead study author Hiroyuki Murakami said in a statement.

In the Pacific Ocean, tropical cyclones that could threatentypically arise off the west coast of Mexico from June through November. But lack of moisture over the Pacific and strong westerly winds usually stop the storms from reaching the islands.

But the new model predicts that these westerly winds called aand similar to the polar jet stream will shift northward in the next 60 years, removing the roadblock. The projections also suggest the eastern Pacific Ocean will warm, giving storms more fuel in the form of rising moisture.

"The yearly number we project, however, still remains very low," study co-author Bin Wang said in a statement. Between 1979 and 2003, on average, one tropical cyclone pummeled the islands every four years. The researchers expect that number will double or triple.

The storm projections are based on athat includes the history of North Pacific tropical cyclones and a temperature rise of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

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Flashlights in his face, the driver steps out and places his hands on the roof while the soldiers frisk him for drugs and weapons.

He's clean, and a hand gesture from the commanding officer sends him off into the maze of ramshackle homes that is Petare, one of the most dangerous parts of Venezuela's notoriously crime-infested capital.

Since Monday, this scene is playing out day and night at dozens of military checkpoints set up here in the socialist government's latest attempt to control the oil-rich country's pandemic of violence.

Critics dismiss the "Secure Homeland" initiative as a political charade that risks degenerating into human rights abuses while having no lasting impact on crime. But to many residents, weary of being terrorized by armed gangs, seeing troops on the streets is a welcome projection of government power.

"You have to act forcefully so that people feel the force of the state," said 47-year-old Irving Garcia, an unemployed former Army reservist, who like many Caracas residents has firsthand experience of violent crime. Garcia said he was shot in the chest when he unknowingly walked into a restaurant robbery. The bullet shattered his sternum, he said, inviting a reporter to feel a piece of protruding bone through his shirt.

With some 15,000 killings a year, Venezuela's homicide rate is the fifth highest in the world, according to U.N. statistics. The murder rate doubled during the 14-year-rule of the late President Hugo Chavez as cheap access to guns and an ineffective justice system fed a culture of violence in slums like Petare, parts of which have become no-go zones for outsiders, including police.

Chavez banned gun sales, expanded a new national police force and stepped up policing and other programs in high-crime areas. Now, his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, is adding military muscle by deploying 3,000 troops on the streets. The initiative started in the Caracas area on Monday and will be expanded to the states of Zulia, Lara and Carabobo next week.

Human rights activists worry that sending soldiers trained for warfare on policing missions will only make things worse for the residents they are meant to protect.

"It's going to aggravate the situation, unfortunately, because the army isn't prepared to deal with issues of public safety," said Liliana Ortega, director of the COFAVIC human rights group. "We have various emblematic cases in which the use of the armed forces resulted in disproportional force."

She said they include the 1989 street riots known as the "Caracazo," when 300 people were killed, and a 1992 prison riot in Caracas in which 63 prisoners died.

The soldiers, who work together with the National Guard and national police force, have the power to make arrests but are supposed to hand over the detainees to civilian authorities. Any human rights abuses would be tried by civilian courts, according to the constitution.

In deeply divided Venezuela, there are also concerns over the initiative's political undertones. Maduro narrowly won an April 14 presidential election that the opposition claims he stole through fraud, voter intimidation and abuse of government powers. Some of the first military units were deployed in areas under the political control of the opposition.

Petare, for example, lies in Miranda state, which is governed by Henrique Capriles, Maduro's challenger in the presidential election. The mayor overseeing Petare also is from the opposition.

On Tuesday night, the military commander in charge of the troops in Petare, Gen. Antonio Benavides, led a motorcycle-borne unit roaring up deserted, winding streets, with a gaggle of journalists in tow. They stopped for a meeting with grass-roots Chavistas in the hilltop Bombilla neighborhood.

"How often does the mayor come here? How often does the governor come here?" Benavides asked the crowd of about 40 people. "Never," they replied, unanimously.

A Capriles poster on a staircase above the outdoor gathering indicated not everyone here supports the government.

David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at the University of Georgia, said that for Maduro, the security initiative was both "an effort to fight crime and an effort to maintain or recover support in places where it has been declining because of crime and violence, among other issues."

Though the idea of using military force against criminals resonates among Venezuelans, Smilde said, it would probably amount to little more than setting up road blocks and trying to project a presence on street corners. "But of course that just means that crime takes place a block away," he said.

Some in Petare said the success of the initiative would depend not only on the soldiers' ability to hunt down criminals and delinquents, but to win the trust of its law-abiding residents.

"What matters is how they are integrating with society, what they teach our young," said Carmen Aponte, 47.

At one checkpoint, on a potholed street where stray dogs rummaged through foul-smelling litter from a daytime food market, irritated taxi drivers complained that the stop-and-search was bad for business.

"They make it hard for us," said Jorge Torres, 50. "We can't stop anywhere we want to and people don't know where we can pick them up."

He conceded the area was safer, for now, but predicted the military presence would be short lived. The government has said the soldiers will stay in the streets for a few months until regular law enforcement units can be boosted by new recruits.

"Once they leave, everything changes," Torres said.

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Associated Press video: https://vimeo.com/66289079

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AP writer Jorge Rueda in Caracas contributed to this report.