DxO Labs tries making sense of camera lens sharpness

This chart shows the perceptive megapixel score for the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM mounted on the 21-megapixel Canon EOS 5D Mark II. At settings where the plot is green, the lens matches the camera's resolution. At f22 and smaller apertures, the lens-camera combination reduces the camera's effective performance to only about 4 megapixels or so.

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Aiming to make it easier for photography enthusiasts to evaluate photo gear, DxO Labs today announced a new method of measuring lens sharpness it hopes will make more intuitive sense.

The idea, called the perceptual megapixel, shows how much of a camera's original sensor resolution a particular lens can preserve when factors such as lens sharpness, optical defects, and sensor pixel size are taken into account.

One example the company provides: on a 21.1-megapixel Canon 5D Mark II, the Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG lens gets a score of 17.2 perceptual megapixels and the much higher-priced Carl Zeiss Distagon T* HSM 35mm f/1.4 ZE gets only 15.2 perceptual megapixels.

The perceptual megapixel score is designed to be more practical than the time-tested but often incomprehensible measurement that prevails today, MTF (modulation transfer function) graphs. And the perceptual megapixel measurement also takes into account the camera, not just the lens.

That means, for example, that a person in the market for new photo gear could make a more informed judgement about both cameras and lenses. For example, is it worth paying a price premium for a lens on the expectation of a later upgrade to a full-frame camera body?

DxO Labs today moved to the new measurement on its DxOMark site, where it publishes test results for image sensors and lens performance scores for 2,700 combinations of lenses with particular cameras.

One example of the performance of two 35mm f1.4 lenses on the Canon 5D Mark II. The perceptive megapixel rating shows the Zeiss lens scoring lower than the Sigma lens on that particular camera.

(Credit:
DxO Labs)

One example: The Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II mounted on an 18-megapixel Canon EOS 7D yields only about 5 perceptive megapixels of resolution shooting wide open anywhere from 55mm to 250mm and only hitting about 6 perceptive megapixels at the maximum tops.

But the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM on a 21.1-megapixel Canon EOS 5D Mark II, measures better than 20 megapixels all across its zoom range and from f2.8 to f5.6.

Of course, many other factors weigh into lens quality assessments besides sharpness, including ruggedness, vignetting, distortion, weather-sealing, image stabilization, and lens coatings that reduce lens flare and other optical drawbacks.

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In divorce, mom had authority over Conn. shooter

Last Updated 11:12 a.m.

NEWTOWN, Conn. When the parents of Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza divorced in 2009, their legal documents offer no hints of an acrimonious split and make no mention of any lingering mental health or medical issues for the then-teenage boy.

Newly-public divorce paperwork shows that Nancy Lanza had the authority to make all decisions regarding her son's upbringing.

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The court papers were made public Monday.

The divorce was finalized in September 2009, when Adam Lanza was 17.

There is no evidence of bitterness in the court file, no exchange of accusations or drawn out custody disputes.

Nancy and Peter Lanza had joint legal custody of Adam but he lived with his mother. The parents agreed to consult and discuss major decisions affecting Adam's best interests. In instances where the parents couldn't agree, Nancy Lanza "shall make the final decision," Judge Stanley Novak wrote on Sept. 24, 2009.

Nancy Lanza, who was once a stockbroker for John Hancock in Boston, married Peter Lanza in Kingston, N.H., in June 1981. The divorce file said the marriage "has broken down irretrievably and there is no possibility of getting back together."

The divorce agreement gave Nancy Lanza $265,000 in alimony last year.

It makes no mention of any mental health issues regarding her son.

As part of the divorce, Nancy Lanza was ordered to attend a parenting education program. The provider, Family Centers Inc., certified that she completed the program on June 3 and June 10, 2009. The document says only that Lanza "satisfactorily completed the program."

The documents also say Adam Lanza has lived his entire life at the Newtown home where he shot his mother to death, before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday morning and killing 20 children and six adults before taking his own life.

A Connecticut officials said Nancy Lanza was found in bed, in her pajamas, shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle.

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Victims of Conn. school shooting

Adam Lanza is believed to have used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle in the school attack, a civilian version of the military's M-16 and a model commonly seen at marksmanship competitions. Versions of the AR-15 were outlawed in the United States under the 1994 assault weapons ban; that law expired in 2004, and Congress, in a nod to the political power of the gun-rights lobby, did not renew it.

Neighbors told CBS News that Nancy Lanza was a gun enthusiast and often took Adam Lanza target shooting with her; it was her guns Adam used against her and the women and children at Sandy Hook.

CBS News' Pat Milton reports a source briefed on the investigation said that Nancy Lanza was demanding of her children. Even though Adam was highly intelligent, she pressed him to high standards and even pressed her sons to measure up at the shooting range where she taught them to shoot, the source said.

Federal agents have concluded that Adam Lanza had visited an area shooting range, but they do not know whether he practiced shooting there. Agents determined Lanza's mother visited shooting ranges several times, but it's not clear whether she took her son or whether he fired a weapon there, said Ginger Colbrun, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Adam's aunt, Marsha Lanza of Crystal Lake, Ill., said that Nancy Lanza kept guns for own safety, and had something of a survivalist mentality; she was worried about protecting her home if the economy went south.

Money was not an issue for the family. Marsha said her ex-husband left Nancy "well-off . . . She didn't have to work."

However, a friend of Nancy Lanza, local landscaper Dan Holmes, said she evidently still suffered from a bad divorce and could be pretty vocal about her ex-husband ... years afterwards."

Peter Lanza, a tax director who lives in Stamford, Conn., issued a statement relating his own family's anguish in the aftermath.

"Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. No words can truly express how heartbroken we are," he said. "We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. ... Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired."

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Newtown Couple Vow to Live for Dead Daughter

The parents of Jessica Rekos, a 6-year-old girl who died during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., said they are committed to keeping their daughter's memory alive despite their pain.

"We will talk about her every day, we will live for her," Krista Rekos told ABC News. "We will make sure her brother knows what an amazing person she was."

Richard and Krista Rekos say that talking about Jessica, who loved horseback riding and whom they called the CEO of their family, brings tiny moments of comfort.

CLICK HERE for full coverage of the massacre at the elementary school.

"Jessica loved writing, and she would often leave us little notes all over the house," Rekos said. "They would just say, 'I love you so much.'

"She was a ball of fire, she ruled the roost," Krista Rekos said.

When the call came Friday morning that Sandy Hook Elementary was on lockdown, Krista Rekos rushed in disbelief through the town where she and her husband were raised, a place they had always felt safe.

"I was running, and I kept thinking, 'I'm coming for you honey, I'm coming,'" she said, choking up.

CLICK HERE to read about the "hero teacher," the principal and 20 children who lost their lives.

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Richard Rekos said they initially had little information on what had happened.

"We had no idea at that point," he said. "We thought, OK, the reports are that one or two people may have been injured and taken to hospitals. There was still hope, that the children were hiding, there was still so much hope at that point."

The couple said that they walked around the firehouse, thinking that maybe Jessica had been taken there.

"I knew exactly what she was wearing, and I was hoping to see her little ponytail run around the corner, and her jacket and her black glittery Uggs that she had on that morning," Krista Rekos said.

Finally, around 1:15 p.m., everyone was asked to sit down, and a police officer said 20 children had been killed.

"We couldn't get a straight answer," Richard Rekos said. "There's so much panic and confusion when that announcement was made, the life was just sucked out of the room. And you know, I just point-blank found a state trooper and said, 'Are you telling me that standing here as a parent that my daughter is gone?' And he said, 'Yes.'"

The Rekoses were asked to stay at the firehouse to identify their daughter's body but, overcome with grief, they left in disbelief. The couple went home, and got into their daughter's bed, staying there until about 1 a.m., they said.

At that point there was a knock on the door and a police officer said that Jessica was dead.

"It just confirmed the nightmare, it's not real," Krista Rekos said. "It's still not real that my little girl who's so full of life and wants a horse so badly, and who was going to get cowboy boots for Christmas, isn't coming home."

The couple said the pain is just settling in. But equally strong is their commitment to keeping their daughter's memory alive.

The parents said that their 6-year old family powerhouse, with an enormous heart, will forever be their angel who left behind love notes that are still being found.

"This morning I found a little journal, and it was exactly what I needed, because it says, 'I love you so much momma, love Jessica,'" her mother said.

"It was like she was telling me she was watching us and she knows how hard this must be for us, and she wants us to know she loved us, and she knows how much she was loved."

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Syrian vice president says neither side can win war

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said that neither the forces of President Bashar al-Assad nor rebels seeking to overthrow him can win the war which is now being fought on the outskirts of Assad's powerbase in Damascus.

Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim in a power structure dominated by Assad's Alawite minority, has rarely been seen since the Syrian revolt erupted in March 2011 and is not part of the president's inner circle directing the fight against Sunni rebels.

But he is the most prominent figure to say in public that Assad will not win. He was speaking to the pro-Assad al-Akhbar paper in an interview from Damascus which is now hemmed in by rebel fighters to the south.

Assad's forces have used jets and artillery to try to dislodge the fighters from around Damascus but the violence has crept into the heart of the capital and rebels announced on Sunday a new offensive in the central province of Hama.

Sharaa said the situation in Syria, where more than 40,000 people have been killed, was deteriorating and a "historic settlement" was needed to end the conflict, involving regional powers and the U.N. Security Council and the formation of a national unity government "with broad powers".

"With every passing day the political and military solutions are becoming more distant. We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime," Sharaa was quoted as saying.

"The opposition cannot decisively settle the battle and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a decisive settlement," he told the paper, adding that the insurgents fighting to topple Syria's leadership could plunge it into "anarchy and an unending spiral of violence".

Sources close to the Syrian government say Sharaa had pushed for dialogue with the opposition and objected to the military response to an uprising that began peacefully.

In Damascus, residents said on Monday the army had told people to evacuate the Palestinian district of Yarmouk, suggesting an all-out military offensive on the southern district was imminent.

The centre of the city, largely insulated from the violence for 21 months, is now full of army and vigilante checkpoints and shakes to the sound of regular shelling, residents say.

Queues for bread form at bakeries hours before dawn, as people seek out dwindling supplies, power cuts are increasing and fears are growing that Damascus could descend into chaos.

In a veiled criticism of the crackdown, Sharaa said there was a difference between the state's duty to provide security to its citizens, and "pursuing a security solution to the crisis."

He said even Assad could not be certain where events in Syria were leading, but that anyone who met him would hear that "this is a long struggle...and he does not hide his desire to settle matters militarily to reach a final solution."

CHANGE INEVITABLE

"We realize today that change is inevitable," Sharaa said, but "none of the peaceful or armed opposition groups with their known foreign links can call themselves the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people".

"Likewise the current leadership...cannot achieve change alone after two years of crisis without new partners who contribute to preserving (Syria's) national fabric, territorial unity and regional sovereignty".

Rebels have now brought the war to the capital, without yet delivering a fatal blow to the government. But nor has Assad found the military muscle to oust his opponents from the city.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France, one of the powers most insistent that Assad has lost his legitimacy, said: "I think the end is nearing for Bashar al-Assad."

On the ground, rebels said they were launching an operation to seize the central province of Hama to try to link northern rural areas of Syria under their control to the center.

Qassem Saadeddine, a member of the newly established rebel military command, said fighters had been ordered to surround and attack checkpoints across the province. He said forces loyal to Assad had been given 48 hours to surrender or be killed.

"When we liberate the countryside of Hama province ... then we will have the area between Aleppo and Hama liberated and open for us," he told Reuters.

The city of Hama in the province of the same name has a special resonance for anti-Assad activists. In 1982 Hafez al-Assad, father of the current ruler, crushed an uprising in the city, killing up to 30,000 civilians.

In Damascus, activists said fighter jets bombed the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on Sunday, killing at least 25 people sheltering in a mosque.

The attack was part of a month-old campaign by Assad's forces to eject rebels from positions they are establishing around the capital's perimeter. Yarmouk, to the south, falls within an arc of territory running from the east of Damascus to the southwest from where rebels hope to storm the government's main redoubt.

MOSQUE HIT

Opposition activists said the deaths in Yarmouk, to which refugees have fled from fighting in nearby suburbs, resulted from a rocket fired from a warplane hitting the mosque.

Footage showed bodies and body parts scattered on the stairs of what appeared to be the mosque.

The latest battlefield accounts could not be independently verified due to tight restrictions on media access to Syria.

Syria is home to more than 500,000 Palestinian refugees, most living in Yarmouk, and both Assad's government and the rebels have enlisted and armed Palestinians as the uprising, which began as a peaceful street movement 21 months ago, has mushroomed into a civil war.

After Sunday's air raid, clashes flared between Palestinians from the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and rebels including other Palestinian fighters and some PFLP-GC fighters were killed.

In the latest of a string of military installations to fall to the rebels, the army's infantry college north of Aleppo was captured on Saturday after five days of fighting, a rebel commander with the powerful Islamist Tawheed Brigade said.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Samia Nakhoul and Anna Willard)

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Ex-CNB senior officer jailed 15 months for forgery and CBT

SINGAPORE: A former Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) senior officer who used money seized from drug offenders for his personal expenses has been sentenced to 15 months' jail.

36-year-old Mohamad Hasri Haron was found guilty of two counts of forgery and one count of criminal breach of trust.

Four other similar counts have also been taken into consideration.

The father of two resigned in November 2010 after working in the bureau for about 13 years.

He was an investigation officer during the time of the offences, which took place between 2008 and 2010.

During that period, CNB officers seized cash amounting to more than S$4,165 from drug offenders on four occasions. The money was then handed to Mohamad Hasri for the purpose of investigations.

However, Mohamad Hasri misappropriated the money and used it for his personal expenses.

Investigations also revealed that in 2010, Mohamad Hasri did not return the misappropriated money to the drug offenders.

Mohamad Hasri lied to them saying that the money would be returned after obtaining court approval to do so.

He also forged official documents which falsely stated that he had returned the money.

During mitigation, Mohamad Hasri, who is unrepresented, said he was remorseful and pleaded for leniency.

Mohamad Hasri, who has a 3-year-old daughter and a 4-month-old son, apologised for causing his family "a lot of hurt".

The court also heard that he has since made full restitution.

- CNA/jc

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Netflix, RIM, others get boot from key Nasdaq stock index

With Facebook's entry, a handful of other tech companies exit key stock index.

The shakeup that landed Facebook on Nasdaq's top 100 list is also leading to the departure of other prominent tech players.

Facebook was added last week to the Nasdaq 100, the collection of the largest 100 nonfinancial companies trading on the stock exchange. Facebook's addition to the index came with the departure of IT consulting company Infosys, which is moving over to the New York Stock Exchange.

However, Infosys is not the only tech company leaving the index. A handful of other prominent tech players, including Netflix and beleaguered handset maker Research In Motion will be dropped from the index on December 24, the stock exchange revealed late Friday.

The past 12 months have been rough on both company's stocks. Netflix recently became the target of hostile-takeover speculation following months of a lagging stock price, and RIM continues to lose market share to Apple and Samsung, which practically own the smartphone market.

But those companies are not alone in getting the boot from Nasdaq's top 100 list. Game maker Electronic Arts, chip maker Marvell Technology Group, electronics maker Flextronics International, chip equipment maker Lam Research, and Internet infrastructure provider VeriSign will also be removed. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott will join them in departing.

Taking their places on the exchange's index are Analog Devices, Catamaran Corp., Discovery Communications, Equinix, Liberty Global, Liberty Media, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, SBA Communications, Verisk Analytics, and Western Digital.

"Our objective re-ranking process ensures the Nasdaq-100 remains a relevant investable index that is the underlying benchmark for about 7,100 products in 22 countries with a notional value of about $1 trillion," Nasdaq QMX Vice President John L. Jacobs said in a statement.

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Losing our religion

(CBS News) The words "In God We Trust" can be found on all our currency, a reflection of the importance of religion in American lives. At least the lives of many of us, but not ALL. Our Sunday Morning Cover Story is reported by Lee Cowan:

It's not just in Newtown, Connecticut, but in churches and synagogues - and any other building of faith - the question "why" is being asked over and over this morning.

In times of both heartache and happiness, we turn to our faith for guidance and comfort. But increasingly, how we think about our faith is changing.

According to a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the nation's spiritual landscape may be becoming a little LESS religious.

Some 45 million people, or one-fifth of the U.S. adult population, now say they belong to no church in particular.

Six percent of them are either atheist or agnostic.

"There's a yearning to find like-minded people, to be able to have a conversation that's not taboo," said Red McCall, president of an atheist group in the buckle of the Bible Belt - Oklahoma City - whom we met last month.

In just the past three years, membership in the Oklahoma Atheists has jumped from just 300 members to well over a thousand.

Shelly Rees, a college professor, in one of them. She feels the public mood on atheists - even here - has softened.

"There were still people when we were marching in the parade at Halloween yelling, 'You're going to hell,' and stuff like that," said Rees. "But there were more people who weren't, and I think that's going to keep going. I think that's the trend."

Researchers call them "The Nones" - those who check the "none" box when asked to describe their religious affiliation.

And they've more than doubled since 1990.

Is the nation becoming more secular? "Maybe, a little bit," said Cary Funk, the senior researcher on that Pew Study. Funk says it's a complicated question, because being unaffiliated isn't necessarily the same as not having faith.

"Sixty-eight percent of the unaffiliated say they believe in God or a universal spirit. More than a third describe themselves as spiritual people, but not religious people," Funk said. "And a good portion pray, at least daily."

So if it's not God, or the thought of a higher power that's turning people off, what is?

The study suggests it's organized religion - with respondents overwhelmingly saying many organizations are too focused on money, power and politics.

Protestants have suffered the greatest decline. They now account for just 48 percent of religious adults, making it the first time in history that the United States doesn't have a Protestant majority.

Evangelical churches aren't immune, either. The megachurches once bursting at the seams are a little less mega than they used to be.

"We're seeing church attendance being much more inconsistent than I've ever seen it in my entire life," said Ed Young, Senior Pastor of the Fellowship Church based in Dallas. He's hardly conventional - even preaching a sermon with his wife while sitting on a double bed.

It's his attempt not at a gimmick, he says, but to reach those who these days find organized religion, at its best, irrelevant - at its worst, intolerant.

"I don't think we have been vulnerable enough," said Pastor Young. "I don't think we have been real enough about issues and about life. You have to realize that the church is pretty much one generation away from extinction."

Indeed, it's the young - one out of every three person surveyed under the age of 30 - who say they don't link themselves with a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or anything else.

Compare that, with the "Greatest Generation," where only one in 20 claimed no religious home.

"We're in kind of a post-denominational phase, I think, in many ways in the United States," said Charles Kimball, Director of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "That's still dramatically different that what you see in Europe, but you see that pattern, I think, is present here as well."

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Conn. Community Mourns Victims of Massacre

President Obama will visit Newtown, Conn. today to meet with the grieving families and thank the first responders from Friday's school shooting, as the community begins the long process of healing.

The pictures of the young victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School emerged Saturday, along with a remarkable story of survival.

Twenty children and six adults were killed at the school when shooter Adam Lanza went on a shooting rampage.

Later this evening, the community will gather for an interfaith vigil, where the president is scheduled to address mourners, some from out of state who came to offer help and others, who knew the young victims or their families.

Addressing the nation on Friday, Obama mourned the children who "had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own."

Story of Survival

READ: Complete List of Sandy Hook Victims

The lone survivor of her class tricked the gunman by playing dead, the girl's pastor told ABC News, before running out of the school covered in the blood of her classmates.

"She ran out of the school building covered from head to toe with blood and the first thing she said to her mom was, 'Mommy, I'm OK but all my friends are dead,'" said Pastor Jim Solomon. "Somehow in that moment, by God's grace, [she] was able to act as she was already deceased."

Five first graders in another class were also killed, along with six staff members.

Connecticut Shooting: Churches Services Honor Victims Watch Video

Connecticut Shooting: Pastor Explains How Girl Played Dead to Survive Watch Video

"The mom told me, and I thought this was very insightful, that she was suffering from what she felt was survivor's guilt because so many of her friends no longer have their children but she has hers," the pastor said.

Click Here for full coverage of the tragedy at the elementary school.

Remembering the Victims of the Sandy Hook Shooting

There was Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, who would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman's bullets not claimed her life, her father said.

Noah Pozner and his twin sister had just celebrated their sixth birthdays. His twin sister survived the shooting, but Noah did not.

Six-year-old Jesse Lewis went to school on Friday, excited to make gingerbread houses. He died, along with his teacher, Victoria Soto, 27, whose family said was shielding some of her first graders when she was hit by bullets.

As the community mourns and families bear the pain of planning 26 funerals before Christmas, school board members hope to get students back to a familiar routine.

"Well, all the mental health experts we've talked to...tell us that the best thing we can do is to get back to normal operations as soon as possible," said Bill Hart, a member of the Newtown Board of Education.

"We know some teachers won't be prepared to come back, he said. "We are going to be prepared with substitutes. We've got counseling for all. We're prepared to do whatever we have to do to help all of our community."

READ: Police Seek Motive in Shooting

Students who attend Sandy Hook Elementary School will be moved to another location that has yet to be announced, Hart said. He said officials did not yet know what would become of the building that was turned into a slaughterhouse on Friday.

"I think trying to understand what we are going to do with that is a long process and we're not in any way prepared to make those decisions now," he said.

ABC News' Lara Spencer and Dan Harris contributed reporting.

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Japan's LDP surges back to power, eyes two-thirds majority with ally

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) surged back to power in an election on Sunday just three years after a devastating defeat, giving ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a chance to push his hawkish security agenda and radical economic recipe.

An LDP win will usher in a government committed to a tough stance in a territorial row with China, a pro-nuclear energy policy despite last year's Fukushima disaster and a potentially risky prescription for hyper-easy monetary policy and big fiscal spending to beat deflation and tame a strong yen.

Exit polls by television broadcasters showed the LDP winning nearly 300 seats in parliament's powerful 480-member lower house, while its ally, the small New Komeito party, looked set to win about 30 seats.

That would give the two parties the two-thirds majority needed to over-rule parliament's upper house, where they lack a majority and which can block bills, which would help to break a policy deadlock that has plagued the world's third biggest economy since 2007.

"We need to overcome the crisis Japan is undergoing. We have promised to pull Japan out of deflation and correct a strong yen. The situation is severe, but we need to do this," Abe said on live TV. "The same goes for national security and diplomacy."

Parliament is expected to vote Abe in as prime minister on December 26.

Analysts said that while markets had already pushed the yen lower and share prices higher in anticipation of an LDP victory, stocks could rise further and the yen weaken if the "super majority" was confirmed.

Top executives of the LDP and the New Komeito confirmed that they would form a coalition. "The basis, of course, is a coalition between the LDP and the New Komeito. But if there's room to cooperate with Japan Restoration Party, we need to do so," said LDP Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba, referring to a new, right-leaning party that was set to pick up about 46 seats.

"I think there is room to do this in the area of national defense," he said, referring to cooperation with the Japan Restoration Party. The New Komeito is more moderate than the LDP on security issues.

DEMOCRATS' DEBACLE

Exit polls showed Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) winning only 65 seats, just over a fifth of its tally in 2009.

The DPJ, which swept to power in 2009 promising to pay more heed to consumers than companies and reduce bureaucrats' control over policymaking, was hit by defections just before the vote.

Party executive Kohei Otsuka told NHK that Noda would likely have to quit the party leadership over the defeat, in which several party heavyweights lost their seats.

Many voters had said the DPJ failed to meet election pledges as it struggled to govern and cope with last year's huge earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, and then pushed through an unpopular sales tax increase with LDP help.

Voter distaste for both major parties has spawned a clutch of new parties including the Japan Restoration Party, founded by popular Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto.

LDP leader Abe, 58, who quit as premier in 2007 citing ill health after a troubled year in office, has been talking tough in a row with China over uninhabited isles in the East China Sea, although some experts say he may temper his hard line with pragmatism once in office.

"The Senkaku islands are inherently Japanese territory," Abe said, referring to the islands that China calls the Diaoyu. "I want to show my strong determination to prevent this from changing."

But he also said he had no intention of worsening relations with China

The soft-spoken grandson of a prime minister, who would become Japan's seventh premier in six years, Abe also wants to loosen the limits of a 1947 pacifist constitution on the military, so Japan can play a bigger global security role.

China's official Xinhua news agency, noting the deterioration in relations with Japan, warned it not to continue its lurch to the right.

"An economically weak and politically angry Japan will not only hurt the country, but also hurt the region and the world at large," Xinhua said. "Japan, which brought great harm and devastation to other Asian countries in World War II, will raise further suspicions among its neighbors if the current political trend of turning right is not stopped in time."

"UNLIMITED" MONETARY EASING

The LDP, which promoted atomic energy during its decades-long reign, is expected to be friendly to nuclear utilities, although deep public safety concerns remain a barrier to business-as-usual for the industry.

Abe has called for "unlimited" monetary easing and big spending on public works to rescue the economy from its fourth recession since 2000. Such policies, a centerpiece of the LDP's platform for decades, have been criticized by many as wasteful pork-barrel politics.

"Quantitative easing by the BOJ will help correct a strong yen and push up stock prices," Abe said ."That will help boost investment and lead to rises in wages, jobs and household revenues. We'd like to shorten the time needed for this to happen."

Kyodo news agency said the new government could draft an extra budget for 2012/13 worth up to 10 trillion yen ($120 billion) and issue debt to pay for it.

Many economists say that prescription for "Abenomics" could create temporary growth and enable the government to go ahead with a planned initial sales tax rise in 2014 to help curb a public debt now twice the size of gross domestic product.

But it looks unlikely to cure deeper ills or bring sustainable growth, and risks triggering a market backlash if investors decide Japan has lost control of its finances.

"It's a pretty big win for the LDP. Abe's economic policies will be implemented so the economy will improve next year. The problem is what happens after that," said Koichi Haji, chief economist at NLI Research Institute.

"Japan can't spend on public works for ever and the Bank of Japan's monetary easing won't keep the yen weak for too long. The key is whether Abe can implement long-term structural reforms and growth strategies."

Japan's economy has been stuck in the doldrums for decades, its population ageing fast and big corporate brands faltering, making "Japan Inc" a synonym for decline.

Consumer electronics firms such as Sony Corp are struggling with competition from foreign rivals and burdened by a strong yen, which makes their products cost more overseas.

(Additional reporting by Chikafumi Hodo, Yoko Kubota, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Leika Kihara and Mari Saito in TOKYO, Yoshiyuki Osada in OSAKA and Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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PM Lee sends condolences over US school shooting

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has sent his condolences to US President Barack Obama on the Connecticut school shooting that killed 28 people, including 20 children.

In his condolence letter, Mr Lee said he was "deeply shocked and saddened" to hear of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Offering his sincere condolence to Mr Obama, the victims' families and all Americans on behalf of the government and people of Singapore, Mr Lee said "an event like this reminds us of our common humanity, regardless of nationality, or where we live in the world."

Mr Lee said the shooting was a "senseless loss of innocent young lives, especially since schools should be sanctuaries" for children.

Mr Lee wished Mr Obama success in his efforts to prevent such tragedies from recurring in the future.

He added the nation's thoughts are with the victims' families and all Americans "during this difficult time".

- CNA/xq

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