Authorities may for the first time ban access to the evacuation zone around Japan's crippled nuclear plant, citing concerns Wednesday over radiation risks for residents who may be returning to check on their homes.

About 70,000-80,000 people were living in the 10 towns and villages within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, which has been leaking radiation after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami wrecked its power and cooling systems.

Three army officers and three children were killed by "armed criminal gangs" around the central city of Homs, Syrian authorities announced on Tuesday.

"Armed criminal gangs who block roads and spread fear in the area, came upon General Abdo Khodr Al-Tellawi, his two children and his nephew, and killed them in cold blood," the official news agency SANA reported. The victims' bodies were "mutilated", SANA added.

The State Department has been secretly financing opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, The Washington Post reported, citing previously undisclosed diplomatic documents provided to the newspaper by the WikiLeaks website.

One of the outfits funded by the U.S. is Barada TV, a London-based satellite channel that broadcasts anti-government news into Syria, the Post reported Sunday. Barada's chief editor, Malik al-Abdeh, is a cofounder of the Syrian exile group Movement for Justice and Development.

Vicious storms smacked the Deep South and toppled trees like dominoes as tornadoes howled through towns, tossing a mobile home in Alabama nearly a quarter of a mile across a state highway, killing the man inside.

Combined with fatalities in Arkansas and Oklahoma, the death toll had risen to 10 by early Saturday — the deadliest storm of the season so far.

Nokia Corp. on Tuesday launched its first smartphones to run on the updated Symbian software with new icons, enhancements and a faster browser.

Nokia said the two models — the E6 and X7 — have longer battery life, better text input and new Ovi Maps applications with improved search and public transport routes.

Kindergarten classes are supplementing crayons, finger paints and flashcards with iPads, a development that excites supporters but that detractors worry is wasted on pupils too young to appreciate the expense.

Next fall, nearly 300 kindergartners in the central Maine city of Auburn will become the latest batch of youngsters around the country to get iPad2 touchpad tablets to learn the basics about ABCs, 1-2-3s, drawing and even music.

It's that time of year when the bugs emerge to bug us.

Some can pose real threats — Lyme disease from tiny ticks, West Nile virus from mosquitoes, or life-threatening allergic reactions to bee stings. But most bug bites in this country are an itchy nuisance.

Japan raised the severity level of the crisis at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing cumulative radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.

Japanese nuclear regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency — after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan paid another visit to Japan's tsunami-devastated coast Sunday, promising officials in a fishing-dependent city that his government will do whatever it can to help.

Kan visited Ishinomaki, a coastal city of 163,000 people in Miyagi, one of the prefectures (states) hardest-hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that killed as many as 25,000 people, destroyed miles of coastline and left tens of thousands homeless.

Google has added a Latitude feature that lets people using iPhones or Android-powered smartphones get rewarded for loyalty to shops or restaurants.

The feature that Google rolled out across the United States late Thursday lets people unlock discounts by regularly using location-sharing Latitude applications to check in at a select set of establishments.