Aussie PM's stock rises a bit with smack at rival

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has drawn cheers from women around the world for a recent speech attacking her chief rival for what she said were sexist comments. But whether that helps her party's flagging prospects in elections next year remains in doubt.

Voters are increasingly favoring Gillard over opposition leader Tony Abbott, and the popularity of her center-left Labor Party has risen from recent record lows. But the party remains well below the 38 percent support that saw it scrape through elections to form a fragile minority government in 2010. Analysts doubt that her newfound fire will turn around Labor's prospects.

Australian political expert Nick Economou says it took Gillard a long time "to get to the point where she suddenly looks like a leader."

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Songs offer messages of hope at Sandy benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — From "Livin' on a Prayer" to "The Living Proof," every song Friday at NBC's benefit concert for superstorm Sandy victims became a message song.

New Jersey's Jon Bon Jovi gave extra meaning to "Who Says You Can't Go Home." Billy Joel worked in a reference to Staten Island, the decimated New York City borough. The hourlong event, hosted by Matt Lauer, was heavy on stars and lyrics identified with New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area, which took the brunt of this week's deadly storm. The telethon was a mix of music, storm footage and calls for donations from Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg and others.

The mood was somber but hopeful, from Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" to Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" and a tearful Mary J. Blige's "The Living Proof," her ballad of resilience with the timely declaration that "the worst is over/I can start living now." Joel rocked out with "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)," a song born from crisis, New York City's near bankruptcy in the 1970s, while Jimmy Fallon endured a faulty microphone and gamely led an all-star performance of the Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk" that featured Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Steven Tyler. The Aerosmith frontman then sat behind a piano and gave his all on a strained but deeply emotional "Dream On." Sting was equally passionate during an acoustic, muscular version of The Police hit "Message In a Bottle" and its promise to "send an SOS to the world."

The show ended, as it only could, with Springsteen and the E Street Band, tearing into "Land Of Hope and Dreams."

"God bless New York," Springsteen, New Jersey's ageless native son, said in conclusion. "God bless the Jersey shore."

The stable of NBC Universal networks, including USA, CNBC, MSNBC, E! Entertainment, The Weather Channel and Bravo, aired the concert live from the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, several blocks north of where the city went days without power. Millions of people for whom the benefit was organized couldn't watch the event because they had no electricity.

NBC Universal invited other networks to televise the event, but not everyone signed on.

That might have something to do with network rivalries.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the networks organized a benefit together behind the scenes and it was televised on more than 30 networks simultaneously, including all the big broadcasters.

After Hurricane Katrina, NBC televised its own benefit before the other broadcasters, one that became best known for Kanye West's off-script declaration that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." The other broadcasters cooperated on their own telethon a week later, and NBC televised that one, too.

Also this year, NBC organized and scheduled a telethon and gave others the chance to air it.

Others declined to televise Friday's telethon, even though ABC parent Walt Disney Co. said it would donate $2 million to the American Red Cross and various ABC shows will promote a "Day of Giving" on Monday. The CBS Corp., Viacom Inc., parent of "Jersey Shore" network MTV, Fox network owner News Corp. also announced big donations to the Red Cross.

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Floods render NYC hospitals powerless

NEW YORK (AP) — There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York. And yet two of the city's busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power.

Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.

The closures led to dramatic scenes of doctors carrying patients down dark stairwells, nurses operating respirators by hand, and a bucket brigade of National Guard troops hauling fuel to rooftop generators in a vain attempt to keep the electricity on.

Both hospitals, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, were still trying to figure out exactly what led to the power failures Thursday, but the culprit appeared to be the most common type of flood damage there is: water in the basement.

While both hospitals put their generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood, other critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.

Both hospitals had fortified that equipment against floods within the past few years, but the water — which rushed with tremendous force — found a way in.

"This reveals to me that we have to be much more imaginative and detail-oriented in our planning to make sure hospitals are as resilient as they need to be," said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The problem of unreliable backup electricity at hospitals is nothing new.

Over the first six months of the year, 23 percent of the hospitals inspected by the Joint Commission, a health care facility accreditation group, were found to be out of compliance with standards for backup power and lighting, according to a spokesman.

Power failures crippled New Orleans hospitals after Hurricane Katrina. The backup generator failed at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., after the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew through the state in 2011. Hospitals in Houston were crippled when Tropical Storm Allison flooded their basements and knocked out electrical equipment in 2001.

When the Northeast was hit with a crippling blackout in 2003, the backup power at several of New York City's hospitals failed or performed poorly. Generators malfunctioned or overheated. Fuel ran out too quickly. Even where the backup systems worked, they provided electricity to only some parts of the hospital and left others in the dark.

Afterward, a mayoral task force recommended upgrading testing standards for generators and requiring backup plans for blood banks and health care facilities that provide dialysis treatment.

Alan Aviles, president of New York City's Health and Hospitals Corp., which operates Bellevue, said that after a scare last summer when Hurricane Irene threatened to cause flooding, Bellevue put its basement-level fuel pumps in flood-resistant chambers.

It still isn't clear whether water breached those defenses, but when an estimated 17 million gallons of water rushed through loading docks and into the hospital's 1-million-square-foot basement, the fuel feed to the generators stopped working. The floodwaters also knocked out the hospital's elevators.

For two days, National Guardsmen carried fuel to the generators, but conditions inside the hospital for patients and staff deteriorated anyway. The generators were designed to supply only 30 percent of the usual electrical load at the hospital, leaving a lot of equipment and labs hobbled. The hospital also lost all water pressure on Tuesday. Nearly 700 patients had been evacuated by Thursday afternoon.

"The precautions we had taken to date had served us well," Aviles said. "But Mother Nature can always up the stakes."

NYU Langone Medical Center had also tried to armor itself against floods.

All seven of the generators providing backup power to the parts of the hospital involved in patient care are only a few years old and are on higher floors. The fuel tank is in a watertight vault. New fuel pumps were installed just this year in a pump house upgraded to withstand a high flood, said the hospital's vice president of facilities operation, Richard Cohen.

"The medical center invested quite a bit of money to upgrade the facility," he said.

The pump house remained "bone dry," Cohen said. But water shoved aside plastic and plywood defenses and infiltrated the fuel vault, where sensors detected the potentially damaging liquid and shut the generators down. "The force of the surge that came in was unbelievable. It dislodged our additional protection and caused a breach of the vault as well," Cohen said.

The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.

Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.

"It didn't really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble," he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, "I thought, 'We'll have power upstairs. We're an operating room.'"

He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a "med sled."

"There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside," he said. "I can't say that they were very well prepared for it."

That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.

Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone's generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.

Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital's power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital's power needs.

"It's a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it," Cohen said.

___

AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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Bloomberg cancels marathon amid outcry

RT @YahooSportsNBA: Jeremy Lin and James Harden are the NBA’s best backcourt. Do not argue. http://t.co/zsGlGTgp via @YahooBDL

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Families await bodies after Pakistan factory fire

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — At the only morgue in Pakistan's largest city lie the blackened remains of 32 people killed in one of the worst industrial accidents in the country's history, wrapped in white plastic body bags waiting for DNA tests to determine who they are.

That means an excruciating wait — so far more than a month — for families whose relatives are believed to have been killed but have not been accounted for.

One of those in the morgue may be the daughter-in-law of Aisha Bano. Bano's son and his wife both were working as stitching machine operators in the warehouse-factory producing jeans and other clothes when it was ravaged by a Sept. 11 blaze. The son is known to have died. His wife is still missing.

Bano says her grandchildren have continuous nightmares about their missing mother, dreaming that she's trying to get home.

"Almost every midnight one of them wakes me up to tell me somebody is outside the house calling their names and pleading to open the door," said Bano, tears rolling down her cheeks.

The fire horrified Karachi, and residents are still struggling to deal with the extent of the tragedy. According to official figures, 259 workers died in the fire, but there are indications the toll may be even higher. The inferno laid bare the dangerous conditions at some Pakistani factories, as well as the limitations of facilities in this port city of more than 18 million people.

It took rescue workers more than 36 hours to put out the blaze. Investigators haven't determined what caused the fire but suggested that it might have been a short circuit that ignited material and wood. Between 300 and 400 workers were inside working. An investigation found that the emergency exits were permanently locked, and the main doors were locked after the fire broke out to prevent theft.

Many of the dead suffocated to death in the basement when it filled with smoke. Those on the top floors of the five-story building could be seen on television images desperately breaking through the metal bars blocking the windows and then jumping to the ground below.

When authorities were finally able to make their way into the blackened building they found dozens of bodies, many charred beyond recognition.

Most of the dead have been identified and handed over to their families, many in the first couple of days because the bodies were intact.

Those remaining are at the Edhi Morgue, identifiable only by DNA.

There's no place in Karachi to do the DNA tests, so samples have been sent to a laboratory in Islamabad, said officials. Despite reassurances from the government that the dead would be quickly identified, the turnover has been slow. The lab provided results on nine bodies so far, leaving 32 still at the morgue, said Inspector Jahanzeb Khan with the Karachi police.

"We sent a lot of reminders to the laboratory to expedite the DNA match process," he said.

Bano's family received the body of her son, Muhammad Javed, from the hospital the day after the fire. But his wife Samina's has still not been identified. Bano and her other sons initially thought Samina might still be alive and visited all the city's hospitals. When realization struck that she was likely dead, they began visiting the morgue.

"We checked all the unidentified bodies so many times. We visited the Edhi Morgue 17 days in a row," she said, sitting next to her three grandchildren and younger son.

The doctors took a DNA sample from one of the relatives and told them it would take up to three days to confirm Samina's body, Bano said. When they contacted the police, they were told the samples were sent to Islamabad and were told to wait.

The lack of identification has also made it difficult for families to receive compensation promised by the government.

Muhammad Siddiq lost his son Muhammad Shehbaz in the factory. His son came home for lunch that day with a fever but he brushed aside his mother's urging to stay home and returned to work. Provincial government officials told the family they have to prove they have lost a family member before they can receive compensation. So they need confirmation of his body.

Siddiq said the compensation pales in comparison to the family's need to bury their son.

"All I need is my son's body so his soul can rest," he said. "His mother has almost lost her senses."

A recent survey by a Karachi union suggests even more people might have been killed.

The Hosiery Garment Textile Workers Union along with the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research surveyed families in the neighborhood where the factory was located as well as another neighborhood nearby where many workers lived. They found 65 families who said they were still missing relatives after the blaze. Some of those could be among the unidentified at the morgue, but the numbers indicate many might not be.

"If they have died, the casualties are much higher than reported," said Rehana Yasmin from the union.

Two of the owners of Ali Enterprises, which owned the factory, are in a Karachi prison awaiting trial on murder charges for allegedly telling guards to lock the doors after the fire started to prevent theft. A third owner was allowed to stay out of jail because of poor health. Police have also arrested the factory's general manager and three private security guards on murder charges for carrying out the orders to lock the doors.

The Federal Investigation Agency, one of the country's highest law enforcement agencies, was tasked with investigating the fire and recently submitted a report blaming the owners and relevant government departments for not following safety and labor laws.

The second floor, where most of the casualties were reported, was not even in the approved map of the factory, the FIA found. Water hydrants did not work, and workers had not been given rescue training by the city's civil defense department, the FIA found. The factory was not registered with the provincial labor department, in violation of the country's labor laws.

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Apple rolls out iPad mini in Asia to shorter lines

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Apple fans lined up in several Asian cities to get their hands on the iPad mini on Friday, but the device, priced above rival gadgets from Google and Amazon.com, attracted smaller crowds than at the company's previous global rollouts.

Apple Inc's global gadget rollouts are typically high-energy affairs drawing droves of buyers who stand in line for hours. But a proliferation of comparable rival devices may have sapped some interest.

About 50 people waited for the Apple store in Sydney, Australia, to open, where in the past the line had stretched for several blocks when the company debuted new iPhones.

At the head of Friday's line was Patrick Li, who had been waiting since 4:30 am and was keen to get his hands on the 7.9-inch slate.

"It's light, easy to handle, and I'll use it to read books. It's better than the original iPad," Li said.

There were queues of 100 or more outside Apple stores in Tokyo and Seoul when the device went on sale, but when the company's flagship Hong Kong store opened staff appeared to outnumber those waiting in line.

The iPad mini marks Apple's first foray into the smaller-tablet segment, and the latest salvo in a global mobile-device war that has engulfed combatants from Internet search leader Google Inc to Web retailer Amazon.com Inc and software giant Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft's 10-inch Surface tablet, powered by the just-launched Windows 8 software, went on sale in October, while Google and Amazon now dominate sales of smaller, 7-inch multimedia tablets.

POSITIVE REVIEWS

Unveiled last week, the iPad mini has won mostly positive reviews, with criticism centering on a screen considered inferior to rivals' and a lofty price tag. The new tablet essentially replicates most of the features of its full-sized sibling, but in a smaller package.

"Well, first of all it's so thin and light and very cute - so cute!" said iPad mini customer Ten Ebihara at the Apple store in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district.

At $329 for a Wi-Fi only model, the iPad mini is a little costlier than predicted but some analysts see that as Apple's attempt to retain premium positioning.

Some investors fear the gadget will lure buyers away from Apple's $499 flagship 9.7-inch iPad, while proving ineffective in combating the threat of Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, both of which are sold at or near cost.

Also on Friday, Apple rolled out its fourth-generation iPad, with the same 9.7-inch display as the previous version but with a faster A6X processor and better Wi-Fi. Both devices were going on sale in more than 30 countries.

Apple will likely sell between 1 million and 1.5 million iPad minis in the first weekend, far short of the 3 million third-generation iPads sold last March in their first weekend, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

"The reason we expect fewer iPad minis compared to the 3rd Gen is because of the lack of the wireless option and newness of the smaller form factor for consumers," Munster said in a note to clients. "We believe that over time that will change."

Reviewers have applauded Apple for squeezing most of the iPad's features into a smaller package that can be comfortably manipulated with one hand.

James Vohradsky, a 20 year-old student who previously queued for 17 hours at the Sydney store to buy the iPhone 5, only stood in line for an hour and a half this time.

"I had an iPad 1 before, I kind of miss it because I sold it about a year ago. It's just more practical to have the mini because I found it a bit too big. The image is really good and it's got the fast A5 chip too," Vohradsky said.

The iPad was launched in 2010 by late Apple boss Steve Jobs and since then it has taken a big chunk out of PC sales, upending the industry and reinventing mobile computing with its apps-based ecosystem.

A smaller tablet is the first device to be added to Apple's compact portfolio under Cook, who took over from Jobs just before his death a year ago. Analysts credit Google and Amazon for influencing the decision.

Some investors worry that Apple might have lost its chief visionary with Jobs, and that new management might not be able to stay ahead of the pack as rivals innovate and encroach on its market share.

(Additional reporting by Mariko Lochridge in Tokyo, Stefanie McIntyre in Hong Kong and Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Writing by Noel Randewich and Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Alex Richardson)

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Blake Shelton pulls off surprise win at CMAs

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Winning the Country Music Association Awards' entertainer of the year is a top honor and always counted as a career high point. But for Blake Shelton it wasn't even the most memorable moment of an amazing Thursday night.

"The Voice" star took home three trophies, including his third straight male vocalist victory, but nothing compared to sharing song of the year with wife Miranda Lambert. The pair wrote "Over You," about the death of Shelton's brother Richie in a car wreck 15 years ago. He said that trophy will always have a special place in their Oklahoma home.

"For me as a songwriter that is as personal as I can get," Shelton said. "So that songwriter award, song of the year award, it will have its own shelf. It will have spotlights on it and an alarm and everything. Trip wires and there will be a land mine if you walk towards it. It is a real big deal to Miranda and I."

Shelton's entertainer win was the biggest surprise of a night full of them. Even he couldn't believe he'd won the award in a field that included Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley.

"I didn't think about that tonight. I was thinking there's Taylor Swift right there," he said of the two-time entertainer of the year. "Really, this is pretty dumb that there's anyone else even nominated."

The reality, though, is Shelton capped one of the most impressive career reboots in country music history with the win. About three years ago, he was searching for a hit or a gimmick that might return him to the top of the charts, without much luck. He scored a novelty hit with Trace Adkins called "Hillbilly Bone," began a run of hits and then joined "The Voice" in a move that made him an instant celebrity outside the country world.

He hasn't sold as many records as Swift, whose "Red" just moved 1.2 million copies in its first week, or as many concert tickets as Chesney or Aldean. But his leading-man looks, wicked sense of humor, Twitter presence and mellow baritone have made him one of country's top stars.

While Shelton didn't give himself much of a shot, Lambert — who also won her third straight female vocalist of the year award — thought he fit the definition of entertainer of the year after doing a little research.

"I realized that it just meant not only touring numbers, not only ticket sales or how much production you have, but the way that you represent country music within a year," Lambert said. "The media that you do and the work that you do and the TV shows that you are on and how you represent yourself and how you speak out about country music. When you think about it that way, Blake Shelton deserved to win that trophy tonight."

Shelton's victory was just one of many surprises during the awards. Quartet Little Big Town joined Lambert with two wins apiece, taking home vocal group and single of the year for "Pontoon." And Thompson Square's Shawna and Keifer Thompson won vocal duo of the year, ending Sugarland's five-year run in that category.

"Y'all, this has been a 13-year journey," Karen Fairchild said as members of the group fist-pumped, jumped up and down and shouted on stage. "We're living proof that if you work really hard and chase your dream, all the good stuff happens and it follows you. Nashville, you made us your band. Thank you for letting us do this."

Like fellow outsiders LBT, Eric Church felt the love from the CMA's voters for the first time. He won the prestigious album of the year for his breakthrough record "Chief," signaling the North Carolina native's complete acceptance by the country music community.

"I spent a lot of my career wondering where I fit in — too country, too rock," Church told the crowd. "I want to thank you guys for giving me somewhere to hang my hat tonight."

The awards went off-script early, and not just for Little Big Town. Thompson Square won in a category that's been locked up by either Sugarland or Brooks & Dunn 19 of the last 20 years.

"Ever since I was 5 years old, I used to practice in the kitchen with one of my Meemaw's Mason jars for this moment here," Shawna Thompson said.

Hunter Hayes won new artist of the year, while Chesney and Tim McGraw won musical event of the year for "Party Like a Rock Star" and Toby Keith won video of the year for "Red Solo Cup."

Church helped kick off the show by combining forces with Aldean and Luke Bryan. Playing with a large American flag behind them, the trio of performers teamed up on Aldean's new single "The Only Way I Know" from his new album "Night Train" and earned a standing ovation. Each returned later to play singles, showing how large a market share they now own in country music.

Most of country's top stars were on hand at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena for the celebration, with many slated to perform. Swift performed her somber new single "Begin Again" on a set with a picture of the Eiffel Tower and falling leaves in the background. She received an ovation of her own.

Shelton, McGraw and wife Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum and Keith Urban joined together to salute lifetime achievement winner Willie Nelson, ending with a group sing-along of his iconic "On the Road Again."

Little Big Town performed their winner "Pontoon," a song that was something of a departure for Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook and Phillip Sweet. Produced by Jay Joyce, the song has a sharper groove than LBT's previous efforts.

In a coincidence, Joyce also produced Church's "Chief." The hard edge he brought to both paid off all around.

Church said album of the year, arguably the CMA's second most prestigious award, was a win that fit right in with his and Joyce's philosophy.

"I still think in this day and time the only way to really get a fan base is you've got to give them more than one chapter of a book," Church said. "They've got to read the whole book."

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AP writer Kristin M. Hall in Nashville contributed to this report.

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Floods render NYC hospitals powerless

NEW YORK (AP) — There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York. And yet two of the city's busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power.

Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.

The closures led to dramatic scenes of doctors carrying patients down dark stairwells, nurses operating respirators by hand, and a bucket brigade of National Guard troops hauling fuel to rooftop generators in a vain attempt to keep the electricity on.

Both hospitals, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, were still trying to figure out exactly what led to the power failures Thursday, but the culprit appeared to be the most common type of flood damage there is: water in the basement.

While both hospitals put their generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood, other critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.

Both hospitals had fortified that equipment against floods within the past few years, but the water — which rushed with tremendous force — found a way in.

"This reveals to me that we have to be much more imaginative and detail-oriented in our planning to make sure hospitals are as resilient as they need to be," said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The problem of unreliable backup electricity at hospitals is nothing new.

Over the first six months of the year, 23 percent of the hospitals inspected by the Joint Commission, a health care facility accreditation group, were found to be out of compliance with standards for backup power and lighting, according to a spokesman.

Power failures crippled New Orleans hospitals after Hurricane Katrina. The backup generator failed at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., after the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew through the state in 2011. Hospitals in Houston were crippled when Tropical Storm Allison flooded their basements and knocked out electrical equipment in 2001.

When the Northeast was hit with a crippling blackout in 2003, the backup power at several of New York City's hospitals failed or performed poorly. Generators malfunctioned or overheated. Fuel ran out too quickly. Even where the backup systems worked, they provided electricity to only some parts of the hospital and left others in the dark.

Afterward, a mayoral task force recommended upgrading testing standards for generators and requiring backup plans for blood banks and health care facilities that provide dialysis treatment.

Alan Aviles, president of New York City's Health and Hospitals Corp., which operates Bellevue, said that after a scare last summer when Hurricane Irene threatened to cause flooding, Bellevue put its basement-level fuel pumps in flood-resistant chambers.

It still isn't clear whether water breached those defenses, but when an estimated 17 million gallons of water rushed through loading docks and into the hospital's 1-million-square-foot basement, the fuel feed to the generators stopped working. The floodwaters also knocked out the hospital's elevators.

For two days, National Guardsmen carried fuel to the generators, but conditions inside the hospital for patients and staff deteriorated anyway. The generators were designed to supply only 30 percent of the usual electrical load at the hospital, leaving a lot of equipment and labs hobbled. The hospital also lost all water pressure on Tuesday. Nearly 700 patients had been evacuated by Thursday afternoon.

"The precautions we had taken to date had served us well," Aviles said. "But Mother Nature can always up the stakes."

NYU Langone Medical Center had also tried to armor itself against floods.

All seven of the generators providing backup power to the parts of the hospital involved in patient care are only a few years old and are on higher floors. The fuel tank is in a watertight vault. New fuel pumps were installed just this year in a pump house upgraded to withstand a high flood, said the hospital's vice president of facilities operation, Richard Cohen.

"The medical center invested quite a bit of money to upgrade the facility," he said.

The pump house remained "bone dry," Cohen said. But water shoved aside plastic and plywood defenses and infiltrated the fuel vault, where sensors detected the potentially damaging liquid and shut the generators down. "The force of the surge that came in was unbelievable. It dislodged our additional protection and caused a breach of the vault as well," Cohen said.

The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.

Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.

"It didn't really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble," he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, "I thought, 'We'll have power upstairs. We're an operating room.'"

He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a "med sled."

"There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside," he said. "I can't say that they were very well prepared for it."

That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.

Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone's generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.

Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital's power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital's power needs.

"It's a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it," Cohen said.

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AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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Gas stations scramble in Sandy's aftermath

NEW YORK (AP) — There's plenty of gasoline in the Northeast — just not at gas stations.

In parts of New York and New Jersey, drivers lined up Thursday for hours at gas stations that were struggling to stay supplied. The power outages and flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy have forced many gas stations to close and disrupted the flow of fuel from refineries to those stations that are open.

At the same time, millions of gallons of gasoline are sitting at the ready in storage tanks, pipelines and tankers that can't unload their cargoes.

"It's like a stopped up drain," said Tom Kloza, Chief Oil Analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

For people staying home or trying to restart a business, the scene wasn't much brighter: Millions were in the dark and many will remain so for days. As of Thursday, 4.5 million homes were without power, down from a peak of 8.5 million. The New Jersey utility Public Service Electric & Gas said it will restore power to most people in 7 to 10 days. Consolidated Edison, which serves New York City and Westchester County, said most customers will have power by Nov. 11, but some might have to wait an additional week or longer.

Superstorm Sandy found a host of ways to cripple the region's energy infrastructure. Its winds knocked down power lines and its floods swamped electrical substations that send power to entire neighborhoods. It also mangled ports that accept fuel tankers and flooded underground equipment that sends fuel through pipelines. Without power, fuel terminals can't pump gasoline onto tanker trucks, and gas stations can't pump fuel into customers' cars.

The Energy Department reported Thursday that 13 of the region's 33 fuel terminals were closed. Sections of two major pipelines that serve the area — the Colonial Pipeline and the Buckeye Pipeline — were also closed.

Thousands of gas stations in New Jersey and Long Island were closed because of a lack of power. AAA estimates that 60 percent of the stations in New Jersey are shut along with up to 70 percent of the stations in Long Island.

Thursday morning the traffic to a Hess station on 9th Avenue in New York City filled two lanes of the avenue for two city blocks. Four police officers were directing the slow parade of cars into the station.

A few blocks away, a Mobil station sat empty behind orange barricades, with a sign explaining it was out of gas.

Taxi and car service drivers were running dry — and giving up, even though demand for rides was high because of the crippled public transit system. Northside Car Service in Williamsburg, Brooklyn has 250 drivers available on a typical Thursday evening. Today they had just 20. "The gas lines are too long," said Thomas Miranda, an operator at Northside.

Betty Bethea, 59, waited nearly three hours to get to the front of the line at a Gulf station in Newark, but she brought reinforcements: Her kids were there with gas cans, and her husband was behind her in his truck.

Bethea had tried to drive to her job at a northern New Jersey Kohl's store on Thursday morning, only to find her low-fuel light on. She and her husband crisscrossed the region in search of gas and were shooed away by police at every closed station she encountered.

"It is crazy out here — people scrambling everywhere, cutting in front of people. I have never seen New Jersey like this," Bethea said.

But relief appeared to be on the way, even as the lines grew Thursday. The Environmental Protection Agency lifted requirements for low-smog gasoline, allowing deliveries of gasoline from other regions. Tanker trucks sped north from terminals in Baltimore and other points south with fuel.

A big delivery of fuel was on its way south to Boston from a Canadian refinery. Ports and terminals remained open in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, and portions of the Colonial and Buckeye pipelines are expected to re-open on Friday. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners expects to open its three terminals in New Jersey and New York over the next two days after bringing in backup generators.

And the U.S. Coast Guard opened the Port of New York and New Jersey to tankers Thursday.

Logistical problems will remain, though, for days. Barges can now visit terminals up the Hudson River and into Long Island Sound, but many of the major fuel hubs and terminals near the New York and New Jersey ports still can't offload fuel. They need to get electricity back, pump water out of flooded areas, and inspect equipment before starting operations again.

And gas stations won't be able to open up until they have power, either.

That means tanker trucks will have to travel further to deliver fuel to stations, and customers will have to drive further to find open stations.

It does not mean, however, that the region will run out of gasoline. OPIS's Kloza suspects the long lines are partly a result of panic-buying.

"This is not the Arab Oil Embargo again," he said. "There are moments when hysteria is warranted, and moments it's not. Right now, it's not."

Prices shouldn't spike like they did in the 1970s — or even as they did before Hurricane Isaac slammed the Gulf Coast this summer. There may be a short-term increase, but gas prices should resume what has been a 6-week slide. Gasoline demand is very low at this time of year, and there's enough fuel to go around — as soon as it can get around.

The national average gasoline price fell a penny to $3.51 per gallon Thursday, according to AAA, OPIS and Wright Express. Six weeks ago the price was $3.87.

Patrick DeHaan of GasBuddy.com, which collects gasoline prices from thousands of drivers, said prices weren't spiking in New York and New Jersey on Thursday. It was just a matter of finding stations that were open and had fuel.

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Samantha Henry and Michael Rubinkam contributed to this story from Newark, N.J.

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Cyclone weakens after displacing 150K in India

CHENNAI, India (AP) — A tropical storm weakened Thursday after slamming into southern India, bringing heavy rain and a storm surge and displacing 150,000 people. Six deaths have been reported in India and Sri Lanka.

Just before the storm made landfall Wednesday, an oil tanker with 37 crew ran aground off Chennai. One of its lifeboats capsized in the choppy waters, and one crewmember drowned, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

On Thursday, two helicopters searched in the Bay of Bengal for the four missing crewmembers, said coast guard officer Gurdip Singh, adding that 32 crewmembers were rescued from the tanker.

Andhra Pradesh state said two people died there when their homes collapsed due to heavy rain Wednesday night in Nellore and Chittoor districts, and PTI reported another death in Tamil Nadu state, a 46-year old man who slipped into the rough sea from a pier and drowned. Sri Lanka reported two deaths earlier from the cyclone.

The cyclone had maximum winds of 75 kph (45 mph) after landfall but had weakened to a tropical depression. A storm surge of up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) was forecast to flood low-lying coastal areas, the India Meteorological Department said.

Power supply was disrupted to parts of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, PTI said.

Heavy to very heavy rain expected, and fishermen were asked to stay at shore.

State authorities turned 282 schools into relief centers in Chennai and the city's port halted cargo operations. Twenty-three ships were moved to safer areas.

About 150,000 people were moved to shelters in Nellore, district official B. Sridhar said.

In Sri Lanka, 4,627 people were displaced by flooding and 56 fled because of a landslide threat in the island's central region. One woman died Tuesday after a tree branch fell on her while another person was killed in flooding, the nation's Disaster Management Center said. Floods also damaged about 1,000 houses, it said.

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Associated Press writer Bharatha Mallawarachi in Colombo, Sri Lanka, contributed to this report.

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Apple's Cook fields his A-team before a wary Wall Street

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook's new go-to management team of mostly familiar faces failed to drum up much excitement on Wall Street, driving its shares to a three-month low on Wednesday.

The world's most valuable technology company, which had faced questions about a visionary-leadership vacuum following the death of Steve Jobs, on Monday stunned investors by announcing the ouster of chief mobile software architect Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett -- the latter after six months on the job.

Cook gave most of Forstall's responsibilities to Macintosh software chief Craig Federighi, while some parts of the job went to Internet chief Eddy Cue and celebrated designer Jony Ive.

But the loss of the 15-year veteran and Jobs's confidant Forstall, and resurgent talk about internal conflicts, exacerbated uncertainty over whether Cook and his lieutenants have what it takes to devise and market the next ground-breaking, industry-disrupting product.

Apple shares ended the day down 1.4 percent at 595.32. They have shed a tenth of their value this month -- the biggest monthly loss since late 2008, and have headed south since touching an all-time high of $705 in September.

For investors, the management upheaval from a company that usually excels at delivering positive surprises represents the latest reason for unease about the future of a company now more valuable than almost any other company in the world.

Apple undershot analysts targets in its fiscal third quarter, the second straight disappointment. Its latest Maps software was met with widespread frustration and ridicule over glaring mistakes. Sources told Reuters that Forstall and Cook disagreed over the need to publicly apologize for its maps service embarrassment.

And this month, Apple entered the small-tablet market with its iPad mini, lagging Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc despite pioneering the tablet market in 2010.

Investor concerns now center around the demand, availability and profitability of new products, including the iPad mini set to hit stores on Friday.

"The sudden departure of Scott Forstall doesn't help," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee. "Now there's some uncertainty in the management."

"There appears to be some infighting, post-Steve Jobs, and looks like Cook is putting his foot down and unifying the troops."

Apple declined to comment beyond Monday's announcement.

Against that backdrop, Cook's inner circle has some convincing to do. In the wake of Forstall's exit, iTunes maestro Eddy Cue -- dubbed "Mr Fixit", the sources say -- gets his second promotion in a year, taking on an expanded portfolio of all online services, including Siri and Maps.

The affable executive with a tough negotiating streak who, according to documents revealed in court, lobbied Jobs aggressively and finally convinced the late visionary about the need for a smaller-sized tablet, has become a central figure: a versatile problem-solver for the company.

Ive, the British-born award-winning designer credited with pushing the boundaries of engineering with the iPod and iPhone, now extends his skills into the software realm with the lead on user interface.

Marketing guru Schiller continues in his role, while career engineer Mansfield canceled his retirement to stay on and lead wireless and semiconductor teams. Then there's Federighi, the self-effacing software engineer who a source told Reuters joined Apple over Forstall's initial objections, and has the nickname "Hair Force One" on Game Center.

"With a large base of approximately 60,400 full-time employees, it would be easy to conclude that the departures are not important," said Keith Bachman, analyst with BMO Capital Markets. "However, we do believe the departures are a negative, since we think Mr. Forstall in particular added value to Apple."

TEAM COOK

Few would argue with Forstall's success in leading mobile software iOS and that he deserves a lot of credit for the sale of millions of iPhones and iPads.

But despite the success, his style and direction on the software were not without critics, inside and outside.

Forstall often clashed with other executives, said a person familiar with him, adding he sometimes tended to over-promise and under-deliver on features. Now, Federighi, Ive and Cue have the opportunity to develop the look, feel and engineering of the all-important software that runs iPhones and iPads.

Cue, who rose to prominence by building and fostering iTunes and the app store, has the tough job of fixing and improving Maps, unveiled with much fanfare by Forstall in June, but it was found full of missing information and wrongly marked sites.

The Duke University alum and Blue Devils basketball fan -- he has been seen courtside with players -- is deemed the right person to accomplish this, given his track record on fixing services and products that initially don't do well.

The 23-year veteran turned around the short-lived MobileMe storage service after revamping and wrapping it into the reasonably well-received iCloud offering.

"Eddy is certainly a person who gets thrown a lot of stuff to ‘go make it work' as he's very used to dealing with partners," said a person familiar with Cue. The person said Cue was suited to fixing Maps given the need to work with partners such as TomTom and business listings provider Yelp.

Cue's affable charm and years of dealing with entertainment companies may come in handy as he also tries to improve voice-enabled digital assistant Siri. He has climbed the ladder rapidly in the past five years and was promoted to senior vice president last September, shortly after Cook took over as CEO.

Both Cue and Cook will work more closely with Federighi, who spent a decade in enterprise software before rejoining Apple in 2009, taking over Mac software after the legendary Bertrand Serlet left the company in March last year

Federighi was instrumental in bringing popular mobile features such as notifications and Facebook integration onto the latest Mac operating system Mountain Lion, which was downloaded on 3 million machines in four days.

The former CTO of business software company Ariba, now part of SAP, worked with Jobs at NeXT Computer. Federighi is a visionary in software engineering and can be as good as Jobs in strategic decisions for the product he oversees, a person who has worked with him said.

His presentation skills have been called on of late, most recently at Apple annual developers' gathering in the summer.

Then there's Ive, deemed Apple's inspirational force. Among the iconic products he has worked on are multi-hued iMac computers, the iPod music player, the iPhone and the iPad.

Forstall's departure may free Ive of certain constraints, the sources said. His exit brought to the fore a fundamental design issue -- to do or not to do digital skeuomorphic designs. Skeuomorphic designs stay true to and mimic real-life objects, such as the bookshelf in the iBooks icon, green felt in its Game Center app icon, and an analog clock depicting the time.

Forstall, who will stay on as adviser to Cook for another year, strongly believed in these designs, but his philosophy was not shared by all. His chief dissenter was Ive, who is said to prefer a more open approach, which could mean a slightly different design direction on the icons.

"There is no one else who has that kind of (design) focus on the team," the person said of Ive. "He is critical for them."

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr; Editing by Edwin Chan and Ken Wills)

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Spears, Odom face test of live TV on 'X Factor'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Britney Spears was coolly composed on the first live episode of "The X Factor." The same can't be said for new host Khloe Kardashian Odom and her microphone.

Odom, adding to her reality TV credentials, was paired with Mario Lopez to emcee "X Factor" as the singing contest shifted Wednesday from taped to live broadcasts.

Lopez, host of "Extra," performed like the pro he is. Odom came across like the novice she is, shouting her lines despite the mic clutched in her hand and making awkward small talk with contestants and judge and executive producer Simon Cowell.

When Lopez teased 13-year-old singer Diamond White about having a boyfriend, the girl replied, "No, we're friends. My mom would kill me."

"Don't let your mom kill you," exclaimed Odom, drawing a confused smile from White.

At another point, Odom sounded like an oddly flirtatious schoolgirl as she introduced Cowell as "Mr. Sexy."

In a conference call Tuesday, Cowell had discussed expectations for his co-host, a member of reality TV's first family that includes sister Kim Kardashian. Odom's credits include "Khloe and Lamar" with husband Lamar Odom, a Los Angeles Clippers player.

She wants to "prove a point," Cowell said, noting observers had questioned Odom's readiness to steer a live program.

He warned that she would need "nerves of steel" Wednesday because she had less rehearsal time than planned.

"I kind of like to see the unpredictable and I quite like seeing people under pressure and just how they deal with it," Cowell said. Odom and Lopez replaced first-season host Steve Jones, a U.K. TV personality.

Cowell also expressed reservations about how Spears would manage.

While lauding her as "very, very good judge" so far, he told the teleconference it was unclear "what she's going to be like on a live show" involving competition between judges over the contestants they are mentoring.

Spears, a pop princess who has struggled in her personal life, including spells in rehab, proved up to the task. She heaped praise on singers and remained calm when criticism was leveled at those she's guiding.

When Cowell told one teenager that "we need to sort your vocals out," Spears shot back, "I disagree. I think you're a true star."

Of the 16 acts featured on the live "X Factor," four will be cut Thursday by Spears, Cowell, Antonio "L.A." Reid and Demi Lovato. Viewers will decide contestants' fates in following weeks.

Cowell took a moment at the start of Wednesday's show to express sympathy for Hurricane Sandy victims on the East Coast, saying, "our hearts are with you and we hope things get sorted out quickly."

An on-screen crawl invited viewers to donate to the American Red Cross.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org.

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Man with bionic leg to climb Chicago skyscraper

CHICAGO (AP) — Zac Vawter considers himself a test pilot. After losing his right leg in a motorcycle accident, the 31-year-old software engineer signed up to become a research subject, helping to test a trailblazing prosthetic leg that's controlled by his thoughts.

He will put this groundbreaking bionic leg to the ultimate test Sunday when he attempts to climb 103 flights of stairs to the top of Chicago's Willis Tower, one of the world's tallest skyscrapers.

If all goes well, he'll make history with the bionic leg's public debut. His whirring, robotic leg will respond to electrical impulses from muscles in his hamstring. Vawter will think, "Climb stairs," and the motors, belts and chains in his leg will synchronize the movements of its ankle and knee. Vawter hopes to make it to the top in an hour, longer than it would've taken before his amputation, less time than it would take with his normal prosthetic leg — or, as he calls it, his "dumb" leg.

A team of researchers will be cheering him on and noting the smart leg's performance. When Vawter goes home to Yelm, Wash., where he lives with his wife and two children, the experimental leg will stay behind in Chicago. Researchers will continue to refine its steering. Taking it to the market is still years away.

"Somewhere down the road, it will benefit me and I hope it will benefit a lot of other people as well," Vawter said about the research at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Bionic — or thought-controlled — prosthetic arms have been available for a few years, thanks to pioneering work done at the Rehabilitation Institute. With leg amputees outnumbering people who've lost arms and hands, the Chicago researchers are focusing more on lower limbs. Safety is important. If a bionic hand fails, a person drops a glass of water. If a bionic leg fails, a person falls down stairs.

The Willis Tower climb will be the bionic leg's first test in the public eye, said lead researcher Levi Hargrove of the institute's Center for Bionic Medicine. The climb, called "SkyRise Chicago," is a fundraiser for the institute with about 2,700 people climbing. This is the first time the climb has played a role in the facility's research.

To prepare, Vawter and the scientists have spent hours adjusting the leg's movements. On one recent day, 11 electrodes placed on the skin of Vawter's thigh fed data to the bionic leg's microcomputer. The researchers turned over the "steering" to Vawter.

He kicked a soccer ball, walked around the room and climbed stairs. The researchers beamed.

Vawter likes the bionic leg. Compared to his regular prosthetic, it's more responsive and more fluid. As an engineer, he enjoys learning how the leg works.

It started with surgery in 2009. When Vawter's leg was amputated, a surgeon repositioned the residual spaghetti-like nerves that normally would carry signals to the lower leg and sewed them to new spots on his hamstring. That would allow Vawter one day to be able to use a bionic leg, even though the technology was years away.

The surgery is called "targeted muscle reinnervation" and it's like "rewiring the patient," Hargrove said. "And now when he just thinks about moving his ankle, his hamstring moves and we're able to tell the prosthesis how to move appropriately."

To one generation it sounds like "The Six Million Dollar Man," a 1970s TV show featuring a rebuilt hero. A younger generation may think of Luke Skywalker's bionic hand.

But Hargrove's inspiration came not from fiction, but from his fellow Canadian Terry Fox, who attempted a cross-country run on a regular artificial leg to raise money for cancer research in 1980.

"I've run marathons, and when you're in pain, you just think about Terry Fox who did it with a wooden leg and made it halfway across Canada before cancer returned," Hargrove said.

Experts not involved in the project say the Chicago research is on the leading edge. Most artificial legs are passive. "They're basically fancy wooden legs," said Daniel Ferris of the University of Michigan. Others have motorized or mechanical components but don't respond to the electrical impulses caused by thought.

"This is a step beyond the state of the art," Ferris said. "If they can achieve it, it's very noteworthy and suggests in the next 10 years or so there will be good commercial devices out there."

The $8 million project is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and involves Vanderbilt University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Rhode Island and the University of New Brunswick.

Vawter and the Chicago researchers recently took the elevator to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower to see the view after an afternoon of work in the lab. Hargrove and Vawter bantered in the elevator in anticipation of Sunday's event.

Hargrove: "Am I allowed to trash talk you?"

"It's fine," Vawter shot back. "I'll just defer it all to the leg that you built."

At the top, Vawter stood on a glass balcony overlooking the city. The next time he heads to the top, he and the bionic leg will take the stairs.

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AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/CarlaKJohnson.

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Thousands still trapped in homes after Sandy

NEW YORK, N.Y. - People along the battered U.S. East Coast slowly began reclaiming their daily routines Thursday, even as crews searched for victims and tens of thousands remained without power after superstorm Sandy claimed more than 70 lives.

The New York Stock Exchange came back to life, and two major New York airports reopened to begin the long process of moving stranded travellers around the world.

New York's three major airports were expected to be open Thursday morning with limited flights. Limited service on the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, would resume Thursday.

President Barack Obama landed in New Jersey on Wednesday, which was hardest hit by Monday's hurricane-driven storm, and he took a helicopter tour of the devastation with Gov. Chris Christie. "We're going to be here for the long haul," Obama told people at one emergency shelter.

For the first time since the storm pummeled the heavily populated Northeast, doing billions of dollars in damage, brilliant sunshine washed over New York City, for a while.

At the stock exchange, running on generator power, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a thumbs-up and rang the opening bell to whoops from traders. Trading resumed after the first two-day weather shutdown since a blizzard in 1888.

It was clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks could take considerably longer.

There were still only hints of the economic impact of the storm.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted it would cause $20 billion in damage and $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15 billion.

About 6 million homes and businesses were still without power, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Electricity was out as far west as Wisconsin in the Midwest and as far south as the Carolinas.

In New Jersey, National Guard troops arrived in the heavily flooded city of Hoboken, just across the river from New York City, to help evacuate about 20,000 people still stuck in their homes and deliver ready-to-eat meals. Live wires dangled in floodwaters that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said were rapidly mixing with sewage.

Tempers flared. A man screamed at emergency officials in Hoboken about why food and water had not been delivered to residents just a few blocks away. The man, who would not give his name, said he blew up an air mattress to float over to a staging area.

As New York crept toward a semi-normal business day, morning rush-hour traffic was heavy as buses returned to the streets and bridges linking Manhattan to the rest of the world were open.

A huge line formed at the Empire State Building as the observation deck reopened.

Tourism returned, but the city's vast and aging infrastructure remained a huge challenge.

Power company Consolidated Edison said it could be the weekend before power is restored to Manhattan and Brooklyn, perhaps longer for other New York boroughs and the New York suburbs.

Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers was unprecedented, but it said it planned to restore some service on Friday to and from New York City — its busiest corridor — and would give details Thursday.

In Connecticut, some residents of Fairfield returned home in kayaks and canoes to inspect widespread damage left by retreating floodwaters that kept other homeowners at bay.

"The uncertainty is the worst," said Jessica Levitt, who was told it could be a week before she can enter her house. "Even if we had damage, you just want to be able to do something. We can't even get started."

In New York, residents of the flooded beachfront neighbourhood of Breezy Point returned home to find fire had taken everything the water had not. A huge blaze destroyed perhaps 100 homes in the close-knit community where many had stayed behind despite being told to evacuate.

John Frawley, who lived about five houses from the fire's edge, said he spent the night terrified "not knowing if the fire was going to jump the boulevard and come up to my house."

"I stayed up all night," he said. "The screams. The fire. It was horrifying."

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Contributors to this report included Associated Press writers Angela Delli Santi in Belmar, New Jersey; Geoff Mulvihill and Larry Rosenthal in Trenton, New Jersey; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Samantha Henry in Jersey City, New Jersey; Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut; Susan Haigh in New London, Connecticut; John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Alicia Caldwell and Martin Crutsinger in Washington; David Klepper in South Kingstown, Rhode Island; David B. Caruso, Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York.

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Apparent insider attack kills 2 NATO troops

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A man wearing an Afghan police uniform killed two NATO troops in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the international military alliance said.

The assault appeared to the be the latest in a string of insider attacks that have threatened to sever the partnership between international troops and the Afghan forces they are trying to train to take over responsibility for the country's security. There have also been cases of insurgents donning Afghan uniforms in assaults.

A statement from NATO gave no further details, saying the shooting is still under investigation.

Afghan officials said there was an attack in Helmand province's Nahri Sarraj district but also could not confirm any details.

"We know that there are casualties," said Ismail Hotak, the director of the provincial office that coordinates with the international forces.

Both the British and American militaries have large contingents in Helmand.

At least 53 international troops have been killed in attacks by Afghan soldiers or police this year, and a number of other assaults are still under investigation, the international alliance has said.

The surge in insider attacks is throwing doubt on the capability of the Afghan security forces to take over from international troops ahead of a planned handover to the Afghans in 2014. It has further undermined public support for the 11-year war in NATO countries.

The attacks have not been limited to members of the NATO-led international coalition. More than 50 Afghan members of the government's security forces also have died this in attacks by their own colleagues.

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Swift's 'Red' sells 1.2 million copies in debut

NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Swift's new album is called "Red," but its true color is a brilliant platinum. The 22-year-old sold 1.2 million copies of her latest album in its first week — the largest sales week for any album in a decade.

Nielsen SoundScan confirmed the blockbuster sales on Tuesday night. "Red" marks Swift's second straight album to sell more than 1 million copies in its first week; "Speak Now," her third album, sold a little over 1 million copies when it was released in 2010. She is the only woman to have two albums sell more than 1 million copies in its first week.

"They just told me Red sold 1.2 million albums first week. How is this real life?! You are UNREAL. I love you so much. Thanks a million ;)," Swift tweeted Tuesday night.

The only other act to sell more than 1 million copies of an album in its debut week twice was 'N Sync.

Swift isn't a boy band, but she's certainly got the appeal of one: the country crossover has a huge following, particularly among teens who have followed her since she was a teen herself, releasing her first album. But she's also a critic's darling: The Grammy-winner's "Red" garnered plenty of acclaim when it was released last week.

Swift was omnipresent in the week of the album's release, appearing on such shows as "Good Morning America" and "Katie." She also joined with two untraditional partners — Papa John's and Walgreens, which offered the album for sale. And she announced her upcoming tour.

The last album to sell more than 1 million copies in its debut week was Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," which sold 1.1 million copies last year. However, that album was deeply discounted on Amazon.com in its first week.

Swift has the opportunity to celebrate for a second time this week: As the reigning "Entertainer of the Year" at the CMA Awards, she has the chance to capture the trophy again when it is held Thursday in Nashville.

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http://www.taylorswift.com

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Nekesa Mumbi Moody is the AP's Global Entertainment & Lifestyles Editor. Follow her at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi

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Millions in Northeast struggle after massive storm

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The northeastern United States battled epic flood waters and lengthy power outages on Tuesday after the massive storm Sandy pummeled the coast with a record storm surge, high winds and heavy rains that killed at least 45 people and caused billions of dollars in losses.

Millions of people in New York City and other hard-hit areas will spend days or weeks recovering from a storm already seen as far more destructive that Hurricane Irene, which slammed into the same region a year ago. One disaster modeling company said Sandy may have caused up to $15 billion in insured losses.

The storm killed 18 people in New York City, among 23 total in New York state, while six died in New Jersey. Seven other states reported fatalities.

Some 8.2 million homes and businesses in several states were without electricity as trees toppled by Sandy's fierce winds took down power lines.

Sandy hit the coast with a week to go to the November 6 presidential election and turned its fury inland with heavy snowfall, dampening an unprecedented drive to encourage early voting and raising questions whether some polling stations will be ready to open on Election Day.

New York City will struggle without its subway system, which was inundated and will remain shut for days. Much of the Wall Street district was left underwater but officials hoped to have financial markets reopen on Wednesday.

Sandy was the biggest storm to hit the country in generations when it crashed ashore with hurricane-force winds on Monday near the New Jersey gambling resort of Atlantic City, devastating the Jersey Shore tourist haven. Flood waters lifted parked cars and deposited them on an otherwise deserted highway.

With the political campaign and partisanship on hold, Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie planned to tour New Jersey disaster areas on Wednesday.

"It's total devastation down there. There are boats in the street five blocks from the ocean," said Peter Sandomeno, an owner of the Broadway Court Motel in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey.

Christie, who has been a strong supporter of Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, praised Obama and the federal response to the storm.

Obama and Romney put campaigning on hold for a second day but Romney planned to hit the trail again in Florida on Wednesday and Obama seemed likely to resume campaigning on Thursday for a final five-day sprint to Election Day.

Obama faces political danger if the government fails to respond well, as was the case with predecessor George W. Bush's botched handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Obama has a chance to show that his administration has learned the lessons of Katrina and that he can lead during a crisis.

NEW YORK UNDER WATER

Sandy brought a record storm surge of almost 14 feet to downtown Manhattan, well above the previous record of 10 feet during Hurricane Donna in 1960, the National Weather Service said.

The storm forced New York City to postpone its traditional Halloween parade, which had been set for Wednesday night in Greenwich Village and threatened to disrupt Sunday's New York City marathon.

The lower half of Manhattan went dark when surging seawater flooded a substation and as power utility Consolidated Edison shut down others pre-emptively. Some 250,000 customers lost power.

Fire ravaged the Breezy Point neighborhood in the borough of Queens, destroying 110 homes and damaging 20 while destroying still more in the nearby neighborhood of Belle Harbor. Remarkably, no fatalities were reported.

"To describe it as looking like pictures we've seen of the end of World War Two is not overstating it," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said after touring the area. "The area was completely leveled. Chimneys and foundations were all that was left of many of these homes."

Hospitals closed throughout the region, forcing patients to relocate and doctors to carry premature babies down more than a dozen flights of stairs at one New York City facility.

While some parts of the city went unscathed, neighborhoods along the East and Hudson rivers bordering Manhattan were underwater and expected to be without power for days, as were low-lying streets in Battery Park near Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center stood before the September 11, 2001, attacks.

"I'm lucky to have gas; I can make hot water. But there is no heating and I'm all cold inside," said Thea Lucas, 87, who lives alone in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

DESTRUCTION THROUGHOUT REGION

Airlines canceled more than 18,000 flights, though two of the New York City area's three major airports planned to reopen with limited service on Wednesday.

Cellphone service went silent in many states and some emergency call centers were affected.

Some cities like Washington, Philadelphia and Boston were mostly spared but he storm reached as far inland as Ohio and parts of West Virginia were buried under 3 feet (1 meter) of snow, a boon for ski resorts that was one of the storm's few bright spots.

The western extreme of Sandy's wind field buffeted the Great Lakes region, according to Andrew Krein of the National Weather Service, generating wind gusts of up to 60 mph on the southern end of Lake Michigan and up to 35 mph Chicago.

In Cleveland, buildings in the city's downtown area were evacuated due to flooding, police said. Winds gusting to 50 mph brought down wires and knocked out power to homes and business. City officials asked residents to stay inside and for downtown businesses to remained closed for the day.

Amid the devastation there was opportunity. Snowmakers at Snowshoe Mountain in the mountains of West Virginia had their equipment running at full speed on Tuesday, taking advantage of the cold temperatures to build the 24-30 inch base they need to open for skiing by Thanksgiving.

"There are snowmakers out there making snow in what was a hurricane and blizzard," said Dave Dekema, marketing director for the resort, which received a foot-and-a-half of snow, with another foot or two expected.

The resort's phones, email account and Facebook pages were "going crazy," Dekema said, with avid skiers and snowboarders wondering if there was any chance of getting out on the mountain this weekend. He said that was unlikely.

(Additional reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Ilaina Jonas, Daniel Bases, Lucas Jackson, Edward Krudy and Scott DiSavino in New York; Ian Simpson in West Virginia; Diane Bartz and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Susan Guyett in Indianapolis; Kim Palmer in Cleveland and James B. Kelleher in Chicago. Writing by Daniel Trotta and Ros Krasny; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Poll: Australians split over PM's sexism judgment

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australians appear to be split over Prime Minister Julia Gillard's judgment that her main political rival is sexist.

In a fiery speech to Parliament on Oct. 9, Gillard branded opposition leader Tony Abbott a misogynist for a string of allegedly sexist comments. Her commentary has been lauded by feminists around the world, but a poll published Tuesday showed Australians are divided.

Abbott apologized last week for suggesting that Gillard's government was inexperienced in family policy — a criticism some saw as a cheap shot at Gillard, who has no children.

The poll by Sydney market researcher Newspoll published in The Australian newspaper found that 45 percent of respondents said Abbott had behaved in a sexist way toward Gillard recently and 39 percent said he had not. There was no clear majority view, with 16 percent of respondents undecided.

How Abbott was judged on the sexism charge closely correlated with how respondents intend to vote at general elections next year.

Of those who said Abbott is sexist, 66 percent support Gillard's center-left Labor Party. Of those who said he is not, 76 percent back his conservative coalition.

Women were more likely than men to condemn Abbott for sexism.

Of those who said he was sexist, 43 percent were women and 35 percent were men. Of those who responded that he was not sexist, 48 percent were men and 41 percent were women.

Despite the divide, Gillard's public stance against sexism has gained solid support.

Gillard has said she stands by every word of her blistering attack on Abbott and has vowed to speak out against sexism in the future whenever she sees it.

More than three in four respondents (78 percent) said Gillard's response to the sexism issue had been "about right," including 83 percent of women and 72 percent of men.

Another 16 percent accused her of overreacting (22 percent of men and 12 percent of women), while 5 percent said she had underreacted (5 percent of men and 4 percent of women).

The poll was based on a random telephone survey of 1,218 voters nationwide at the weekend. It had a 3 percentage point margin of error.

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Panasonic may curb solar panel, lithium battery expansion: sources

TOKYO (Reuters) - Electronics conglomerate Panasonic Corp may curtail its expanded production of solar panels and small lithium batteries used in PCs and other devices as part of new round of restructuring, two sources at the company told Reuters.

Panasonic recently built a solar panel plant in Malaysia for 45 billion yen ($564 million), upping capacity by one-third to 900 megawatts. Plans to further ramp up production to 1.5 gigawatts may be scaled back, however, because of weak demand, particularly in Europe, the sources said on condition they were not identified.

Panasonic's new president, Kazuhiro Tsuga, has promised a new revival plan for the Japanese company by the end of the current business year next March 31. He has said he will weed out loss-making or low-profitability units.

The firm's business in small lithium batteries has been hurt by price competition from Korean and Chinese competitors. Falling into the red last year, it was aiming to return to profit this year by shifting production to China, where costs are lower, but may post a loss instead, the sources said.

As a result of the squeeze on expanded output of solar panels and batteries, Panasonic's energy unit may struggle to reach a target of raising sales to more than 1 trillion yen, or 10 percent of overall sales, and operating margin to at least 10 percent by March 2016, the sources said.

The unit retains 202 billion yen of goodwill following the acquisition of Sanyo in 2010. Analysts estimate that two-thirds of that is related to solar panels and small lithium batteries.

Shares of Panasonic, which releases its results on Wednesday for the quarter ended September 30, rose 3 percent in morning trading in Tokyo to 507 yen. ($1 = 79.8150 Japanese yen) (Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Michael Watson)

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In Vietnam, US relies on pirate site to network

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP) — It's a wildly popular website laden with unlicensed songs and Hollywood movies, a prime exhibit of the digital piracy that is strangling the music industry in Asia and eroding legitimate online sales around the world.

The free-to-download bonanza has pushed Vietnam's Zing.vn into the ranks of the globe's top 550 websites. But a few clicks inside the site reveal a surprising presence: the U.S. government, which maintains a bustling social media account there.

Washington is a vocal proponent of intellectual property rights in Vietnam as it is around the world, and a site like Zing would be shut down in the United States. But with space for public diplomacy limited in Communist Vietnam, the American embassy uses its "Zingme" account to reach out to young people in Vietnam as it seeks to build closer ties with its former enemy.

The embassy's presence shows just how mainstream pirate sites have become in Vietnam, where the government does nothing to stop them operating. But it also raises questions whether Washington is legitimizing a renowned pirate site that record labels, singers and industry groups say ignores requests that it take down infringing material.

Coca-Cola and Samsung pulled their advertising from the site earlier this month because of piracy concerns following questions by The Associated Press. The move challenged Zing's business model and was praised by recording industry groups. Samsung said last week it was also closing its Zingme account for the same reason.

The embassy said it recognizes the concerns for U.S. copyright interests posed by Zing but that it believes that contact with the website's users could reduce traffic or infringing activity on it. The mission sometimes uses its Zingme page to post about copyright infringement.

Its statement noted that the site had removed, at its request, the link to infringing material that appears on other Zingme pages as a matter of course. It also noted to its lack of options in a country where the Communist government controls the media, saying "there were few spaces for public discourse and intermittent access to Facebook", referring to a block the government sometimes puts on the American social networking site.

But not everyone thinks engaging with Zing is the right thing to do.

"Here we are as an American company trying to set things right with one of the biggest pirates in Vietnam but the U.S. embassy is essentially showing its support by being on its site," said Mimi Nguyen, an American who has been trying fruitlessly to get Zing to take down some 10,000 songs owned by her family's business for a year.

"It is really sad to find out the embassy is using their platform."

The Recording Industry Association of America, which praised the decision by Samsung and Coke to withdrawn from Zing and has labeled Zing a "notorious" pirate site, said it was neither endorsing nor criticizing the embassy's decision to maintain the site.

Neil Turkewitz, a senior vice president at the association, said he imagined the embassy had tried to balance the ability to target a tech-savvy demographic with anti-piracy messages against the appearance of a connection between it and the site.

"My guess is that it wasn't an easy decision," he said.

The recording industry around the world is struggling to make money from online distribution models, and illegal downloading remains rampant. Artists and producers in much of Asia are feeling the pinch especially hard because governments have failed to pass or enforce anti-piracy laws. Licensed CDs, films and downloads can cost the equivalent of a day's salary, making it even harder to wean people off pirated products.

In Vietnam, inaction by a government that sees no political upside in cracking down on what many see as a victimless crimes has pushed the industry to the point of collapse. Zing is seen as the No.1 enemy by those who speak out against its effective stranglehold over the country's music industry.

"Zing is destroying the industry and they know it," said record producer Quoc Trung, who is leading a campaign against online piracy. "We need people to pay for music, not just click on it. It is now or never."

Zing, which declined repeated requests for comment on this article and a previous one, has used free download to become the sixth-most visited site in Vietnam, and the second most popular Vietnamese music download site. Around 15 percent of its visitors are from overseas. It is not the only infringing website in Vietnam by far, but it is the most visited.

Sites that offer pirated content alongside other Internet services like Zing exist elsewhere around the world and are among the most reprehensible, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

"They want to appear as legitimate actors, and have functions unrelated to piracy, yet operate network services that include features that intentionally and effectively induce infringement," it said in a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative in August asking the government to use all the tools at its disposal to ensure Zing and others are not permitted to undermine legitimate online markets.

"These services deliberately gain market share by providing access to infringing materials, launching music services without any form of licensing, and have demonstrated continued resolve to engage in conduct based upon misappropriation."

Zingme closely resembles Facebook, which recently overtook the Vietnamese site in subscriber numbers, according to one research group. Facebook is sometimes blocked by the government because of fears it could be used to mobilize dissent against its one-party rule. Zingme is never blocked, and is more popular with younger, less educated Vietnamese. Companies and institutions often have accounts on both. The embassy has more than 18,000 friends on Zingme, compared to 12,000 on Facebook.

Many in the industry have no choice but to work with Zing even as it distributes their music and films for free. Not having your music on the site means getting an audience for live concerts, or attracting commercial sponsorship, is almost impossible, industry executives said. But a few are pushing back, among them established singer Le Quyen, who is suing Zing and eight other infringing websites.

"I'm sure that Zing is aware that what they do is wrong, but they are afraid that other singers will put pressure on them if I win the case," she said before one of her near-weekly concerts at a venue owned by her husband here. "That's why they keep avoiding my demands. Their tactic is to drag the case on until their opponent gets tired and gives up."

Some in the industry predict Zing and other websites will embrace a more legitimate model, rather like Baidu in neighboring China, which after years of complaints from international and local record labels about pirated content signed a licensing deal with its former critics last year. Major Western record labels eager to sell music in the 13th most populous country in the world have been in early talks with Zing and other sites, but there is no deal on the horizon.

For now, the sites are not taking down their unlicensed content because doing so would mean that users would flock to that of a rival, and new ones are cropping all the time. Those offering unlimited downloads of Hollywood movies for a monthly subscription as low as $2 are amassing large audiences, and could be looking to leveraging their popularity to become legitimate providers.

"In Vietnam, you build an audience first, and then you negotiate," said Phung Tien Cong, a manager at MVCorp, which is trying to establish a pay-for-song business in collaboration with Zing, other websites and license holders.

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Brummitt can be reached at https://twitter.com/cjbrummitt.

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