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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The strategy: Grind it out, get out the vote

WASHINGTON (AP) — For President Barack Obama, winning re-election rests on a workman-like, get-out-the-vote strategy aimed at protecting key territory in the Midwest, ramping up minority turnout and building early voting leads that could protect against a late surge by Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

It's a far cry from the lofty rhetoric and gauzy closing argument advertisements that defined Obama's final push in 2008. And it's a reflection of a race that remains tight in its final days, and an outcome that could hinge on little more than battleground state turnout.

"We have two jobs: One, persuade the undecideds, and two, to turn our voters out," said Jim Messina, Obama's data-driven campaign manager.

Obama himself has gotten deeply involved in those efforts. He made a personal appeal to 9,000 undecided voters on a conference call from Air Force One, promoted early voting by casting his own ballot before Election Day and offered encouragement to staff and volunteers during numerous stops to battleground state campaign offices.

"I hate to put the burden of the entire world on you, but basically it's all up to you," Obama told volunteers this week in Orlando, Fla. His comments were meant to be light-hearted, but they spoke to the degree to which his campaign is counting on its massive ground game to carry Obama to re-election.

The campaign relied heavily on that operation this week when Superstorm Sandy forced Obama off the campaign trail and back to Washington for three days to oversee the federal response. The Democratic get-out-the-vote effort kept churning, allowing Obama to project presidential leadership and offer comfort in a crisis — intangibles his campaign knows could be beneficial in persuading late-breaking voters.

They helped him win over at least one person: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, who said Obama's handling of the storm was key his decision to endorse the president.

Obama, in his closing argument to voters, is trying to burnish his bipartisan credentials, seeking to convince voters he's the same man who burst into the political spotlight eschewing the notion of red states or blue states.

Polls show Obama and Romney tied nationally. But the president's advisers say the map of competitive states tilts in their favor. The president started the race with more pathways than Romney for reaching the required 270 Electoral College votes, and aides say all of those options are still within reach. Romney's campaign, on the other hand, is still grappling for a clear roadmap to 270.

Nine states are up for grabs: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado and Nevada.

Key to Obama's electoral strategy is protecting a Midwestern firewall: Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin, a three-state combination that would put him over the necessary threshold. The president will visit those states multiple times in the campaign's final stretch, including four straight days of travel to Ohio.

Obama can win without Ohio. But if he does carry the state's 18 electoral votes, it would make Romney's path to victory far more difficult, requiring the Republican to win nearly every other competitive state or pull off upsets in traditionally Democratic states.

Private polling from both parties has Obama leading Romney in Ohio, where the president's bailout of the auto industry is popular. And more Democrats than Republicans in the state have cast early votes.

Romney's campaign is looking to expand the battleground map by making a late play for a trio of left-leaning states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota. That's forced Obama's team to buy television advertising time in states where it had hoped to avoid spending money.

Obama aides insist it's not in trouble in those states and aides say there are no plans for Obama or Vice President Joe Biden to travel there in the campaign's closing days. Instead, they say their strong fundraising efforts have given them the financial means to defend against Romney's criticism wherever he decides to run ads.

But aides say turnout, not ads, will determine the election. Obama's team has put particular emphasis on ramping up turnout during early voting periods, especially among "sporadic" voters who may be less likely to go to the polls on Election Day.

Their efforts appear to be bearing fruit. Democrats have an edge in votes cast in Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. Republicans have an advantage in Colorado.

Obama's campaign says boosting early vote totals could put some states out of reach for Romney even before Election Day. In Ohio, for example, Obama aides estimate the Republican would need to carry at least 53 percent of the vote cast there on Tuesday in order to remain in contention.

It's more than just party registration that has Obama's team feeling confident. They tout data showing two-third of those who have already voted were women, young people, blacks and Hispanics. Obama is almost certain to win the majority of those voting blocs.

Aides say minority voting in particular is on track to reach an all-time high, perhaps as high as 28 percent of all voters.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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No pigeons, planes, pingpong balls at China meet

BEIJING (AP) — Don't roll down the taxi windows. Don't buy a remote-controlled plane without a police chief's permission. And don't release your pigeons.

Beijing is tightening security as its all-important Communist Party congress approaches, and some of the measures seem downright bizarre. Kitchen knives and pencil sharpeners reportedly have been pulled from store shelves, and there's even a rumor that authorities are on the lookout for seditious messages on pingpong balls.

The congress, which begins Nov. 8, will name new leaders to run the world's most populous country and second-largest economy for the next decade. Most of the security measures have been phased in in time for Thursday's opening of a meeting of the Central Committee, the roughly 370-member body that is finalizing preparations for the congress.

China always tightens security for high-profile events, like much of the rest of the world. London, for instance, restricted air traffic during the Olympics.

But many of Beijing's rules seem extraordinary, perhaps in an effort to smooth a once-a-decade transition that has already been bumpy.

Bo Xilai, once a candidate for the all-powerful Politburo's Standing Committee, suffered a spectacular fall from grace in which his wife was convicted of murder. One of President Hu Jintao's closest aides was demoted, apparently after his son was killed alongside two partially dressed women in an accident in his Ferrari. Meanwhile, protests over pollution, land seizures and local corruption continue across the country.

Human rights groups report that activists and petitioners are being rounded up ahead of the congress. But the broader security measures may best illustrate how China is trying to leave absolutely no room for disruptions.

The government has blocked searches for the phrase "18th Party Congress" on websites including China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo. Internet posters manage to get around that by using characters that sound like "party congress." One substitute: "Sparta."

Taxi drivers have been told to remove window handles, to avoid sensitive parts of the city and not to open their windows or doors if they pass "important venues." Some taxi drivers, but not all, have been told to ask passengers to sign a "traveling agreement" if they want to go near Tiananmen Square.

A man who answered the phone at Wan Quan Si taxi company in the south of the capital said the rule applies to all taxi companies in Beijing. He declined to give his name.

Beijing investment company worker Li Tianshu said she didn't believe colleagues' claims that door handles had been removed until she got into a taxi herself the other day.

"There were no handles for three of the four windows," she said. "The driver told me that their company asked them to do it to prevent passengers spreading leaflets. The driver complained that if they don't take the handles away or the passengers throw leaflets out of the taxis, they will be fired."

Citizens have taken to Weibo to post photos of doors with handles crudely ripped off. Liu Shi, a client manager in a mass communication company, wrote that the taxi driver had told him that power to electronic window buttons would also be cut.

A memo circulating on Weibo warned taxi drivers to be on guard against passengers who may want to cast balloons with slogans or throw "pingpong balls with reactionary words." It was unclear who issued the memo and its authenticity could not be confirmed.

A man who wouldn't give his name at Tong Hai taxi company in central Beijing said it had received orders "from higher authorities" to reinforce security measures and a memo, but he wouldn't elaborate.

Police in the capital are asking that Chinese show their ID cards and foreigners their passports when buying remote-controlled model aircraft over safety concerns, the official Global Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

One toy store owner said authorities had told him to stop selling medium and large-sized planes.

"This kind of plane can't fly over long distances and it can hardly carry anything," said Chen Ziping, holding up a model about half a meter (half a yard) long. "They just told me to stop selling it and I have to follow the order."

The Global Times quoted an unnamed police officer from Aoyuncun station in Chaoyang district as saying that people wanting to buy model planes during the congress should go to the vendor's local police station to register. When the buyer receives approval from the station's police chief, he can make the purchase, the officer said.

Still, they won't be allowed to fly model planes in the city, and balloons also are on the blacklist, the newspaper said. It cited another officer from Chaoyang district Public Security Bureau as saying that pigeon owners must keep their birds in their coops during the congress.

Chen Jieren had a run-in with the security rules Sunday after the handle of his knife broke while he was cooking dinner. He took his ID card to the supermarket, knowing that people must show identification when buying knives during sensitive periods.

"Well, it didn't work this time," Chen said in a telephone interview. "I was told by the police that no more knives can be sold, not even pencil sharpeners. And I don't think the shopkeeper was kidding, because several days ago I saw myself that police were asking the sales assistants in the stationer's not to sell pencil sharpeners.

"I went back and got an old knife and tried to sharpen it. I guess I have to live with it until the Congress finishes," he added, glumly.

Wang Ye, an engineer from Beijing who lives in Shanghai, was planning on returning to his home city to run a marathon, but it was postponed with no word on when it might be held. The date of a marathon in the eastern city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, was also changed.

"There is no official explanation, but we all know that it is due to the 18th Congress," he said. "(The Beijing marathon) has been held regularly for the past 31 years.

"I guess I will give up running competitions in China and try to attend more abroad," said Wang. "At least they tell me the schedule one year before the event."

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Microsoft pushes new Windows to developers

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Days after launching Windows 8, Microsoft Corp is mounting a strong campaign to win over the software developers it needs to kick-start its new operating system.

A lack of apps is Microsoft's Achilles heel as it attempts to catch Apple Inc and Google Inc in the rush toward mobile computing.

Windows 8, the new Surface tablet and a range of Windows-based phones - all unveiled in the past week - are designed to close that gap, but the world's largest software company still needs to convince developers to recreate the thriving 'ecosystem' that made PCs so successful.

"Please go out and write lots of applications," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer pleaded with 2,000 developers on Tuesday, kicking off an annual, four-day meeting at its campus near Seattle.

The event, called 'Build,' is the equivalent of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference and Google's I/O event.

Microsoft gave each paying attendee one of its Surface tablets and 100 gigabytes of free space on its SkyDrive online storage service. On top of that, handset partner Nokia threw in a free Lumia 920 smartphone running Windows Phone 8.

The unprecedentedly generous give-away signals the intent of what Microsoft openly calls "evangelism." Most developers at the meeting, who paid up to $2,000 to attend, are already converted to the Windows religion. But this year there is a feeling that Microsoft can re-establish itself as a relevant platform for developers.

"The sessions are overflowing. Everybody wants to learn," said Greg Lutz, product manager at development tools company ComponentOne, who is attending the conference.

"The Surface is really exciting. It's been interesting to see people that would normally be critics of Microsoft surprised to see how good it is," said Lutz, whose company makes features that developers can use in apps, such as calendars or charts.

Microsoft recognizes it needs apps to flesh out its new online Windows Store and make Windows 8 machines more attractive to users, said Russ Whitman, chief strategy officer at Ratio Interactive, a design agency that helps companies create apps.

"The catalog (of apps) is where they are weak, there's no doubt," he said. "But if Microsoft stays focused on quality not quantity, they can win."

DEVELOPER DOUBTS

When Windows 8 launched on Friday, some major content providers had prominent apps in the Windows store, such as Netflix Inc, the New York Times and Rovio's Angry Birds Space. But big names such as Facebook and Twitter were missing.

Twitter moved to rectify that on Tuesday, announcing that a native Windows app would be rolled out "in the months ahead." Dropbox, a fast-growing cloud storage service, also announced it would soon have a Windows app, as did online payment firm PayPal and sports network ESPN.

But Facebook, which now has more than 1 billion users, has not yet made public any plans for a Windows app, despite the fact Microsoft is a minor shareholder.

And Microsoft still has to overcome indifference from many developers who do not see demand from users or simply do not have the resources to build Windows apps alongside iOS and Android.

"Windows 8 is getting good reviews and the tile user interface is a great fit with our geo-visual content," said Jason Karas, CEO at website Trover, where users can share photos of interesting discoveries. "It's on the roadmap for Trover, but we are still a very lean team, so we're hesitant to support a third platform until we have all the innovations we want to see in iPhone and Android in place."

Microsoft has yet to persuade other influential online services, for example car-rental firm Zipcar or real estate information firm Zillow, to develop for Windows 8.

To get more developers on board, Microsoft is spending this week demonstrating how it is making it easier to develop apps for Windows and get them into the real world.

A key part of that is a new set of tools tying in its Azure cloud service, which allows Windows apps to easily harness data stored in remote servers.

"Some of the new changes are pretty incredible and are going to make developing, especially some of the mobile apps, much easier," said Mike Cousins, a software developer following the conference by webcast from Calgary, Canada.

"It just makes it super-easy to integrate mobile clients into your application," said Cousins, who is developing Shuttr, a site for photographers to display and sell their work. "It's been reduced from probably a week's work to minutes."

400 MILLION NEW MACHINES

Microsoft's best argument to developers is the sheer size of the Windows user base.

Microsoft sold 4 million upgrades to Windows 8 in its first four days, a mere fraction of the 670 million or so machines running Windows 7. Ballmer said there would be 400 million new devices running Windows next year, including PCs, tablets and phones, and the company would be marketing heavily to consumers.

That is an attractive audience for developers, and Whitman at Ratio Interactive said he saw many new faces at Microsoft's event this week who previously were more interested in web-based apps and other platforms.

"There's a new generation of developers that can build on Windows 8 that have been building using JavaScript and HTML," he said. "Seeing some of those developers show up and talk about building apps using other languages is pretty cool. It's a whole different group than Microsoft has traditionally been able to court."

One Wall Street analyst said developers may even be tempted to switch back to Microsoft after working with Apple's iOS platform.

"There does seem to be some excitement about the new operating system and many of the new devices that are coming to market," said Jason Maynard, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. "We have heard some developers talk about 're-Microsofting' and moving from their Macs for app development."

Cousins said that once developers see the user base for Windows 8 grow, the momentum will start to have an effect.

"All the new PCs people buy will be Windows 8, and people will start demanding Windows 8 apps from companies, and then they will start making them," he said. "I think we'll see a wave of apps coming out pretty soon."

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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The Sandy 15? Superstorm comfort-eating on menu

Jamie Sanders went to the grocery store in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy with good intentions. Cucumbers and apples were on her list.

But her local supermarket hadn't gotten any new supplies — and with the prospect of working in her Upper East Side apartment for several days ahead, she joined the hordes of East Coast residents holed up in their homes who found comfort in the bottom of a crinkly bag, a brightly colored box or a perfect pint-sized cardboard container.

"There was some canned food left and some Oreos," the copywriter and beauty blogger said. "I do like Oreos, but these were an impulse buy. I saw they were Winter Oreos with red cream and a snowman on top and I had to try them."

Chips and salsa also went into the cart, although she would have preferred Doritos if any were left, and she sheepishly admitted to making a meal of some boxed macaroni and cheese, too.

Facebook and Twitter were full of similar mini-confessions of calories consumed while people were either left in the dark and trying to eat up what was deep in their freezer before it thawed, or making due with the shelf-stable, packaged foods that were in the grocery store after the meat and produce were gone. Others turned to baking as a rainy day family activity.

Add to that the Halloween candy that many people bought for trick-or-treaters and it really was "the perfect storm," said New York-based registered dietician Keri Glassman.

Glassman, author of the upcoming book "The New You and Improved Diet," said stress and boredom make it hard to fight off temptation. Her advice: don't eat it all in one sitting. "If you have that candy in the house, make it one treat a day for the next few days."

Oreos were also on the menu at Jill Nawrocki's home in Brooklyn, although hers are of the Double Stuf variety.

She is preparing to run in Sunday's New York Marathon and had been expecting to be eating protein and leafy greens this week, but it wasn't meant to be. "I usually do my grocery shopping on Sunday, which didn't happen this week, so my cupboards were pretty bare," she said via email.

She had stocked up last year on "pretty gross" non-perishable foods during Hurricane Irene and didn't want to make that same mistake.

Even fitness trainer Simone de la Rue gave into a burger, french fries and margarita on Tuesday — for lunch, no less.

"I'm going stir crazy myself. I have a little cabin fever," de la Rue said. "I never do this, but it helped me pass the time."

Nancy Yates, a retired United Nations development officer who lives in desolate lower Manhattan, where thousands of people are still living without power, went shopping with neighbor Norma Fontane for comfort food at a bodega lit by flashlight and candlelight.

They picked up canned chicken noodle soup and crackers, chocolate bars, chips and cookies — "to help the depression," Fontane joked.

Extra time prompted Matthew Bautista, a publicist in Harlem, to go really far in the other direction: Instead of junk food, he has spent the last four days concocting gourmet meals. "I've been homebound, so I used my Dutch oven for the first time," he said.

His lights stayed on, so one night it was spare ribs braised in red wine, another it was butternut squash soup, and there's still a pork loin to cook. He has invited neighbors and friends who are without power or affected by flooding to join him.

But now he knows that his local gym is open, so he is planning on squeezing that in between meals.

Still without power at her apartment or West Chelsea studio on Wednesday, de la Rue was making up for her indulgences with a few extra workout videos streamed on her iPad.

For fellow storm binge-eaters, she suggests candlelight yoga or any sort of household cleaning that requires scrubbing. If you're home with the kids, ask them to put on their favorite music — maybe you'll become hip to a little Carly Rae Jepsen or One Direction — and just dance around together.

Next time, Glassman said, plan ahead and make things such as low-sodium, bean-based soups, frozen vegetables, peanut butter, canned tuna and salmon, green tea and oatmeal the pantry "staples."

It's not too late to get on the bandwagon now, she added: "Every meal is a Monday morning."

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Exasperation builds on Day 3 in storm-stricken NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — Frustration — and in some cases fear — mounted in New York City on Thursday, three days after Superstorm Sandy. Traffic backed up for miles at bridges, large crowds waited impatiently for buses into Manhattan, and tempers flared in gas lines.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city would send bottled water and ready-to-eat meals into the hardest-hit neighborhoods through the weekend, but some New Yorkers grew dispirited after days without power, water and heat and decided to get out.

"It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big-time."

Rima Finzi-Strauss decided to take bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.

"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."

The mounting despair came even as the subways began rolling again after a three-day shutdown. Service was restored to most of the city, but not the most stricken parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the tunnels were flooded.

Bridges into the city were open, but police enforced a carpooling rule and peered into windows to make sure each car had at least three people. The rule was meant to ease congestion but appeared to worsen it. Traffic jams stretched for miles, and drivers who made it into the city reported that some people got out of their cars to argue with police.

Rosemarie Zurlo said she planned to leave Manhattan for her sister's place in Brooklyn because her own apartment was freezing, "but I'll never be able to come back here because I don't have three people to put in my car."

With only partial subway service, lines at bus stops swelled. More than 1,000 people packed the sidewalk outside an arena in Brooklyn, waiting for buses to Manhattan. Nearby, hundreds of people massed on a sidewalk.

When a bus pulled up, passengers rushed the door. A transit worker banged on a bus window, yelled at people inside, and then yelled at people in the line.

With the electricity out and gasoline supplies scarce, many gas stations across the New York area remained closed, and stations that were open drew long lines of cars that spilled out onto roads.

At a station near Coney Island, almost 100 cars lined up, and people shouted and honked, and a station employee said he had been spit on and had coffee thrown at him.

In a Brooklyn neighborhood, a station had pumps wrapped in police tape and a "NO GAS" sign, but cars waited because of a rumor that gas was coming.

"I've been stranded here for five days," said Stuart Zager, who is from Brooklyn and was trying to get to his place in Delray Beach, Fla. "I'm afraid to get on the Jersey Turnpike. On half a tank, I'll never make it."

The worst was over at least for public transportation. The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North were running commuter trains again, though service was limited. New Jersey Transit had no rail service but most of its buses were back.

The storm killed more than 80 people in the U.S. New York City raised its death toll on Thursday to 38, including two Staten Island boys, 2 and 4, swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters.

In New Jersey, many people were allowed back into their neighborhoods Thursday for the first time since Sandy ravaged the coastline. Some found minor damage, others total destruction.

The storm cut off barrier islands, smashed homes, wrecked boardwalks and hurled amusement park rides into the sea. Atlantic City, on a barrier island, remained under mandatory evacuation.

More than 4.6 million homes and businesses, including about 650,000 in New York and its northern suburbs, were still without power. Consolidated Edison, the power company serving New York, said electricity should be restored by Saturday to customers in Manhattan and to homes and offices served by underground power lines in Brooklyn.

In darkened neighborhoods, people walked around with miner's lamps on their foreheads and bicycle lights clipped to shoulder bags and, in at least one case, to a dog's collar. A Manhattan handyman opened a fire hydrant so people could collect water to flush toilets.

Some public officials expressed exasperation at the relief effort.

James Molinaro, president of the borough of Staten Island, suggested that people not donate money to the American Red Cross because the Red Cross "is nowhere to be found."

"We have hundreds of people in shelters throughout Staten Island," he said. "Many of them, when the shelters close, have nowhere to go because their homes are destroyed. These are not homeless people. They're homeless now."

Josh Lockwood, the Red Cross' regional chief executive, said 10 trucks began arriving to Staten Island on Thursday morning and a kitchen was set up to distribute meals. Lockwood defended the agency, saying relief workers were stretched thin.

"We're talking about a disaster where we've had shelters set up from Virginia to Indiana to the state Maine, so there's just this tremendous response," he said. "So I would say no one organization is going to be able to address the needs of all these folks by themselves."

In Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, Mary Wilson, 75, was buying water from a convenience store that was open but had no power. She said she had been without running water or electricity for three days, and lived on the 19th floor.

She walked downstairs Thursday for the first time because she ran out of bottled water and felt she was going to faint. She said she met people on the stairs who helped her down.

"I did a lot of praying: 'Help me to get to the main floor.' Now I've got to pray to get to the top," she said. "I said, 'I'll go down today or they'll find me dead.'"

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Contributing to this story were Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik, Michael Hill, Karen Matthews, Jennifer Peltz and Christina Rexrode.

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Afghans set presidential poll date; Taliban jeer

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghans will elect a new president in the spring of 2014 in a ballot considered crucial for their country's stability and security after more than 11 years of war.

Afghan politicians and the country's foreign backers hailed Wednesday's announcement as a step toward a peaceful transition of power. The Taliban, who could make or break the poll, denounced it as meaningless and vowed to keep on fighting.

The government-appointed Independent Electoral Commission set polling day as April 5, 2014, the same year that most troops in the U.S.-led NATO coalition will have left in a withdrawal that has already begun.

The date is in line with the Afghan constitution adopted after the coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001. But the Taliban claimed the vote was an American ploy.

"These are not elections, they are selections," said spokesman Qari Youssof Ahmadi. "The U.S. wants to select those people it wants and who will work for the purpose of the enemy. The Afghans know the country is occupied by the enemy, so what do elections mean?"

The Taliban are the country's main opposition group, and President Hamid Karzai has in the past asked the insurgents to lay down their weapons and join the political process. But they have vowed to keep fighting.

Still, despite their rhetoric, it remains unclear what the insurgents will do ahead of the elections.

Prospects appear bleak. Peace talks are stalled and the Taliban show no signs of relenting in their fight. During Karzai's decade in office they have never recognized him as president and consider him an American puppet.

The 2009 poll that gave Karzai a second term were marred by allegations of massive fraud and vote-rigging, while violence and intimidation in the Taliban-dominated east and south helped limit overall turnout to 33 percent, and more than one million of the 5.5 million votes cast were ruled invalid.

The constitution limits Karzai to two terms, and he has said he will not try for a third. But Afghans generally consider his government to be corrupt and to have favored his political allies and members of his family, and although many of the allegations have not been proven, there are concerns he might seek a way to remain in power or appoint a family member to run as a proxy in the 2014 election.

Although no one has openly declared a candidacy, possible contenders mentioned so far are mostly members of the former Northern Alliance, which ousted the Taliban after the American invasion in late 2001. They include former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who lost to Karzai in 2009, and Quayum Karzai, one of the president's brothers.

The International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, warned this month of a "precipitous slide toward state collapse" unless steps are taken soon to prevent a repeat of the "chaos and chicanery" of the 2009 election.

"Plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014," the Brussels-based group said.

U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham said the election date represented "more than a day on a calendar. It is symbolic of the aspiration of Afghans for elections which will be crucial for Afghanistan's future stability. This will be an Afghan process, with the U.S. and the international community prepared to provide support and encouragement to millions of Afghans who, on April 5, 2014, will make their mark on history with a peaceful transition of political authority."

In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called it a "historic opportunity."

Free and fair elections are also a key condition for delivering more than $16 billion in aid that was pledged at an international donor conference last May.

Provincial elections will be held on the same day as the presidential poll, and parliamentary elections will follow in 2015, said Fazel Ahmad Manawai, the election commission's chief.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.

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Facebook shares fall as lock-up period expires

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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.

___

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

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Obama touring hard-hit New Jersey

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — President Barack Obama got an up-close look at the devastation wrought by superstorm Sandy on Wednesday, forsaking partisan campaigning days before the close election in favor of a disaster tour guided by the Republican governor of New Jersey. Rival Mitt Romney muted criticism of his foe as he barnstormed battleground Florida.

Yet a controversy as heated as any in the long, intense struggle for the White House flared over Romney's late-campaign television and radio ads in bellwether Ohio. "Desperation," Vice President Joe Biden said of the broadcast claims that suggested automakers General Motors and Chrysler are adding jobs in China at the expense of Ohio workers. "One of the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember."

Republicans were unrepentant as Romney struggled for a breakthrough in the Midwest.

"American taxpayers are on track to lose $25 billion as a result of President Obama's handling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas," said an emailed statement issued in the name of Republican running mate Paul Ryan.

The two storms — one inflicted by nature, the other whipped up by rival campaigns — were at opposite ends of a race nearing its end in a flurry of early balloting by millions of voters, unrelenting advertising and so many divergent public opinion polls that the result was confusion, not clarity.

National surveys make the race a tight one for the popular vote, with Romney ahead by a statistically insignificant point or two in some, and Obama in others.

Both sides claim an advantage from battleground state soundings that also are tight. Obama's aides contend he is ahead or tied in all of them, while Romney's team counters that his campaign is expanding in its final days into what had long been deemed safe territory for the president in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

The storm added yet another element of uncertainty, as Obama spent a third straight day embracing his role as incumbent and Romney tried to tread lightly during a major East Coast disaster.

The president received a briefing at the Federal Emergency Management Agency across town from the White House before flying to New Jersey, where the shoreline absorbed some of the worst damage in a storm that killed 50 and laid waste to New York City's electrical and transportation systems.

Gov. Chris Christie was waiting when Air Force One landed, and he and Obama, two figures in blue windbreakers, walked together toward the president's helicopter to begin their tour. It was a tableau that seemed impossible a week ago — a president struggling to defend his economic record in a tight election, flying off to a non-battleground state to spend the afternoon in the company of the man who delivered the keynote address at Romney's Republican National Convention this summer.

Photos: New Jersey devastated

1. Photo By Pablo Martinez Monsivais 2 hrs 57 mins ago

   President Barack Obama is greeted by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie upon his arrival at Atlantic City International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Atlantic City, NJ. Obama traveled to region to... more&nbsp

   President Barack Obama is greeted by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie upon his arrival at Atlantic City International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Atlantic City, NJ. Obama traveled to region to take an aerial tour of the Atlantic Coast in New Jersey in areas damaged by superstorm Sandy, (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) less&nbsp

 

The storm forced an abrupt change in Romney's campaign, as well.

A spokesman, Kevin Madden, told reporters the president's challenger maintained a "positive tone and talked about what the governor would hope to do on day one of his presidency.

Romney told his crowd in Tampa, "We love all of our fellow citizens. We come together at times like this, and we want to make sure that they have a speedy and quick recovery from their financial and, in many cases, personal loss." His criticism of Obama was glancing. "I don't just talk about change. I actually have a plan to execute change and make it happen."

But the clash was ferocious over Romney's broadcast ads. The radio version said that after Obama's auto bailout, General Motors "cut 15,000 American jobs, but they are planning to double the number of cars built in China which means 15,000 more jobs for China.

"And now comes word that Chrysler is starting to build cars in, you guessed it, China."

Biden said the ads were scurrilous, and he noted that executives from General Motors and Chrysler, which produces Jeeps, had said the claims were inaccurate.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is, just recently in the last couple of months, in Toledo, Ohio, not only is the Jeep plant open and churning out Jeeps, they announced they're adding 1,100 new jobs."

Ryan's emailed response conceded nothing. "President Obama has chosen not to run on the facts of his record, but he can't run from them," it said.

His reference to a $25 billion cost to taxpayers reflected the Treasury Department's most recent estimate of the amount General Motors and Chrysler still owe the government from the financing it received during a managed bankruptcy in 2009.

Ryan didn't mention that the two companies have repaid billions more than that. Nor did he refer to Obama's frequent claim that the administration's bailout, which Romney opposed, saved large numbers of jobs and prevented the collapse of the U.S. auto industry itself.

Obama's aides said the president would return to political travel on Thursday with stops in Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado. But for one more day, he was hands-on commander of the federal response to Sandy, and consoler-in-chief for its victims.

He and Christie flew by helicopter over washed-out roads, flooded homes, boardwalks bobbing in the ocean, and in Seaside Heights, a fire still burning after ruining about eight structures.

The president's itinerary also included a community center in Brigantine Beach that is serving as a shelter for local storm victims. Officials said about 200 people were sleeping in the center's gym at the height of the storm, a number that has been reduced.

The political impact of the storm on the race was difficult to gauge.

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters it had "tended to freeze this race" in place because "people are focused on the storm. That's what's been in the news."

Not everyone, and not all the time.

In the race's final days, Romney's campaign is running ads in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, two states long considered safe for the president, and the Republican's allies are airing commercials in Michigan and New Mexico.

Obama's aides insisted the states were safe for him, but it dispatched former President Bill Clinton to Minnesota, and purchased airtime in the other three states to respond to the Republicans.

Both campaigns invested in get-out-the-vote operations well in advance of Election Day.

Officials in Florida said more than 2.6 billion ballots had been cast as of Tuesday night. Democrats voted in slightly higher numbers than Republicans, but nearly 450,000 voters were independents.

___

Associated Press writers Steve Peoples and Kasie Hunt in Florida, Philip Elliott in Eau Claire, Wis., Ben Feller, Charles Babington, Ken Thomas and Martin Crutsinger in Washington, Matthew Daly in Sarasota, Fla., Brian Bakst in St. Paul, Minn., and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report. Espo reported from Washington.

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