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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With Christie, Obama vows, ‘We will not quit until this is done’

President Barack Obama hugs North Point Marina owner Donna Vanzant as he tours the damage in Brigantine, N.J. At …Just six days before the election, President Barack Obama toured storm-ravaged areas with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He told Garden State residents struggling in the superstorm's aftermath that all of America shares their pain—and their government is there to help.

"The main message I wanted to send is the entire country has been watching what's been happening," Obama said Wednesday during a visit to the Brigantine Beach Community Center. "Everybody knows how hard Jersey's been hit."

("Except my boss," shouted Michael Henshaw, 32, a Brigantine resident who works at an insurance company. "Well, except your boss. If you need me to call, you let me know," Obama replied, drawing laughter from the room. That exchange, and many of the details in this post, are from pool reporter Reid Epstein of Politico.)

The White House told reporters that during the worst of the storm's devastation 200 people were sleeping in the center's gym, though that number has dropped to 50. The center still serves as a spot for people to get meals and take hot showers.

Obama traveled to New Jersey, which bore the brunt of the storm's wrath, with Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Craig Fugate. The president and Christie—an outspoken Mitt Romney backer—traded praise over the response to the devastating storm.

"I want to just let you know that your governor is working overtime to make sure that as soon as possible everybody can get back to normal," said Obama. "We are going to be here for the long haul. We're going to not tolerate any red tape. We're not going to tolerate any bureaucracy."

Christie, wearing a blue polar fleece jacket with "CHRIS CHRISTIE GOVERNOR" in white letters over his heart, echoed Obama's message.

"I just want to tell all of you exactly what the president just said. I know he means it," Christie said. "I want to thank the president for coming here today. It's really important to have the president of the United States acknowledge all the suffering that's going on here in New Jersey, and I appreciate it very much. We're going to work together to make sure we get ourselves through this crisis and get everything back to normal. Thank you for coming, sir."President Barack Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Aides say the president is focused on doing his job, not on the election, but the governor's praise and the seemingly smooth federal response to the storm could help him in his neck-and-neck race with Romney.

Obama and Christie took an aerial tour of some of the destruction aboard the president's Marine One helicopter before the visit to Brigantine.

In brief public remarks afterward, the governor had said of the president, "He has sprung into action immediately to help. He has worked incredibly closely with me since before the storm hit.

"It's been a great working relationship to make sure that we're doing the jobs that people elected us to do, and I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state and the people of our state."

(He also joked about those who ignored his "admonition to get the hell out of here. You are forgiven this time, but not for much longer.")

Obama returned the praise, saying Christie had been "responsive" and "aggressive" even before "this incredible storm. ... The people of New Jersey recognize that he has put his heart and soul into making sure that the people of New Jersey bounce back even stronger than before. So I just want to thank him for his extraordinary leadership and partnership."

The president added that "because of some good preparation, the loss of life was kept lower than it might have been."

He then offered his "thoughts and prayers" to those who lost loved ones. "I speak for the whole country," he said.

Both men cited the urgent need to restore power to the vast areas that lost it during the storm.

Obama, who canceled campaign events on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to take charge of the federal response, said he had instituted a "15-minute rule" for returning telephone calls from governors and mayors. "If they need something, we'll figure out a way to say 'yes,'" the president said.

"We will not quit until this is done," he promised.

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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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Hurricane Sandy disrupts Northeast U.S. telecom networks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Power outages and flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy disrupted telecommunications services in Northeastern states on Tuesday, resulting in spotty coverage for cellphones, television, home telephones and Internet services.

While all the region's telecom service providers were having problems, Verizon Communications, which serves many of the states in the hurricane's path, may have suffered some of the worst damage from the storm to its wireline network.

About 25 percent of the region's wireless cell towers were out of action after the storm and some 911 emergency call centers were not working, according to Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

"Our assumption is that communications outages could get worse before they get better," Genachowski told reporters on a conference call, noting that the storm had not ended.

Also power outages could disrupt more cell sites if they run out of back-up power before commercial electricity services are up and running again.

People lined up at pay-phones in at least one New York neighborhood, the Lower East Side, today as their phones had either lost coverage or they had run out of battery power because there was nowhere to charge their phones in the neighborhood which had lost commercial power.

New York-based Verizon said the storm caused flooding at three Verizon central offices that hold telecom equipment in Lower Manhattan as well as sites in Queens and Long Island.

Its downtown headquarters, which was put out of action 11 years ago by the September 11 attacks, had three feet of water in the lobby at one point. Because of flooding, all its telecom equipment at that office, which serves much of Wall Street and downtown consumers, was knocked out of service.

The company said it was working on pumping out the water in the hope that it could restart its back-up power generators in the facility as commercial power services were not yet restored the morning after the big storm hit.

"The bullseye of the impact is the metro area," said spokesman William Kula, adding that restoring service for the city's financial district was a top priority for Verizon.

Telecom disruptions affect electronic trading as well as corporate operators. The chief operating officer of the New York Stock Exchange, which is expected to open Wednesday, said "lots of telecom infrastructure is down" and that the NYSE was working with big firms to ensure they were doing testing of their systems.

Verizon did not give an estimate as to how many businesses and consumers were affected. Two of three Manhattan central offices were partially flooded and operating minimal services.

Customers served by the damaged central offices will experience "a loss of all services" including TV, Internet, and traditional telephone services, Kula said. Some customers may experience intermittent busy signals for non-emergency calls.

Verizon said its engineers were working on assessing the damage from the early hours. Outside of New York, the company warned that it was also having some trouble.

"Verizon is discovering that many poles and power lines/Verizon cables are down throughout the region due to heavy winds and falling trees," the company said in a statement.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA said they were dealing with wireless service problems in the hurricane region. Cable operators Cablevision Systems Corp, Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable also said they were having service problems.

"I think everybody's equipment's going to be damaged, including cellphone towers," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Christopher King said from his Verizon Wireless cellphone in Baltimore.

"Particularly for Verizon, they're clearly going to have the most damage on the wireline side because its pretty much all of their territory (where the storm hit)," King said.

Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider said it was seeing outages at some cell sites because of the power outages across all the states in Sandy's path including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Maryland, North Virginia and New England.

"(Repair crews) have started on some critical areas but they haven't been able to get to everywhere they need to be," spokeswoman Crystal Davis said. She noted that 80 of the company's stores would reopen at noon. Sprint had closed about 180 stores ahead of the storm.

T-Mobile USA said that "customers may be experiencing service disruptions or an inability to access service in some areas, especially those that were hardest hit by the storm."

People complained of outages to their cable telephone, Internet and television services from providers including Comcast, Cablevision and Verizon in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.

Cablevision said it was experiencing widespread service interruptions primarily related to loss of power. The company said it is working to restore services.

Comcast, whose headquarters is in Philadelphia and serves East Coast states, said that for the majority of customers, "Comcast service should be restored as power comes back on to their homes."

Cellphone service was spotty for top wireless providers Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, according to some customers.

Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, said on Tuesday afternoon that customers may be experiencing service issues and that about 94 percent of its cell sites were up and running.

AT&T said it was experiencing some issues in areas heavily affected by the storm. By Tuesday morning, spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T was in the initial stages of on-the-ground assessment and that it expected "crews will be working around the clock to restore service."

Several Time Warner Cable customers in Brooklyn said that their Internet, television and phone services stopped working Monday night but were back again by Tuesday morning.

Time Warner Cable said that while it has not seen any major damage to its infrastructure, its customers who do not have electricity do not have cable services.

Millions of people in the eastern United States awoke on Tuesday to flooded homes, fallen trees and widespread power outages caused by Sandy, which swamped New York City's subway system and submerged streets in Manhattan's financial district.

At least 30 people were reported killed in the United States by one of the biggest storms to ever hit the country. Sandy dropped just below hurricane status before making landfall on Monday night in New Jersey.

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Saba, Liana Baker, Katya Wachtel in New York, Dian Bartz in Washington DC and many other Reuters reporters around the hurricane region; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

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Disney to make new 'Star Wars' films, buy Lucas co

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A decade since George Lucas said "Star Wars" was finished on the big screen, a new trilogy under new ownership is destined for theaters after The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that it was buying Lucasfilm Ltd. from him for $4.05 billion.

The seventh movie, with a working title of "Episode 7," is set for release in 2015. Episodes 8 and 9 will follow. The trilogy will continue the story of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia beyond "Return of the Jedi," the third film released and the sixth in the saga. After that, Disney plans a new "Star Wars" movie every two or three years. Lucas will serve as creative consultant in the new movies.

"I'm doing this so that the films will have a longer life," Lucas, the 68-year-old creator of the series and sole owner of Lucasfilm, said in an interview posted on YouTube. "I get to be a fan now ... I sort of look forward to it. It's a lot more fun actually, than actually having to go out into the mud and snow."

Disney CEO Bob Iger said Lucasfilm had already developed an extensive story line on the next trilogy, and Episode 7 was now in early-stage development. He said he talked with Lucas about buying the company from him a year and a half ago, but they didn't decide on a deal until very recently as Lucas set in motion his retirement.

"The last 'Star Wars' movie release was 2005's 'Revenge of the Sith' — and we believe there's substantial pent-up demand," Iger said.

The blockbuster deal announced Tuesday will see Disney pay half the acquisition price in cash and half in newly issued stock. The company expects it to add to earnings in 2015. Along with the cash, Lucas will end up owning about 40 million Disney shares, which is about a 2.2 percent stake of the 1.83 billion shares that will be in circulation when the transaction closes.

The deal includes Lucasfilm's prized high-tech production companies, Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, as well as rights to the "Indiana Jones" franchise.

Lucas was hailed as a cinematic visionary when the original "Star Wars" came out in 1977. But he had become an object of often-vicious ridicule by the time he released 3-D versions of all six films in the Star Wars franchise earlier this year.

Die-hard Star War fans had been vilifying Lucas for years, convinced that he had become a commercial sell-out and had compounded his sins by desecrating the heroic tale that he originally sought to tell.

They railed against him for adding grating characters such as Jar Jar Binks in the second trilogy and attacked him for tinkering with the original trilogy, too. Any revision in special edition or home video releases — such as making the Ewoks blink or having a green-skinned alien named Greedo take the first shot at Han Solo in a famous bar scene — were treated as blasphemy.

The criticism grated on Lucas, who vowed never to make another Star Wars movie.

"Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?" Lucas told The New York Times earlier this year.

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the fourth film in another lucrative franchise, subjected Lucas to even more barbs when it came to the big screen in 2008. Fans of those films were especially outraged about an opening scene that featured Indiana Jones crawling into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive a nuclear bomb blasting.

Lucas was fed up by the time he released "Red Tails," a movie depicting the valor of African-American pilots during World War II, earlier this year. He told the Times he was ready to retire from the business of making blockbusters and return to his roots as a student at USC's film school, where he once made a movie about clouds moving in a desert.

Kathleen Kennedy, the current co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become the division's president and report to Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. She will serve as executive producer for the new movies. Directors for the new movies have not yet been announced.

In the YouTube video, Lucas said the decision to continue with the saga wasn't inconsistent with past statements.

"I always said I wasn't going to do any more and that's true, because I'm not going to do any more, but that doesn't mean I'm unwilling to turn it over to Kathy to do more," Lucas said.

He said he has given Kennedy his story lines and other ideas, "and I have complete confidence that she's going to take them and make great movies."

Kennedy added that she and Lucas had discussed ideas with a couple of writers about the future movies and said Lucas would continue to have a key advisory role. "My Yoda has to be there," she said.

The deal brings Lucasfilm under the Disney banner with other brands including Pixar, Marvel, ESPN and ABC, all companies that Disney has acquired over the years.

A former weatherman who rose through the ranks of ABC, Iger has orchestrated some of the company's biggest acquisitions, including the $7.4 billion purchase of animated movie studio Pixar in 2006 and the $4.2 billion acquisition of comic book giant Marvel in 2009.

Coincidentally, Lucas owned the startup that later became Pixar, before he sold it to Apple's Steve Jobs in 1986 for about $5 million. When Jobs sold Pixar to Disney, he became Disney's largest single shareholder with a 7.7 percent stake. Those shares are now held in a trust.

Disney shares were not trading with stock markets closed due to the impact of Superstorm Sandy in New York. They closed on Friday at $50.08.

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AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this story.

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Mammograms: For 1 life saved, 3 women overtreated

LONDON (AP) — Breast cancer screening for women over 50 saves lives, an independent panel in Britain has concluded, confirming findings in U.S. and other studies.

But that screening comes with a cost: The review found that for every life saved, roughly three other women were overdiagnosed, meaning they were unnecessarily treated for a cancer that would never have threatened their lives.

The expert panel was commissioned by Cancer Research U.K. and Britain's department of health and analyzed evidence from 11 trials in Canada, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.

In Britain, mammograms are usually offered to women aged 50 to 70 every three years as part of the state-funded breast cancer screening program.

Scientists said the British program saves about 1,300 women every year from dying of breast cancer while about 4,000 women are overdiagnosed. By that term, experts mean women treated for cancers that grow too slowly to ever put their lives at risk. This is different from another screening problem: false alarms, which occur when suspicious mammograms lead to biopsies and follow-up tests to rule out cancers that were not present. The study did not look at the false alarm rate.

"It's clear that screening saves lives," said Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research U.K. "But some cancers will be treated that would never have caused any harm and unfortunately, we can't yet tell which cancers are harmful and which are not."

Each year, more than 300,000 women aged 50 to 52 are offered a mammogram through the British program. During the next 20 years of screening every three years, 1 percent of them will get unnecessary treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation for a breast cancer that wouldn't ever be dangerous. The review was published online Tuesday in the Lancet journal.

Some critics said the review was a step in the right direction.

"Cancer charities and public health authorities have been misleading women for the past two decades by giving too rosy a picture of the benefits," said Karsten Jorgensen, a researcher at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen who has previously published papers on overdiagnosis.

"It's important they have at least acknowledged screening causes substantial harms," he said, adding that countries should now re-evaluate their own breast cancer programs.

In the U.S., a government-appointed task force of experts recommends women at average risk of cancer get mammograms every two years starting at age 50. But the American Cancer Society and other groups advise women to get annual mammograms starting at age 40.

In recent years, the British breast screening program has been slammed for focusing on the benefits of mammograms and downplaying the risks.

Maggie Wilcox, a breast cancer survivor and member of the expert panel, said the current information on mammograms given to British women was inadequate.

"I went into (screening) blindly without knowing about the possibility of overdiagnosis," said Wilcox, 70, who had a mastectomy several years ago. "I just thought, 'it's good for you, so you do it.'"

Knowing what she knows now about the problem of overtreatment, Wilcox says she still would have chosen to get screened. "But I would have wanted to know enough to make an informed choice for myself."

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Dozens killed, millions without power in Sandy's wake

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The most devastating storm in decades to hit the country's most densely populated region upended man and nature as it rolled back the clock on 21st-century lives, cutting off modern communication and leaving millions without power Tuesday as thousands who fled their water-menaced homes wondered when — if — life would return to normal.

A weakening Sandy, the hurricane turned fearsome superstorm, killed at least 48 people, many hit by falling trees, and still wasn't finished. It inched inland across Pennsylvania, ready to bank toward western New York to dump more of its water and likely cause more havoc Tuesday night.  Behind it: a dazed, inundated New York City, a waterlogged Atlantic Coast and a moonscape of disarray and debris — from unmoored shore-town boardwalks to submerged mass-transit systems to delicate presidential politics.

"Nature," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, assessing the damage to his city, "is an awful lot more powerful than we are."

More than 8.2 million households were without power in 17 states as far west as Michigan. Nearly 2 million of those were in New York, where large swaths of lower Manhattan lost electricity and entire streets ended up under water — as did seven subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn at one point, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. The New York Stock Exchange was closed for a second day from weather, the first time that has happened since a blizzard in 1888. The city's subway system, the lifeblood of more than 5 million residents, was damaged like never before and closed indefinitely, and Consolidated Edison said electricity in and around New York could take a week to restore.

"Everybody knew it was coming. Unfortunately, it was everything they said it was," said Sal Novello, a construction executive who rode out the storm with his wife, Lori, in the Long Island town of Lindenhurst, and ended up with 7 feet of water in the basement.

The scope of the storm's damage wasn't known yet. Though early predictions of river flooding in Sandy's inland path were petering out, colder temperatures made snow the main product of Sandy's slow march from the sea. Parts of the West Virginia mountains were blanketed with 2 feet of snow by Tuesday afternoon, and drifts 4 feet deep were reported at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

With Election Day a week away, the storm also threatened to affect the presidential campaign. Federal disaster response, always a dicey political issue, has become even thornier since government mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And poll access and voter turnout, both of which hinge upon how people are impacted by the storm, could help shift the outcome in an extremely close race.

As organized civilization came roaring back Tuesday in the form of emergency response, recharged cellphones and the reassurance of daylight, harrowing stories and pastiches emerged from Maryland north to Rhode Island in the hours after Sandy's howling winds and tidal surges shoved water over seaside barriers, into low-lying streets and up from coastal storm drains.

Images from around the storm-affected areas depicted scenes reminiscent of big-budget disaster movies. In Atlantic City, N.J., a gaping hole remained where once a stretch of boardwalk sat by the sea. In Queens, N.Y., rubble from a fire that destroyed as many as 100 houses in an evacuated beachfront neighborhood jutted into the air at ugly angles against a gray sky. In heavily flooded Hoboken, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan, dozens of yellow cabs sat parked in rows, submerged in murky water to their windshields. At the ground zero construction site in lower Manhattan, sea water rushed into a gaping hole under harsh floodlights.

One of the most dramatic tales came from lower Manhattan, where a failed backup generator forced New York University's Tisch Hospital to relocate more than 200 patients, including 20 babies from neonatal intensive care. Dozens of ambulances lined up in the rainy night and the tiny patients were gingerly moved out, some attached to battery-powered respirators as gusts of wind blew their blankets.

In Moonachie, N.J., 10 miles north of Manhattan, water rose to 5 feet within 45 minutes and trapped residents who thought the worst of the storm had passed. Mobile-home park resident Juan Allen said water overflowed a 2-foot wall along a nearby creek, filling the area with 2 to 3 feet of water within 15 minutes. "I saw trees not just knocked down but ripped right out of the ground," he said. "I watched a tree crush a guy's house like a wet sponge."

In a measure of its massive size, waves on southern Lake Michigan rose to a record-tying 20.3 feet. High winds spinning off Sandy's edges clobbered the Cleveland area early Tuesday, uprooting trees, closing schools and flooding major roads along Lake Erie.

Most along the East Coast, though, grappled with an experience like Bertha Weismann of Bridgeport, Conn.— frightening, inconvenient and financially problematic but, overall, endurable. Her garage was flooded and she lost power, but she was grateful. "I feel like we are blessed," she said. "It could have been worse."

The presidential candidates' campaign maneuverings Tuesday revealed the delicacy of the need to look presidential in a crisis without appearing to capitalize on a disaster. President Barack Obama canceled a third straight day of campaigning, scratching events scheduled for Wednesday in swing-state Ohio, in Sandy's path. Republican Mitt Romney resumed his campaign with plans for an Ohio rally billed as a "storm relief event."

And the weather posed challenges a week out for how to get everyone out to vote. On the hard-hit New Jersey coastline, a county elections chief said some polling places on barrier islands will be unusable and have to be moved.

 "This is the biggest challenge we've ever had," said George R. Gilmore, chairman of the Ocean County Board of Elections.

By Tuesday afternoon, there were still only hints of the economic impact of the storm. Airports remained closed across the East Coast and far beyond as tens of thousands of travelers found they couldn't get where they were going.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted the storm will end up causing about $20 billion in damages and $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15 billion — big numbers probably offset by reconstruction and repairs that will contribute to longer-term growth.

"The biggest problem is not the first few days but the coming months," said Alan Rubin, an expert in nature disaster recovery.

Sandy began in the Atlantic and knocked around the Caribbean — killing nearly 70 people — and strengthened into a hurricane as it chugged across the southeastern coast of the United States. By Tuesday night it had ebbed in strength but was joining up with another, more wintry storm — an expected confluence of weather systems that earned it nicknames like "superstorm" and, on Halloween eve, "Frankenstorm."

It became, pretty much everyone agreed Tuesday, the weather event of a lifetime — and one shared vigorously on social media by people in Sandy's path who took eye-popping photographs as the storm blew through, then shared them with the world by the blue light of their smartphones. 

On Twitter , Facebook and the photo-sharing service Instagram, people tried to connect, reassure relatives and make sense of what was happening — and, in many cases, work to authenticate reports of destruction and storm surges. They posted and passed around images and real-time updates at a dizzying rate, wishing each other well and gaping, virtually, at scenes of calamity moments after they unfolded. Among the top terms on Facebook through the night and well into Tuesday, according to the social network: "we are OK," ''made it" and "fine."

Around midday Tuesday, Sandy was about 120 miles east of Pittsburgh, pushing westward with winds of 45 mph, and was expected to turn toward New York State on Tuesday night. Although weakening as it goes, the storm will continue to bring heavy rain and flooding, said Daniel Brown of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Atlantic City's fabled Boardwalk, the first in the nation, lost several blocks when Sandy came through, though the majority of it remained intact even as other Jersey Shore boardwalks were dismantled. What damage could be seen on the coastline Tuesday was, in some locations, staggering — "unthinkable," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said of what unfolded along the Jersey Shore, where houses were swept from their foundations and amusement park rides were washed into the ocean. "Beyond anything I thought I would ever see."

Resident Carol Mason returned to her bayfront home to carpets that squished as she stepped on them. She made her final mortgage payment just last week. Facing a mandatory evacuation order, she had tried to ride out the storm at first but then saw the waters rising outside her bathroom window and quickly reconsidered.

"I looked at the bay and saw the fury in it," she said. "I knew it was time to go."

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Contributing to this report were Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, N.J.; Alicia Caldwell and Martin Crutsinger in Washington; Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York; Meghan Barr in Mastic Beach, N.Y.; Christopher S. Rugaber in Arlington, Va.; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa.: John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Conn.; Vicki Smith in Elkins, W.Va.; David Porter in Newark, N.J.; Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh; and Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn.

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Follow Ted Anthony on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted

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China wants to stop profiteering at temple sites

BEIJING (AP) — China is telling tourist-favored Buddhist temples: Don't let money be your mantra.

Authorities announced a ban this week on temples selling shares to investors after leaders of several popular temples planned to pursue stock market listings for them as commercial entities. Even the Shaolin Temple of kung fu movie fame was once rumored to be planning a stock market debut — and critics have slammed such plans as a step too far in China's already unrestrained commercial culture.

"Everywhere in China now is about developing the economy," complained Beijing resident Fu Runxing, a 40-year-old accountant who said he recently went to a temple where incense was priced at 300 yuan ($50) a stick.

"It's too excessive. It's looting," she said.

Centuries-old Buddhist pilgrimage sites Mount Wutai in Shanxi province, Mount Putuo in Zhejiang and Mount Jiuhua in Anhui all were moving toward listing on stock markets in recent months to finance expansions, according to state media.

The government's religious affairs office called on local authorities to ban profiteering related to religious activity and told them not to allow religious venues to be run as business ventures or listed as corporate assets.

Companies that manage temple sites may be able to bypass the prohibition on listing shares simply by excluding the temples themselves from their lists of assets. A Buddhist site at Mount Emei in Sichuan already has been on the Shenzhen stock exchange since 1997 but its listed assets include a hotel, cable car company and ticket booths — not the temples, which date back several hundred years. Shanghai lawyer Wang Yun said the new prohibition wouldn't likely affect Emei, but might make additional companies think twice before listing.

Turning religious sites into profit-making enterprises is certainly not limited to China, but it illustrates just how commercialized this communist country has become in the past couple of decades, with entrepreneurs seizing on every opportunity to make money. One businessman has started selling canned "fresh air" in polluted Beijing.

No one could have anticipated that the poor and egalitarian China of Mao Zedong's time would become a "Wild West" of commercialism, said Mary Bergstrom, founder of The Bergstrom Group, a marketing consultancy in Shanghai.

"There aren't the established checks and balances in China that exist in other countries ,so people are more willing and able to test the boundaries of what is acceptable, especially if the end result of these tests is potential profit," she said.

The Chinese government has strict controls on religion, with temples, churches and mosques run by state-controlled groups. Even so, religion is booming, along with tourism, giving some places a chance to cash in.

The ban on profiteering from religious activity is "just a reflection of the terrible reality of the over-commercialization in recent years of temples and other places," the Southern Metropolis Daily said in an editorial Wednesday. "People who have been to famous religious places should be familiar with expensive ticket prices and donations for all kinds of things."

Chinese entities from nature parks to religious sites are increasingly turning to commercial activities to pay expenses as government support dwindles in a society with little charitable giving. Temples face heavy costs to maintain centuries-old buildings and gardens.

But the State Administration for Religious Affairs says some local governments, businesses and individuals have built religious sites for profit, hired fake monks and tricked visitors into handing over money.

A notice on its website Monday, issued jointly with the police ministry and other authorities, warned of serious punishment for officials found to be involved in religious profiteering.

The new rules leave open when commercialism crosses the line to profiteering. No matter where the line might be, entrepreneurial officials and religious groups may not heed it.

An employee of the Wutai Scenic District Administration's propaganda office confirmed Wednesday that the local government was planning to pursue a stock market listing but said he couldn't give details. The man, who would give only his surname, Bai, said he didn't know whether the latest notice would affect that plan.

The notion that some temples were becoming more about dollars than dharma first came to the fore in 2009 with reports that the legendary Shaolin monastery and martial arts center might sell shares to investors on a mainland or Hong Kong stock market.

The 1,500-year-old temple has become a lucrative business enterprise and holds registered trademarks, but its managers have denied rumors of floating shares and reiterated that denial Wednesday.

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Associated Press researcher Flora Ji contributed to this report.

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Apple software, retail chiefs out in sweeping overhaul

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook on Monday replaced the heads of its software and retail units in the company's most sweeping executive shake-up in a decade following embarrassing problems with its new mapping program and unpopular store-related decisions.

Software chief Scott Forstall, who oversaw the launch of the flawed mapping software and much criticized Siri voice-enabled assistant, will leave Apple next year and serve as an advisor to Cook in the meantime.

Forstall, seen as a polarizing figure inside Apple, had been billed as one of the future candidates to take the top job at Apple. He was the executive behind the panned Apple Maps app that the company announced with much fanfare in summer.

The moves, which come a little more than a year into Cook's tenure as CEO, were described by Apple as a way to increase "collaboration" across its hardware, software and services business.

"These changes show that Tim Cook is stamping his authority on the business," Ben Wood, analyst with CCS Insight, said. "Perhaps disappointed with the Maps issues, Forstall became the scapegoat."

Critics of the maps debacle, which led Cook to apologize to customers, had been calling for Forstall's head. "Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?" Fortune editor Philip Elmer Dewitt wrote on Sept 29.

The moves hand over substantially more responsibility to Cue, the head of Internet Software and Services who helped create the iTunes music store and App Store. The 23-year Apple veteran already is in charge of Cloud services and will take on Apple Maps and Siri.

Apple said a search is underway for a new retail chief to replace John Browett and that the retail team would report directly to Cook. Browett had riled up the retail store staff when he decided to reduce the number of retail employees.

Browett took over as head of Apple's retail stores earlier this year, replacing Ron Johnson, who went on to become the CEO of JC Penney.

Last week Apple delivered a second straight quarter of disappointing financial results, and iPad sales fell short of Wall Street's targets, marring its record of consistently blowing past investors' expectations.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Superstorm causes major entertainment disruption

David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon are doing their shows without audiences. Jimmy Kimmel, visiting from his home base in sunny Hollywood, canceled a taping in Brooklyn. "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are taking the night off, and each of Broadway's 40 theaters will be dark through Tuesday — all because of a powerful storm on the East Coast.

Hurricane Sandy didn't just halt airline flights, political campaigning and the stock market on Monday, it also disrupted a wide swath of the New York area's bustling entertainment industry.

City officials said that all film permits for Monday and Tuesday have been revoked because of the hurricane and associated safety precautions.

"There will be no city authorized outdoor filming within the five boroughs," read a statement Monday from the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

Production on at least nine shows was affected, including "Gossip Girl," ''Person of Interest" and "Elementary," according to the Los Angeles Times.

The storm also forced Focus Features officials to cancel the New York premiere of "Anna Karenina," which was set for Tuesday. A studio spokeswoman said they plan to reschedule.

Concerts planned for New York and New Jersey were canceled or postponed, including performances by Journey, comedian Louis C.K., and the "Freedom to Love Now" show featuring Rufus Wainwright and fun., which is now set for spring of 2013.

Radio City Music Hall is shuttered until Wednesday. Carnegie Hall postponed concerts planned for Tuesday. Off-Broadway shows and even national tours of Broadway shows like "Anything Goes," currently in Wilmington, Del., closed their doors.

It was the most detrimental storm for the theater community since the threat of Hurricane Irene in late August 2011 prompted producers to cancel matinee and evening performances on both a Saturday and Sunday.

East Coast charity galas were also canceled, and fashion designer Prabal Gurung postponed the unveiling of his anticipated collection for Target until next week.

Some network schedules were shaken up by the widespread power outages cutting into the available TV audience in the East.

CBS planned to air repeats instead of new episodes Monday of "How I Met Your Mother," ''Partners," ''2 Broke Girls" and "Mike & Molly." A CBS News special on Sandy was to follow at 10 p.m. EDT, pre-empting "Hawaii Five-O."

The CW also was set to air repeats of "90201" and "Gossip Girl."

ABC said it was sticking to its schedule of new episodes of "Dancing With the Stars" and "Castle." Fox was to air a previously scheduled rerun of "The X Factor," which had been planned if the San Francisco-Detroit World Series ended, as it did, in four games.

NBC did not immediately respond about the status of its Monday schedule, which includes "The Voice" and "Revolution."

Sandy took a toll on the box office even before it made landfall. Movie-ticket sales were down more than 11 percent compared to the same weekend last year, said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. This weekend's top film, "Argo," collected $12.1 million. The top film during the same weekend in 2011, "Puss in Boots," earned $34 million.

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AP Entertainment Writers Lynn Elber and Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen can be reached at www.twitter.com/APSandy .

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