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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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."

Photos: NYC facing daunting commute

1. 7 hrs ago

   A picture is worth a thousand words.

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, and Amtrak was hoping to resume train service between New York and Boston for the first time since the storm hit.

The storm killed at least 90 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.

"You can clearly tell at the office, or even walking down the street, who has power and who doesn't," said Jordan Spiro, who lives in the blackout zone. "New Yorkers may not be known as the friendliest bunch, but take away their ability to shower and communicate and you'll see how disgruntled they can get."

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 Cara Anna, Verena Dobnik, Michael Hill, Karen Matthews, Jennifer Peltz and Christina Rexrode in New York and Joan Lowy in Washington.

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Changing channels; Sony, Sharp in turnaround battle

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp is likely to say it returned to an operating profit for July-September after it sold a chemicals business, but investors still aren't sure a consumer electronics revamp will deliver the profit growth the group seeks.

Sony shares, valued at less than $12 billion, have dropped 16 percent since end-June and its 5-year credit default swaps - the cost of insuring against debt default - have jumped by almost 60 percent. The benchmark Nikkei average is down by less than 1 percent.

The maker of Bravia TVs, Vaio laptops and PlayStation game consoles, battling weak demand and tough competition, is expected to say it earned operating profit of 33.8 billion yen ($424.7 million) in its second-quarter, after losing 1.6 billion yen a year ago, according to an average estimate from five analysts on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sony has sold a chemicals unit to state-backed Development Bank of Japan for 58 billion yen, and other asset sales may further inflate operating profit this business year. The Japanese group, which blazed a trail in the early 1980s with its Walkman portable music players, is closing the Shinagawa Technology Center, a 31-storey Tokyo office built in 1998 and may even sell the 37-storey Sony Tower, the New York headquarters of its U.S. business, according to media reports.

Sony has said it expects to reduce its global workforce by 10,000 people by end-March, around 6 percent of its total, as it seeks to lop 30 billion yen off its costs.

HIGH-RISK

Kazuo Hirai, who took over as CEO in April, has pledged to rebuild Sony around gaming, digital imaging and mobile devices, and nurture new businesses such as medical devices, as the TV business shrinks - Sony has lost close to $9 billion in TVs over the past 8 years. In late-September, Sony agreed to pay 50 billion yen to become the biggest shareholder in Olympus Corp, a world leader in medical endoscopes.

"The areas in which Sony is continuing to focus are of course high-risk, high-return markets," said JP Morgan analyst Yoshiharu Izumi in a recent report. "Although we expect (full-year) margin improvement in the electronics segment, we think it's too early to appraise a sustained recovery."

While battling weak demand for its products, fierce competition from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics and others, Sony is also up against a strong yen and a depressed global economy.

Panasonic Corp, a rival Japanese TV maker, said on Wednesday it will lose almost $10 billion this business year as it cleans its house of risky assets - writing down billions of dollars of goodwill and assets in its mobile and energy units and preparing for more restructuring that is likely to see it shift away from money-losing TVs and other consumer electronics.

OUTLOOK DIMMER

In August, Sony cut its full-year operating profit forecast by more than a quarter to 130 billion yen, still some way above the average forecast by 19 analysts for 107 billion yen. At a net level, Sony sees annual profit of 20 billion yen, while the market prediction is for around a third of that.

"It's unclear if Sony will cut its full-year operating profit guidance, but we see considerable potential for second-half shortfalls, mainly in smartphones and games," Goldman Sachs analyst Takashi Watanabe said in a client note.

Sales of Sony's handsets, including its Xperia smartphones, are expected to have slid by more than a fifth in July-September, to below 8 million devices, a Reuters poll showed last month. [ID:nL6E8LAL10] For next year, it's forecast to sell 34.4 million mobiles, about the same as Samsung shifts each month.

The South Korean firm and Apple are also encroaching on Sony's gaming business, and Hirai has cut the forecast for annual sales of the hand-held Vita and PSP consoles to 12 million from 16 million.

After four straight years of net losses, Hirai is also hampered by weakened finances. At end-June, Sony's shareholder equity ratio fell to below 15 percent - a rate of 20 percent is generally considered a healthy minimum.

While selling off non-core assets, Sony has also spent to bolster its business portfolio - laying out $1.8 billion in four months on the Olympus stake, a cloud gaming firm and a website for doctors, but this has prompted both Moody's and Standard & Poor's to lower their long-term debt rating on the company to the second-lowest investment grade.

SHARP DOWNTURN

At rival Japanese TV maker Sharp Corp, which also announces quarterly earnings on Thursday, the need to return to profit is more urgent.

The maker of Aquos TVs has secured a $4.6 billion bank bailout, and has pledged to axe 10,000 jobs, sell assets, and return to profit. At end-June, Sharp's shareholder equity ratio was 18.7 percent.

After adding restructuring charges, valuation losses on stocks of LCD display panels and other costs, Sharp is expected to post a 400 billion yen net loss for April-September, almost double the company's estimate, the Nikkei business daily reported last week.

In front-loading those costs, and taking the hit now, Sharp may be better placed to return to profit in the current second half of the year, allowing lenders to justify the bailout.

Sharp is said to be increasing production capacity for its high-definition power-saving IGZO screens, which it hopes to sell to makers of ultrabook computers, including Lenovo Group, Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard, Japanese media have reported.

For the second quarter, Sharp is expected to have made a 50.4 billion yen operating loss, according to the average of six analysts on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Both Sharp and Sony may also have felt the impact of a recent dispute with China over ownership of islands in the East China Sea, which triggered sometimes violent protests against Japanese products. Sharp had almost a fifth of its revenues in China, while Sony has around 8 percent of its business there.

Sharp shares have more than halved since end-June, to record lows below 150 yen. Five years ago, the stock traded at above 2,440 yen. Its market value has slumped to below $2.4 billion.

($1 = 79.5800 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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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.

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

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Disney unlikely to change 'Star Wars' brand

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Naysayers would have you believe Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm can only mean one thing: Bambi and Mickey Mouse are sure to appear in future "Star Wars" movies taking up lightsabers against the dark side of the Force.

Not so, say experts who've watched Disney's recent acquisition strategy closely. If anything, The Walt Disney Co. has earned credibility with diehard fans by keeping its fingerprints off important film franchises like those produced by its Marvel Entertainment and Pixar divisions.

"They've been pretty clearly hands-off in terms of letting the creative minds of those companies do what they do best," says Todd Juenger, an analyst with Bernstein Research. "Universally, people think they pulled it off."

Though the Walt Disney Co. built its reputation on squeaky clean family entertainment, its brand today is multifaceted. Disney, of course, started as an animation studio in 1923 with characters such as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse. Over the years, the company ventured into live action movies, opened theme parks, launched a fleet of cruise ships and debuted shows on TV.

By way of acquisitions over the last few decades, it has ballooned into a company with $40.9 billion in annual revenue and a market value of $88 billion. Disney bought Capital Cities/ABC in 1995 for $19 billion, Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006, Marvel for $4.2 billion in 2009 and this week, it said it will purchase Lucasfilm and the "Star Wars" franchise for $4.05 billion.

Disney's acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 offers the best example of how it might treat Lucasfilm and the "Star Wars" universe.

Marvel was in the midst of a storyline that would span several films following the smash hit success of its first self-produced movie, "Iron Man," in 2008. When Disney bought it a year later, it continued reading from the comic book giant's playbook, releasing in subsequent years "Iron Man 2," ''Thor," ''Captain America" and then this year, "The Avengers," which brought heroes from those movies together in one giant film that grossed $1.5 billion at the box office.

Now, "Avengers" director Joss Whedon is working on the sequel and developing a Marvel-based TV series for Disney-owned ABC.

Rick Marshall, a journalist and blogger who writes about the comic book and movie industries, was skeptical when Disney bought Marvel. But his doubts quickly melted when it was clear Disney wouldn't taint the Marvel universe by getting too involved.

"I was the first one to say there's going to be a Goofy-Wolverine crossover," Marshall said. "We haven't seen that... Disney was able to step away."

Recent history ought to assuage "Star Wars" fans who fear the Disney empire. But that hasn't stopped many of them from posting an array of video and pictorial mash-ups and jokes online as they poke fun at their darkest fears: Luke Skywalker staring into the distance at a mouse-eared sun and Darth Vader telling Donald Duck that he's his father.

What Disney did with Marvel was merely amplify its presence in theme parks, stores and theaters, observers say.

Disney's formula for success with Marvel was not to tamper with storylines, but to bring the existing franchise under its corporate umbrella.

Before it was acquired, Marvel paid Paramount Pictures a percentage of movie ticket sales to advertise its movies, make film prints and get them into theaters. Disney has those capabilities, so now that money doesn't go out the door. Disney also has a worldwide network of staff that help put Marvel toys on store shelves, expanding their reach and saving the money that Marvel used to pay third-party merchandise middlemen.

Owning Marvel also gives Disney a steady flow of super hero cartoons for its pay TV channel, Disney XD. These kind of logistical savings allow Disney to profit from ownership while not interfering in the creative process.

"Marvel does seem like it's running pretty independently and staying pretty close to its roots," said Janney Capital Markets analyst Tony Wible.

Disney's recent acquisitions have also filled gaps in its creative portfolio. CEO Bob Iger has said the company's $7.4 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006 was partly an investment in talent and a way to "grow and improve Disney animation." The deal brought John Lasseter, a former Disneyland employee, back into the fold as its chief creative officer of both Disney and Pixar's animation studios.

The purchase of Marvel helped Disney add characters that would resonate with boys at a time when the company was becoming known more for princesses, fairies and its fictional teenage rock star Hannah Montana.

The "Star Wars" franchise fills a hole in Disney's live-action portfolio, which suffered an embarrassing $200 million loss on the sci-fi flick "John Carter" earlier this year. The box-office bomb caused an executive shuffle at the studio that brought in former Warner Bros. president Alan Horn, who oversaw the hugely successful runs of "Harry Potter" and "The Dark Knight" movies.

It's in Disney's best interest to maintain the integrity of film franchises that come with a built-in fan base. Disney chief Iger has said the plan is for "Star Wars" live-action movies to replace others that may be in development, and to keep its production slate at a modest 7 to 10 movies per year.

"I think Disney's intention is that it just doesn't want to get in the way of a great asset," said Morningstar analyst Michael Corty.

In a conference call explaining the acquisition, Iger told analysts that "Disney respects and understands, probably better than just about anyone else, the importance of iconic characters and what it takes to protect and leverage them effectively."

When "Star Wars Episode 7" hits theaters in 2015, millions of fans will surely hold Iger to his word.

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Man with bionic leg to climb Chicago skyscraper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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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