7.4 million wake up in the dark: Sandy leaves death and destruction in wake

NEW YORK (AP) — As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.

New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island.

The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states, cut power to more than 7.4 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold.

The massive storm reached well into the Midwest: Chicago officials warned residents to stay away from the Lake Michigan shore as the city prepares for winds of up to 60 mph and waves exceeding 24 feet well into Wednesday.

"This will be one for the record books," said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Consolidated Edison, which had more than 670,000 customers without power in and around New York City.

An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater — 3 feet above the previous record — gushed into Gotham, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street, and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety. Skyscrapers swayed and creaked in winds that partially toppled a crane 74 stories above Midtown.

Right before dawn, a handful of taxis were out on the streets, though there was an abundance of emergency and police vehicles.

Remnants of the former Category 1 hurricane were forecast to head across Pennsylvania before taking another sharp turn into western New York by Wednesday morning. Although weakening as it goes, the massive storm — which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada — will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, said Daniel Brown, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

As Hurricane Sandy closed in on the Northeast, it converged with a cold-weather system that turned it into a monstrous hybrid of rain and high wind — and even snow in West Virginia and other mountainous areas inland.

Just before it made landfall at 8 p.m. near Atlantic City, N.J., forecasters stripped Sandy of hurricane status — but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still packed hurricane-force wind, and forecasters were careful to say it was still dangerous to the tens of millions in its path.

While the hurricane's 90 mph winds registered as only a Category 1 on a scale of five, it packed "astoundingly low" barometric pressure, giving it terrific energy to push water inland, said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.

Officials blamed at least 16 deaths on the converging storms — five in New York, three each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, two in Connecticut, and one each in Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia. Three of the victims were children, one just 8 years old.

Sandy, which killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Eastern Seaboard, began to hook left at midday Monday toward the New Jersey coast. Even before it made landfall, crashing waves had claimed an old, 50-foot piece of Atlantic City's world-famous Boardwalk.

"We are looking at the highest storm surges ever recorded" in the Northeast, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for Weather Underground, a private forecasting service.

Sitting on the dangerous northeast wall of the storm, the New York metropolitan area got the worst of it.

An explosion at a ConEdison substation knocked out power to about 310,000 customers in Manhattan, said Miksad.

"We see a pop. The whole sky lights up," said Dani Hart, 30, who was watching the storm from the roof of her building in the Navy Yards.

"It sounded like the Fourth of July," Stephen Weisbrot said from his 10th-floor apartment.

New York University's Tisch Hospital was forced to evacuate 200 patients after its backup generator failed. NYU Medical Dean Robert Grossman said patients — among them 20 babies from neonatal intensive care that were on battery-powered respirators — had to be carried down staircases and to dozens of waiting ambulances.

Not only was the subway shut down, but the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed due to high winds.

A construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and dangled precariously. Thousands of people were ordered to leave several nearby buildings as a precaution, including 900 guests at the ultramodern Le Parker Meridien hotel.

Alice Goldberg, 15, a tourist from Paris, was watching television in the hotel — whose slogan is "Uptown, Not Uptight" — when a voice came over the loudspeaker and told everyone to leave.

"They said to take only what we needed, and leave the rest, because we'll come back in two or three days," she said as she and hundreds of others gathered in the luggage-strewn marble lobby. "I hope so."

Trading at the New York Stock Exchange was canceled again Tuesday — the first time the exchange suspended operations for two consecutive days due to weather since an 1888 blizzard struck the city.

Fire destroyed at least 50 homes Monday night in a flooded neighborhood in the Breezy Point section of the borough of Queens, where the Rockaway peninsula juts into the Atlantic Ocean. Firefighters told WABC-TV that they had to use a boat to rescue residents because the water was chest high on the street. About 25 people were trapped in one home, with two injuries reported.

Airlines canceled around 12,500 flights because of the storm, a number that was expected to grow.

Off North Carolina, not far from an area known as "the Graveyard of the Atlantic," a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" sank when her diesel engine and bilge pumps failed. Coast Guard helicopters plucked 14 crew members from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas.

A 15th crew member who was found unresponsive several hours after the others was later pronounced dead. The Bounty's captain was still missing.

One of the units at Indian Point, a nuclear power plant about 45 miles north of New York City, was shut down around 10:45 p.m. Monday because of external electrical grid issues, said Entergy Corp., which operates the plant. The company said there was no risk to employees or the public.

And officials declared an "unusual event" at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey Township, N.J., the nation's oldest, when waters surged to 6 feet above sea level during the evening. Within two hours, the situation at the reactor — which was offline for regular maintenance — was upgraded to an alert, the second-lowest in a four-tiered warning system. Oyster Creek provides 9 percent of the state's electricity.

In Baltimore, fire officials said four unoccupied rowhouses collapsed in the storm, sending debris into the street but causing no injuries. Meanwhile, a blizzard in far western Maryland caused a pileup of tractor-trailers that blocked the westbound lanes of Interstate 68 on slippery Big Savage Mountain near the town of Finzel.

"It's like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs up here," said Bill Wiltson, a Maryland State Police dispatcher.

Hundreds of miles from the storm's center, gusts topping 60 mph prompted officials to close the port of Portland, Maine, and scaring away several cruise ships. A state of emergency in New Hampshire prompted Vice President Joe Biden to cancel a rally in Keene and Republican nominee Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, to call off her bus tour through the Granite State.

About 360,000 people in 30 Connecticut towns were urged to leave their homes under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders. Christi McEldowney was among those who fled to a Fairfield shelter. She and other families brought tents for their children to play in.

"There's something about this storm," she said. "I feel it deep inside."

Despite dire warnings and evacuation orders that began Saturday, many stayed put.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — whose own family had to move to the executive mansion after his home in Mendham, far from the storm's center, lost power — criticized the mayor of Atlantic City for opening shelters there instead of forcing people out.

Eugenia Buono, 77, and her neighbor, Elaine DiCandio, 76, were among several dozen people who took shelter at South Kingstown High School in Narragansett, R.I. They live on Harbor Island, which is connected to the mainland by a causeway.

"I'm not an idiot," said Buono, who survived hurricanes Carol in 1954 and Bob in 1991. "People are very foolish if they don't leave."

___

Hays reported from New York and Breed reported from Raleigh, N.C.; AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Washington. Associated Press writers David Dishneau in Delaware City, Del., Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, Emery P. Dalesio in Elizabeth City, N.C., and Erika Niedowski in Cranston, R.I., also contributed.

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More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain’s most popular football teams, Barcelona‘s 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”

More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being “more than a club” for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain’s economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.

Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month’s game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain’s capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence “estelada” flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.

“It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that,” said Pujol. “Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag.”

Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team “Catalonia‘s unarmed symbolic army.”

Barca-Real Madrid matches have a nickname: “el clasico” — the classic — and they are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, seen by 400 million people in 30 countries. But local passions run high. In Spain, where football has deep political and cultural connotations, many see the clashes of Spain’s most successful teams as a proxy battle between wealthy Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. If Barca is a symbol of Catalan nationalism, Real Madrid is an emblem of a unified Spain.

“Look, the truth is that ever since the Civil War there has always been tension in Spain,” said Pujol. “Having traveled in Spain, they always look at us as Catalans.”

Ahead of kickoff before any “clasico,” Camp Nou traditionally greets Real Madrid players with a huge mosaic of Barcelona’s burgundy-and-blue made up of colored cards. This year, for the first time, they held up cards forming the red-and-yellow striped Catalan “senyera” flag — an explicit nationalist message. (Barca says it can neither confirm nor deny reports that its away uniform next season will be modeled on the senyera.)

Then came the crowd’s collective shout for independence at 1714 hours — in reference to the year 1714 when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip V in the War of Spanish Succession. It was organized by a pro-independence group through social media.

Barca fan David Fort sees his team as a vehicle to show the world that Catalonia has its own language and culture, which is distinct from what he called the “bulls and flamenco” associated with Spain.

“We have this love for Barca because we have the chance to be represented around the world,” said Fort, a 38-year-old architect from the southern Catalan town of Tarragona. “When we travel and they ask me if I am Spanish, I say not exactly, but when I mention Barca they say ‘Ah! The Catalan team’, and of course since they are champions you feel proud.”

Barca, like every institution in Spain, was marked by the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s and resulting right-wing dictatorship that ended after Franco’s death in 1975.

Franco’s soldiers killed Barca’s club president in 1936, and the club was forced to change its name from a Catalan to a Spanish version. And while Real Madrid was identified with the regime, Barca, for many, came to represent Catalan anti-fascist resistance.

“Under Franco, people could not shout ‘Long Live Catalonia!,’ but they could shout ‘Long Live Barca!’ (¡Visca Barca!)” in Catalan, said Ernest Folch, a newspaper columnist who writes about Barca for El Periodico. The chant became a kind of code for expressing Catalan pride.

“Barca is an anomaly. There is no other club with its particular history,” said Folch. “It survived the Franco dictatorship, and has always been a focal point for protest and ferment where sport has mixed with politics.”

And politics is a very hot topic these days in Catalonia.

Voters will go to the polls on Nov. 25 in regional elections sure to be judged as a litmus test of the strength of the pro-independence movement that brought 1.5 million people to the streets of Barcelona on Sept. 11 in the largest rally since the 1970s.

Catalonia is heavily in debt and has in fact asked Spain for a euros 5.9 billion ($ 75 billion) bailout. Even so, regional lawmakers voted on Sept. 27 to hold a referendum on self-determination at a date still to be determined. And although it is still unclear that a “Yes” vote would win, Spain’s central government has called such a referendum unconstitutional and will surely try to stop it from taking place.

That all puts Catalonia, and therefore Barca, in the midst of Spain’s struggles to deal with consequences of back-to-back recessions, 25 percent unemployment, and high public debt that has drawn it into the euro crisis along with already bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Barca’s appeal, of course, transcends its regional identity. The team is beloved throughout the world, and a poll last year found that it had displaced Real Madrid as Spain’s most popular team. Barca has 546 fan clubs in Catalonia, and 841 in the rest of Spain. Some of these fans— even in Catalonia — disagree with what they perceive as the political turn the club has taken in recent years.

“It’s surreal to talk to talk about these ideas related to independence,” said fan Jamie Easton, 27, a Spaniard born in Barcelona to a British father and a mother of Catalan descent. “Barca is a Catalan and Spanish club because Barcelona is part of Spain, and fans can feel however they want.”

The upswing in separatist sentiment in Catalonia has forced both the club and its players— many of whom form the backbone of Spain’s world champion national side — to try a difficult balancing act between supporting their most fervent pro-independence fans without alienating the millions of others who are not.

“We are Barca. We represent Catalonia and we will support whatever Catalans want,” said Barca and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez. But he added: “We try to isolate ourselves from everything outside the game. We know the political issue is there, and the people have the right to express themselves however they wish, but we are here to play football and make sure people have fun.”

The glaring exception to the moderate tone is former coach Pep Guardiola, a hugely popular figure in Catalonia, who appeared in a video during the Sept. 11 march saying: “Here you have my vote for independence.”

Two weeks after the politically charged “clasico,” Barca president Sandro Rosell made his first official visit to southern Spain to cool tensions at a meeting of Barca fan clubs.

“I don’t know what information you are receiving here, but I preferred to come here and say on behalf of the club that Barca will never get mixed up in political issues,” Rosell told the 1,000 Spanish fans, promising that Barca would never display a mosaic of the separatist “estelada” flag at Camp Nou.

“This doesn’t mean that this isn’t a Catalan club and that of course we will defend our roots and origins, but one thing shouldn’t be mixed with the other. One thing is politics and the other is identity. Barca unites us all.”

___

AP Writer Jorge Sainz contributed to this report from Madrid.

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In San Francisco, tech investor leads a political makeover

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - One morning in April, Ron Conway, the billionaire technology investor, sat in a conference room on the second floor of San Francisco's City Hall with about 50 representatives from the city's business community.

On the agenda was a sweeping proposal by Mayor Ed Lee to reform the city's payroll tax, a plan that would favor companies with many employees but little revenue — tech start-ups, namely — while shifting the burden to the real estate and financial industries.

The head of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was arguing against the proposal when Conway abruptly cut him off.

"The tech industry is producing all the jobs in this city," Conway snapped, according to four people present, his voice rising as he insisted that old-line businesses "need to get on board."

In the end, they did get on board — and San Francisco voters on November 6 will decide whether to approve the change in the tax code.

Conway's success with the tax initiative demonstrates the profound transformation playing out in San Francisco's business corridors and its halls of power. As start-ups blossom, attracting a wave of entrepreneurs and investment dollars, the tech industry is wielding newfound clout in local politics — largely thanks to Conway, its brash, silver-haired champion.

The shift, local political experts say, harks back to the turn of the last century, when financial institutions like the Bank of Italy — forebear to present-day Bank of America — gradually eroded the railroad barons' grip over California politics.

Now the tech industry, led by Conway, is beginning to overshadow long-dominant local business lobbies, said Chris Lehane, a political consultant and former adviser in the Clinton White House.

"When you have a new business entity that really hasn't existed in the past and becomes a real player in local politics, that changes the balance a bit," said Lehane, who is based in San Francisco. "People like Ron Conway, he's an angel investor in companies but also an angel supporter of politicians he cares about."

Not everyone in this famously liberal city is enthused about the new tech boom, which is driving up rents and threatening to price out all but the wealthy.

"As someone who lived through the tech boom in the '90s and watched countless friends and community members get pushed out of their homes, only for the bubble to disintegrate, this is painful to watch," said Gabriel Haaland, political director for the SEIU Local 1021, the largest union in the city. "Those times are here again."

Last month, when San Francisco Magazine published an article bemoaning tech-driven gentrification, traffic on the magazine's website broke all records.

"It touched on an issue that people have been thinking about for a while," said Jon Steinberg, the magazine's editor.

Conway and Lee make no apologies.

"Tech added 13,000 out of the 25,000 new jobs we created the last couple years, which helped us bring the unemployment rate to the third-lowest in the state," Lee, a Democrat, said in an interview. "We have to work with the new jobs creators, and that's what I believe the public wants me to do."

Conway, who made his name in the 1990s by betting on small, early-stage companies and scoring a huge win with Google, says a key goal of a new civic organization he has started, San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation, is to provide service jobs in tech for long-term residents and the unemployed.

"It would be great if we could create a few hundred jobs in the $50,000 to $80,000 income bracket," said Conway. "We're here to improve the living conditions for all of San Francisco. That's the responsibility tech wants to take."

ODD COUPLE

Conway and Lee have an exceptionally close relationship, one that has captivated the city's political set even while attracting accusations of favoritism from the mayor's rivals.

The two make an odd couple. Lee was a publicity-shy city bureaucrat and civil rights lawyer for decades before being named caretaker mayor of this Democratic bastion in 2011 after his predecessor was elected lieutenant governor. Conway, until recently a registered Republican, counts Tiger Woods and Henry Kissinger among his investors and considers a start-up tour with Ashton Kutcher in tow just another day's work.

In a city that faces chronic budget deficits even as it enjoys a comparatively strong economy, the relationship is symbiotic. Conway taps his access to Lee to promote his companies, from Twitter to Zynga to Airbnb; Lee persuades Conway to rally tech leaders to help fund the police, the schools, the parks.

Their alliance began only last year. As interim mayor, Lee impressed Conway when he pushed through a tax exemption for Twitter, which had considered moving out of the city to avoid the tax bill that would have resulted from an initial public offering. San Francisco imposes a 1.5 percent payroll tax on local companies, a levy that applies to any gains in an IPO.

When Lee ran for a full four-year term several months later, Conway formed an independent political action committee on his behalf. He rustled up almost $700,000 from the likes of entrepreneur Sean Parker; Zynga CEO Mark Pincus; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; venture capitalists John Doerr and Tom Byers; and Credit Suisse banker Bill Brady.

He also enlisted Portal A, a video production outfit consisting of three twentysomething hitmakers, to create a YouTube video that featured rapper MC Hammer, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson dancing on Conway's rooftop. The clip went viral and effectively drowned out ads from Lee's rivals.

A year later, Conway rated the mayor's performance a "9.5 out of 10."

"I have a tremendous respect for Mayor Lee," he said. "He listens to people. He builds consensus, and that's an improvement from the past."

Conway said he and Lee are "too busy with our day jobs" to socialize frequently. Neither likes to publicly discuss their relationship. But when the mayor turned 60 in May, Lee and his family sat down for a three-hour private dinner with Conway and his wife, Gayle, at an Italian restaurant in North Beach, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's gossip columnists.

For Conway — whose calls to the mayor's office are considered the highest priority, City Hall insiders say — no issue facing his portfolio companies is too insignificant for him to get involved. In one instance this year, after social media company Pinterest moved to San Francisco, Conway pressed officials to repaint curbs to allow employee parking near the start-up's offices, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The city refused; Conway denied that the incident occurred.

While some cities have cracked down on services like Airbnb, which lets residents rent out spare bedrooms and can run afoul of local lodging ordinances, Lee has taken the opposite tack. This year he formed a policy-making group to consider how to regulate and foster such companies, which are part of what's known in Silicon Valley as the "sharing economy."

The mayor has also urged Conway to help city initiatives. Conway recently contributed $100,000 toward a campaign to approve bonds to restore the city's parks, and gave $25,000 to a charity founded by Lee that funds impoverished public schools. When a group of software developers tried recently to create an app that would improve public bus performance but lacked funds for a pilot program, SF Citi stepped in and cut a check.

Lee said he hoped Conway would fill a void left by recently deceased philanthropists such as Gap Inc founder Don Fisher, real estate mogul Walter Shorenstein and private equity investor Warren Hellman.

"The tech guys like Conway usually want to meet presidents and such. You never see them play so deep in local government," said one Democratic fundraiser. "It's unusual."

But the tech world says the headlong plunge into local politics is classic Conway.

"When Ron is passionate about an issue or a company or a person, it's never a secret," said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. "He's passionate about San Francisco right now, and it's exhibiting itself in the way he helps companies in the city, the way he helps the city. It's fantastic to see."

CHANGING TAX POLICY

Conway says his top priority is passage of the payroll tax reform initiative on November 6.

The measure would tax local businesses based on their gross receipts instead of the size of their payroll, which benefits low-revenue, high-headcount companies like startups. Financial, insurance and real estate companies would see their local taxes rise by 30 percent, while taxes will remain flat for most scientific and technical companies.

Crucially, the measure would also mean that proceeds from an IPO would not be subject to taxes.

Landlords, and to a lesser extent financial services companies, conceded that they had lost their first political fight with the tech industry, but took the long view.

"We knew we were going to be socked in a big way, and we worked early and long and hard with the city for a rate that was fair," said Ken Cleaveland of the Building Owners and Managers Association. "In the end it wasn't in our best interest to fight our tenants."

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Douglas Royalty and Dale Hudson)

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R&B singer Natina Reed hit and killed by car in Georgia

(Reuters) – Natina Reed, a member of the R&B singing trio Blaque, was struck and killed by a car as she walked in a major roadway in Georgia, police said on Saturday.

Reed, who also appeared in the cheerleader movie “Bring It On” in 2000, would have turned 33 on Sunday.

She was struck by a car at about 10:30 p.m. Friday on a state highway just north of the Atlanta suburb of Lilburn, Gwinnett County Police Sergeant Rich Long said.

The car’s driver called 911 and a passenger performed CPR but Reed was pronounced dead at an area medical center, police said. Authorities ruled the driver was not at fault and no charges were expected to be filed, Long said.

Investigators were trying to determine why Reed was in the road, Long said.

As part of Blaque, Reed performed the 1999 hits “Bring It All to Me” and “808″ with fellow members Shamari Fears DeVoe and Brandi Williams.

Reed’s fellow group members said in a statement on Saturday that Blaque had recently reunited and the group was working on an album and a reality show.

“My world as I know it has forever changed,” DeVoe said on Twitter on Saturday. “Until we meet again, may you find comfort in the arms of an angel. I love you Natina.”

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Plant compounds tied to less stomach cancer in women: study

(Reuters) – Getting a moderate amount of plant substances called flavonoids through food may be linked to a lower stomach cancer risk in women – but not in men, according to a European study.

The researchers, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that women with the highest intake of flavonoids were half as likely to develop the disease as women who had the smallest intake.

“A flavonoid-rich diet is based on plant-based foods (such as) fruits, vegetables, whole grain cereals, nuts, legumes, and their derived products (tea, chocolate, wine),” lead author Raul Zamora-Ros told Reuters Health by email.

“This kind of diet combined with less consumption of red and processed meat can be a good way to reduce the risk of developing stomach cancer,” added Zamora-Ros, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Spain.

The findings don’t prove that flavonoids alone can ward off the disease, because other factors such as a healthier lifestyle may play a role.

The researchers not that past research has hinted that flavonoids may help protect against cancer, but few studies have focused on stomach cancer – the fourth most common, and the second most deadly, according to Zamora-Ros.

For the study, the researchers turned to ongoing research following almost 500,000 men and women in 10 European countries. All of the participants were between 35 and 70 years old, and had been part of the study for about 11 years.

During that time, there were 683 cases of stomach cancer, of which 288 occurred in women.

The researchers analyzed the participants’ food diaries to see how many flavonoids they are on average, then they checked to see whether or not that amount was linked to the participant’s cancer risk.

Green tea contains a large amount of flavonoids, with more than 12,511 milligrams (mg) per 100 grams (g) of leaves. Pinto beans also contain a lot, with about 769 mg per 100 g of beans.

Women who got more than 580 mg of flavonoids per day had a 51-percent-lower risk of developing stomach cancer than women who consumed no more than 200 mg a day.

“If you look at absolute numbers, this risk reduction probably wouldn’t be as significant as if we were talking about colon cancer,” said Richard peek, director of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, who was not involved in the study.

Zamora-Ros said a person’s exact risk depends on several factors, including whether they smoke and drink, how much red and processed meat they eat, and whether they are obese.

He added that the absence of a link between flavonoids and stomach cancer in men was a surprise, and might be due to differences in how much they smoke or drink, or to hormonal differences.

Overall, he added, the study adds more evidence that “healthy lifestyles reduce the risk of chronic diseases.” SOURCE: http://bit.ly/UDC3xx

(Reporting from New York by Andrew Seaman at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

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East Coast superstorm could endanger 50 million people

NEW YORK (AP) — From Washington to Boston, big cities and small towns were buttoned up Monday against the onslaught of a superstorm that threatened 50 million people in the most heavily populated corridor in the nation, with forecasters warning that the New York area could get the worst of it — an 11-foot wall of water.

"The time for preparing and talking is about over," Federal Emergency Management Administrator Craig Fugate said Sunday as Hurricane Sandy made its way up the Atlantic on a collision course with two other weather systems that could turn it into one of the most fearsome storms on record in the U.S. "People need to be acting now."

Forecasters said the hurricane could blow ashore Monday night or early Tuesday along the New Jersey coast, then cut across into Pennsylvania and travel up through New York State on Wednesday.

Airlines canceled more than 7,200 flights and Amtrak began suspending train service across the Northeast. New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore moved to shut down their subways, buses and trains and said schools would be closed on Monday. Boston also called off school. And all non-essential government offices closed in the nation's capital.

The New York Stock Exchange said it will be shut down Monday, including electronic trading. Nasdaq is shutting the Nasdaq Stock Market and other U.S. exchanges and markets it owns, although its exchanges outside the U.S. will operate as scheduled.

As rain from the leading edges of the monster hurricane began to fall over the Northeast, hundreds of thousands of people from Maryland to Connecticut were ordered to evacuate low-lying coastal areas, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City, 50,000 in Delaware and 30,000 in Atlantic City, N.J., where the city's 12 casinos were forced to shut down for only the fourth time ever.

"We were told to get the heck out. I was going to stay, but it's better to be safe than sorry," said Hugh Phillips, who was one of the first in line when a Red Cross shelter in Lewes, Del., opened at noon.

"I think this one's going to do us in," said Mark Palazzolo, who boarded up his bait-and-tackle shop in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., with the same wood he used in past storms, crossing out the names of Hurricanes Isaac and Irene and spray-painting "Sandy" next to them. "I got a call from a friend of mine from Florida last night who said, 'Mark, get out! If it's not the storm, it'll be the aftermath. People are going to be fighting in the streets over gasoline and food.'"

Authorities warned that the nation's biggest city could get hit with a surge of seawater that could swamp parts of lower Manhattan, flood subway tunnels and cripple the network of electrical and communications lines that are vital to the nation's financial center.

Sandy, a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 75 mph as of Sunday evening, was blamed for 65 deaths in the Caribbean before it began traveling northward, parallel to the Eastern Seaboard. As of 2 a.m. Monday, it was centered about 425 miles southeast of New York City, moving to the north at 14 mph, with hurricane-force winds extending an incredible 175 miles from its center.

Gale force winds reported over coastal North Carolina, southeastern Virginia, the Delmarva Peninsula and coastal New Jersey.

Sandy was expected to hook inland during the day Monday, colliding with a wintry storm moving in from the west and cold air streaming down from the Arctic.

Forecasters said the combination could bring close to a foot of rain in places, a potentially lethal storm surge of 4 to 11 feet across much of the region, and punishing winds that could cause widespread power outages that last for days. The storm could also dump up to 2 feet of snow in Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia.

Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press that given Sandy's east-to-west track into New Jersey, the worst of the storm surge could be just to the north, in New York City, on Long Island and in northern New Jersey.

Forecasters said that because of giant waves and high tides made worse by a full moon, the metropolitan area of about 20 million people could get hit with an 11-foot wall of water.

"This is the worst-case scenario," Uccellini said.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned: "If you don't evacuate, you are not only endangering your life, you are also endangering the lives of the first responders who are going in to rescue you. This is a serious and dangerous storm."

New Jersey's famously blunt Gov. Chris Christie was less polite: "Don't be stupid. Get out."

New York called off school Monday for the city's 1.1 million students and shut down all train, bus and subway service Sunday night. More than 5 million riders a day depend on the transit system.

Officials also postponed Monday's reopening of the Statue of Liberty, which had been closed for a year for $30 million in renovations. The United Nations said it would close Monday and canceled all meetings at its headquarters.

In Washington, President Barack Obama promised the government would "respond big and respond fast" after the storm hits.

"My message to the governors as well as to the mayors is anything they need, we will be there, and we will cut through red tape. We are not going to get bogged down with a lot of rules," he said.

He also pleaded for neighborliness: "In times like this, one of the things that Americans do is we pull together and we help out one another And so, there may be elderly populations in your area. Check on your neighbor, check on your friend. Make sure that they are prepared. If we do, then we're going to get through this storm just fine."

The storm forced the president and Mitt Romney to rearrange their campaign schedules in the crucial closing days of the presidential race. And early voting on Monday in Maryland and the District of Columbia was canceled.

Despite the dire warnings, some people were refusing to budge.

Jonas Clark of Manchester Township, N.J. — right in the area where Sandy was projected to come ashore — stood outside a convenience store, calmly sipping a coffee and wondering why people were working themselves "into a tizzy."

"I've seen a lot of major storms in my time, and there's nothing you can do but take reasonable precautions and ride out things the best you can," said Clark, 73. "Nature's going to what it's going to do. It's great that there's so much information out there about what you can do to protect yourself and your home, but it all boils down basically to 'use your common sense.'"

In New Jersey, Denise Faulkner and her boyfriend showed up at the Atlantic City Convention Center with her 7-month-old daughter and two sons, ages 3 and 12, thinking there was a shelter there. She was dismayed to learn that it was just a gathering point for buses to somewhere else. Last year, they were out of their home for two days because of Hurricane Irene.

"I'm real overwhelmed," she said as baby Zahiriah, wrapped in a pink blanket with embroidered elephants, slept in a car seat. "We're at it again. Last year we had to do it. This year we have to do it. And you have to be around all sorts of people — strangers. It's a bit much."

Before leaving their home in Atlantic City, John and Robshima Williams of packed their kids' Halloween costumes so they could go bunk-to-bunk trick-or-treating at a shelter. Her 8-year-old twins are going as the Grim Reaper and a zombie, while her 6-year-old plans to dress as a witch.

"We're just trying to make a bad situation good," the mother said. "We're going to make it fun no matter where we are."

___

Breed reported from Raleigh, N.C.; Contributing to this report were AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J.; and Dave Dishneau in Wilmington, Del.

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Lithuania opens 2nd round of national election

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Voting stations have opened in the second round of Lithuania’s parliamentary elections, with the results likely to determine whether the small East European nation continues tough austerity measures in an effort to join the euro zone.

Nearly half of Parliament’s 141 seats are at stake in single-mandate district voting, which takes place two weeks after the party-list round that failed to produce a clear favorite.

Two center-left opposition parties took the most seats and have pledged to form a new coalition government, but the ruling conservative party, which came in third, still has a chance to emerge victorious as it has candidates in over half the 67 districts where voting will be held Sunday.

Opposition parties have vowed to increase social spending and postpone tentative plans to adopt the euro in 2014.

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Confidante put drugs in Britney’s food, singer’s mom testifies

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The one-time confidante of Britney Spears said he crushed up drugs in the pop singer’s food to help her sleep and disabled her phone lines during the height of her meltdown five years ago, Spears’ mother testified on Friday.

Lynne Spears told the Los Angeles jury in a civil trial that Sam Lutfi, Britney’s self-styled manager at the time, described his actions to her in a January 2008 exchange at her daughter’s Los Angeles home.

“Those were his exact words,” Lynne Spears said on her first day on the witness stand. “I was very worried and I didn’t know what to do so I tried to get her away from there.”

Lutfi is suing Lynne Spears for defaming him in her 2008 book “Through the Storm,” in which she related some of Lutfi’s actions in 2007 when he became the singer’s closest friend, and moved into her house.

Lynne Spears admitted under cross examination that she did not call police despite her concerns about her daughter.

She also acknowledged she had been estranged from her daughter for months in 2007, and that Lutfi told her he wanted to help reunite them.

Lynne Spears’ book also claims Lutfi tried to cut the singer off from her family, and portrays him as a figure who controlled her every move.

Lutfi, who met Spears in a nightclub in 2007 and has said he tried to wean her off drugs, testified tearfully earlier this week he received death threats after the book was published.

The week-long trial has lifted the lid on the much-publicized meltdown by Spears in 2007 and early 2008, in which she went through a divorce, lost custody of her two kids, shaved her head and wielded an umbrella at paparazzi.

Lutfi is also suing Spears for a portion of her earnings at that time, claiming the “Toxic” singer hired him as her manager.

Lutfi further alleges Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, punched him in the chest in 2008, during a period when the singer was twice held in a psychiatric ward in a Los Angeles hospital.

Jamie Spears was later named conservator of his daughter’s personal and business affairs, and the family took out restraining orders against Lutfi.

Spears, now 30, has since made a comeback with world tours hit albums and a new job as a judge on TV talent show “The X-Factor”. She is not expected to attend the trial.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; editing by Todd Eastham)

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S.Africa’s Zuma drops suit over rape cartoon: paper

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African President Jacob Zuma intends to drop a four-year-old lawsuit claiming nearly $ 600,000 in damages from a cartoonist who depicted him poised to rape “Lady Justice“, a newspaper said on Sunday.

The Sunday Times, named as a defendant in the case, said it had reached an agreement with Zuma‘s lawyers for the suit and all claims to be dropped, including the demand for monetary damages and an apology.

Officials for the South African presidency were not immediately available for comment.

The civil case had been due to start on Monday.

Zuma, facing re-election for leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) at the end of the year, has been criticised for pushing laws seen as trying to muzzle the media.

If the case went forward, it could have provided ammunition for foes in the party who say he wants to silence his critics through bullying.

Zuma had been seeking 4 million rand for defamation from Avusa media and an additional 1 million rand from a former Sunday Times editor for publishing the 2008 cartoon.

Ray Hartley, the current editor, said in the paper: “A lot of time and taxpayer money has been wasted on an ill-considered effort to curtail free expression.”

The cartoon from award-winning Jonathan Shapiro, better known by his pen name “Zapiro”, shows Zuma’s supporters holding down Lady Justice while Zuma stands over the woman with his trousers unzipped.

It was published when Zuma was facing corruption charges that could have blocked his path to the presidency.

A court in 2006 acquitted Zuma of raping an HIV-positive family friend in a case that garnered widespread public interest in a country with one of the world’s highest recorded rates of sexual violence.

Zuma’s ANC took a Johannesburg gallery to court and led massive street rallies earlier this year to protest a painting called “The Spear” that portrayed Zuma with his penis exposed.

The ANC, which has ruled since apartheid ended in 1994, called the image racist and intended to tarnish Zuma’s dignity.

Zuma’s critics say the image was reflective of his colourful personal life. A Zulu polygamist with four wives and more than 20 children, he has also been caught having extra-marital affairs.

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Tsunami hits Hawaii after Canada earthquake

HONOLULU (Reuters) - Hawaii was hit by a tsunami on Saturday night prompting the authorities to order at least 100,000 people on the island state to move to higher ground.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the first tsunami wave was three feet high and less forceful than expected. Some forecasts had predicted a wave of up to six feet high.

"The tsunami arrived about when we expected it should," Senior Geophysicist Gerard Fryer told reporters at a news conference, saying: "I was expecting it to be a little bigger."

Other waves were expected.

The tsunami hit with little warning and an alert, issued at short notice due to initial confusion among scientists about the quake's undersea epicenter, caused massive traffic congestion as motorists made a mass exodus from low-lying areas.

The Warning Center had said the first tsunami wave would strike the islands at 10:28 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time.

Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle announced that all police and emergency personnel were being pulled out from potential flood zones shortly before the first wave, leaving anyone defying evacuation orders to fend for themselves. He urged motorists who remained caught in harm's way due to gridlocked roads to abandon their vehicles and proceed on foot.

"If you are stuck in traffic, you might consider getting out of your car and consider walking to higher ground. You will have to assess your own situation, depending on where you are right now. Right now it is critical," he said

Vindell Hsu, a geophysicist at the Tsunami Warning Center said an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people who live in Hawaii's coastal zones had been urged to move to higher ground until after 10:30 p.m.

Governor Neil Abercrombie issued an emergency proclamation for the state.

The tsunami center cautioned that wave height could not be predicted and that the first wave "may not be the largest".

It said: "All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face".

CANADA QUAKE

The warnings followed a powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 that hit Canada's Pacific coastal province of British Columbia late on Saturday.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered 123 miles south-southwest of Prince Rupert at a depth of 6.2 miles.

The Earthquakes Canada agency said the quake in the Haida Gwaii region was followed by numerous aftershocks as large as 4.6 and that a small tsunami has been recorded by a deep-ocean pressure sensor.

In Hawaii, tsunami warning sirens could be heard blaring out across Honolulu, the state capital on Oahu, the state's most populous island, prompting an immediate crush of traffic, with many motorists stopping first at service stations to top up with gasoline.

At movie theaters, films were halted in mid-screening as announcements were made urging patrons to return to their homes.

The last time Oahu had a tsunami warning was after the devastating Japanese earthquake of March 2011.

On Honolulu's famed Waikiki Beach, residents of high-rise buildings were told to move to the third floor or higher for safety.

Stephany Sofos, a resident of Diamond Head near Waikiki, said most people had either evacuated or relocated to a higher floor.

"I moved my car up the hill, packed up my computer and have my animals all packed and with me," Sofos said, saying that she had not yet seen any obvious receding of the surf, a telltale sign that a tsunami wave is imminent.

"I'm pretty confident because we have a lot of reefs out there and that will prevent any major damage. Maybe it's a false confidence, but I'm not really worried," she said, adding, "It is nerve-wracking."

Tsunami Warning Center Geophysicist Gerard Fryer said the tsunami had caught scientists by surprise.

"We thought that the earthquake was on land and when we learned that it was deeper undersea and we gathered more information, we had no choice but to issue a warning," he said

As residents scrambled to reach higher ground on Oahu, at least four major road accidents were reported by the state Emergency Medical Services. More accidents were also reported on the outer islands.

(Reporting by Jorene Barut and Suzanne Roig in Honolulu; Writing by Steve Gorman and Tim Gaynor; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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