China think tank urges gov't to end 1-child policy

China think tank urges gov't to end 1-child policy

A Chinese woman plays with her grandchild at the Ritan Park in Beijing Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. A government think tank says China should start phasing out its one-child policy immediately and allow two children for every family by 2015. It remains unclear whether Chinese leaders are ready to take that step.

BEIJING (AP) -- A government think tank is urging Chinese leaders to start phasing out China's one-child policy immediately and allow two children for every family by 2015, a daring proposal to do away with the unpopular policy.

Some demographers see the timeline put forward by the China Development Research Foundation as a bold move by the body close to the central leadership. Others warn that the gradual approach, if implemented, would still be insufficient to help correct the problems that China's strict birth limits have created.

Xie Meng, a press affairs official with the foundation, said the final version of the report will be released "in a week or two." But Chinese state media have been given advance copies. The official Xinhua News Agency said the foundation recommends a two-child policy in some provinces from this year and a nationwide two-child policy by 2015. It proposes all birth limits be dropped by 2020, Xinhua reported.

"China has paid a huge political and social cost for the policy, as it has resulted in social conflict, high administrative costs and led indirectly to a long-term gender imbalance at birth," Xinhua said, citing the report.

But it remains unclear whether Chinese leaders are ready to take up the recommendations. China's National Population and Family Planning Commission had no immediate comment on the report Wednesday.

Known to many as the one-child policy, China's actual rules are more complicated. The government limits most urban couples to one child, and allows two children for rural families if their firstborn is a girl. Numerous other exceptions include looser rules for minority families and a two-child limit for parents who are themselves both singletons.

Cai Yong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said the report holds extra weight because the think tank is under the State Council, China's Cabinet. He said he found it remarkable that state-backed demographers were willing to publicly propose such a detailed schedule and plan on how to get rid of China's birth limits.

"That tells us at least that policy change is inevitable, it's coming," said Cai, who was not involved in the drafting of the report but knows many of the experts who were. Cai is a visiting scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai. "It's coming, but we cannot predict when exactly it will come."

Adding to the uncertainty is a once-in-a-decade leadership transition that starts Nov. 8 and will see a new slate of top leaders installed by next spring. Cai said the transition could keep population reform on the back burner or changes might be rushed through to help burnish the reputations of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao on their way out.

There has been growing speculation among Chinese media, experts and ordinary people about whether the government will soon relax the one-child policy - introduced in 1980 as a temporary measure to curb surging population growth - and allow more people to have two children.

Though the government credits the policy with preventing hundreds of millions of births and helping lift countless families out of poverty, it is reviled by many ordinary people. The strict limits have led to forced abortions and sterilizations, even though such measures are illegal. Couples who flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.

Many demographers argue that the policy has worsened the country's aging crisis by limiting the size of the young labor pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires. They say it has contributed to the imbalanced sex ratio by encouraging families to abort baby girls, preferring to try for a male heir.

The government recognizes those problems and has tried to address them by boosting social services for the elderly. It has also banned sex-selective abortion and rewarded rural families whose only child is a girl.

Many today also see the birth limits as outdated, a relic of the era when housing, jobs and food were provided by the state.

"It has been thirty years since our planned economy was liberalized," commented Wang Yi, the owner of a shop that sells textiles online, under a news report on the foundation's proposal. "So why do we still have to plan our population?"

Though open debate about the policy has flourished in state media and on the Internet, leaders have so far expressed a desire to maintain the status quo. President Hu said last year that China would keep its strict family planning policy to keep the birth rate low and other officials have said that no changes are expected until at least 2015.

Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an expert on China's demographics, contributed research material to the foundation's report but has yet to see the full text. He said he welcomed the gist of the document that he's seen in state media.

It says the government "should return the rights of reproduction to the people," he said. "That's very bold."

Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Beijing's Renmin University and a vocal advocate of reform, said the proposed timeline wasn't aggressive enough.

"They should have reformed this policy ages ago," he said. "It just keeps getting held up, delayed."

Storm spins death and 'a lot of tears' along path

Storm spins death and 'a lot of tears' along path 

FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, a firefighter leaves the destroyed home in Pasadena, Md where Donald Cannata Sr. was killed overnight when a tree fell on it during superstorm Sandy.

Death blew in on the superstorm's wild winds and sea water torrents, claiming 90-year-olds and children with capriciously toppling trees, taking tall-ship adventurers in mountainous Atlantic waves and average folks just trying to deal with a freakish snowstorm. It felled both heroes rushing into harm's way and, ironically, people simply following advice to play it safe at home.

At least 63 died as the shape-shifting hurricane and winter storm ravaged the eastern U.S., and searchers continued looking for victims Wednesday.

In New York City, a college student went out to take pictures in the borough of Queens and was electrocuted by a downed power line, while across town on Staten Island, an off-duty policeman drowned after moving his family to safety.

Lauren Abraham, who went by the nickname LolaDiva on YouTube, was a makeup artist who worked out of a studio in her parents' Queens home. The recent beauty school graduate was studying at City University of New York's Lehman College, according to her Facebook page. "In her time of reflection she learned to find the beauty in even the darkest situations," her online bio reads.

As the superstorm ravaged New York and floodwater surged into his Staten Island house Monday evening, off-duty NYPD officer Artur Kasprzak, 28, shepherded six adult relatives and a baby to the attic.

Then, according to police, Kasprzak, a six-year veteran of the force, told one of the women he was going to check the basement. When he didn't return, she called 911. Police came quickly with a SCUBA unit, but couldn't access the home because power lines had fallen into the water.

"He went to the basement. And the water just started washing in," his sister Marta told the Daily News. "He was pushed into a window. ... The water just kept coming in."

Bunting draped a firehouse in Easton, Conn., honoring another first responder who rushed to help. Lt. Russell Neary was killed when an enormous tree crashed down on his fire truck as he and others tried to clear storm debris.

"We're a small volunteer department, and so everybody knew everybody," said Casey Meskers, the department vice president. Neary was the president. An insurance executive, he had volunteered for 13 years, and also helped with his children's sports teams.

"We've been on the soccer fields with each other with our kids," Meskers said Wednesday. "There's been a lot of tears shed, I'll tell you."

So many times, trees and heavy limbs that fell to the storm's powerful gusts left mourners along its path.

Two people died when a tree fell on their vehicle in Morris County, N.J., and many others perished inside homes, where they thought they'd be safe - from North Salem, N.Y., where two boys, 11 and 13, were killed when a tree fell on their home, to Pasadena, Md.

Donald Cannata Sr., 73, was at home in Pasadena, a leafy suburb between Baltimore and Annapolis, when the storm knocked a large tree into his house. The retired civil engineer lived alone with his cat and dog and had stepped into the kitchen just when the tree fell.

He loved photography and opera and was considerate, hardworking and selfless, said his son, Donald Jr., an opinion shared by neighbors. Cannata's son said his father's death "shook me so to the core," partly because they had talked about taking down the tree.

"We talked about it so many times. I said, `Pop, the tree's getting pretty old,'" Cannata said.

An elderly man trimming a tree in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County was killed when a limb broke and fell on him, authorities said.

A limb fall also killed John Rose Sr. as he and his wife checked fences on his snow-covered 100-acre farm near Philippi, W.Va., on Tuesday. The storm had dumped about seven inches of snow in the region, where Rose was a Republican candidate for the House of Delegates. He had traveled to Charleston regularly to lobby lawmakers on farming and other issues, and he hoped to continue making the trip as a member.

Rose, 60, had previously run a power-washing business and worked as a coal miner, his son George Rose said.

"The whole county knew him," he said.

The storm's blizzard threat was still far off when, churning in the relatively warm Atlantic off Cape Hatteras, N.C., on Monday, Hurricane Sandy engulfed the replica tall ship HMS Bounty. The ship, which was featured in the films "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," took on water and eventually went down.

Coast Guard rescuers saved most of the 17 crew members, but a search continues for the ship's captain, Robin Wallbridge.

Swept overboard with him was Claudene Christian, 42, who said she was a direct descendant of the man who led the infamous 1789 mutiny on the real HMS Bounty. In the 1962 Bounty film, Marlon Brando starred as lead mutineer Fletcher Christian.

Searchers found Christian - a novice sailor who was wearing an orange survival suit - unresponsive in the water late Monday, about eight nautical miles from where the Bounty sank. She was flown by helicopter to a hospital on the mainland, where she was pronounced dead.

A marketing specialist, she had lived in Alaska, Oklahoma and California. She was a member of the University of Southern California cheering squad, the Song Girls, from 1989 to 1991, said coach Lori Nelson. "Claudene will always be remembered for her energetic and bubbly personality on and off the field," the team posted on its Facebook page.

Endless accidents that would be described as freak twists of fate spun off from the superstorm.

Eugene "Rusty" Brooks, 42, of Woodstock, N.H., died Tuesday morning when a hillside construction site in the state's White Mountains collapsed beneath him. Brooks, owner of Pemmi Contracting, had been preparing a cellar on a home site on Loon Mountain in the ski resort town of Lincoln, said Police Chief Ted Smith. The cellar hole had filled up with rain from Sandy, and Brooks had just thrown a hose in to drain it off when the ground gave way.

"The retaining wall just liquefied with him standing there," Smith said. "He washed down with all the boulders, mud and water into the street."

When police and rescue workers arrived, they found a bystander performing CPR on Brooks, who could not be revived.

"It just basically was a freak, bizarre accident," the chief said. "It could have given way prior to him being there or afterwards."

The massive storm's unrelenting stress was blamed as a contributor to death by some loved ones, and in other cases the paralyzing wind and water compounded medical problems.

An Atlantic City, N.J., woman had a heart attack while she was being evacuated on Monday, officials reported.

In Pennsylvania's Lehigh County, an 86-year-old woman was pronounced dead of hypothermia after being found unresponsive in her yard following exposure to the storm, and a 48-year-old woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning in her home, the coroner's office reported.

A 90-year-old woman also died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator in the Philadelphia area, one of two claimed by the storm at age 90. The other was a Mansfield, Conn., woman who neighbors said left her home after a small tree snapped and was killed by a larger one.

In New York City, Herminia St. John, a 75-year-old grandmother of 14 who suffered from congestive heart failure and diabetes, died after her oxygen machine lost power and a backup failed. Her grandson, Claudio St. John, rushed into the street and tried unsuccessfully to flag down an ambulance. Finally, he went around the corner to Bellevue Hospital, where his mother worked as a food supervisor for 30 years. But by the time someone came it was too late.

"I hugged her and she hugged and kissed me," Elsa St. John, 54, told the Daily News. "She asked me to turn her to the window and she was gone."

Sandy's death toll climbs; millions without power

Sandy's death toll climbs; millions without power 

A parking lot full of yellow cabs is flooded as a result of superstorm Sandy on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 in Hoboken, NJ.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Millions of people from Maine to the Carolinas awoke Tuesday without electricity, and an eerily quiet New York City was all but closed off by car, train and air as superstorm Sandy steamed inland, still delivering punishing wind and rain. The U.S. death toll climbed to 39, many of the victims killed by falling trees.

The full extent of the damage in New Jersey, where the storm roared ashore Monday night with hurricane-force winds of 80 mph, was unclear. Police and fire officials, some with their own departments flooded, fanned out to rescue hundreds.

"We are in the midst of urban search and rescue. Our teams are moving as fast as they can," Gov. Chris Christie said. "The devastation on the Jersey Shore is some of the worst we've ever seen. The cost of the storm is incalculable at this point."

More than 8.2 million people across the East were without power. Airlines canceled more than 15,000 flights around the world, and it could be days before the mess is untangled and passengers can get where they're going.

The storm also disrupted the presidential campaign with just a week to go before Election Day.

President Barack Obama canceled a third straight day of campaigning, scratching events scheduled for Wednesday in swing state Ohio. Republican Mitt Romney resumed his campaign, but with plans to turn a political rally in Ohio into a "storm relief event."

Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damage and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, making it one of the costliest natural disasters on record in the U.S., according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm.

Lower Manhattan, which includes Wall Street, was among the hardest-hit areas after the storm sent a nearly 14-foot surge of seawater, a record, coursing over its seawalls and highways.

Water cascaded into the gaping, unfinished construction pit at the World Trade Center, and the New York Stock Exchange was closed for a second day, the first time that has happened because of weather since the Blizzard of 1888. The NYSE said it will reopen on Wednesday.

A huge fire destroyed as many as 100 houses in a flooded beachfront neighborhood in Queens on Tuesday, forcing firefighters to undertake daring rescues. Three people were injured.

New York University's Tisch Hospital evacuated 200 patients after its backup generator failed. About 20 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit were carried down staircases and were given battery-powered respirators.

A construction crane that collapsed in the high winds on Monday still dangled precariously 74 floors above the streets of midtown Manhattan, and hundreds of people were evacuated as a precaution. And on Staten Island, a tanker ship wound up beached on the shore.

Most major tunnels and bridges in New York were closed, as were schools, Broadway theaters and the metropolitan area's three main airports, LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark.

With water standing in two major commuter tunnels and seven subway tunnels under the East River, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was unclear when the nation's largest transit system would be rolling again. It shut down Sunday night ahead of the storm.

Joseph Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the damage was the worst in the 108-year history of the New York subway.

Similarly, Consolidated Edison said it could take at least a week to restore electricity to the last of the nearly 800,000 customers in and around New York City who lost power.

Millions of more fortunate New Yorkers surveyed the damage as dawn broke, their city brought to an extraordinary standstill.

"Oh, Jesus. Oh, no," Faye Schwartz said she looked over her neighborhood in Brooklyn, where cars were scattered like leaves.

Reggie Thomas, a maintenance supervisor at a prison near the overflowing Hudson River, emerged from an overnight shift, a toothbrush in his front pocket, to find his Honda with its windows down and a foot of water inside. The windows automatically go down when the car is submerged to free drivers.

"It's totaled," Thomas said with a shrug. "You would have needed a boat last night."

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

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

In Portland, Maine, gusts topping 60 mph scared away several cruise ships and prompted officials to close the port.

Sandy also brought blizzard conditions to parts of West Virginia and neighboring Appalachian states, with more than 2 feet of snow expected in some places. A snowstorm in western Maryland caused a pileup of tractor-trailers that blocked part of Interstate 68 on slippery Big Savage Mountain.

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

The death toll climbed rapidly, and included 17 victims in New York State - 10 of them in New York City - along with five dead in Pennsylvania and five in New Jersey. Sandy also killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Eastern Seaboard.

In New Jersey, Sandy cut off barrier islands, swept houses from their foundations and washed amusement pier rides into the ocean. It also wrecked several boardwalks up and down the coast, tearing away a section of Atlantic City's world-famous promenade. Atlantic City's 12 waterfront casinos came through largely unscathed.

Jersey City was closed to cars because traffic lights were out, and Hoboken, just over the Hudson River from Manhattan, was hit with major flooding.

A huge swell of water swept over the small New Jersey town of Moonachie, near the Hackensack River, and authorities struggled to rescue about 800 people, some living in a trailer park. And in neighboring Little Ferry, water suddenly started gushing out of storm drains overnight, submerging a road under 4 feet of water and swamping houses.

Police and fire officials used boats and trucks to reach the stranded.

"I looked out and the next thing you know, the water just came up through the grates. It came up so quickly you couldn't do anything about it. If you wanted to move your car to higher ground you didn't have enough time," said Little Ferry resident Leo Quigley, who with his wife was taken to higher ground by boat.

A day after Sandy, New Yorkers find a changed city

A day after Sandy, New Yorkers find a changed city 

Two women shop for groceries by flashlight in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. ConEd cut power Moday to some neighborhoods served by underground lines as the advancing storm surge from Hurricane Sandy threatened to flood substations. Floodwaters later led to explosions that disabled a substation in Lower Manhattan, cutting power tens of thousands of customers south of 39th Street.

  

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stripped of its bustle and mostly cut off from the world, New York was left wondering Tuesday when its particular way of life - carried by subway, lit by skyline and powered by 24-hour deli - would return.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the power company said it could be several days before the lights come on for hundreds of thousands of people plunged into darkness by what was once Hurricane Sandy.

And Bloomberg said it could be four or five days before the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, is running again. All 10 of the tunnels that carry New Yorkers under the East River were flooded.

Sandy killed 10 people in New York City. The dead included two who drowned in a home and one who was in bed when a tree fell on an apartment, the mayor said. A 23-year-old woman died after stepping into a puddle near a live electrical wire.

"This was a devastating storm, maybe the worst that we have ever experienced," Bloomberg said.

For the 8 million people who live here, the city was a different place one day after the storm.

In normal times, rituals bring a sense of order to the chaos of life in the nation's largest city: Stop at Starbucks on the morning walk with the dog, drop the kids off at P.S. 39, grab a bagel.

On Tuesday, those rituals were suspended, with little indication when they would come back. Schools were shut for a second day and were closed Wednesday, too.

Coffee shops, normally open as close as a block apart, were closed in some neighborhoods. New York found itself less caffeinated and curiously isolated from the world, although by afternoon it had begun to struggle back to life.

Some bridges into the city reopened at midday, but the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan, and the Holland Tunnel, between New York and New Jersey, remained closed. And service on the three commuter railroads that run between the city and its suburbs was still suspended.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said bus service would be restored at 5 p.m. EDT, on a limited schedule but free. He said he hoped there would be full service on Wednesday, also free.

The New York Stock Exchange was closed for a second day, the first time that has happened because of weather since the 19th century, but said it would reopen on Wednesday.

Swaths of the city were not so lucky. Consolidated Edison, the power company, said it would be four days before the last of the 337,000 customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who lost power have electricity again.

For the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County, with 442,000 outages, it could take a week, Con Ed said. Floodwater led to explosions that disabled a power substation on Monday night, contributing to the outages.

New Yorkers were left without power to charge their iPods and Kindles and Nooks for the subway. Not that there was a subway. People clustered around electrical outlets at a Duane Reade drugstore to power up their phones.

At a small market called Hudson Gourmet, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, cashiers made change by candlelight and shoppers used flashlights to scour the shelves.

Lee Leshen used the light from his phone to make his selections - three boxes of linguine and a can of tomatoes. His power was out, but the gas in his stove worked, so he could cook. He said he almost never cooks but is learning.

John Tricoli, his wife, Christine, and their 6-year-old twins spent Monday night holed up in their 11th-floor apartment in one of several lower Manhattan office buildings that were converted to condos in the 2000s and have drawn young families. Once the power went off at 7 p.m., there was a major challenge - no TV.

By candlelight, "we colored, we read, we played games - old school," Christine Tricoli said as the family emerged to go on a walk on Tuesday that started with a trek down 11 flights of stairs.

"There was even talking," she said.

The city modified its taxi rules and encouraged drivers to pick up more than one passenger at a time, putting New Yorkers in the otherwise unthinkable position of having to share a yellow cab with a stranger.

Livery cabs and black sedans, normally allowed to pick up passengers only by arrangement, were allowed to stop for people hailing rides on the street.

The landscape of the city changed in a matter of hours.

A fire destroyed as many as 100 houses in a flooded beachfront neighborhood in Queens. Firefighters said the water was chest-high on the street and they had to use a boat to make rescues.

In Brooklyn, Faye Schwartz surveyed the damage in her Brooklyn neighborhood, where cars were strewn like leaves, planters were deposited in intersections and green Dumpsters were tossed on their sides.

"Oh, Jesus. Oh, no," she said.

The chief line of demarcation Tuesday ran through Manhattan's Chelsea section. Above 25th Street, delis did business and traffic lights worked. Below 25th Street, nothing.

For some New Yorkers, the aftermath of the storm stirred memories of the blackout of August 2003, when a cascading power failure in the Northeast left the city without power for parts of two days. This time, as then, there was no sign of looting or widespread crime. Nine people in all were arrested on charges they stole from a gas station, an electronics store and a clothing store in Queens.

But the 2003 blackout was a communal experience, with strangers lounging on stoops and bars blaring music into darkened neighborhoods. This time, people had to stay indoors and wait.

At a darkened luxury high-rise building in lower Manhattan, resident manager John Sarich was sending porters with flashlights up and down 47 flights of stairs to check on people who live there.

He said most people stayed put despite calls to evacuate. One pregnant woman started having contractions, and Sarich said that before the power went out, he nervously researched online how to deliver a baby.

"I said, `Oh boy, I'm in trouble,'" Sarich said. The woman managed to find a cab to take her to a hospital.

Bloomberg told reporters that the storm deaths were tragic but said the city pulled through better than some people expected, considering the magnitude of the storm.

The mayor said: "We will get through the days ahead by doing what we always do in tough times - by standing together, shoulder to shoulder, ready to help a neighbor, comfort a stranger and get the city we love back on its feet."

Electoral Quotas for a White Majority

Green Papers: Diverse Views from a Green Perspective

Electoral Quotas for a White Majority
by Asa Gordon

REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS are intent on establishing a neo-Redemptionist Electoral College that will only reflect the majority will of white people as “[T]he Republican Party becomes more and more a white folks’ party”. (“The GOP is trying to rig the electoral college,” Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, Sept. 21, 2011).

The original politics of Redemption was to to reclaim the South for white Democratic, one-party rule in the U.S. South following the First Reconstruction of the 1860s. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption_(United_States_history)].  The GOP’s neo-Redemptionist Electoral College would claim the Nation for white Republican, one-party rule in the U.S. from the Second Reconstruction of the 1960s.
The Republican party has demonstrated that it can unambiguously embrace a white partisan majority that represents a national minority, whereas the Democratic party has proved to be ambivalent in embracing a national majority that embraces the collective will of non-white minorities.

The Washington Post’s recent cynical editorial (“A cynical GOP move, If you can’t win the election, change the rules,” Oct. 16, 2011) on the GOP’s “Rigging the Electoral College” declares:

“State [Pennsylvania] Senate Majority Leader Dominic F. Pileggi (R) has introduced a bill that would shift Pennsylvania from a winner-take-all system to one that awards electoral votes by congressional district, as Maine and Nebraska do. Mr. Pileggi and other supporters of the switch say that a district-based approach better reflects the will of all of Pennsylvania’s voters. ”
What the supporters fail to say, and what the Washington Post editorial fails to report, is that the switch to a district-based approach best reflects the will of not all but a specific subset of Pennsylvania’s voters: those who are white.  More

Syrian regime launches nationwide airstrikes

Syrian regime launches nationwide airstrikes 

In this Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012 photo. A rebel fighter throws a homemade grenade towards Syrian army troops on the frontline in the Bustan Al-Pasha neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria. Syria's air force fired missiles and dropped barrel bombs on rebel strongholds while opposition fighters attacked regime positions, flouting a U.N.-backed cease-fire that was supposed to quiet fighting over a long holiday weekend but never took hold.

BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian fighter jets pounded rebel areas across the country on Monday with scores of airstrikes that anti-regime activists called the most widespread bombing in a single day since Syria's troubles started 19 months ago.

The death toll for what was supposed to be a four-day cease-fire between the regime of President Bashar Assad and rebels seeking his overthrow exceeded 500, and activists guessed the government's heavy reliance on air power reflected its inability to roll back rebel gains.

"The army is no longer able to make any progress on the ground so it is resorting to this style," said activist Hisham Nijim via Skype from the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Activists said more than 80 people were killed nationwide Monday while videos posted online showed fighter jets screaming over Syrian towns, mushroom clouds rising from neighborhoods and residents searching the remains of damaged and collapsed buildings for bodies. One video from Maaret al-Numan in the north showed residents trying to save a boy who was buried up to his shoulders in rubble. Another showed the dead bodies of a young boy and girl laid out on a tile floor.

The airstrikes focused on rebel areas in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, as well as on restive areas in and around the capital Damascus. The regime has been bombing rebel areas in the north for months, but had sparingly used its air force near the capital, presumably to avoid isolating its supporters there.

But analysts say that rampant defections and rising rebel capabilities have lessened the regime's ability to take back and hold rebel areas, making air strikes its most effective way to fight back.

Monday was supposed to be the fourth and final day of an internationally sanctioned cease-fire to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest periods of the Muslim calendar. But violence marred the truce almost immediately after it was to go into effect on Friday and continued apace through the weekend.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he was "deeply disappointed" that the warring parties didn't respect the cease-fire and called on the divided international community to unite to stop the bloodshed.

"As long as the international community remains at odds, the needs, attacks and suffering will only grow," he told reporters in South Korea.

Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who represents the U.N. and the Arab League and presented the plan, told reporters in Moscow that he'd keep trying to lessen the violence and "put an end to it."

World powers remain divided on how to stop Syria's crisis, with the U.S. and many Arab and European nations calling for Assad to step down while Russia, China and Iran continue to back the regime. But with the sides largely stalemated on the battlefield and little international appetite for military intervention, few expect the war to end soon.

Anti-regime activist say more than 35,000 people have been killed since the anti-Assad uprising started in March 2011.

The holiday cease-fire was the first international effort in months to try to stop the violence, and it accomplished little.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which compiles daily death tolls based on contacts inside Syria, said more than 500 people had been killed during the four-day holiday. It said more than 80 people were killed Monday and that the number was likely to rise further. Prior to the holiday, about 150 people were reported dead each day.

But in a change, Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Observatory, said the number of airstrikes spiked on Monday.

"Today has seen the most intense air raids across Syria since the start of the uprising," he said, estimating there were more than 60 airstrikes nationwide by early afternoon.

He said the airstrikes sought to compensate for recent regime losses on the ground.

Muhieddine Lathkani, a London-based member of the Syrian National Council opposition group, said the air attacks were a result of the regime's "total despair" and reflected the military's inability to recapture rebel areas.

Among the hardest hit areas was the northern town of Maaret al-Numan, which rebels seized earlier this month only to face heavy retaliation from the military. Amateur videos posted online Monday showed dozens of men combing through huge swaths of rubble, occasionally finding wounded people covered in cement dust and carrying them off for treatment.

Other videos showed fighter jets screaming through the sky and dropping bombs over Damascus suburbs including Yabroud, Hazza and Harasta.

Videos from the poor neighborhood of Hajar al-Aswad in south Damascus showed what activists said were people killed by regime shelling. One video showed a dead family of five, all wrapped in blankets. Others showed three dead bodies in a small bus and the bodies of two young children laid out on a floor.

Activist videos could not be independently verified due to reporting restrictions in Syria, but they appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Also Monday, a car bomb exploded in the Damascus suburb of Jarmana, knocking balconies off of residential buildings and sending firemen rushing to fight the blaze, according to TV footage. The state news agency SANA said 11 people were killed and 67 wounded. The Observatory said five people were killed.

SANA also reported a second car bomb in the area later Monday but did not give a number of the dead and wounded.

In Turkey, about 150 members of the Syrian opposition met Monday to discuss how to manage rebel-held areas and plan for a post-Assad future.

Abdelbaset Sieda, president of the Syrian National Council, said the Syrian regime was losing its grip on power and that the opposition must be prepared to rebuild the devastated country.

Since the start of the uprising, the Syrian opposition has failed to come up with a united leadership and has been riddled by disagreements between numerous factions over the role of Islam in the uprising, the best way to topple Assad and other issues.

Exile opposition leaders also have no control over and limited communication with many rebel brigades fighting inside the country.

Superstorm Sandy slams into New Jersey coast

Superstorm Sandy slams into New Jersey coast 

A downed limb lies in a flooded street as Hurricane Sandy approaches, Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, in Center Moriches, N.Y. Hurricane Sandy continued on its path Monday, as the storm forced the shutdown of mass transit, schools and financial markets, sending coastal residents fleeing, and threatening a dangerous mix of high winds and soaking rain.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) -- Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline with 80 mph winds and hurled a record-breaking 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City on Monday, roaring ashore after washing away part of the Atlantic City boardwalk and putting the presidential campaign on hold.

Just before its center reached land, the storm was stripped 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 remained every bit as dangerous to the 50 million people in its path.

The National Hurricane Center announced at 8 p.m. that Sandy had come ashore about five miles from Atlantic City. The sea surged a record of nearly 13 feet at the Battery, at the foot of Manhattan.

In an attempt to lessen damage from the storm, New York City's main utility cut power to about 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan, which includes Wall Street. Authorities worried that seawater would seep into the subway and cripple it, along with the electrical and communications systems vital to the nation's financial center.

As it closed in, Sandy knocked out power to more than 1.5 million people and smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor - Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, with stinging rain and gusts of more than 85 mph.

At least four deaths were blamed on the storm in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York. Among them were two people killed by falling trees.

As Sandy made its way toward land, it converged with a cold-weather system out of the west that turned into a fearsome superstorm, a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high wind but of snow. Forecasters warned of 20-foot waves bashing into the Chicago lakefront and up to 3 feet of snow in West Virginia.

Airlines canceled more than 12,000 flights, disrupting the plans of travelers all over the world, and storm damage was projected at $10 billion to $20 billion, meaning it could prove to be one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney canceled their campaign appearances at the very height of the race, with just over a week to go before Election Day. The president pledged the government's help and made a direct plea from the White House to those in the storm's path.

"When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate," he said. "Don't delay, don't pause, don't question the instructions that are being given, because this is a powerful storm."

Sandy, which killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Atlantic, began to hook left at midday toward the New Jersey coast.

The storm lost its status as hurricane because it no longer had a warm core center nor the convection - the upward air movement in the eye - that traditional hurricanes have, but it was still as dangerous as it was when it was considered a hurricane, according to National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen.

Pete Wilson, who owns an antiques shop in Cape May, N.J., at the state's southern tip and directly in Sandy's path, said the water was 6 inches above the bottom edge of the door. He had already taken a truckload of antiques out but was certain he would take a big hit.

"My jewelry cases are going to be toast," he said. "I am not too happy. I am just going to have to wait, and hopefully clean up."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said people were stranded in Atlantic City, which sits on a barrier island and was mostly under water late Monday. He accused the mayor of allowing them to stay there.

With the hurricane fast approaching, Christie warned it was no longer safe for rescuers, and advised people who didn't evacuate the barrier islands to "hunker down" until morning.

"I hope, I pray, that there won't be any loss of life because of it," he said.

While the hurricane's 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.

"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. "The energy of the storm surge is off the charts, basically."

In New York City, authorities worried that salt water would seep through the boarded-up street grates and through the sandbags placed at subway entrances, damaging the electrical connections needed to operate the subway.

Hours before landfall, there was graphic evidence of the storm's power.

A construction crane atop a luxury high-rise in New York City collapsed in the wind and dangled precariously 74 floors above the street. Forecasters said the wind at the top the building may have been close to 95 mph.

Off North Carolina, a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" went down in the storm, and 14 crew members were rescued by helicopter from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas. Another crew member was found hours later but was unresponsive. The captain was missing.

At Cape May, water sloshed over the seawall, and it punched through dunes in other seaside communities. 

Sandy also tore away an old section of Atlantic City's historic boardwalk.

"When I think about how much water is already in the streets, and how much more is going to come with high tide tonight, this is going to be devastating," said Bob McDevitt, president of the main Atlantic City casino workers union. "I think this is going to be a really bad situation tonight."

In Maryland, at least 100 feet of a fishing pier at the beach resort of Ocean City was destroyed, and Gov. Martin O'Malley said there would be devastating flooding from the swollen Chesapeake Bay.

"There will be people who die and are killed in this storm," he said.

At least half a million people had been ordered to evacuate, including 375,000 from low-lying parts of New York City, and by the afternoon authorities were warning that it could be too late for people who had not left already.

Millions of people stayed home from work. Sheila Gladden evacuated her home in Philadelphia's flood-prone Eastwick neighborhood, which took on 5 1/2 feet of water during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and headed for a hotel.

"I'm not going through this again," she said.

Those who stayed behind had few ways to get out. New York's subways, which serve 5 million people a day, were shut down. The Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the city planned to shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, the George 

Washington, the Verrazano-Narrows and several other spans because of high winds.

Stock and bond markets were closed Monday and Tuesday, the first shutdown since the days after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and the first two-day closing of the stock market because of weather since a blizzard in 1888. The New York Stock Exchange is inside the mandatory evacuation zone in lower Manhattan, blocks from New York Harbor.

If the storm reaches the higher estimate of $20 billion in damage, that would put it ahead of Hurricane Irene, which raked the Northeast in August 2011 and caused $16 billion in damage. Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,200 people, cost $108 billion.

Advantage Obama in hunt for 270 electoral votes

Advantage Obama in hunt for 270 electoral votes

President Barack Obama walks to St. John's Episcopal Church from the White House with his daughters Sasha, left, and Malia, in Washington, on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012.

 
AMES, Iowa (AP) -- President Barack Obama is poised to eke out a victory in the race for the 270 electoral votes needed to win re-election, having beaten back Republican Mitt Romney's attempts to convert momentum from the debates into support in all-important Ohio, according to an Associated Press analysis a week before Election Day.

While the Democratic incumbent has the upper hand in the electoral vote hunt, Romney has pulled even, or is slightly ahead, in polling in a few pivotal states, including Florida and Virginia. The Republican challenger also appears to have the advantage in North Carolina, the most conservative of the hotly contested nine states that will determine the winner.

While in a tight race with Obama for the popular vote, Romney continues to have fewer state-by-state paths than Obama to reach 270. Without Ohio's 18 electoral votes, Romney would need last-minute victories in nearly all the remaining up-for-grabs states and manage to pick off key states now leaning Obama's way, such as Iowa or Wisconsin.

To be sure, anything can happen in the coming days to influence the Nov. 6 election.

The AP analysis isn't intended to predict the outcome. Rather, it's meant to provide a snapshot of a race that has been stubbornly close in the small number of competitive states all year. The analysis is based on public polls and internal campaign surveys as well as spending on television advertising, candidate visits, get-out-the-vote organizations and interviews with dozens of Republican and Democratic strategists in Washington and in the most contested states.

The analysis shows that Obama probably would win with at least 271 electoral votes from 21 states, including Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, and the District of Columbia. Romney seems on track for 206 from 23 states, including North Carolina. Obama won that state in 2008 and campaigned aggressively there this year. 

But Obama's team acknowledges it is the most difficult state for him to win, and he's paid less attention to it recently.

Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia, with a combined 61 votes at stake, could go either way.

"I'm counting on Iowa! Iowa may be the place that decides who the next president is!" Romney said on one of two visits to the state last week. In Ohio last week, a hoarse Obama reminded a Cleveland audience near the end of a six-state marathon: "I need you, Ohio. America needs you, Ohio."

Romney is banking on what his supporters say is late momentum. Obama is betting that his aggressive effort to register and lock in early voters, mainly Democratic-leaning younger and minority voters, will give him an insurmountable advantage heading into Election Day, when more Republicans typically vote than Democrats.

About 35 percent of voters are expected to cast their ballots before Nov. 6, either in person or by mail. 

More than 5 million people already have voted. No votes will be counted until Nov 6, but some states report the party affiliation of people who have voted. Democrats have the edge in Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina, according to state figures and data collected by the United States Elections Project at George 

Mason University. Republicans have the early edge in Colorado.

Obama, who won in 2008 in places where Democrats had not for a generation, continues to have several routes to electoral victory. His easiest: win Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin, which are leaning his way. He could keep the White House with victories in Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada. If he loses Ohio, he could prevail by sweeping New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado.

Romney has fewer options. He must carry Florida and Virginia, where Republicans are feeling good about his standing, as well as wrest control of Ohio, and then also win Nevada, Colorado or New Hampshire. If he loses Ohio, Romney must make up for the state's 18 electoral votes by cutting his way through Obama-leaning territory.

At the top of that target list are Wisconsin, carried by Democrats in six straight presidential elections and where Obama has the edge, and Iowa, a perennial swing-voting state.

Romney's campaign began airing advertisements last week in Minnesota, arguing he was staking a claim in likely Obama territory. But even GOP strategists acknowledged the move was aimed at hitting voters in western Wisconsin and pressuring Obama to follow suit. By Friday, Obama's campaign had done just that, although the president has a healthy lead in both polling and organization in Minnesota.

"We have to keep working those other states, in case Ohio doesn't come through," said veteran GOP presidential strategist Charlie Black, who is advising Romney's campaign.

Ohio is a lynchpin for both candidates.

Obama was in strong standing in the state before the three presidential debates. But Romney's strong performance in the debates helped him gain ground. But Republicans and Democrats alike now say that any momentum Romney had in Ohio from those debates has run its course, and the state gain is leaning toward Obama. New public polls show a tight race.

Operatives in both parties point to the last debate six days ago, and Obama's criticism of Romney's opposition to the automotive industry bailout. They say the criticism was effective in branding Romney as out of touch with working-class voters in a state whose manufacturing economy relies heavily on the car and auto parts industries.

The president started running a new TV ad in the state assailing Romney's position on the aid. Obama's internal polling in Ohio has shown a slight increase in support from white, working-class voters, an important part of Ohio's largely blue-collar electorate.

"That is a killer,'" Tad Devine, a top aide to 2004 and 2000 Democratic nominees, said of the heat Romney is taking for his bailout position. "And it's going to have the biggest impact in the decisive state in the outcome of the election."

Out of necessity, Romney is refusing to cede ground in Ohio, where no Republican has lost and then gone on to win the presidency. He hunkered down in the state for two days last week, and running mate Paul Ryan headlined eight events in the state over the weekend. The impending storm that's set to hit the East Coast led 

Romney to cancel Virginia campaigning on Sunday and join Ryan in Ohio.

In Ohio alone, Romney and allied groups were spending nearly $9 million on television ads, compared with Obama and his allies' $6 million, and showed no signs of letting up in the final week.

Elsewhere, Obama is looking to stunt any Romney inroad with suburban women, a pivotal constituency, in Colorado and Virginia, by casting the Republican as an extremist on abortion and hammering him on his opposition to federal money for Planned Parenthood.

In Nevada, Romney is banking on the support of fellow Mormons, and noting the high unemployment and foreclosure rates, to overtake Obama. But the president's team is appearing ever more confident of winning the state, partly because of the backing of a booming Hispanic population.

Florida, the biggest battleground prize with 29 electoral votes, is viewed by both sides as a tight. Democrats acknowledge that Romney's standing has improved because of his debate performances and could move out of reach for Obama in the coming days.

Sandy and storm surge pose 'worst case scenario'

Sandy and storm surge pose 'worst case scenario' 

A car goes through the high water as Hurricane Sandy bears down on the East Coast, Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012, in Ocean City, Md. Governors from North Carolina, where steady rains were whipped by gusting winds Saturday night, to Connecticut declared states of emergency. Delaware ordered mandatory evacuations for coastal communities by 8 p.m. Sunday.

KENSINGTON, Md. (AP) -- The projected storm surge from Hurricane Sandy is a "worst case scenario" with devastating waves and tides predicted for the highly populated New York City metro area, government forecasters said Sunday.

The more they observe it, the more the experts worry about the water - which usually kills and does more damage than winds in hurricanes.

In this case, seas will be amped up by giant waves and full-moon-powered high tides. That will combine with drenching rains, triggering inland flooding as the hurricane merges with a winter storm system that will worsen it and hold it in place for days.

Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press that given Sandy's due east-to-west track into New Jersey, that puts the worst of the storm surge just north in New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey. "Yes, this is the worst case scenario," he said.

In a measurement of pure kinetic energy, NOAA's hurricane research division on Sunday ranked the surge and wave "destruction potential" for Sandy - just the hurricane, not the hybrid storm it will eventually become - at 5.8 on a 0 to 6 scale. The damage expected from winds will be far less, experts said. Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters says that surge destruction potential number is a record and it's due to the storm's massive size.

"You have a lot of wind acting over a long distance of water for hundreds of miles" and that piles the storm surge up when it finally comes ashore, Masters said. Even though it doesn't pack much power in maximum wind speed, the tremendous size of Sandy - more than 1,000 miles across with tropical storm force winds - adds to the pummelling power when it comes ashore, he said.

The storm surge energy numbers are bigger than the deadly 2005 Hurricane Katrina, but that can be misleading. Katrina's destruction was concentrated in a small area, making it much worse, Masters said. Sandy's storm surge energy is spread over a wider area. Also, Katrina hit a city that is below sea level and had problems with levees.

National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb said Hurricane Sandy's size means some coastal parts of New York and New Jersey may see water rise from 6 to 11 feet from surge and waves. The rest of the coast north of Virginia can expect 4 to 8 feet of surge.

The full moon Monday will add 2 to 3 inches to the storm surge in New York, Masters said.

"If the forecasts hold true in terms of the amount of rainfall and the amount of coastal flooding, that's going to be what drives up the losses and that's what's going to hurt," said Susan Cutter, director of the hazards and vulnerability research institute at the University of South Carolina.

Cutter said she worries about coastal infrastructure, especially the New York subways, which were shutting down Sunday night.

Klaus Jacob, a Columbia University researcher who has advised the city on coastal risks, said, "We have to prepare to the extent we can, but I'm afraid that from a subway point of view, I think it's beyond sheer preparations. I do not think that there's enough emergency measures that will help prevent the subway from flooding."

Knabb said millions of people may be harmed by inland flooding.

A NOAA map of inland and coastal flood watches covers practically the entire Northeast: all of Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut; most of Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, and parts of northeastern Ohio, eastern Virginia, North Carolina, and western New Hampshire.

Along the mid-Atlantic coast, storm surge is already starting to build, Uccellini said. NOAA's Coastal Services Center chief Margaret Davidson said to expect "bodacious impacts" from both surge and inland flooding.

The surge - in which water steadily increases from the ocean- will be worst in the areas north of where Sandy comes ashore.

New York will have the most intense storm surge if Sandy comes ashore anywhere in New Jersey, Uccellini said. Only if it arrives farther south, such as Delaware, will New York see a slightly, only slightly, smaller storm surge.

In general, areas to the south and west of landfall will get the heaviest of rains. Some areas of Delaware and the Maryland and Virginia peninsula will see a foot of rain over the several days the storm parks in the East, Uccellini said. The rest of the mid-Atlantic region may see closer to 4 to 8 inches, NOAA forecasts.

The good news about inland flooding is that the rivers and ground aren't as saturated as they were last year when Hurricane Irene struck, causing nearly $16 billion in damage, much of it from inland flooding in places like Vermont, Uccellini and Masters said.

The storm, which threatens roughly 50 million in the eastern third of the country, began as three systems. Two of those - an Arctic blast from the north and a normal winter storm front with a low-pressure trough- have combined. Hurricane Sandy will meld with those once it comes ashore, creating a hybrid storm with some of the nastier characteristics of a hurricane and a nor'easter, experts have said.

Bombings, clashes leave Syria truce in tatters

Bombings, clashes leave Syria truce in tatters 

In this Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012 photo, smoke rises from the Karmal Jabl neighborhood, during clashes between rebel fighters and the Syrian army in Aleppo, Syria.

BEIRUT (AP) -- A Syrian warplane flattened a three-story building, suspected rebels detonated a deadly car bomb and both sides traded gunfire in several hotspots across the country Saturday, activists said, leaving a U.N.-backed holiday truce in tatters on its second day.

The unraveling of the cease-fire marked the latest setback to ending Syria's civil war through diplomacy. Foreign military intervention is unlikely, raising the grim prospect of a drawn-out war of attrition between President Bashar Assad and those trying to topple him.

The proposed four-day truce during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha had been a long shot from the start since international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi failed to get solid commitments from all combatants. Fighting dropped off in the first hours of the cease-fire Friday, but by the end of the day, activists said 151 people had been killed in bombings and shootings, a standard daily toll in Syria.

On Saturday, the first regime airstrike since the start of the truce reduced a three-story building in the Arbeen suburb of the capital, Damascus to rubble, killing at least eight men, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which compiles reports from activists.

In the remote eastern town of Deir el-Zour, assailants detonated a car bomb near a military police compound, then opened fire at those rushing to the scene, killing a total of eight people and causing extensive damage, the Observatory said. Syrian media denied there were casualties. The attack bore the hallmarks of Jabhat al-Nusra, a radical rebel-allied Islamic group that has rejected the cease-fire.

The Syrian air force also bombed rebel positions Saturday during a fierce battle for control over the main road linking Aleppo, Syria's largest city, with the capital, activists said. Earlier this month, rebels seized Maaret al-Numan, a town along the highway and besieged a nearby military base, disrupting regime supplies to embattled Aleppo. The Syrian air force has responded with sustained bombing raids on area villages.

By late Saturday, at least 76 people had been killed across Syria, including 20 Syrian soldiers, activists said. 

The Observatory reported deadly regime shelling and sniper attacks in several locations, while Syrian state-media said rebels ambushed a number of military positions.

Military analyst Joe Holliday said neither side has an incentive to halt fighting, noting that rebels have disrupted regime supply routes to the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. "The regime can't accept the current military status quo without a fight and the rebels have no reason to since they believe they have the momentum," said Holliday, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

Brahimi's spokesman declined comment Saturday on the apparent failure of his initiative. It's not clear what Brahimi's next move could be, since the international community is divided over the Syria conflict that erupted 19 months ago.

Assad allies Russia and China have shielded the regime against harsher U.N. Security Council sanctions, while the rebels' foreign backers have shied away from military intervention.

The U.S., meanwhile, is averse to sending strategic weapons to help the rebels break the battlefield stalemate, fearing they will fall into the hands of militant Islamists, who are increasingly active in rebel ranks. 

The al-Qaida-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra, for example, is believed to be on the front lines in Aleppo and near Maaret al-Numan.

When Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, first floated the idea of a holiday truce, he did not say what his long-term plan was. Even a temporary reduction in violence during such a truce would not have been a springboard for talks between Assad and the opposition on ending the war. Syria's opposition says it will only negotiate if Assad resigns, a step the Syrian leader has refused to take.

Some said Brahimi's initiative allowed a paralyzed international community to show briefly that it was doing something to try to end the war that has claimed more than 35,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center said the truce at least "provides the illusion of movement, that something is being done, that the international community is still trying to find a solution."

The U.S. said Friday that both sides have violated the holiday cease-fire, but singled out the regime. In the previous attempted truce six months ago, the Syrian military violated key provisions, such as withdrawing troops from urban centers, and was widely held responsible for the collapse of the cease-fire.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi on Saturday accused the U.S. of being one-sided. He said Syria remains committed to halting military operations. He said all cease-fire violations were the result of attacks, most of them carried out by organizations that originally rejected the truce, an apparent reference to Jabhat al-Nusra. The spokesman said Syria has sent messages to the U.N. Security Council concerning the violations.

Syrian state media accused the rebels of breaking the truce from the start.

One of the deadliest attacks Friday was a car bomb attack in a residential area of Damascus.

The state-run news agency SANA on Saturday quoted the director of Damascus Hospital, Dr. Adib Mahmoud, as saying the hospital received 15 dead civilians, including eight children, and 92 wounded, among them 65 children. Activists had put the death toll at 11.

Also Saturday, Lebanese broadcaster LBC TV said journalist Fidaa Itani, one of its employees covering Syria's civil war, was detained by the rebels and is being held in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border.

The station quoted a local rebel leader in Azaz, Abu Ibrahim, as saying that rebels suspected Itani after he filmed many videos of rebels operations in Aleppo. Itani's Lebanese cellphone was closed when The Associated Press tried to reach him.

The area also was the site of the May kidnapping of 11 Shiite Lebanese pilgrims who were on their way home from Iran. Two have been released while rebels say they will hold the others until Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, apologizes to the Syrian people for supporting Assad.

US Superstorm threat launches mass evacuations

US Superstorm threat launches mass evacuations 

Large waves generated by Hurricane Sandy crash into Jeanette's Pier in Nags Head, N.C., Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012 as the storm moves up the east coast. Hurricane Sandy, upgraded again Saturday just hours after forecasters said it had weakened to a tropical storm, was barreling north from the Caribbean and was expected to make landfall early Tuesday near the Delaware coast, then hit two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid monster storm.

SHIP BOTTOM, N.J. (AP) -- Forget distinctions like tropical storm or hurricane. Don't get fixated on a particular track. Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow, say officials who warned millions in coastal areas to get out of the way.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," said Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As Hurricane Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean - where it left nearly five dozen dead - to meet two other powerful winter storms, experts said it didn't matter how strong the storm was when it hit land: The rare hybrid storm that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

"This is not a coastal threat alone," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "This is a very large area."

New Jersey was set to close its casinos this weekend, New York's governor was considering shutting down the subways to avoid flooding and half a dozen states warned residents to prepare for several days of lost power.

Sandy weakened briefly to a tropical storm early Saturday but was soon back up to Category 1 strength, packing 75 mph winds about 335 miles southeast of Charleston, S.C., as of 5 p.m. Experts said the storm was most likely to hit the southern New Jersey coastline by late Monday or early Tuesday.

Governors from North Carolina, where heavy rain was expected Sunday, to Connecticut declared states of emergency. Delaware ordered mandatory evacuations for coastal communities by 8 p.m. Saturday.

New Jersey's Chris Christie, who was widely criticized for not interrupting a family vacation in Florida while a snowstorm pummeled the state in 2010, broke off campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in North Carolina Friday to return home.

"I can be as cynical as anyone," the pugnacious chief executive said in a bit of understatement Saturday. "But when the storm comes, if it's as bad as they're predicting, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical as you otherwise might have been."

The storm forced the presidential campaign to juggle schedules. Romney scrapped plans to campaign Sunday in the swing state of Virginia and switched his schedule for the day to Ohio. First Lady Michelle Obama cancelled an appearance in New Hampshire for Tuesday, and President Barack Obama moved a planned Monday departure for Florida to Sunday night to beat the storm.

In Ship Bottom, just north of Atlantic City, Alice and Giovanni Stockton-Rossini spent Saturday packing clothing in the back yard of their home, a few hundred yards from the ocean on Long Beach Island. Their neighborhood was under a voluntary evacuation order, but they didn't need to be forced.

"It's really frightening," Alice Stockton-Rossi said. "But you know how many times they tell you, `This is it, it's really coming and it's really the big one' and then it turns out not to be? I'm afraid people will tune it out because of all the false alarms before, and the one time you need to take it seriously, you won't. This one might be the one."

A few blocks away, Russ Linke was taking no chances. He and his wife secured the patio furniture, packed the bicycles into the pickup truck, and headed off the island.

"I've been here since 1997, and I never even put my barbecue grill away during a storm. But I am taking this one seriously," he said.

What makes the storm so dangerous and unusual is that it is coming at the tail end of hurricane season and the beginning of winter storm season, "so it's kind of taking something from both," said Jeff Masters, director of the private service Weather Underground.

Masters said the storm could be bigger than the worst East Coast storm on record - the 1938 New England hurricane known as the Long Island Express, which killed nearly 800 people. "Part hurricane, part nor'easter - all trouble," he said. Experts said to expect high winds over 800 miles and up to 2 feet of snow as well inland as West Virginia.

And the storm was so big, and the convergence of the three storms so rare, that "we just can't pinpoint who is going to get the worst of it," said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Officials are particularly worried about the possibility of subway flooding in New York City, said Uccellini.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to prepare to shut the city's subways, buses and suburban trains by Sunday, but delayed making a final decision. The city shut the subways down before last year's Hurricane Irene, and a Columbia University study predicted that an Irene surge just 1 foot higher would have paralyzed lower Manhattan.

Up and down the Eastern Seaboard and far inland, officials urged residents and businesses to prepare in big ways and little.

The Virginia National Guard was authorized to call up to 500 troops to active duty for debris removal and road-clearing, while homeowners stacked sandbags at their front doors in coastal towns.

Utility officials warned rains could saturate the ground, causing trees to topple into power lines, and told residents to prepare for several days at home without power. "We're facing a very real possibility of widespread, prolonged power outages," said, Ruth Miller, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

Warren Ellis, who was on an annual fishing pilgrimage on North Carolina's Outer Banks, didn't act fast enough to get home.

Ellis' 73-year-old father, Steven, managed to get off uninhabited Portsmouth Island near Cape Hatteras by ferry Friday. But the son and his 10-foot camper got stranded when high winds and surf forced state officials to suspend service Saturday.

"We might not get off here until Tuesday or Wednesday, which doesn't hurt my feelings that much," said Ellis, 44, of Ammissville, Va. "Because the fishing's going to be really good after this storm."

Last year, Hurricane Irene poked a new inlet through the island, cutting the only road off Hatteras Island for about 4,000.

In Maine, lobsterman Greg Griffen wasn't taking any chances; he moved 100 of his traps to deep water, where they are more vulnerable to shifting and damage in a storm.

"Some of my competitors have been pulling their traps and taking them right home," said Griffen. The dire forecast "sort of encouraged them to pull the plug on the season."

In Muncy Valley north of Philadelphia, Rich Fry learned his lesson from last year, when Tropical Storm Lee inundated his Katie's Country Store.

In between helping customers picking up necessities Saturday, Fry was moving materials above the flood line. Fry said he was still trying to recover from the losses of last year's storm, which he and his wife, Deb, estimated at the time at $35,000 in merchandise.

"It will take a lot of years to cover that," he said.

Christie's emergency declaration will force the shutdown of Atlantic City's 12 casinos for only the fourth time in the 34-year history of legalized gambling here. The approach of Hurricane Irene shut down the casinos for three days last August.

Atlantic City officials said they would begin evacuating the gambling hub's 30,000 residents at noon Sunday, busing them to mainland shelters and schools.

Tom Foley, Atlantic City's emergency management director, recalled the March 1962 storm when the ocean and the bay met in the center of the city.

"This is predicted to get that bad," he said.

Mike Labarbera, who came from Brooklyn to gamble at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, thought the caution was overblown.

"I think it's stupid," he said. "I don't think it's going to be a hurricane. I think they're overreacting."

Ray Leonard disagreed, and has a famous storm survival story to back him up.

Leonard rode out 1991's infamous "perfect storm", made famous by the Sebastian Junger bestseller of the same name, with two cremates in his 32-foot sailboat, Satori, before being plucked from the Atlantic off Martha's Vineyard, Mass., by a Coast Guard helicopter.

The 85-year-old former sailor said Saturday that if he had loved ones living in the projected landfall area, he would tell them to leave.

"Don't be rash," Leonard said in a telephone interview Saturday from his home in Fort Myers, Fla. "Because if this does hit, you're going to lose all those little things you've spent the last 20 years feeling good about."