Afghans set presidential poll date; Taliban jeer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

___

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

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Facebook shares fall as lock-up period expires

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Museums, theaters among NYC attractions reopening

NEW YORK (AP) — Museums, the Empire State Building, Broadway theaters and many stores reopened Wednesday to the relief of tourists who'd been stuck in hotel rooms since the weekend due to superstorm Sandy. But parks, the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and many other top attractions remained shuttered, some indefinitely as damage assessment continued.

"We tried to go to Central Park but it was closed," said Angela Walsh, here from Lincoln, England, with her husband and two kids, as they took pictures at Rockefeller Center Wednesday morning, where the rink was opening for skating. She said they'd spent much of the last two days in their hotel room. "Thank God for Facebook," she added. "That kept them entertained."

All city parks and the High Line are closed indefinitely. In Central Park at least 250 mature trees were felled by the storm, with benches and playgrounds damaged as well. "It's all about keeping the public safe," said Doug Blonsky, president and CEO of the Central Park Conservancy.

Most Broadway matinee and evening performances were expected to play as scheduled Wednesday. Cancelations included "Evita," ''The Lion King," ''Mary Poppins" and "Scandalous."

Thomas Karlegott waited with his wife and another couple from Angelholm, Sweden, all on their first visit to New York, for the opening of the TKTS booth in Times Square Wednesday. He said they'd be happy with tickets to any show at all after wandering around a largely shuttered Manhattan for the last few days without doing much.

"We ate good food," he added with a smile, but admitted that they'd missed shopping and going to museums.

Subways remained closed, making it difficult to get around. The Staten Island Ferry, a humble commuter boat that's popular with tourists because it offers a free, beautiful view of New York Harbor, was shut due to flooding in the ferry terminal. Yellow cabs were on the streets but hard to come by.

Local buses were running, but double-decker tour buses — normally a ubiquitous sight around the city — remained out of service Wednesday, though City Sights, Gray Line and other bus companies announced on their websites that they hoped to resume operations Thursday. Circle Line boat tours said via Twitter that they also hoped to resume Thursday.

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were expected to remain closed at least until Saturday, according to their websites.

Tourism is the city's fifth largest industry, with an annual economic impact worth $52 billion, including $34.5 billion in direct spending. Nearly 51 million people visited New York City in 2011. The city's official tourism agency, NYC & Co., referred a request for comment to the mayor's office, which did not immediately respond.

Among those lining up at the Museum of Modern Art were Sophie Manisse and her two daughters from Lyon, France. "We wanted to see the Halloween parade," she said, referring to the annual Greenwich Village event, which was canceled. Instead, they headed into MOMA, where Edvard Munch's "The Scream" went on display a week ago and seemed to symbolize the state of mind of many visitors.

"We're really upset," said Debbie Clinton, visiting the city from Liverpool, England, as they walked into the Empire State Building, one of the first of the city's major attractions to reopen Wednesday morning. "We bought passes for all these attractions and we haven't used them." They were heading home Thursday.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art also opened Wednesday, and the Guggenheim opened for one exhibition, "Picasso Black and White."

Crowds of would-be shoppers gathered outside Macy's and other stores Wednesday in anticipation of the doors opening.

"It's filled with tourists!" reported Macy's spokeswoman Elina Kazan a few minutes after the store opened. She said they had limited staffing but saluted the workers who made it to 34th Street from the city's far-flung neighborhoods "by any means possible. They walked, carpooled, bused or cabbed from the boroughs. Many waited for hours but made it in."

Some visitors had a philosophical attitude. Martine Juillard of Paris, waiting with her two teenage daughters for an Abercrombie & Fitch store to open on Fifth Avenue Wednesday, said there had been some frightening moments during the worst of the storm.

"We are pleased because we are alive," she said with a bold smile. "For the shops and the museums, we'll come back another time."

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Man with bionic leg to climb Chicago skyscraper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

___

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

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Obama gets first-hand look at devastation

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — President Barack Obama jetted to storm-stricken New Jersey on Wednesday for a first-hand look at the devastation, as his aides tried to keep overt politics at bay for one more day.

Still, with Election Day less than a week away, Obama's visit was layered with political implications. The deadly storm has given Obama an opportunity to project presidential leadership in the final days of the tightly contested White House race. And Obama's tour guide in New Jersey was the state's Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a supporter of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

To the chagrin of some Republicans, Christie has lavished praise on Obama for his efforts in helping states dealing with the storm.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said there were no political motivations behind Obama's decision to join his supporter's rival Wednesday.

"This is not a time for politics," Carney said. "The president appreciates the efforts of governors, state and local officials across the various states that were affected by the storm regardless of political party."

Christie was on hand to greet Obama as Air Force One landed on a sunny, breezy day in Atlantic City. The two men, along with FEMA administrator Craig Fugate, boarded Marine One for an hour-long aerial tour of the storm damage.

Obama stopped by FEMA headquarters in Washington before heading to New Jersey.

Wednesday marked Obama's third straight day off the campaign trail. He canceled rallies across four battleground states and retreated to the White House to oversee the government's storm response.

Obama planned to return to the campaign trail Thursday, with stops planned in Green Bay, Wis., Las Vegas and Boulder, Colo. He planned to be on the road campaigning every day through the Nov. 6 election.

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Apparent insider attack kills 2 NATO troops

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A man wearing an Afghan police uniform killed two NATO troops in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the international military alliance said.

The assault appeared to the be the latest in a string of insider attacks that have threatened to sever the partnership between international troops and the Afghan forces they are trying to train to take over responsibility for the country's security. There have also been cases of insurgents donning Afghan uniforms in assaults.

A statement from NATO gave no further details, saying the shooting is still under investigation.

Afghan officials said there was an attack in Helmand province's Nahri Sarraj district but also could not confirm any details.

"We know that there are casualties," said Ismail Hotak, the director of the provincial office that coordinates with the international forces.

Both the British and American militaries have large contingents in Helmand.

At least 53 international troops have been killed in attacks by Afghan soldiers or police this year, and a number of other assaults are still under investigation, the international alliance has said.

The surge in insider attacks is throwing doubt on the capability of the Afghan security forces to take over from international troops ahead of a planned handover to the Afghans in 2014. It has further undermined public support for the 11-year war in NATO countries.

The attacks have not been limited to members of the NATO-led international coalition. More than 50 Afghan members of the government's security forces also have died this in attacks by their own colleagues.

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Nokia says shipping new Lumia smartphones this week

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From Springsteen to Letterman, Sandy disrupts

NEW YORK (AP) — Broadway, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center all remained dark Tuesday as Superstorm Sandy left the New York entertainment industry fighting to go on with the show — even if it meant performing for empty studios.

That was how David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon taped their late shows Monday night, leading to some remarkably quiet monologues. On Tuesday, as the city took account of the damage wrought by the storm, some late-night shows were moving back into full production, while the aftermath of Sandy continued to cause the cancellations of film premieres, film and TV production and even that most unshakable performer: Bruce Springsteen.

The Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert scheduled for Tuesday night at the Rochester Blue Cross Arena in upstate New York was postponed until Wednesday because of the hurricane. Officials at the arena said the concert was rescheduled due to flight cancellations for Springsteen's band and more than 1,000 ticket holders.

In New York, despite a downed subway system and a large swath of Manhattan being powerless, others were pushing on.

ABC announced Tuesday that Jimmy Kimmel, who had planned to bring his Los Angeles-based "Jimmy Kimmel Live" to Brooklyn for a week's worth of shows, will be live from the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night after canceling Monday's show.

Jimmy Fallon, after sending his studio audience home Monday, planned to resume taping "Late Night" with an audience Tuesday.

Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" both canceled Tuesday night's tapings. Representatives for Letterman's "Late Show" didn't immediately respond to questions about Tuesday's plans.

Letterman and Fallon's taped shows Monday, sans studio audiences, were an unusual sight. Letterman read his trademark top 10 list with hand-written signs held up for each entry, and guest Denzel Washington showed up in a yellow rain slicker, claiming he swam to the Ed Sullivan Theater. On "Late Night," guest Seth Meyers said the experience was "like watching Charlie Rose if he had a band and everybody was a little bit high."

"Saturday Night Live," for which Meyers is a head writer, is expected to put on a new show Saturday as scheduled, with host Louis C.K., who himself had to cancel two Sunday stand-up performances in New York.

The city revoked film permits for all five boroughs on Tuesday, after doing the same Monday. Among the productions affected are "Smash," ''Gossip Girl," ''Person of Interest," ''666 Park Avenue" and "Elementary." Films forced to stop shooting include Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" and Akiva Goldsman's "Winter's Tale."

The Tuesday premiere of Joe Wright's Tolstoy adaptation "Anna Karenina" was canceled.

ABC's "Good Morning America," NBC's "Today" show and "CBS This Morning" aired live Tuesday with extensive storm coverage, though "GMA" was forced to cancel its planned Wednesday Halloween special.

Daytime shows were less successful Tuesday, with production called off for "Live! With Kelly and Michael," ''Katie," ''The View" and "The Chew." ABC said work on all the programs would resume Wednesday.

While Broadway theaters were closed and ready to reopen Wednesday, the thriving downtown off-Broadway community, with most of its theaters in lower Manhattan, was still assessing the damage and likely facing a longer time off. The superstorm already forced the well-respected Vineyard Theatre in Union Square to cancel performances of its world-premiere production of "Checkers," which was to open Wednesday.

Many of the cultural institutions of New York remained shuttered Tuesday. Aside from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center cancelling performances, the Metropolitan Opera and Radio City Music Hall were also closed.

___

AP Entertainment Writers Mark Kennedy in New York and Lynn Elber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

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China passes law to curb abuse of mental hospitals

BEIJING (AP) — China's legislature on Friday passed a long-awaited mental health law that aims to prevent people from being involuntarily held and unnecessarily treated in psychiatric facilities — abuses that have been used against government critics and triggered public outrage.

The law standardizes mental health care services, requiring general hospitals to set up special outpatient clinics or provide counseling, and calls for the training of more doctors.

Debated for years, the law attempts to address an imbalance in Chinese society — a lack of mental health care services for a population that has grown more prosperous but also more aware of modern-day stresses and the need for treatment. Psychiatrists who helped draft and improve the legislation welcomed its passage.

"The law will protect the rights of mental patients and prevent those who don't need treatment from being forced to receive it," said Dr. Liu Xiehe, an 85-year-old psychiatrist based in the southwestern city of Chengdu, who drafted the first version of the law in 1985.

"Our mental health law is in line with international standards. This shows the government pays attention to the development of mental health and the protection of people's rights in this area," Liu told The Associated Press by phone.

Pressure has grown on the government in recent years after state media and rights activists reported cases of people forced into mental hospitals when they did not require treatment. Some were placed there by employers with whom they had wage disputes, some by their family members in fights over money, and others — usually people with grievances against officials — by police who wanted to silence them.

Yang Yamei, of the Inner Mongolian city of Hulunbuir, has been locked up at a local mental hospital for the last eight months in what her daughter says is retaliation for her attempts to seek compensation from the government for a court ruling that unfairly sentenced her to three years in a labor camp.

This is the third time in four years that she has been forcibly committed, her daughter Guo Dandan said by phone.

"It's because my mother has been petitioning for help, but the authorities don't want to solve her problems, so they put her in there," Guo said. "I have tried many times to persuade her doctors to release her, but they refuse."

Guo's claim could not be independently verified. Local government offices and the mental hospital could not immediately be reached for comment.

"I only hope that the law will be stricter," Guo said. "In the cases of petitioners, when the authorities can use their personal relationships with doctors to fake medical records, hospitals should not be allowed to accept such cases."

The law states for the first time that mental health examinations and treatment must be conducted on a voluntary basis, unless a person is considered a danger to himself or others. Only psychiatrists have the authority to commit people to hospitals for treatment, and treatment may be compulsory for patients diagnosed with a severe mental illness, according to the law.

Significantly, the law gives people who feel they have been unnecessarily admitted into mental health facilities the right to appeal.

But it will likely be a challenge for people to exercise that right once they are in the system, said Huang Xuetao, a lawyer who runs an organization in the southern city of Shenzhen that assists people who have been committed against their will.

Though questions remain over how the law will be enforced and whether sufficient government funding will be provided to enable the expansion of services, psychiatrists said the passage of the legislation marked a milestone.

"It's very exciting. I honestly believe this will start a new trajectory," said Dr. Michael Phillips, a Canadian psychiatrist who has worked in China for nearly three decades and now heads a suicide research center in Shanghai.

Phillips said the biggest change for the psychiatric system is the curb on involuntary admissions. At least 80 percent of hospital admissions are compulsory, he said.

___

Associated Press researcher Flora Ji contributed to this report.

Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gillianwong

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Sandy's death toll climbs; millions without power

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 38, 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.

Photos: Superstorm Sandy wreaks havoc

1. 3 hrs ago

   Men survey a large tree that fell during Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012 in Washington, DC. The storm has claimed at least 16 lives in the United States, and has caused massive flooding across ... more&nbsp

   Men survey a large tree that fell during Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012 in Washington, DC. The storm has claimed at least 16 lives in the United States, and has caused massive flooding across much of the Atlantic seaboard. US President Barack Obama has declared the situation a 'major disaster' for large areas of the US East Coast including New York City, with wide spread power outages and significant flooding in parts of the city. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images) less&nbsp

"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 four 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.

___

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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