Exclusive - Amazon to win e-book tussle with Apple

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union regulators are to end an antitrust probe into e-book prices by accepting an offer by Apple and four publishers to ease price restrictions on Amazon, two sources said on Tuesday.

The decision hands online retailer Amazon victory in its attempt to sell e-books cheaper than its rivals in the fast-growing market that publishers hope will boost revenue and increase customer numbers.

Apple and the publishers offered in September to let retailers set their own prices or discounts for a period of two years, and also to suspend "most-favored nation" contracts for five years.

Such clauses bar Simon & Schuster, News Corp. unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of German company Macmillan, from making deals with rival retailers to sell e-books more cheaply than Apple.

The agreements, which critics say prevent Amazon and other retailers from undercutting Apple's charges, sparked an investigation by the European Commission in December last year.

Pearson Plc's Penguin group, which is also under investigation, did not take part in the offer.

The EU antitrust authority, which in September asked for feedback from rivals and consumers about the proposal, has not asked for more concessions, said one of sources.

"The Commission is likely to accept the offer and announce its decision next month," the source said on Tuesday.

Antoine Colombani, spokesman for competition policy at the European Commission, said: "We have launched a market test in September and our investigation is still ongoing."

Amazon declined to comment, while Apple did not respond to an email for comments.

Companies found guilty of breaching EU rules could be fined up to 10 percent of their global sales, which in Apple's case could reach $15.6 billion, based on its 2012 fiscal year.

FROWNING ON ONLINE TRADE CURBS

Antitrust regulators tend to frown on restrictions on online trade and the case is a good example of this policy, said Mark Tricker, a partner at Brussels-based law firm Norton Rose.

"This case shows the online world continues to be a major focus for the Commission. They are looking at lots of different aspects of e-commerce, as this can have such a significant impact on consumers, development and innovation," he said.

"These markets change very quickly and if you don't stamp down on potential infringements of competition rules, you can have significant consequences."

UBS analysts estimate that e-books account for about 30 percent of the U.S. book market and 20 percent of sales in Britain but are minuscule elsewhere. Amazon created demand for e-books when it launched its e-Kindle reader, charging $9.99 for each book.

Apple's agency model let publishers set prices in return for a 30 percent cut to the maker of iPhone and iPad.

The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating e-book prices. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette recently settled, but Apple, Penguin Group and Macmillan continue to fight the allegations.

(Editing by Rex Merrifield and David Goodman)

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Broadway takes a big hit from Superstorm Sandy

NEW YORK (AP) — Superstorm Sandy, which darkened Broadway while smashing into the eastern U.S. last week, predictably ravaged the box offices around Times Square, with shows losing more than $6 million from the previous week.

The Broadway League, the national trade association for the Broadway industry, released data Tuesday that showed, as expected, all shows took a hit. One of the hardest hurt was the musical "Nice Work If You Can Get It," which lost $538,853.

The total haul for the week ending Sunday was $13,578,724, well below the total from the previous week of $20,083,783. Attendance also plunged, from 214,909 ticket holders to just 149,443.

The storm struck last Monday and shuttered all 40 Broadway theaters until Wednesday. All shows were up and running by Thursday night, but the damage had been done, though few expect the pain to last.

"It will come back to its former life, there's no question about it. Broadway is New York and everyone celebrates the theater in this city," said Barry Weissler, who has been producing work on Broadway since 1982. "It's catch-up time."

Most shows on Broadway have eight performances a week, but Sandy forced many, including "The Phantom of the Opera," ''The Heiress," ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Chicago" to put on just six shows. "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Evita" only managed five shows. Altogether, 40 individual performances were canceled.

Other shows that took a beating include "Wicked," which lost $490,996, though it still managed to pull in $1,166,275. The least hurt was "Rock of Ages," which lost just $59,209.

Sandy joins other recent shocks to have rocked Broadway finances, including the Sept. 11 attacks, which shuttered theaters for two days, and Hurricane Irene in 2011 that wiped away a weekend's revenue.

"Storms will not stop us, the terrible tragedy of 9/11 will not stop us. Theater will continue. It's one of the oldest art forms known to man and it will continue," said Weissler, who together with his wife, Fran, has produced such shows as "Grease," ''Chicago" and "Annie Get Your Gun."

In dozens of off-Broadway theaters, the losses have been more than financial, with some suffering damage. The SoHo Rep and The Bank Street Theater lost power and had some flooding, while many other downtown theaters lost power, including the MCC Theatre and SoHo Playhouse.

The infectious drumming show "Blue Man Group" was quieted, the immersive, genre-bending show "Sleep No More" was stilled, and The Public Theater was shut down for almost a week. The lobby at its home at Astor Place is now a collection site for post-Sandy supplies.

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Study: Stem cells from strangers can repair hearts

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Researchers are reporting a key advance in using stem cells to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks. In a study, stem cells donated by strangers proved as safe and effective as patients' own cells for helping restore heart tissue.

The work involved just 30 patients in Miami and Baltimore, but it proves the concept that anyone's cells can be used to treat such cases. Doctors are excited because this suggests that stem cells could be banked for off-the-shelf use after heart attacks, just as blood is kept on hand now.

Results were discussed Monday at an American Heart Association conference in California and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study used a specific type of stem cells from bone marrow that researchers believed would not be rejected by recipients. Unlike other cells, these lack a key feature on their surface that makes the immune system see them as foreign tissue and attack them, explained the study's leader, Dr. Joshua Hare of the University of Miami.

The patients in the study had suffered heart attacks years earlier, some as long as 30 years ago. All had developed heart failure because the scar tissue from the heart attack had weakened their hearts so much that they grew large and flabby, unable to pump blood effectively.

Researchers advertised for people to supply marrow, which is removed using a needle into a hip bone. The cells were taken from the marrow and amplified for about a month in a lab at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, then returned to Miami to be used for treatment, which did not involve surgery.

The cells were delivered through a tube pushed through a groin artery into the heart near the scarred area. Fifteen patients were given cells from their own marrow and 15 others, cells from strangers.

About a year later, scar tissue had been reduced by about one-third. Both groups had improvements in how far they could walk and in quality of life. There was no significant difference in one measure of how well their hearts were able to pump blood, but doctors hope these patients will continue to improve over time, or that refinements in treatment will lead to better results.

The big attraction is being able to use cells supplied by others, with no blood or tissue matching needed.

"You could have the cells ready to go in the blood bank so when the patient comes in for a therapy — there's no delay," Hare said. "It's also cheaper to make the donor cells," and a single marrow donor can supply enough cells to treat as many as 10 people.

Dr. Elliott Antman of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who heads the heart conference, praised the work.

"That opens up an entire new avenue for stem cell therapy, like a sophisticated version of a blood bank," he said. There's an advantage in not having to create a cell therapy for each patient, and it could spare them the pain and wait of having their own marrow harvested, he said.

The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Hare owns stock in a biotech company working on a treatment using a mixture of cells.

Juan Lopez received his own cells in the study, and said it improved his symptoms so much that at age 70, he was able to return to his job as an engineer and sales manager for a roofing manufacturer and ride an exercise bike.

"It has been a life-changing experience," said Lopez, who lives in Miami. "I can feel day by day, week by week, month by month, my improvement. I don't have any shortness of breath and my energy level is way up there. I don't have any fluid in my lungs."

And, he said happily, "My sex drive has improved!"

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .

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If Romney wins, he would begin his first term as a baffling figure

By Walter Shapiro

In the frenetic closing hours of a hard-fought presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has been ballyhooing his bipartisan credentials. It’s part of his final argument to persuadable voters that he’s really Moderate Mitt rather than the “severely conservative” Massachusetts governor of the Republican primaries.

In Sanford, Fla., on Monday, Romney boasted that in Massachusetts, working with “a Democrat legislature—85 percent Democrat—I helped turn my state from deficit to surplus.” And the Republican nominee in his final major campaign speech Friday in West Allis, Wis., pledged, “When I’m elected, I will work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress. I will meet regularly with their leaders.”

All this brings to mind a delicious story from Romney’s first days as governor in 2003. At a closed-to-the-press meeting with top legislative leaders, Romney told them about his private-sector management philosophy from Bain Capital, “My usual approach has been to set out the strategic vision for the enterprise and then work with the executive vice presidents to implement that strategy.”

As Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman make clear in their biography, “The Real Romney,” the mostly Democratic legislators were not amused by Romney’s business theories of political governance. Regardless of party, few legislators in Congress or on Beacon Hill in Boston see themselves as second-tier management implementing someone else’s strategic vision.

Romney has matured as a political leader over the past decade, though he has spent more time running for president than serving in public office. And Romney did have legislative victories in Massachusetts, including (shhh!) a health care reform plan eerily similar to the President Barack Obama’s.

The lasting relevance of that Massachusetts anecdote lies in the way it highlights the painful transition from the glib certainties of the campaign trail to the unrelenting demands of actually governing. It’s why it’s still hard to see the relevance to the White House in Romney’s frequent campaign trail claim, “I promise change—and I have a record of achieving it. I built a business, and turned around another.”

If Romney were elected, he would probably have to deal with a divided Congress in which Democrats retain a narrow majority in the Senate while the Republicans are in command of the House. The legislative arithmetic for Romney would revolve around the necessity to pick up about a dozen Democratic votes to overcome any Senate filibuster.

As the 45th president, Romney might well be able to enact a significant portion of his domestic agenda during the post-inaugural honeymoon period thanks to GOP discipline and Democratic skittishness.

Obamacare would almost certainly be eviscerated or eliminated, though in an era of austerity budgeting, it’s hard to imagine what alternatives would be offered to the uninsured. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would be made permanent—and business would be granted a permissive regulatory climate.

Far trickier would be enacting Romney’s signature proposal to slash all income tax rates by 20 percent and make up the revenue loss by closing loopholes and ending deductions. The intractable problem is that President Romney would either have to slash popular deductions like mortgage interest or concede that his numbers cannot add up as revenue neutral. Whenever Congress gets into the act on taxes, it is a safe bipartisan prediction that no voting bloc suffers and the deficit soars.

Beyond the bold strokes of his budget-slashing economic agenda, Romney would enter the Oval Office as a baffling political figure. He has reinvented himself politically so many times from his centrist days of his 1994 Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy to the fire-breathing conservatism of the Republican presidential primaries that it’s impossible for an outsider to know what’s real. In fact, Romney himself may be a bit bewildered as to where he stands.

A Romney presidency might be a portrait in schizophrenia.

On one hand, he probably would assign key roles to soft-right Republican advisers like the former Utah governor Mike Leavitt (who heads the transition team) and Beth Myers (who ran the vice-presidential search).

But whatever his personal beliefs, Romney also understands that the right-wing conservatives who dominate the Republican Party have accepted him with reservations. Whether picking Supreme Court nominees or charting his way through the thicket of social issues, President Romney would be keenly aware of the implicit threat of a primary challenge in 2016 if he deviates far from doctrinal purity.

Every new president in his confident, post-election naiveté makes serious errors. In fact, the desk chair in the Oval Office should come with a seat belt and training wheels.

The character test lies in how a new president responds to the discovery that no one, not even a veteran of Bain Capital, is prepared for the rigors of the White House. What he does with that knowledge—rather than his six-year quest for the White House—would be the true measure of the leadership style of Mitt Romney.

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Prosecutor: US soldier had blood of victims on him

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) — The soldier accused of killing 16 villagers in a nighttime rampage in Afghanistan returned to his base wearing a cape and with the blood of his victims on his rifle, belt, shirt and pants, a military prosecutor said Monday.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was incredulous when fellow U.S. soldiers drew their weapons on him when he returned to Camp Belambay in southern Afghanistan last March, prosecutor Lt. Col. Jay Morse said as a preliminary hearing opened at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

Bales then turned to one sergeant at the scene and said: "Mac, if you rat me out ..." Morse said.

Bales, 39, has been charged with 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder in one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nine of the victims were children. The hearing will help determine whether the case goes to a court martial.

Bales has not entered a plea. His attorneys have not discussed the evidence in the case, but say Bales has PTSD and suffered a concussive head injury during a prior deployment to Iraq.

The father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., sat beside one of his civilian lawyers, Emma Scanlan, in green fatigues as an investigating officer read the charges against Bales and informed him of his rights. Bales said, "Sir, yes, sir," when asked if he understood them.

Morse said Bales seemed utterly normal in the hours before the March 11 killings. With his colleagues, Bales watched the movie "Man on Fire," a fictional account of a former CIA operative on a revenge rampage.

Just before he left the base, Morse said, Bales told a Special Forces soldier that he was unhappy with his family life, and that the troops should have been quicker to retaliate for a roadside bomb attack that claimed one soldier's leg.

"At all times he had a clear understanding of what he was doing and what he had done," said Morse, who described Bales as lucid, coherent and responsive.

Bales is accused of slipping away from the remote outpost with an M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher to attack the villages of Balandi and Alkozai, in a dangerous district.

American officials have said they believe Bales broke the slaughter into two episodes — walking first to one village, returning to the base and slipping away again to carry out the second attack.

The prosecutor said Bales returned to the base at one point, telling a colleague about shooting people at a village. The soldier apparently took it as a bad joke and responded: "Quit messing around."

Prosecutors played for the first time a video captured by a surveillance blimp that showed a caped figure running toward the base, then stopping and dropping his weapons as he's confronted. There is no audio. Morse said Bales was the caped figure.

After being taken into custody, Morse said, Bales said: "I thought I was doing the right thing."

The hearing is scheduled to run as long as two weeks, and part of it will be held overnight to allow video testimony from witnesses, including an estimated 10 to 15 Afghans, in Afghanistan.

Bales' attorney, John Henry Browne, said the hearing will give the defense a chance to see what the government can prove. They are expecting a court martial.

Bales is an Ohio native who joined the Army in late 2001 — after the 9/11 attacks — as his career as a stockbroker imploded. An arbitrator entered a $1.5 million fraud judgment against him and his former company that went unpaid, and his attempt to start an investment firm in Florida also failed.

He was serving his fourth combat tour after three stints in Iraq, and his arrest prompted a national discussion about the stresses posed by multiple deployments.

Scanlan, his attorney, declined to say to what extent the lawyers hope to elicit testimony that could be used to support a mental-health defense. Bales himself will not make any statements because his lawyers said he would have nothing to gain.

Bales' wife, Karilyn, who plans to attend the hearing, had complained about financial problems on her blog in the year before the killings, and noted Bales was disappointed at being passed over for a promotion.

Browne described those stresses as garden-variety — nothing that would prompt such a massacre — and has also said, without elaborating, that Bales suffered a traumatic incident during his second Iraq tour that triggered "tremendous depression."

Bales remembers little or nothing from the time of the attacks, the defense said.

Scanlan, who deferred an opportunity to give an opening statement, said the Army had only recently turned over a preliminary DNA trace evidence report from the crime scenes, but defense experts have not had time to review it.

Bales, who spent months in confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., before being transferred to Lewis-McChord last month, is doing well, Scanlan said.

"He's getting prepared," she said, "but it's nerve-wracking for anybody."

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Apple sells 3 million iPads over first weekend

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Force is strong with dream 'Star Wars' directors

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's the question we've all been pondering from the second we heard that three more "Star Wars" movies were planned: Who will direct them?

When George Lucas announced last week he was selling Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.05 billion, he also revealed that the long-rumored Episodes VII, VIII and IX were in the works. Instantly, fans began tossing around names of directors who'd be a good fit for this revered material.

So let's call this a wish list, a wouldn't-it-be-cool list. Because a lot of the people here are tied up with franchises of their own — who knows if they'd be available to take over the first of these films, due out in 2015? Others are just people whose work I admire and I'd be curious to see how they'd apply their styles within this universe.

Then there's also the theory that Disney executives and Kathleen Kennedy, the current co-chairman of Lucasfilm who will become the division's president, won't want an auteur, someone who would put his or her own aesthetic stamp on the franchise. There goes your dream of seeing Chewbacca and R2-D2 through the eyes of David Lynch.

Whoever is chosen, whether it's a new director for each film or the same person taking over the trilogy, I think I speak for all of us when I say: Please, no Ewoks:

— J.J. Abrams: The most obvious choice, really. His sci-fi bona fides were already beyond reproach, and he solidified them with his reimagining of the "Star Trek" franchise in 2009. His sequel "Star Trek Into Darkness" is due out next year. This just makes sense all around.

— Joss Whedon: Another pretty obvious choice. Like Abrams, he has cultivated a well-deserved and loyal following among sci-fi fans between "Firefly" and "Serenity," but he catapulted himself into a whole 'nother stratosphere with this summer's enormous hit "The Avengers." Thing is, he may be just a tad busy with "The Avengers 2" — which is also due out in 2015.

— Brad Bird: He directed the most recent and best in film in the "Mission: Impossible" series, last year's "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol." It gave Bird the opportunity to use his animation expertise from the beloved Pixar films "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" to make a live-action movie that was lively and thrillingly staged. This would be an excellent fit.

— Jon Favreau: He's a massive "Star wars" fan and is extremely knowledgeable about Lucas and his life. He's also shown he can manipulate the kind of massive machinery it takes to make a blockbuster with the hugely successful "Iron Man" movies. This would also be a no-brainer.

— Christopher Nolan: Dark Knight. 'Nuff said.

— Peter Jackson: Sure, it makes sense. He's gotten his arms around gigantic franchises with rabid fan bases, to universal acclaim and awards, with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. But the last of his three "Hobbit" movies comes out in 2014. He might already be kinda wiped out at this point.

— David Fincher: A hugely confident, virtuoso filmmaker mostly known for drama, but his remake of the Swedish hit "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was epic and just heart-poundingly thrilling, and "The Social Network" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" showcased his mastery of special-effects trickery.

— Sam Mendes: This might seem like an odd choice until you see "Skyfall" this weekend. And you really should see "Skyfall" this weekend. But the "American Beauty" director said the whole experience of making a James Bond movie left him "knackered," to quote him, so who knows whether he'd be up for such a massive undertaking so soon.

— Matt Reeves: A longtime friend and collaborator of Abrams, he directed "Cloverfield" which showed he has an eye for visceral sci-fi action. But "Let Me In," his English-language version of the Swedish vampire thriller "Let the Right One In," revealed his ability to create a chilly, tense mood.

— Matthew Vaughn: His "Kick-Ass" was exactly that, a lively, funny tale of wannabe superheroes, while his "X-Men: First Class" was one of the better-reviewed films in the series. Before that, his debut film "Layer Cake" (starring a pre-Bond Daniel Craig) showed an instinctive ability to create tension and mood.

— Mark Romanek: He's just such an amazing visual stylist, I'd love to see what he'd do with this kind of well-established material. He made his name as a music video director, including the super-expensive space-age video for Michael Jackson's "Scream." But the couple of features he's made — "One Hour Photo" and "Never Let Me Go" — were so gorgeous and had such a signature look, I'd be curious to see what he could do with a bigger toy box.

— Kathryn Bigelow: She's just a bad-ass, a pioneering female action director. She proved she had a way with big, splashy set pieces two decades ago with "Point Break" and became the first woman to win the best-director Oscar for "The Hurt Locker." I'd love to see this male-centric universe from a female perspective.

— Guillermo del Toro: This is my dream "Star Wars" director. Of course, it will never happen. The ingenious maker of "Pan's Labyrinth" and the "Hellboy" movies has a visual style that's so wonderfully weird and inspired, it would never be allowed in such a structured setting. But it would be wondrous to watch.

— Ben Affleck: Probably not the first name you would have thought of a month ago. But "Argo" proved that Affleck is a major filmmaker, and showed he could step deftly from the intimate drama of "Gone Baby Gone" and "The Town" into much a larger and more complicated project. Plus it would allow him to redeem himself with fanboys following the debacle of "Daredevil."

___

Who would you like to see direct the next three "Star Wars" movies? Tell AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire through Twitter: http://twitter.com/christylemire .

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Study: Vitamins don't lower heart risks in men

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Multivitamins might help lower the risk for cancer in healthy older men but do not affect their chances of developing heart disease, new research suggests.

Two other studies found fish oil didn't work for an irregular heartbeat condition called atrial fibrillation, even though it is thought to help certain people with heart disease or high levels of fats called triglycerides in their blood.

The bottom line: Dietary supplements have varied effects and whether one is right for you may depend on your personal health profile, diet and lifestyle.

"Many people take vitamin supplements as a crutch," said study leader Dr. Howard Sesso of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "They're no substitute for a heart-healthy diet, exercising, not smoking, keeping your weight down," especially for lowering heart risks.

The studies were presented Monday at an American Heart Association conference in Los Angeles.

A separate analysis released in connection with the meeting showed that at least 1 in 3 baby boomers who are in good shape will eventually develop heart problems or have a stroke. The upside is that that will happen about seven years later than for their less healthy peers.

The study is "a wake-up call that this disease is very prevalent in the United States and even if you're doing a good job, you're not immune," said Dr. Vincent Bufalino, a Chicago-area cardiologist and spokesman for the American Heart Association.

The findings came in an analysis of five major studies involving nearly 50,000 adults aged 45 and older who were followed for up to 50 years.

The research was published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association, along with the vitamin paper and one fish oil study.

Multivitamins are America's favorite dietary supplement. About one-third of adults take them. Yet no government agency recommends their routine use for preventing chronic diseases, and few studies have tested them to see if they can.

A leading preventive medicine task force even recommends against beta-carotene supplements, alone or with other vitamins, to prevent cancer or heart disease because some studies have found them harmful. And vitamin K can affect bleeding and interfere with some commonly used heart drugs.

Sesso's study involved nearly 15,000 healthy male doctors given monthly packets of Centrum Silver or fake multivitamins. After about 11 years, there were no differences between the groups in heart attacks, strokes, chest pain, heart failure or heart-related deaths.

Side effects were fairly similar except for more rashes among vitamin users. The National Institutes of Health paid for most of the study. Pfizer Inc. supplied the pills and other companies supplied the packaging.

The same study a few weeks ago found that multivitamins cut the chance of developing cancer by 8 percent — a modest amount and less than what can be achieved from a good diet, exercise and not smoking.

Multivitamins also may have different results in women or people less healthy than those in this study — only 4 percent smoked, for example.

The fish-oil studies tested prescription-strength omega-3 capsules from several companies in two different groups of people for preventing atrial fibrillation, a fluttering, irregular heartbeat.

One study from South America aimed to prevent recurrent episodes in 600 participants who already had the condition. The other sought to prevent it from developing in 1,500 people from the U.S., Italy and Argentina having various types of heart surgery, such as valve replacement. About one third of heart-surgery patients develop atrial fibrillation as a complication.

Both studies found fish oil ineffective.

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner in Chicago contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Heart Association: http://www.heart.org

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

Vitamin facts: http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/MVMS-QuickFacts/

Dietary advice: www.dietaryguidelines.gov

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .

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Sandy could cast doubt on election results

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The devastating storm that slammed into the U.S. East Coast last week could send winds of uncertainty through Tuesday's presidential election, narrowing an already close contest and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome.

Though superstorm Sandy is unlikely to determine whether President Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House, experts said it could expose flaws in how the United States conducts elections, leading to protracted legal wrangling and lingering bitterness in a country already fractured along partisan lines.

In a worst-case scenario, the storm disruption could cause Obama to lose the popular vote and still win re-election, stirring up vitriolic memories of the contested 2000 battle that allowed Republican George W. Bush to triumph over Democrat Al Gore.

Last-minute changes imposed by election officials also could

further arm campaign lawyers looking to challenge the result.

At minimum, low turnout would add another wild card to an election projected to be among the closest in U.S. history. Voting could be an afterthought for hundreds of thousands of people still struggling with power outages, fuel shortages and plummeting temperatures.

"It's a possibility that we'll see significant drops in turnout in some of these densely populated areas," said George Mason University professor Michael MacDonald, a voter turnout expert.

"The effects could be quite dramatic in terms of the popular vote," he said.

ONE MORE HEADACHE

Tuesday's election presents yet another headache for local officials in New York and New Jersey, which were hardest hit by the storm. Rescue workers are still recovering bodies, 1.9 million homes and businesses have no power, and tens of thousands of people are without heat as temperatures dip near freezing.

Sandy, one of the most damaging storms to hit the United States, hammered the region with 80-mile-per-hour (129-kph) winds, while walls of water overran seaside communities. At least 113 people in the United States and Canada died.

Election authorities now face unprecedented challenges. In New York City, 143,000 voters have been assigned new polling stations. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday called the city's elections board "dysfunctional" and warned that it needs to clearly communicate changes to poll workers.

In New Jersey, where 25 percent of homes and businesses have no power, officials are allowing displaced voters to cast their ballots by email. In battered Monmouth County, officials are spreading the word about new polling locations in at least 29 towns and setting aside paper ballots to use if electronic voting machines fail.

"Whatever it takes, Asbury Park is voting," City Manager Terence Reidy said.

Legal experts said the late changes, however well-intentioned, may give the losing candidate a basis to challenge results.

"The devil is in the details and no doubt these new rules will be fertile ground for those who choose to challenge the results in the election." said Angelo Genova, a New Jersey election law expert who represents Democratic candidates in this election.

The post-Sandy chaos also could expose flaws in the arcane electoral college system the United States uses to elect presidents.

Candidates are not required to win the popular vote nationwide, but they must amass a majority of the 538 "electoral votes" that are awarded to each state based on population. The system was set up when the United States was founded, as a compromise between slave states and free states.

Usually the electoral college winner also wins the popular vote. But in two elections - 1876 and 2000 - the results diverged, creating historic controversies.

This year, Obama is expected to handily win New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the states most impacted by the storm. But his popular vote total could fall by hundreds of thousands if large numbers of storm-hit voters in Democratic areas are unable to participate. Conceivably, Obama could win the White House while losing the popular vote.

Several experts said they consider that outcome unlikely.

"You'll see lower turnout, yes, but it's not going to change the outcome of the election," said Hunter College political-science professor Jamie Chandler, who predicts Obama will win by at least 1 million votes.

If Obama carries the popular vote by a narrow margin, it could have implications on his ability to govern effectively, according to Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress.

"The more Obama has a solid popular margin the better his victory," he said.

On Sunday, several Republicans said the storm gave Obama an advantage in the campaign's final week by shifting public attention away from the sluggish economy and other topics they hoped to emphasize.

"The hurricane is what broke Romney's momentum," former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said on CNN.

Obama campaign officials said that they are confident the storm will not interfere with the voting process. But they intend to have legal experts on standby just in case.

"We're going to have lawyers who are ready to make sure people can exercise their right to vote. We're going to protect that as fiercely as we can," Obama senior adviser David Plouffe said on Friday.

(Fixes typo in quote in 14th paragraph) (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Erin Smith, Jonathan Spicer, Philip Barbara and Andrew Longstreth; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Paul Simao)

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China's Communists endorse Bo Xilai's expulsion

BEIJING (AP) — China's ruling Communist elite have endorsed the expulsion of former high-flying politician Bo Xilai and approved final preparations for the party's upcoming congress, state media reported Sunday.

The closed-door meeting of the Central Committee that ended Sunday was the last before Communist Party leader Hu Jintao and others in his government begin to cede power to Vice President Xi Jinping and others at the congress, which opens Thursday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the committee endorsed decisions to expel Bo and former Railways Minister Liu Zhijun from the Communist Party. Bo is accused of a range of misdeeds including covering up his wife's murder of a British businessman. Liu faces corruption charges.

The policy-setting committee also appointed two new vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Xinhua said.

The Central Committee is comprised of about 370 people from the upper ranks of the party, government and military.

Bo's ouster earlier this year widened rifts within a leadership that likes to project an image of unity. It also complicated the bargaining over the roster of new leaders.

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