Sandy's death toll climbs; millions without power

NEW YORK (AP) — Millions of people from Maine to the Carolinas waited wearily for the power to come back on Tuesday, and New Yorkers found themselves all but cut off from the modern world as the U.S. death toll from Superstorm Sandy climbed to 40, many of the victims killed by falling trees.
The extent of the damage in New Jersey, where the storm roared ashore Monday night with hurricane-force winds of 80 mph, began coming into focus: homes knocked off their foundations, boardwalks wrecked and amusement pier rides cast into the sea.
"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."
As the storm steamed inland, still delivering punishing wind and rain, 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.
Some bridges into New York reopened, but some tunnels 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.

Why Hurricane Sandy might cost Obama the popular vote—but not the presidency

This year’s black swan arrived on a rush of wind.
Once again, a highly unlikely, unanticipated event has roiled the waters—literally—late in the campaign cycle. Twelve years ago, it was the revelation of George W. Bush’s long-ago drunk driving arrest that likely cost him the popular vote and almost cost him the White House. Four years ago, the September collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of the global financial universe turned a likely Obama victory into a certain one.
And this year, the impact of Hurricane Sandy makes it more likely that we’ll see a presidential election where the winner winds up winning fewer votes than the loser.
Even before Sandy struck the East Coast Monday, an observation was gaining hurricane force: What if Sandy had struck a week later? What if, on Election Day, tens of millions were without power, with mass transit shut, roads flooded, polling stations shut or inaccessible? Would states or the federal government postpone the voting?
Well, we don’t have to turn to “what-if” questions (much as I enjoy them). The storm will likely have a measurable impact on next Tuesday’s voting.
In the past, we’ve seen less powerful storms knock out power for well over a week. Flooding has already taken place on a massive scale, meaning that property owners across the East, and hundreds of miles inland, will be coping with water in their cellars, living rooms, stores and offices. There are schools that may still be closed. This means there’s a very good chance that voters—maybe hundreds of thousands of them—will be coping with urgent, personal affairs, and the trip to the polls may simply be one burden too many.
Now consider where these voters are: overwhelmingly, they’re in states where Obama is all but certain to win, and with huge pluralities. (The latest poll out of New York gives the President a 61-35 advantage over Mitt Romney, which translates to a 2-million-vote plurality.)
This enormous lead, combined with the post-storm burdens, suggests that there’s markedly less incentive than usual for Obama voters in deep-blue states to vote.
The likely result? An increased chance that Obama will lose the national popular vote to Romney, and thus an increased chance that we’ll see, as we did in 2000, a split between the popular vote and the Electoral College tally that in fact decides the presidency.
Should Obama win the election this way, it would be historic: We’ve never had an incumbent president returned to office while losing the popular vote. (Gerald Ford came close; despite losing the popular vote by 1.7 million votes, a shift of barely 11,000 votes in Ohio and Hawaii would have kept him in the White House).
More significant, it would rekindle the argument over the Electoral College that arose—briefly—in 2000: Is this 200-year old mechanism, with an overtly anti-democratic tilt (small states have disproportionately more clout than big states), the right way to choose a president?
After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the ’90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought.
For one thing, losing the popular vote is not necessarily a sign of what “the people” really wanted. Candidates structure their campaigns around the Electoral College; had 2000 been a popular vote election, George W. Bush would have spent more time running up the vote in Texas and California’s inland empire, while Al Gore would have been campaigning in Dallas and Atlanta.
For another, the chaos that enveloped Florida back in 2000 might extend to every state if the popular vote was as close as it was in 1960, 1968, and 2000 (and as it may well be this time). Instead of lawyers and operatives descending on Florida, they might be loaded onto C-130s and parachuted into every state where disputes arose.
I grant you, this inquiry is speculative. It still may be that in the last week of the election, there will be a decisive shift in the electorate that turns a nail-biter into a clear victory. It may be that Sandy is not the Black Swan that will shape the outcome.
But what this storm has done is to raise the possibility of a different kind of storm—a political one—descending on us next week.

At final debate, Obama’s foreign policy offers tempting targets. Can Romney hit them?

Questionable progress amid mounting casualties in Afghanistan. A bloody civil war in Syria. Escalating tensions with Russia. A freshly assertive China worrying its neighbors. Iran defiantly pursuing its nuclear program. The killing of the American ambassador to Libya. Mitt Romney will have his pick of targets Monday night at his third and final debate with President Barack Obama, a faceoff focused on world affairs.
It's not the top issue on many voters' minds (that would be the economy, of course). But aides to both campaigns say voters need to be comfortable with the idea of their preferred candidate representing the country overseas—and responding to a literal life-or-death crisis.
Romney's mission seems straightforward: Convince any doubting voters that he can handle foreign policy. But Romney comes into the debate effectively the underdog, and not just because he isn't the commander in chief. Some of his forays into world affairs have foundered on avoidable missteps that at times have left him looking as awkward on the world stage as a very small dog trying to bite a watermelon.
Obama joked Thursday about his rival's best-known foreign policy struggle: a trip this summer to Britain, Israel and Poland that helped raised Romney's profile but was marred by headlines about gaffes.
"World affairs are a challenge for every candidate," Obama said at the Alfred E. Smith charity dinner in New York. "Some of you guys remember, after my foreign trip in 2008, I was attacked as a celebrity because I was so popular with our allies overseas. And I have to say, I'm impressed with how well Gov. Romney has avoided that problem."
At the debate, Obama plans to employ a strategy that calls for trying to make Romney look like a risky bet, while emphasizing his own successes (as Obama joked at the dinner: "Spoiler alert: We got bin Laden").
But you can cut out the smug chuckling, Obama fans: The political firestorm over the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, which claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, has come as the president's poll numbers on foreign policy have slumped. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey released Sunday found that 49 percent of registered voters approved of Obama's handling of world affairs—the same as one month ago, but down from 54 percent approval and 40 percent disapproval in August. And the president's lead over Romney on who would make a better commander in chief slipped: He was up 44 percent to 41 percent compared to 47 percent to 39 percent one month ago.
And Obama isn't always sure-footed: Republicans, led by Romney, have hammered him for describing the bloody unrest in the Middle East as "bumps in the road" to democracy, for example. And the president earlier this year apologized to Poland's president after he referred to a "Polish death camp" that was on Polish soil but was built and operated by the German Nazis.
Against this backdrop, some foreign policy analysts have suggested that the two candidates differ mostly in symbol, not substance, when it comes to foreign affairs. There is some truth to this: On certain key issues, they don't disagree nearly as much as one, or both, of the candidates insist that they do. And when challengers become incumbents they often (re)discover the value of pragmatism. But on a handful of issues, a Romney administration could look sharply different from an Obama second term. Either way, here are some of the likely fights we'll see on Monday night.
Iran's nuclear program
Obama and Romney agree on the need for tough economic sanctions, backed with the threat of military force, to keep Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. But each has a different "red line"—the point at which he would be willing to take the country to war.
The key distinction: Obama says Iran cannot be allowed to build a nuclear weapon—and insists that the United States and its allies will know if it tries to put one together, and will act to prevent it. Romney says Iran cannot be allowed to have the capability to build a nuclear weapon.
Romney's position is in line with that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly pressed the Obama administration to take a harder approach with Iran. It also sets a lower threshold for military action. Romney says he favors tougher sanctions than the ones Obama has approved, and insists that the president's threats to go to war as a last resort haven't been credible.

NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has Obama, Romney tied at 47 percent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are tied at 47 percent support each among likely voters with just over two weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday said.

The nationwide poll, which was conducted after last Monday's presidential debate, reinforced the perception of the race as a cliffhanger.

It showed "a little bit of a lead" for Romney among the critical "battleground" states as a group, NBCcorrespondent Chuck Todd said on the network's "Meet the Press" program.

Among a larger sample of registered voters, Obama led Romney 49% to 44%, the Wall Street Journalsaid in a report on the poll on its website. This, however, was down from a seven-point edge the president had among registered voters in late September, the Journal said.

"Sitting at 47 is a good number for a challenger, but not a good number for an incumbent" close to the November 6 election, NBC's Todd said on Meet the Press. He said Obama's lead among women - 51 percent to 43 percent - was his smallest all year long.

Obama's campaign adviser David Axelrod, appearing on the NBC program, said polls for the election were "all over the map." He said he had always predicted Obama's re-election attempt would be close.

"If you look at the early voting that's going on around the country, it's very robust and its very favorable to us. And we think that's a better indicator than these public polls, which are frankly all over the, all over the map," Axelrod said.

Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who has helped Romney prepare for campaign debates, told Meet the Press: "I like what I see because the trend is in our direction ... that's where you want to be at this point in the campaign."

Romney has been closing in on Obama in recent weeks, with several surveys showing the pair tied or close to it, as Americans remain split between giving Obama more time to fix the economy, or choosing a former business executive who argues he knows best how to create jobs.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Saturday showed Obama with a razor-thin lead, 46 percent to 45 percent. The margin had narrowed from Friday when he had a three-point lead.

After the third and final presidential debate on Monday, Obama travels later in the week to battleground states Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Virginia and Ohio to try to fend off Romney's challenge.

The NBC/WSJ poll of 816 likely voters and 1,000 registered voters was conducted October 17-20. It has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.43 percentage points for the sample of likely voters and plus-minus 3.1 percentage points for registered voters.

Top Facebook executive quits to join London's Tech City

LONDON (Reuters) - Joanna Shields, head of social media group Facebook's operations in Europe, is leaving to join a British government-sponsored venture to create London's answer to Silicon Valley.

Tech City Investment Organisation was set up in April 2011 to attract inward investment focused on an area in London's east End, dubbed "silicon roundabout" and supporting start-ups looking to expand.

It has signed up companies including Cisco, Google and Intel.

"The success of Tech City shows just what can happen when we back some of our most innovative and aspiring companies to grow," Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement on Sunday.

Shields, will join TCIO in January, said she would lead a drive that hopes to make London the number one location for tech in the world.

Her departure will be a blow to Facebook, the world's biggest social network, as the U.S. group seeks to reassure shareholders after a rough reception on Wall Street since its high profile listing in May.

Concern about its slowing revenue growth rate has seen its market valuation halve - Facebook shares closed at $19.00 on Friday, compared with a $38.00 issue price in May.

"Facebook supports the UK Government's vision for building a stronger technology-based economy and start-up ecosystem, and we wish Joanna every success," a company spokesman said.

Earlier this week, Facebook opened an engineering centre in London, its first outside the United States.

Apple drops Java after experts warn Mac users on its security

BOSTON (Reuters) - Apple Inc is removing old versions of Oracle Corp's Java software from Internet browsers on the computers of its customers when they install the latest update to its Mac operating system.

Apple, which has previously included Java with installations of Mac OS X, announced the move on its support site. It said that customers need to obtain Java directly from Oracle if they want to access web content written the widely used programming language. (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572)

Apple did not provide a reason for the change and both companies declined to comment.

Java is a computer language that enables programmers to write one set of code to run on virtually any type of machine. It is widely used on the Internet so that Web developers can make their sites accessible from multiple browsers running on Macs or Microsoft Windows PCs.

Two years ago both companies said they had agreed that Apple would one day stop providing Java software to Mac customers and that would Oracle to take on that responsibility. They did not provide a date for that transition.

Apple is implementing that change in the wake of a Java security scare that prompted some security experts to caution computer users to only use Java on an as-needed basis.

Security experts in Europe discovered Java bugs in late August that hackers had exploited to launch attacks. It took Oracle several days to release an update to Java to correct those flaws.

Adam Gowdiak, a researcher with Polish security firm Security Explorations, said on Friday that he has since found two new security bugs in Java that continue to make computers vulnerable to attack.

Gowdiak said that removing Java from Mac browsers reduces the risks of an attack.

(Reporting By Jim Finkle; Editing by Richard Chang)

White House prepared to meet one-on-one with Iran

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says it is prepared to talk one-on-one with Iran to find a diplomatic settlement to the impasse over Tehran's reported pursuit of nuclear weapons, but there's no agreement now to meet.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Saturday that President Barack Obama has made clear that he will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and will do whatever's necessary to block that from happening. Vietor said Iran must come in line with its obligations, or else faced increased pressure.

"The onus is on the Iranians to do so, otherwise they will continue to face crippling sanctions and increased pressure," Vietor said in a statement. He noted that efforts to get Iran back to the table with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany — the so-called "P5+1" — continue.

Iran has been a recurring issue in the presidential election campaign and Vietor's statement was released shortly after The New York Times reported Saturday that the U.S. and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to negotiations. The paper said Iran has insisted the talks wait until after the Nov. 6 election.

Vietor, however, denied that any such agreement had been reached.

"It's not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections," he said. "We continue to work with the P5+1 on a diplomatic solution and have said from the outset that we that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally."

Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will meet Monday night in a debate focusing on foreign policy and Iran's nuclear ambitions will likely be a topic. Obama has said he'll prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He hopes sanctions alongside negotiations can get Iran to halt uranium enrichment. But the strategy, which began during President George W. Bush's administration, hasn't worked yet. Obama holds out the threat of military action as a last resort. Romney has accused Obama of being weak on Iran and says the U.S. needs to present a greater military threat.

Despite unprecedented global penalties, Iran's nuclear program is advancing as it continues to defy international pressure, including four rounds of sanctions from the U.N. Security Council, to prove that its atomic intentions are peaceful.

Those sanctions, coupled with tough measures imposed by the United States and European nations are taking their toll, particularly on Iran's economy. Iranian authorities have in recent weeks been forced to quell protests over the plummeting value of the country's currency. The rial lost nearly 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in a week in early October, but has since slightly rebounded.

U.S. officials say they are hopeful that pressure from the sanctions may be pushing Iran's leaders toward concessions, including direct talks with the United States. But several said on Saturday that they did not believe such discussions would happen any time soon.

If one-on-one talks are to occur, they would likely follow the model that the U.S. has used in six-nation nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea, the officials said.

In those discussions, U.S. negotiators have met separately with their North Korean counterparts but only as part of the larger effort, which also involves China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. Direct U.S.-North Korean talks are preceded and followed by intense consultations with the other members of the group.

However, the direct talks with North Korea have yet to bear fruit and U.S. officials warned that talks with Iran may not yield anything either. If U.S.-Iran talks do occur, they would likely be part of the P5+1 process, which groups the Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States and is overseen by the European Union. The group has met numerous times with Iranian officials but has yet to achieve any significant progress.

In late September, the group instructed EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to reach out to Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to organize another meeting. No date had been set for the possible resumption of talks.

Iran says its program is for peaceful energy and research purposes but Western nations fear the Islamic republic is determined to develop nuclear weapons and fundamentally reshape the balance of power in the Middle East. That would pose a grave threat to Israel.

Israel has threatened to strike Iran's nuclear facilities if Tehran doesn't stop uranium enrichment a process that can be a pathway to nuclear arms. Israel could decide to strike Iran's nuclear sites on its own, and Israeli leaders say time to act is running out. They have also hinted they would like U.S. support for any such attack.

An Israeli strike on Iran with or without Washington's involvement would likely draw retribution from Tehran including possible attacks on U.S. and Israeli interests overseas or disruptions to the transit of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which could send oil prices skyrocketing.

Obama has counseled patience as public as American public support for another Mideast conflict is low with the Iraq war over and the conflict in Afghanistan winding down.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Andrew Miga contributed to this report.

Apple

Apple has spent more than a decade leaching its hip little tech toys into American homes and pop culture with very little pushback from the stodgy tech sector. Time's up.

A month after releasing its iPhone 5 and about a week away from debuting its iPad Mini and newest 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple finds itself in a peculiar position. Revenue jumped 23% last quarter from the same period a year ago and the company's next year-end summary follows up a 66% annual revenue spike in its 2011 report.

As ubiquitous as the company seems, though, it's still not as big a force as it could be. Its 17% market share among mobile phones in the U.S. still trailsSamsung (25.7%) and LG (18.2%), according to market research firm ComScore.

Meanwhile, its iOS platform's 34.3% share of the U.S. smartphone market still trails Google Android's growing 52.6% stake.

Obama promotes positive signs in housing market

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eager to take note of signs of recovery, President Obama is drawing attention to improvements in the housing industry while keeping up pressure on Republicans to back policies the White House says would help struggling homeowners refinance their debts.
"One of the heaviest drags on our recovery is getting lighter," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "Now we have to build on the progress we've made and keep moving forward."
Obama cited an increased pace in construction of single-family houses and apartments in September. The Commerce Department said this week that last month's construction pace was the fastest in more than four years. Home sales are also up compared with last year, though sales dipped in September from August's two-year high.
With the economy still the dominant issue of the presidential campaign, Obama has been counting on voters believing that conditions are improving. But even indicators that are favorable to Obama still don't signal a strong recovery.
Obama conceded that too many mortgage holders are still under water, owing more than their homes are worth, and blamed congressional Republicans for not passing legislation he proposed in February that would lower lending rates for millions of borrowers. Republicans have objected, citing among other things the estimated $5 billion to $10 billion cost of the proposal.
Obama urged listeners to contact their members of Congress to push for the plan's passage.
"Let's be honest — Republicans in Congress won't act on this plan before the election," Obama said. "But maybe they'll come to their senses afterward if you give them a push."
In the Republican address, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona said Obama had inherited a fragile economy, "but he's done little to improve it."
Flake, who is running for the Senate from Arizona, accused the Obama administration of regulatory overreach, citing examples in his own state to bar mining on certain lands, impose expensive requirements on power plants and threatening to require hotels and resorts to install lifts in pools and spas.
He called on Senate Democrats to pass a budget. "As bad as our fiscal challenges are, it's not too late," he said. "The bell has rung and it is time for us to get to work."  

Utah Symphony violinist to retire after 69 years

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The longest-tenured member of the Utah Symphony is calling it quits.
Violinist Frances Darger is retiring this year after joining the symphony as a 17-year-old college freshman in 1942.
KSL reports (http://bit.ly/MOJz4t ) a British writer last fall compiled a roster of the longest-serving orchestra musicians, and the 86-year-old Darger was at the top of the list.
Darger raves about Maurice Abravanel, saying his selection as music director in 1947 transformed the orchestra into a world-renowned ensemble. He won recording contracts and brought in prestigious guest artists.
She says she stayed with the orchestra so long for the simple reason that she loves "all that pretty music." She says "it's just been a wonderful, wonderful ride."
Darger officially retires after this summer's Deer Valley Music Festival.

Folk artist Doc Watson's responsive after surgery: agent

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) - Grammy-winning folk musician Doc Watson remained in critical condition on Friday but had regained some strength after undergoing colon surgery at a North Carolina hospital, according to his management team.

A statement on Folklore Productions International's website said the 89-year-old performer was "resting and responsive" following his surgery on Thursday.

"The family appreciates everyone's prayers and good wishes," the statement said.

Watson, a singer of bluegrass, country, blues and gospel music, is famous for his flatpicking style on the guitar and his interpretations of folk songs from bygone eras.

A Folklore employee said Watson had fallen earlier in the week at his home in Deep Gap, North Carolina, and was unable to get up without assistance.

He was taken to a local hospital, where his condition was discovered to be more serious than the fall, according to the Folklore office.

On Thursday, he was transferred to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem for surgery, the Folklore employee said.

Watson has won seven Grammy Awards, in addition to the Grammy for lifetime achievement he received in 2004. Most recently, he won in 2006 in the category of best country instrumental performance for his playing on "Whiskey Before Breakfast."

For much of his career, he toured and recorded with his son, Merle Watson. Doc Watson's most popular recordings include the songs "Tom Dooley," "Shady Grove" and "Rising Sun Blues."

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins)

After NYC beer museum tour, hop on over to its bar

NEW YORK (AP) — Beer was hip in New York long before hipsters were into craft brews, according to a new exhibit at the New-York Historical Society that traces the history of beer all the way back to drunken Colonial times.
And it's not your typical staid museum display: There's even a bar at the end of it.
"Beer Here," which opens Friday in New York City and runs through Sept. 2, aims to show that beer is steeped in the state's alcoholic history. From a manifest with beer orders for George Washington's troops to the diary of a 14-year-old hop picker, the exhibit capitalizes on the growing popularity of microbreweries and beer gardens. And it makes the case that, once upon a time, New York — once called New Amsterdam — was at the forefront of the American beer scene.
"Beer was very important to New Yorkers from the earliest point of colonization," said museum curator Debra Schmidt Bach. "The Dutch have a strong beer tradition, so it was a very common drink in their culture, and that's true for the English, as well."
New York City was notorious for its taverns in the mid-1700s, when there were more watering holes here than in any other colony after Dutch colonists brought beer over by the boatload from Europe. Back then, beer was often healthier to drink than water.
"Clean water was a huge issue," Schmidt Bach said. "And most of the sources that had been developed in the early 18th century were pretty polluted by the 1770s. So absolutely, beer was much cleaner."
Scratched, cloudy-looking ale and porter bottles excavated from lower Manhattan are on display as evidence of beer's popularity there during the 18th and 19th centuries. And an accounting ledger from tavern owner William D. Faulkner — no relation to the famous writer — shows he supplied beer to thirsty Revolutionary War soldiers, Continental and British soldiers alike.
Old-fashioned tools used to harvest ice in upstate New York are on display, detailing the process that enabled brewers to keep beer cool during the warmer months. Hops became a commercial crop in 1808, thanks to the state's hop-friendly climate, and Bavarian lagers arrived soon afterward, brought by German immigrants seeking political asylum.
The museum also has old packages of hops from that era, which were used for medicinal purposes to treat everything from sleeplessness to "all disordered conditions of the Nervous System."
But blue mildew outbreaks and spider mite infestations decimated the hops a century later — and the advent of Prohibition was the death knell for New York's dominance as a viable hops-growing area. The region has lagged behind the rest of the country's beer entrepreneurs ever since.
But the explosion of microbreweries in recent years has some people hoping beer is making a comeback.
"Twenty years ago, on the West Coast, the market there was much bigger at that time than it is here now," Taylor said. "There's nowhere to go but up. It's going to get tremendously popular."
Some advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s inspired Ben Hudson, the marketing director at Brooklyn Brewery, who got an early look at the exhibit. The ads included six-packs of Rheingold beer cans from 1952, featuring pretty girls with red lips who competed in the beer maker's "Miss Rheingold" beauty contest. (The yellow satin dress worn by "Miss Rheingold" of 1956 was also on display.) "It's so cool to see what our forebearers though was a good idea," Hudson said. "Entire print ads devoted to how beer brings out a sense of liberty as an American? I just get a great kick out of that."
The exhibit's final stop is an actual tasting room, where visitors can sample the latest lagers and ales from local breweries.
"This is a great exhibit to show that it's not a fad," said Kelly Taylor, the brew master for the Manhattan-based Heartland Brewery, which provided some of the beer. "People think of the cheap beer you get in the grocery store. It's like no, there's actually a history; it's a way of life. It's like this incredible old world beverage that people take for granted."

New Duerer exhibit focuses on artist's early years

 NUREMBERG, Germany (AP) — A new exhibit in Albrecht Duerer's hometown opened Thursday, bringing together works by the German Renaissance artist from a dozen countries with a focus on his formative early years.

The Duerer exhibition at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum is the largest in Germany in 40 years, encompassing the artist's creative period until 1505, including self-portraits and portraits of family and friends, as well as his ambitious nature studies and drawings.

"It made a lot of sense for us to focus on Duerer's development until the year 1505," said curator Daniel Hess. "During this period of time the important developments of his artistic work took place."

The exhibit includes the museum's own Duerer collection as well as 120 of the artist's most important works provided by 51 lenders around the world.

The oldest work — "Self-Portrait" from the Albertina museum in Vienna — dates back to 1484 when Duerer was only 13-years-old. The latest, from 1504, is the "Adoration of the Magi" from the Uffizi in Florence.

His wide body of work also includes religious works, altarpieces, copper engravings and woodcuts.

Duerer was born in 1471 in Nuremberg, which was an economic and cultural center at the time. He died there in 1528.

During his life he made several trips abroad, including two to Italy that had a strong influence on his life. Landscape watercolors made on his first journey there in 1494 are considered some of his most beautiful paintings, and his second trip there in 1505 brought him into contact with Venetian master Giovanni Bellini, whose influence is seen in Duerer's pictures of men and women from this period.

"The mixture of wide loose strokes and fine calligraphic finish make Duerer's paintings so lively," Hess said. "He is never boring and brash. His work is very virtuosic, free and very accurate."

The exhibit runs through Sept. 2.

UK virtual orchestra puts you in conductor's stand

LONDON (AP) — A London museum is putting the conductor's baton in visitors' hands, allowing guests to direct a virtual orchestra using three-dimensional motion sensors.
The "Universe of Sound" installation is an effort by the British capital's Science Museum to dissect how classical music is made, using specially shot footage, immersive sound, and 360 degree projections to give an unusually close-up view of the well-regarded Philharmonia Orchestra.
"At the end of the whole installation you become part of the entirety," said David Whelton, the museum's managing director. "You become part of the Philharmonia."
At the center of the Science Museum's exhibition is footage of Gustav Holst's "The Planets," a majestic orchestral suite at times martial, moody or ethereal. Some 37 cameras shot the Philharmonia's 132 musicians running through the score on the specially-blacked out stage at Watford Colosseum, just outside London, early this year.
They were shot over the course of a single day, playing together, playing in groups, or playing alone. That's something which allows those browsing the footage — projected on large screens against the Science Museum's darkened, sonorous interior — to zoom in on a single section or even a single musician, picking single strands of sound from the general swell of the music.
Greg Felton, who does digital work for the orchestra, pointed an Associated Press reporter to the woodwind section's subtle, atmospheric notes.
"There are people who know The Planets incredibly well who would never have heard this," he said.
The exhibit also gives visitors a chance to see parts of the orchestra in an up-close way which wouldn't otherwise have been possible, focusing on a harpist's hands or a violinist's fingers. One camera was even attached to a trombone's slide, whipping back and forth as the brass section got into gear.
"None of the musicians can get away with anything," remarked the Philharmonia's principle percussionist, Kevin Hathway, who was on hand to demonstrate an interactive drum set.
Would-be maestros may like the virtual conductor program the best.
Several installations at the museum use Microsoft's Kinect technology to capture the hand movements of visitors who stand in specially-made pods. Raise your left hand and the orchestra — which appears on a set of television screens — plays louder. Speed the movement of your right hand and the tempo of the music increases. Get the movements wrong and the musicians get out of tune. Get it really wrong and a computerized audience starts coughing politely.
The conduct-yourself exhibits are likely to be popular, but Felton seemed to like the close-ups the best — particularly the ones that showed musicians resting between movements, their hands slack but their faces alert.
He stopped at a video of organist Richard Pearce, normally hidden behind his massive instrument, far from the back-and-forth of the conductor's baton.
"You never get to see that guy play!" Felton said.
Universe of Sound opens Wednesday. Admission is free.

Police arrest artist setting up 'I Love NY' work

NEW YORK (AP) — An artist who was setting up an illuminated "I Love New York"-themed public art display in Brooklyn was arrested after the wired contraption was mistaken for an explosive device.

Takeshi Miyakawa, a visual artist and furniture designer, was arrested Saturday after placing the installation in two separate areas of the same New York City neighborhood. His lawyer and employer both called the arrest a misunderstanding.

The first apparatus was found Friday morning after a caller reported a suspicious package to police. It consisted of a plastic bag that contained a battery and was suspended from a metal rod attached to a tree. The bag, which had the classic "I Love New York" logo printed on it, was connected by a wire to a plastic box that contained more wires.

The area was evacuated for two hours until a bomb squad determined that the device was not dangerous.

The artist's friend, Louis Lim, said Monday that the art installation was nothing more than a translucent plastic bag with a battery-powered flashlight inside it.

"At night, when it's hung, it looks like the bag is glowing," Lim said. "The reason he did this was to lift people's spirits. He was simply trying to say that he loves the city and spread that attitude around."

At about 2 a.m. Saturday, a police officer discovered Miyakawa on a ladder not far from where the first contraption was found. Police said he was tying a similar "I Love New York" bag to a public lamp post.

Miyakawa was charged with two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, two counts of placing a false bomb or hazardous substance in the first degree, two counts of placing a false bomb or hazardous substance in the second degree, two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment and two counts of second-degree criminal nuisance.

A judge ordered him held pending a psychiatric evaluation. His lawyer, Deborah J. Blum, said Monday that she is filing for emergency relief to have Miyakawa released. A court date was set for June 21 to review the results of the evaluation.

"He's still being held," Blum said Monday. "I believe that it was a gross misunderstanding and other than that I don't have any other comment."

Miyakawa, who was born in Tokyo and is about 50 years old, has worked for a New York-based architect Rafael Vinoly for the last 20 years and also has an independent design practice.

Vinoly's firm released a statement Monday praising Miyakawa for his "extraordinary brand of professionalism" and said he has been a mentor to generations of young architects.

"Takeshi is a fabulous human being and a person of extraordinary talent," Vinoly said. "We hope this misunderstanding is cleared up as quickly as possible."

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement that the charges sounded "like a wild overreaction."

"It's hard to understand why a light-up bag in a tree would be treated as an attempted terrorist act unless there's more to the story than has been reported in the press thus far," she said.

In 2007, an artist touched off a terror scare in Boston by placing electronic devices around the city as part of a marketing stunt for Cartoon Network. The city closed bridges, roads and public transit before authorities realized the signs were not bombs.

On an average day, the NYPD receives nearly 100 reports of a suspicious package. Last year, there were more than 4,000 such reports. The number generally rises following any word of terror threats in New York and around the world.