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...

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Back to business after Sandy's hard hit

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Millions of people across the U.S. Northeast stricken by massive storm Sandy will attempt to resume normal lives on Wednesday as companies, markets and airports reopen, despite grim projections of power and mass transit outages lasting several more days. With six days to go before the November 6 elections, President Barack Obama will visit storm-ravaged areas of the...

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Poll: Australians split over PM's sexism judgment

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australians appear to be split over Prime Minister Julia Gillard's judgment that her main political rival is sexist.In a fiery speech to Parliament on Oct. 9, Gillard branded opposition leader Tony Abbott a misogynist for a string of allegedly sexist comments. Her commentary has been lauded by feminists around the world, but a poll published Tuesday showed Australians are...

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Nokia says shipping new Lumia smartphones this week

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Daniel Day-Lewis gives poet dad's work to Oxford

LONDON (AP) — Actor Daniel Day-Lewis is donating papers belonging to his father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, to Oxford University.

The archive, which fills 54 boxes, includes early drafts of the poet's work, as well as letters from actor John Gielgud and famous literary figures such as W.H. Auden, Robert Graves and Philip Larkin.

Daniel Day-Lewis stars this year in the much-anticipated film "Lincoln," about the assassinated U.S. president. He and his sister, Tamasin, said Tuesday they are thrilled that their father's papers will be housed at Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and become accessible to students and researchers.

Cecil Day-Lewis, who studied classics and became poetry professor at Oxford, was appointed the U.K. poet laureate in 1968. He also wrote mystery novels and stories under the name of Nicholas Blake. He died in 1972.

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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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Superstorm Sandy clobbers New York City

  NEW YORK, N.Y. - Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline and hurled a record-breaking four-metre surge of seawater at New York City on Monday, roaring ashore and putting the presidential campaign on hold a week before election day At least 13 deaths were blamed on the storm.

Sandy knocked out power to at least 5.7 million people, and New York's main utility said large sections of Manhattan had been plunged into darkness by the storm, with 250,000 customers without power as water pressed into the island from three sides, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads.

Just before its centre reached land, the storm was stripped of hurricane status, but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still packed hurricane-force wind, and forecasters were careful to say it remained every bit as dangerous to the 50 million people in its path. By late night, the centre of the storm was over southern New Jersey.

The National Hurricane Center announced at 8 p.m. that Sandy had come ashore near Atlantic City. It smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor, from Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia, New York and Boston, with stinging rain and gusts of more than 85 135 kilometres per hour. The sea surged a record of nearly four metres at the foot of Manhattan, flooding the financial district and subway tunnels.

The 13 deaths were reported in New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Some of the victims were killed by falling trees. Police in Toronto said a woman was killed by a falling sign as high winds closed in on Canada's largest city.

As it made its way toward land, it converged with a cold-weather system that turned into a fearsome superstorm, a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high wind but of snow. Forecasters warned of six-metre waves bashing into the Chicago lakefront and up to 90 centimetres of snow in West Virginia.

Storm damage was projected at $10 billion to $20 billion, meaning it could prove to be one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney suspended their campaigning with just over a week to go before election day.

At the White House, Obama made a direct appeal to those in harm's way: "Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying. When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate. Don't delay, don't pause, don't question the instructions that are being given, because this is a powerful storm."

The storm washed away a section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey. Water was splashing over the seawalls at the southern tip of Manhattan.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said late Monday that the worst of the rain had passed for the city, and that the high tide that sent water sloshing into Manhattan from three sides was receding.

Still, authorities also feared the surge of seawater would damage the underground electrical and communications lines in lower Manhattan that are vital to the nation's financial centre.

Water began pooling in rail yards and on highways near the Hudson River waterfront on Manhattan's far west side. On coastal Long Island, floodwaters swamped cars, downed trees and put neighbourhoods under water as beachfronts and fishing villages bore the brunt of the storm. A police car was lost rescuing 14 people from the popular resort Fire Island.

In downtown Manhattan, rescue workers floated bright orange rafts on flooded streets, while police officers with loudspeakers told people to go home.

"Now it's really turning into something," said Brian Damianakes, taking shelter in a bank vestibule and watching a trash can blow down the street in Battery Park.

A construction crane atop a luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and dangled precariously. Residents in surrounding buildings were ordered to move to lower floors and the streets below were cleared, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

The facade of a four-storey Manhattan building in the Chelsea neighbourhood crumbled and collapsed suddenly, leaving the lights, couches, cabinets and desks inside visible from the street. No one was hurt, although some of the falling debris hit a car.

The major American stock exchanges closed for the day, the first unplanned shutdown since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Wall Street expected to remain closed on Tuesday. The United Nations cancelled all meetings at its New York headquarters.

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

Authorities had warned that New York City and Long Island could get the worst of the storm surge: a three-metre onslaught of seawater that could swamp Lower Manhattan, flood the subways and damage the underground network of electrical and communications lines that are vital to the nation's financial capital.

"Leave immediately. Conditions are deteriorating very rapidly, and the window for you getting out safely is closing," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told those in low-lying areas earlier in the day.

Defiant New Yorkers jogged, pushed strollers and took snapshots of churning New York Harbor during the day Monday, trying to salvage normal routines.

Without most stores and museums open, tourists were left to snap photos of the World Trade Center site, Wall Street and Times Square in largely deserted streets.

Belgian tourist Gerd Van don Mooter-Dedecker, 56, wandered in to Trinity Church after learning that a planned shopping spree with her husband Monday wouldn't happen. "We brought empty suitcases so we could fill them up," she said.

As rain from the leading edges began to fall over the Northeast on Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people from Maryland to Connecticut were ordered to leave low-lying coastal areas, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City, 50,000 in Delaware and 30,000 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Obama declared emergencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, authorizing federal relief work to begin well ahead of time. He promised the government would "respond big and respond fast" after the storm hits.

Off North Carolina, a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" went down in the storm, and 14 crew members were rescued by helicopter from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 5.5-metre seas. Another crew member was found hours later and was hospitalized in critical condition. The captain was still missing.

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UN says 28,000 displaced in Myanmar ethnic clashes

SITTWE, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar's government said Monday it has boosted security in a western state hit by ethnic and sectarian unrest as the number of displaced rose to 28,000 people, mostly Muslims.

The latest violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, which began Oct. 21, killed at least 84 people and injured 129 more, according to the government. Human rights groups believe the true toll could be far higher.

A tense calm has held across the region since Saturday, Rakhine state spokesman Myo Thant said.

He said security had been stepped up in the state, with additional police and soldiers deployed, but he declined to give details.

The priority now is to ensure those who lost homes have adequate shelter and food, he said.

U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar Ashok Nigam said the figure of 28,000 displaced was likely to rise because some people who fled affected areas along the coast by boat have yet to be counted.

An estimated 27,300 of the displaced are Muslims, Nigam said, adding that the U.N. figure was based on statistics from local authorities.

Human Rights Watch has said that the Rohingya have suffered the brunt of the latest violence.

Tensions have simmered in the region since clashes first broke out in June, displacing 75,000 people — also mostly Muslims.

The long-brewing conflict is rooted in a dispute over the Muslim residents' origin. Although many Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, they are widely denigrated as intruders who came from neighboring Bangladesh to steal scarce land.

The U.N. estimates their population in Myanmar at 800,000. But the government does not count them as one of the country's 135 ethnic groups, and so — like neighboring Bangladesh — denies them citizenship. Human rights groups say racism also plays a role: Many Rohingya, who speak a Bengali dialect and resemble Muslim Bangladeshis, have darker skin and are heavily discriminated against.

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Associated Press writer Aye Aye Win reported from Yangon, Myanmar.

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In San Francisco, tech investor leads a political makeover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conway and Lee make no apologies.

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

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

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

ODD COUPLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHANGING TAX POLICY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Prowler at Cruise's home turns out to be neighbor

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Police say a security guard at actor Tom Cruise's house used a stun gun on a would-be prowler, but the man turned out to be an intoxicated neighbor who may have mistakenly entered the property.

Lt. Lincoln Hoshino says the confrontation occurred at Cruise's Beverly Hills residence about 9:30 p.m. PDT Sunday when the actor and his family weren't home.

The guard saw a man "climbing a fence to gain access to the property" and he used the stun gun to detain him for police.

The officer tells City News Service that the man was identified as a 41-year-old neighbor who lives in an adjacent property, and was intoxicated at the time.

The man was taken into custody for trespassing and treated at a hospital for any problems stemming from the stun gun.

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