Apple rolls out iPad mini to shorter lines

SYDNEY/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The launch of Apple Inc's iPad mini attracted smaller crowds from Sydney to New York on Friday than have been typical for previous Apple product debuts, events marked by people lining up for hours or even days.

A proliferation of comparable rival devices may have sapped some interest for the device, which is priced above rival gadgets from Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc.

A few hundred people were in line at Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York at about 8 a.m., days after the city was battered by Hurricane Sandy, one of the biggest storms to ever hit the United States.

Lisa Sieber, 59, from Germany rode a bike to the Apple store on Friday as she said she's been going 'stir crazy' from lack of power and water at her 81-year-old mother's home in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"I didn't think I needed an iPad but once you get your first Mac, you slide into the iPhone and the next one and it makes it easy to get more Apple products," she said, adding that "there's not much to do without power and lights."

While many people have been happy to camp overnight at the New York store for past launches, some were angry on Friday that Apple changed the store's opening time to 10 a.m. for this launch from 8 a.m. previously.

"Usually it's 8 a.m.," said Vincent Leroy, 27, a student from Long Island City in Queens who showed up at the store at 6:30 a.m. His friends complained loudly in unison when he told them he had found out about the delayed opening.

In Amsterdam two hours after the Apple store opened, it looked like a typical day at the store with no lines outside the door. An Apple employee on the scene told Reuters that people had lined up ahead of the store opening.

About 50 people waited for the Apple store in Sydney, Australia, to open, where in the past the line had stretched for several blocks when the company debuted new iPhones.

At the head of Friday's line was Patrick Li, who had been waiting since 4:30 a.m. and was eager to get his hands on the 7.9-inch slate.

"It's light, easy to handle, and I'll use it to read books. It's better than the original iPad," Li said.

There were queues of 100 or more outside Apple stores in Tokyo and Seoul when the device went on sale, but when the company's flagship Hong Kong store opened staff appeared to outnumber those waiting in line.

The iPad mini marks Apple's first foray into the smaller-tablet segment, and the latest salvo in a global mobile-device war that has engulfed combatants from Internet search leader Google, whose Android software runs on tablets from several vendors, to Web retailer Amazon.com and software giant Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft's 10-inch Surface tablet, powered by the just-launched Windows 8 software, went on sale in October, while Google and Amazon now dominate sales of smaller, 7-inch multimedia tablets.

POSITIVE REVIEWS

Unveiled last week, the iPad mini has won mostly positive reviews, with criticism centering on a lofty price tag and a screen considered inferior to those of rivals. The new tablet essentially replicates most of the features of its full-sized sibling, but in a smaller package.

"Well, first of all it's so thin and light and very cute - so cute!" said iPad mini customer Ten Ebihara at the Apple store in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district.

At $329 for a Wi-Fi only model, the iPad mini is a little costlier than predicted, but some analysts see that as Apple's attempt to retain premium positioning.

Some investors fear the gadget will lure buyers away from Apple's $499 flagship 9.7-inch iPad, while proving ineffective in combating the threat of Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, both of which are sold at or near cost.

Also on Friday, Apple rolled out its fourth-generation iPad, with the same 9.7-inch display as the previous version but with a faster A6X processor and better Wi-Fi. Both devices were going on sale in more than 30 countries.

Apple will likely sell between 1 million and 1.5 million iPad minis in the first weekend, far short of the 3 million third-generation iPads sold last March in their first weekend, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

"The reason we expect fewer iPad minis compared to the 3rd Gen is because of the lack of the wireless option and newness of the smaller form factor for consumers," Munster said in a note to clients. "We believe that over time that will change."

Reviewers have applauded Apple for squeezing most of the iPad's features into a smaller package that can be comfortably manipulated with one hand.

James Vohradsky, a 20-year-old student who previously queued for 17 hours at the Sydney store to buy the iPhone 5, only stood in line for an hour and a half this time.

"I had an iPad 1 before, I kind of miss it because I sold it about a year ago. It's just more practical to have the mini because I found it a bit too big. The image is really good and it's got the fast A5 chip too," Vohradsky said.

The iPad was launched in 2010 by late Apple boss Steve Jobs and since then it has taken a big chunk out of PC sales, upending the industry and reinventing mobile computing with its apps-based ecosystem.

A smaller tablet is the first device to be added to Apple's compact portfolio under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from Jobs just before his death a year ago. Analysts credit Google and Amazon for influencing the decision.

Some investors worry that Apple might have lost its chief visionary with Jobs, and that new management might not be able to stay ahead of the pack as rivals innovate and encroach on its market share.

Apple shares were down 1 percent at $590.56 in morning trade on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Mariko Lochridge in Tokyo, Stefanie McIntyre in Hong Kong and Miyoung Kim in Seoul, Roberta Cowan in Amsterdam; Writing by Noel Randewich and Edwin Chan in San Francisco, Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz, Alex Richardson and Steve Orlofsky)

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Blake Shelton pulls off surprise win at CMAs

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Winning the Country Music Association Awards' entertainer of the year is a top honor and always counted as a career high point. But for Blake Shelton it wasn't even the most memorable moment of an amazing Thursday night.

"The Voice" star took home three trophies, including his third straight male vocalist victory, but nothing compared to sharing song of the year with wife Miranda Lambert. The pair wrote "Over You," about the death of Shelton's brother Richie in a car wreck 15 years ago. He said that trophy will always have a special place in their Oklahoma home.

"For me as a songwriter that is as personal as I can get," Shelton said. "So that songwriter award, song of the year award, it will have its own shelf. It will have spotlights on it and an alarm and everything. Trip wires and there will be a land mine if you walk towards it. It is a real big deal to Miranda and I."

Shelton's entertainer win was the biggest surprise of a night full of them. Even he couldn't believe he'd won the award in a field that included Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley.

"I didn't think about that tonight. I was thinking there's Taylor Swift right there," he said of the two-time entertainer of the year. "Really, this is pretty dumb that there's anyone else even nominated."

The reality, though, is Shelton capped one of the most impressive career reboots in country music history with the win. About three years ago, he was searching for a hit or a gimmick that might return him to the top of the charts, without much luck. He scored a novelty hit with Trace Adkins called "Hillbilly Bone," began a run of hits and then joined "The Voice" in a move that made him an instant celebrity outside the country world.

He hasn't sold as many records as Swift, whose "Red" just moved 1.2 million copies in its first week, or as many concert tickets as Chesney or Aldean. But his leading-man looks, wicked sense of humor, Twitter presence and mellow baritone have made him one of country's top stars.

While Shelton didn't give himself much of a shot, Lambert — who also won her third straight female vocalist of the year award — thought he fit the definition of entertainer of the year after doing a little research.

"I realized that it just meant not only touring numbers, not only ticket sales or how much production you have, but the way that you represent country music within a year," Lambert said. "The media that you do and the work that you do and the TV shows that you are on and how you represent yourself and how you speak out about country music. When you think about it that way, Blake Shelton deserved to win that trophy tonight."

Shelton's victory was just one of many surprises during the awards. Quartet Little Big Town joined Lambert with two wins apiece, taking home vocal group and single of the year for "Pontoon." And Thompson Square's Shawna and Keifer Thompson won vocal duo of the year, ending Sugarland's five-year run in that category.

"Y'all, this has been a 13-year journey," Karen Fairchild said as members of the group fist-pumped, jumped up and down and shouted on stage. "We're living proof that if you work really hard and chase your dream, all the good stuff happens and it follows you. Nashville, you made us your band. Thank you for letting us do this."

Like fellow outsiders LBT, Eric Church felt the love from the CMA's voters for the first time. He won the prestigious album of the year for his breakthrough record "Chief," signaling the North Carolina native's complete acceptance by the country music community.

"I spent a lot of my career wondering where I fit in — too country, too rock," Church told the crowd. "I want to thank you guys for giving me somewhere to hang my hat tonight."

The awards went off-script early, and not just for Little Big Town. Thompson Square won in a category that's been locked up by either Sugarland or Brooks & Dunn 19 of the last 20 years.

"Ever since I was 5 years old, I used to practice in the kitchen with one of my Meemaw's Mason jars for this moment here," Shawna Thompson said.

Hunter Hayes won new artist of the year, while Chesney and Tim McGraw won musical event of the year for "Party Like a Rock Star" and Toby Keith won video of the year for "Red Solo Cup."

Church helped kick off the show by combining forces with Aldean and Luke Bryan. Playing with a large American flag behind them, the trio of performers teamed up on Aldean's new single "The Only Way I Know" from his new album "Night Train" and earned a standing ovation. Each returned later to play singles, showing how large a market share they now own in country music.

Most of country's top stars were on hand at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena for the celebration, with many slated to perform. Swift performed her somber new single "Begin Again" on a set with a picture of the Eiffel Tower and falling leaves in the background. She received an ovation of her own.

Shelton, McGraw and wife Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum and Keith Urban joined together to salute lifetime achievement winner Willie Nelson, ending with a group sing-along of his iconic "On the Road Again."

Little Big Town performed their winner "Pontoon," a song that was something of a departure for Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook and Phillip Sweet. Produced by Jay Joyce, the song has a sharper groove than LBT's previous efforts.

In a coincidence, Joyce also produced Church's "Chief." The hard edge he brought to both paid off all around.

Church said album of the year, arguably the CMA's second most prestigious award, was a win that fit right in with his and Joyce's philosophy.

"I still think in this day and time the only way to really get a fan base is you've got to give them more than one chapter of a book," Church said. "They've got to read the whole book."

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AP writer Kristin M. Hall in Nashville contributed to this report.

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Online:

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Floods render NYC hospitals powerless

NEW YORK (AP) — There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York. And yet two of the city's busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power.

Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.

The closures led to dramatic scenes of doctors carrying patients down dark stairwells, nurses operating respirators by hand, and a bucket brigade of National Guard troops hauling fuel to rooftop generators in a vain attempt to keep the electricity on.

Both hospitals, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, were still trying to figure out exactly what led to the power failures Thursday, but the culprit appeared to be the most common type of flood damage there is: water in the basement.

While both hospitals put their generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood, other critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.

Both hospitals had fortified that equipment against floods within the past few years, but the water — which rushed with tremendous force — found a way in.

"This reveals to me that we have to be much more imaginative and detail-oriented in our planning to make sure hospitals are as resilient as they need to be," said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The problem of unreliable backup electricity at hospitals is nothing new.

Over the first six months of the year, 23 percent of the hospitals inspected by the Joint Commission, a health care facility accreditation group, were found to be out of compliance with standards for backup power and lighting, according to a spokesman.

Power failures crippled New Orleans hospitals after Hurricane Katrina. The backup generator failed at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., after the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew through the state in 2011. Hospitals in Houston were crippled when Tropical Storm Allison flooded their basements and knocked out electrical equipment in 2001.

When the Northeast was hit with a crippling blackout in 2003, the backup power at several of New York City's hospitals failed or performed poorly. Generators malfunctioned or overheated. Fuel ran out too quickly. Even where the backup systems worked, they provided electricity to only some parts of the hospital and left others in the dark.

Afterward, a mayoral task force recommended upgrading testing standards for generators and requiring backup plans for blood banks and health care facilities that provide dialysis treatment.

Alan Aviles, president of New York City's Health and Hospitals Corp., which operates Bellevue, said that after a scare last summer when Hurricane Irene threatened to cause flooding, Bellevue put its basement-level fuel pumps in flood-resistant chambers.

It still isn't clear whether water breached those defenses, but when an estimated 17 million gallons of water rushed through loading docks and into the hospital's 1-million-square-foot basement, the fuel feed to the generators stopped working. The floodwaters also knocked out the hospital's elevators.

For two days, National Guardsmen carried fuel to the generators, but conditions inside the hospital for patients and staff deteriorated anyway. The generators were designed to supply only 30 percent of the usual electrical load at the hospital, leaving a lot of equipment and labs hobbled. The hospital also lost all water pressure on Tuesday. Nearly 700 patients had been evacuated by Thursday afternoon.

"The precautions we had taken to date had served us well," Aviles said. "But Mother Nature can always up the stakes."

NYU Langone Medical Center had also tried to armor itself against floods.

All seven of the generators providing backup power to the parts of the hospital involved in patient care are only a few years old and are on higher floors. The fuel tank is in a watertight vault. New fuel pumps were installed just this year in a pump house upgraded to withstand a high flood, said the hospital's vice president of facilities operation, Richard Cohen.

"The medical center invested quite a bit of money to upgrade the facility," he said.

The pump house remained "bone dry," Cohen said. But water shoved aside plastic and plywood defenses and infiltrated the fuel vault, where sensors detected the potentially damaging liquid and shut the generators down. "The force of the surge that came in was unbelievable. It dislodged our additional protection and caused a breach of the vault as well," Cohen said.

The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.

Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.

"It didn't really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble," he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, "I thought, 'We'll have power upstairs. We're an operating room.'"

He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a "med sled."

"There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside," he said. "I can't say that they were very well prepared for it."

That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.

Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone's generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.

Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital's power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital's power needs.

"It's a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it," Cohen said.

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AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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Tempers rise as temps fall after Sandy

Tempers are beginning to flare as Sandy's victims woke in cold, dark homes today to face yet another grinding day of waiting for help while temperatures are forecast to drop into the 30s with a possible Nor'easter on the way.

Nearly 4 million people spent a fourth day without power and were told some will have to wait weeks.

In the meantime, they waited for hours in line yet again for scarce gasoline supplies, water and food, or endured marathon commutes.

Police have been keeping order at hours-long gas station lines, but the fight for fuel is starting to get nasty. Authorities say a motorist was arrested after he tried to cut in line at a gas station in Queens Thursday and allegedly pointed a pistol at another motorist who complained, according to the Associated Press.

The man was identified as Sean Bailey, 35, and he faces charges of menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.

Conditions will worsen for those without power as temperatures dip into the 30s this weekend and the National Weather Service warns that a Nor'easter could rake the Northeast coastline starting Tuesday.

In addition, the death toll from Sandy's rampage edged up to 90.

Some parts of the area hammered by Sandy feel they have been left behind in the rush to restore power to Manhattan.

Staten Island was one of the hardest-hit communities in New York City. More than 80,000 residents are still without power, many are homeless, and at least 19 people died there because of the storm.

Hurricane Sandy: Full Coverage

Four days after the storm, supplies are finally making their way to the borough and Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro is boiling over in anger at what he sees as a slow relief effort.

"This is America, not a third world nation. We need food, we need clothing," Molinaro said.

Staten Island resident Desi Caruso told ABC News said Sandy has destroyed his neighborhood.

"This neighborhood, we are close. We like each other and now all of our lives here are going to separate and we're going to be broken apart," Caruso said.

Photos: Assessing Sandy's Destruction

Caruso, a music producer who has lived in Staten Island for 20 years, plans to move because the risk of another storm causing massive damage is too great.

"Just how you see everything look, that's how my life feels right now. Just a mess. It's a mess," he said.

Red Cross worker Josh Lockwood, on Staten Island, defended relief efforts.

"So many people are in need right now on such a scale that getting the materials to them as quickly as we can so that their needs are met, that's the chief challenge," said Lockwood.

The Red Cross says it's trying to get more out-of-town volunteers to help with storm relief efforts in the Northeast. Volunteer Joe Hawkins, of Greenville, S.C., is helping people in Staten Island.

"I've been on a lot of disasters, you know, from Katrina on, but some of your areas down near the coast are bad as I've ever seen," Hawkins said.

Some on the New Jersey coastline were hit just as hard as Staten Island residents and they were allowed back into their communities Thursday to get their first look at the devastation.

"That's it. I have nothing. I can't get to my job. I had two cars down there because we thought they'd be safe. They're gone," Marianne Russell, of Moonachie, N.J., told WABC.

"A lot of tears are being shed today," said Dennis Cucci, whose home near the ocean in Point Pleasant Beach was heavily damaged. "It's absolutely mind-boggling."

President Obama held a call with state and local officials from New York, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to discuss the repair effort late Thursday night, according to a White House official.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and FEMA Deputy Administrator Richard Serino will travel to Staten Island today to meet with state and local officials and inspect recovery efforts.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the main concern now is over the elderly and poor all but trapped on upper floors of housing complexes in the powerless buildings.

"Our problem is making sure they know that food is available," Bloomberg said Thursday, as officials expressed concern about people having to haul water from fire hydrants up darkened flights of stairs.

In Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, Mary Wilson, 75, walked downstairs from her 19th floor apartment for the first time Thursday because she ran out of bottled water and felt she was going to faint. She said she met people on the stairs who helped her down.

"I did a lot of praying: 'Help me to get to the main floor.' Now I've got to pray to get to the top," she said, after buying water from a convenience store
.
"I said, 'I'll go down today or they'll find me dead," she added.

As essentials dwindle in powerless areas, reports of looting have occurred. Early Thursday morning 18 individuals were arrested for burglary of a Key Food in Coney Island, according to police.

In Far Rockaway, Queens, four arrests were made Thursday stemming from the entry of a closed Radio Shack.

ABC News' Alexis Shaw, Jennifer Abbey, ABC News Radio and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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No pigeons, planes, pingpong balls at China meet

BEIJING (AP) — Don't roll down the taxi windows. Don't buy a remote-controlled plane without a police chief's permission. And don't release your pigeons.

Beijing is tightening security as its all-important Communist Party congress approaches, and some of the measures seem downright bizarre. Kitchen knives and pencil sharpeners reportedly have been pulled from store shelves, and there's even a rumor that authorities are on the lookout for seditious messages on pingpong balls.

The congress, which begins Nov. 8, will name new leaders to run the world's most populous country and second-largest economy for the next decade. Most of the security measures have been phased in in time for Thursday's opening of a meeting of the Central Committee, the roughly 370-member body that is finalizing preparations for the congress.

China always tightens security for high-profile events, like much of the rest of the world. London, for instance, restricted air traffic during the Olympics.

But many of Beijing's rules seem extraordinary, perhaps in an effort to smooth a once-a-decade transition that has already been bumpy.

Bo Xilai, once a candidate for the all-powerful Politburo's Standing Committee, suffered a spectacular fall from grace in which his wife was convicted of murder. One of President Hu Jintao's closest aides was demoted, apparently after his son was killed alongside two partially dressed women in an accident in his Ferrari. Meanwhile, protests over pollution, land seizures and local corruption continue across the country.

Human rights groups report that activists and petitioners are being rounded up ahead of the congress. But the broader security measures may best illustrate how China is trying to leave absolutely no room for disruptions.

The government has blocked searches for the phrase "18th Party Congress" on websites including China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo. Internet posters manage to get around that by using characters that sound like "party congress." One substitute: "Sparta."

Taxi drivers have been told to remove window handles, to avoid sensitive parts of the city and not to open their windows or doors if they pass "important venues." Some taxi drivers, but not all, have been told to ask passengers to sign a "traveling agreement" if they want to go near Tiananmen Square.

A man who answered the phone at Wan Quan Si taxi company in the south of the capital said the rule applies to all taxi companies in Beijing. He declined to give his name.

Beijing investment company worker Li Tianshu said she didn't believe colleagues' claims that door handles had been removed until she got into a taxi herself the other day.

"There were no handles for three of the four windows," she said. "The driver told me that their company asked them to do it to prevent passengers spreading leaflets. The driver complained that if they don't take the handles away or the passengers throw leaflets out of the taxis, they will be fired."

Citizens have taken to Weibo to post photos of doors with handles crudely ripped off. Liu Shi, a client manager in a mass communication company, wrote that the taxi driver had told him that power to electronic window buttons would also be cut.

A memo circulating on Weibo warned taxi drivers to be on guard against passengers who may want to cast balloons with slogans or throw "pingpong balls with reactionary words." It was unclear who issued the memo and its authenticity could not be confirmed.

A man who wouldn't give his name at Tong Hai taxi company in central Beijing said it had received orders "from higher authorities" to reinforce security measures and a memo, but he wouldn't elaborate.

Police in the capital are asking that Chinese show their ID cards and foreigners their passports when buying remote-controlled model aircraft over safety concerns, the official Global Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

One toy store owner said authorities had told him to stop selling medium and large-sized planes.

"This kind of plane can't fly over long distances and it can hardly carry anything," said Chen Ziping, holding up a model about half a meter (half a yard) long. "They just told me to stop selling it and I have to follow the order."

The Global Times quoted an unnamed police officer from Aoyuncun station in Chaoyang district as saying that people wanting to buy model planes during the congress should go to the vendor's local police station to register. When the buyer receives approval from the station's police chief, he can make the purchase, the officer said.

Still, they won't be allowed to fly model planes in the city, and balloons also are on the blacklist, the newspaper said. It cited another officer from Chaoyang district Public Security Bureau as saying that pigeon owners must keep their birds in their coops during the congress.

Chen Jieren had a run-in with the security rules Sunday after the handle of his knife broke while he was cooking dinner. He took his ID card to the supermarket, knowing that people must show identification when buying knives during sensitive periods.

"Well, it didn't work this time," Chen said in a telephone interview. "I was told by the police that no more knives can be sold, not even pencil sharpeners. And I don't think the shopkeeper was kidding, because several days ago I saw myself that police were asking the sales assistants in the stationer's not to sell pencil sharpeners.

"I went back and got an old knife and tried to sharpen it. I guess I have to live with it until the Congress finishes," he added, glumly.

Wang Ye, an engineer from Beijing who lives in Shanghai, was planning on returning to his home city to run a marathon, but it was postponed with no word on when it might be held. The date of a marathon in the eastern city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, was also changed.

"There is no official explanation, but we all know that it is due to the 18th Congress," he said. "(The Beijing marathon) has been held regularly for the past 31 years.

"I guess I will give up running competitions in China and try to attend more abroad," said Wang. "At least they tell me the schedule one year before the event."

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Apple's Cook fields his A-team before a wary Wall Street

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook's new go-to management team of mostly familiar faces failed to drum up much excitement on Wall Street, driving its shares to a three-month low on Wednesday.

The world's most valuable technology company, which had faced questions about a visionary-leadership vacuum following the death of Steve Jobs, on Monday stunned investors by announcing the ouster of chief mobile software architect Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett -- the latter after six months on the job.

Cook gave most of Forstall's responsibilities to Macintosh software chief Craig Federighi, while some parts of the job went to Internet chief Eddy Cue and celebrated designer Jony Ive.

But the loss of the 15-year veteran and Jobs's confidant Forstall, and resurgent talk about internal conflicts, exacerbated uncertainty over whether Cook and his lieutenants have what it takes to devise and market the next ground-breaking, industry-disrupting product.

Apple shares ended the day down 1.4 percent at 595.32. They have shed a tenth of their value this month -- the biggest monthly loss since late 2008, and have headed south since touching an all-time high of $705 in September.

For investors, the management upheaval from a company that usually excels at delivering positive surprises represents the latest reason for unease about the future of a company now more valuable than almost any other company in the world.

Apple undershot analysts targets in its fiscal third quarter, the second straight disappointment. Its latest Maps software was met with widespread frustration and ridicule over glaring mistakes. Sources told Reuters that Forstall and Cook disagreed over the need to publicly apologize for its maps service embarrassment.

And this month, Apple entered the small-tablet market with its iPad mini, lagging Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc despite pioneering the tablet market in 2010.

Investor concerns now center around the demand, availability and profitability of new products, including the iPad mini set to hit stores on Friday.

"The sudden departure of Scott Forstall doesn't help," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee. "Now there's some uncertainty in the management."

"There appears to be some infighting, post-Steve Jobs, and looks like Cook is putting his foot down and unifying the troops."

Apple declined to comment beyond Monday's announcement.

Against that backdrop, Cook's inner circle has some convincing to do. In the wake of Forstall's exit, iTunes maestro Eddy Cue -- dubbed "Mr Fixit", the sources say -- gets his second promotion in a year, taking on an expanded portfolio of all online services, including Siri and Maps.

The affable executive with a tough negotiating streak who, according to documents revealed in court, lobbied Jobs aggressively and finally convinced the late visionary about the need for a smaller-sized tablet, has become a central figure: a versatile problem-solver for the company.

Ive, the British-born award-winning designer credited with pushing the boundaries of engineering with the iPod and iPhone, now extends his skills into the software realm with the lead on user interface.

Marketing guru Schiller continues in his role, while career engineer Mansfield canceled his retirement to stay on and lead wireless and semiconductor teams. Then there's Federighi, the self-effacing software engineer who a source told Reuters joined Apple over Forstall's initial objections, and has the nickname "Hair Force One" on Game Center.

"With a large base of approximately 60,400 full-time employees, it would be easy to conclude that the departures are not important," said Keith Bachman, analyst with BMO Capital Markets. "However, we do believe the departures are a negative, since we think Mr. Forstall in particular added value to Apple."

TEAM COOK

Few would argue with Forstall's success in leading mobile software iOS and that he deserves a lot of credit for the sale of millions of iPhones and iPads.

But despite the success, his style and direction on the software were not without critics, inside and outside.

Forstall often clashed with other executives, said a person familiar with him, adding he sometimes tended to over-promise and under-deliver on features. Now, Federighi, Ive and Cue have the opportunity to develop the look, feel and engineering of the all-important software that runs iPhones and iPads.

Cue, who rose to prominence by building and fostering iTunes and the app store, has the tough job of fixing and improving Maps, unveiled with much fanfare by Forstall in June, but it was found full of missing information and wrongly marked sites.

The Duke University alum and Blue Devils basketball fan -- he has been seen courtside with players -- is deemed the right person to accomplish this, given his track record on fixing services and products that initially don't do well.

The 23-year veteran turned around the short-lived MobileMe storage service after revamping and wrapping it into the reasonably well-received iCloud offering.

"Eddy is certainly a person who gets thrown a lot of stuff to ‘go make it work' as he's very used to dealing with partners," said a person familiar with Cue. The person said Cue was suited to fixing Maps given the need to work with partners such as TomTom and business listings provider Yelp.

Cue's affable charm and years of dealing with entertainment companies may come in handy as he also tries to improve voice-enabled digital assistant Siri. He has climbed the ladder rapidly in the past five years and was promoted to senior vice president last September, shortly after Cook took over as CEO.

Both Cue and Cook will work more closely with Federighi, who spent a decade in enterprise software before rejoining Apple in 2009, taking over Mac software after the legendary Bertrand Serlet left the company in March last year

Federighi was instrumental in bringing popular mobile features such as notifications and Facebook integration onto the latest Mac operating system Mountain Lion, which was downloaded on 3 million machines in four days.

The former CTO of business software company Ariba, now part of SAP, worked with Jobs at NeXT Computer. Federighi is a visionary in software engineering and can be as good as Jobs in strategic decisions for the product he oversees, a person who has worked with him said.

His presentation skills have been called on of late, most recently at Apple annual developers' gathering in the summer.

Then there's Ive, deemed Apple's inspirational force. Among the iconic products he has worked on are multi-hued iMac computers, the iPod music player, the iPhone and the iPad.

Forstall's departure may free Ive of certain constraints, the sources said. His exit brought to the fore a fundamental design issue -- to do or not to do digital skeuomorphic designs. Skeuomorphic designs stay true to and mimic real-life objects, such as the bookshelf in the iBooks icon, green felt in its Game Center app icon, and an analog clock depicting the time.

Forstall, who will stay on as adviser to Cook for another year, strongly believed in these designs, but his philosophy was not shared by all. His chief dissenter was Ive, who is said to prefer a more open approach, which could mean a slightly different design direction on the icons.

"There is no one else who has that kind of (design) focus on the team," the person said of Ive. "He is critical for them."

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr; Editing by Edwin Chan and Ken Wills)

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NBC to hold a benefit concert for Sandy victims

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC will hold a benefit concert Friday for victims of Hurricane Sandy featuring some artists native to the areas hardest hit.

Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi of New Jersey and Billy Joel of Long Island are scheduled to appear at the concert, hosted by "Today" show co-host Matt Lauer.

Other performers include Christina Aguilera, Sting and Jimmy Fallon.

The telecast will benefit the American Red Cross and will be shown on NBC and its cable stations including Bravo, CNBC, USA, MSNBC and E! Other networks are invited to join in.

"Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together" will air at 8 p.m. EDT and will be taped-delayed in the West.

The telethon will be broadcast from NBC facilities in Rockefeller Center in New York City.

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NBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.

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Man with bionic leg to climb Chicago skyscraper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Storm death toll up, gas lines grow

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers awoke to the rumble of subway trains for the first time in four days on Thursday and the death toll continued to rise from the former hurricane Sandy, one of the biggest and most devastating storms ever to hit the United States.

Lines formed at gas stations amid fuel shortages around the U.S. Northeast and emergency utility crews struggled to reach the worst hit areas and restore power to millions of people.

At least 82 people in North America died in the superstorm, which ravaged the northeastern United States on Monday night, and officials said the count could climb higher as rescuers searched house-to-house through coastal towns.

More deaths were recorded overnight as the extent of destruction became clearer in the New York City borough of Staten Island, where the storm lifted whole houses off their foundations.

Authorities recovered 15 bodies from Staten Island. Among those still missing were two boys aged 4 and 2 who were swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters, the New York Post reported. In all, 34 people died in New York City.

In hard-hit New Jersey, where oceanside towns saw entire neighborhoods swallowed by seawater and the Atlantic City boardwalk was destroyed, the death toll doubled to 12.

New Jersey favorite son Bruce Springsteen, along with Jon Bon Jovi and Sting, will headline a benefit concert for storm victims Friday night on NBC television, the network announced.

Sandy started as a late-season hurricane in the Caribbean, where it killed 69 people, before smashing ashore in the United States with 80 mph winds. It stretched from the Carolinas to Connecticut and was the largest storm by area to hit the United States in decades.

About 4.7 million homes and businesses in 15 U.S. states were without power on Thursday, down from a high of nearly 8.5 million, which surpassed the record 8.4 million customers who went dark from last year's Hurricane Irene.

Sandy made landfall in New Jersey with a full moon around high tide, creating a record storm surge that flooded lower Manhattan. By Thursday, the storm had dissipated over the North American mainland.

After a three-day hiatus, President Barack Obama was due to return to the campaign trail on Thursday, boosted in his re-election bid by a resounding endorsement of his disaster response from the Republican governor of New Jersey.

The Democratic incumbent, tied in polls with Mitt Romney before Tuesday's election, begins a two-day trip to the swing states of Colorado, Ohio and Nevada while his Republican challenger travels to Virginia.

Obama viewed flooded and sand-swept New Jersey shore communities on a helicopter tour of the state with Republican Governor Chris Christie on Wednesday.

"The entire country's been watching. Everyone knows how hard Jersey has been hit," Obama told people at an evacuation shelter in the town of Brigantine.

In New York, limited train service returned on some train and subway lines, but more than half of the gas stations in the city and neighboring New Jersey remained shut due to power outages and depleted fuel supplies. Even before dawn, long lines formed at gas stations that were expected to open.

Fuel supplies into New York and New Jersey were being choked off in several ways. Two refineries that make up a quarter of the region's refining capacity were still idle due to power outages or flooding. The New York Harbor waterway that imports a fifth of the area's fuel was still closed to traffic, and major import terminals were damaged and powerless.

In addition, the main oil pipeline from the Gulf Coast, which pumps 15 percent of the East Coast's fuel, remained shut.

Matthew Gessler of Brooklyn went to Breezy Point, a New York neighborhood where fire destroyed 111 homes, to inspect damage to his mother's house. Like others, he likened it to a war zone.

He said you could take a picture of the devastation and say it was the Middle East "and no one would doubt you at all."

In Jersey City, across the Hudson River from New York, drivers negotiated intersections without the aid of traffic lights. Shops were shuttered and lines formed outside pharmacies while people piled sodden mattresses and furniture along the side of the roads. The city has issued a curfew on people as well as a driving ban from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

New Yorkers faced an easier commute as the subway system resumed limited operations. But four of the seven subway tunnels under the East River remained flooded and there was no service in Manhattan below 34th Street, where the power is still out.

Subway rides were free as authorities encouraged commuters to use mass transit rather than drive. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and state Governor Andrew Cuomo said private cars must carry at least three people in order to enter New York, after the city was clogged by traffic on Wednesday.

LaGuardia airport in New York was scheduled to reopen on Thursday with limited service. John F. Kennedy and Newark, New Jersey, airports reopened with limited service on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Michael Erman, Anna Louie Sussman, Atossa Abrahamian, Martinne Geller and Scott DiSavino in New York, Susan Heavey in Washington, Ian Simpson in West Virginia and Mark Felsenthal in Atlantic City, N.J.; Writing by Eddie Evans and Daniel Trotta)

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Plague of office-buying wears at China's image

XILINHOT, China (AP) — In a small town in northern China's Inner Mongolia where sheep and cattle easily outnumber humans, Fan Chen paid a party boss three times an average urban resident's annual salary to become a local police chief.

The scheme was exposed and fell apart, but it was hardly explosive news. It received just a one-line mention in state media. And a friend of Fan's defended him by saying that by current standards, his misdeeds were insignificant.

"What he paid was simply a drizzle," said Xu Huaiwei, a 68-year-old retired engineer. "It's too common in China, and people have paid far more — millions, or tens of millions of yuan — for a government job."

Fan was a small player in the latest of countless office-buying scandals that have touched Chinese officials from the village up to the provincial level. Some scandals implicate hundreds of officials, and state media reports show that the practice has spread to all arms of the government, including the legislature, police and courts.

Buying and selling office is so rampant in China that it has battered the ruling Communist Party's image as an institution that promotes the competent, not the connected. The practice continues despite vows by Chinese leaders to eradicate it, and the public has grown increasingly disgusted.

Fighting corruption will be one of the biggest challenges for the party leadership that will be installed in November in a once-a-decade transition.

Anti-corruption crusaders have particularly warned against personnel corruption, saying it inevitably breeds other forms of corruption as office buyers seek returns on their money. But there have been no recent signs of new action from the government; the last time a leading official talked publicly about office-buying was two years ago.

"We want those who sell offices to be utterly discredited, and those who buy offices to suffer a double loss," Li Yuanchao, head of the party's central organization commission, said in 2010, when Beijing introduced a set of new personnel measures and waged a crackdown campaign.

Xilinhot, nearly 400 miles north of Beijing, is a growing town that presents ripe opportunities for graft. It is the government seat to Xilingol, a Nebraska-sized region of about 1 million people where coal-mine pits are emerging from the premium grasslands.

In the region's largest city, Western-style villas have mushroomed along a man-made lake in one of its newest developments, and young families go to the KFC, but sheep traders still haul their animals to a business-filled street to find buyers.

Fan was part of a web of office-buying centered on Liu Zhuozhi. First as Xilingol's top executive and then as its chief party secretary, Liu ran the region from 2001 to 2008 before advancing to a vice governor post in Inner Mongolia's capital city, Hohhot.

Last summer in a Beijing court, Liu was sentenced to life in prison for corruption, including selling various government jobs, according to the state-run Beijing News. Liu's lawyer Xu Lanting confirmed the report, which says Liu took more than 8 million yuan ($1.2 million) in bribes — mostly by selling positions, including the one for Fan.

The report said Liu took 650,000 yuan ($103,000) from a man who eventually became the chief planner for Xilinhot, sold the city's party secretary position for 640,000 yuan ($101,000), and accepted 500,000 yuan ($80,000) to promote a person to oversee government archives.

The report identifies Fan Chen only by his family name and said he paid 100,000 yuan ($16,000) to be promoted from a deputy to a chief in a different government unit.

AP could not reach Fan. His friend Xu said Fan paid 300,000 ($48,000) for the promotion to be the police chief in Sunitezuoqi, another town in Xilingol. A propaganda officer from Sunitezuoqi confirmed that Fan Cheng was its last police chief.

An official government site also showed Fan was to be promoted to be the police chief of Sunitezuoqi from a lower-ranked deputy position in Xilinhot. Xu said Fan lost his rank last year when he was implicated during the investigation against Liu, and is now a regular police officer.

In Xilingol, local officials said Liu's case is a thing of past and that office-buying is limited to a handful.

"The majority of our cadres are good. Only a few are corrupt," said Yao Situ, director of foreign affairs.

He said local governments are recruiting and promoting cadres through democratic, fair and transparent competitions that value merit above anything else.

Many experts, however, say graft continues to flourish thanks to opaque government, a lack of accountability, the absence of independent supervision and ineffective punishment. They say that in China's one-party government, personnel decisions are made by a few powerful people despite policies and procedures stipulating collective rulings.

"Simply put, in China's cadre selection procedure, the party chief, the deputy chief for personnel, and the director of personnel wield the real power. For office-seekers, it is far more cost-effective to bribe them than to bribe voters in a democratic election," said He Zengke, who has studied China's corruption for more than 20 years. He is director of the China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics, a Beijing-based think tank.

In a heavily regulated country where the government controls resources, it seems almost all government offices can be a profit-making enterprise.

Transportation officials take kickbacks for road projects. Planning directors cash in on their approval powers. Police chiefs dismiss cases for private payments. Judges accept bribes for lighter sentences.

Office-buying is difficult to root out in part because it is so prevalent in China. Those tasked with combatting corruption — such as party chiefs and prosecutors — are often guilty of it themselves.

Sometimes office-buying is uncovered by chance. In northeastern China's Heilongjiang province, a scandal emerged following an assault on police officers who were investigating prostitution in a bath center.

The assault led authorities to examine the business's finances. They found problematic loans that implicated a senior official at a local state-run bank, according to state media.

Investigators uncovered a pyramid of graft. One official, Li Gang, accepted bribes totaling 2,100,000 yuan ($330,000) from more than 35 people over promotional issues. Li himself paid Suihua party secretary Ma De to be a county party secretary. And Ma got his job by paying 800,000 yuan ($127,000) to Han Guizhi, a Heilongjiang party official in charge of personnel affairs.

Han sold other top positions as well, including the chief prosecutor, the chief of the provincial supreme court and the chief of the personnel bureau, according to state media reports.

In 2010, several senior officials fell to corruption charges, including Huang Yao, former deputy party secretary for southwestern China's Guizhou province, and Wang Huayuan, a party standing committee member overseeing discipline inspection in eastern China's Zhejiang province. State media said they had profited from "job assignments" but did not offer more details.

Now, a criminal investigation against Huang Sheng, formerly the vice governor of eastern China's Shandong province, has silenced the Dezhou government, where many officials were promoted during Huang's tenure as the city's party secretary, according to state media.

Office-buying is just one facet of the pervasive corruption culture in China, where government officials routinely embezzle public funds, take bribes in awarding contracts, and favor family and friends in promotion.

China's most notorious corruption scandal in years involves disgraced politician Bo Xilai, who is accused of taking "huge amounts" of money to seek profits for others through public power. His deputy Wang Lijun took money from businesspeople and other contacts, and in exchange, he released detained criminal suspects when his contributors asked. But there is no confirmed report that Bo bought or sold public office.

In Xilinhot, the mood alternates between indignation and resignation among retired cadres who gather every day in an old hospital administration building to exchange gossip over mahjong tiles and playing cards.

"I cannot understand today's corruption. No one dared to do that under Mao," said 73-year-old Wu Lagai, a retired weather bureau official who was watching a game of Chinese chess.

"I simply cannot accept it. Is this because the punishment is too light? I think that might be the problem's source," he said.

"There are countless Liu Zhuozhis," said Wang Qi, a 70-year-old retired economic development official. "For village cadre and up, if you want any position, you pay for it. The more money you pay, the higher position you get. That's an open secret. The public knows, but there's nothing they can do.

"Unless Chairman Mao came back," Xu said.

"Not even Chairman Mao," Wang said. "It needs a thorough reform."

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