Monday, 8.29.11 the world RESS

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BY SAMANTHA GROSSAND BETH FOUHYAssociated Press

NEW YORK — Stripped of hurri-cane rank, Tropical Storm Irenespent the last of its fury Sunday,leaving treacherous flooding andmillions without power — but anunfazed New York and relief that itwas nothing like the nightmare au-thorities feared.

Slowly, the East Coast surveyedthe damage — up to $7 billion byone private estimate — but formany the danger had not passed.

Rivers and creeks turned intoraging torrents tumbling with limbsand parts of buildings in northernNew England and upstate New York.

Flooding was widespread in Ver-mont, and hundreds of people weretold to leave the capital, Montpelier,which could get flooded twice: onceby Irene and once by a utility tryingto save an overwhelmed dam.

“This is not over,” PresidentBarack Obama said from the RoseGarden.

Meanwhile, the nation’s mostpopulous region looked to a newweek and the arduous process ofgetting back to normal.

New York lifted its evacuationorder for 370,000 people and saidsubway service, shut down for thefirst time by a natural disaster, willbe partially restored Monday,though it warned riders to expectlong lines and long waits. Philadel-phia restarted its trains and buses.

“All in all,” New York MayorMichael Bloomberg said, “we are inpretty good shape.”

At least 21 people died in thestorm, most of them when treescrashed through roofs or onto cars.

The main New York power com-pany, Consolidated Edison, didn’thave to go through with a plan tocut electricity to lower Manhattanto protect its equipment. Engineershad worried that salty seawaterwould damage the wiring.

And two pillars of the neighbor-hood came through the storm justfine: The New York Stock Exchangesaid it would be open for businesson Monday, and the Sept. 11 memo-rial at the World Trade Center sitedidn’t lose a single tree.

The center of Irene passed overCentral Park at midmorning withthe storm packing 65 mph winds.By evening, with its giant figure-sixshape brushing over New Englandand drifting east, it was down to 50mph. It was expected to drop belowtropical storm strength — 39 mph— before midnight, and was to driftinto Canada later Sunday or earlyMonday.

“Just another storm,” said ScottBeller, who was at a Lowe’s hard-ware store in the Long Island ham-let of Centereach, looking for agenerator because his power wasout.

The Northeast was spared theurban nightmare some had worriedabout — crippled infrastructure,stranded people and windowsblown out of skyscrapers. Early as-sessments showed “it wasn’t as badas we thought it would be,” NewJersey Gov. Chris Christie said.

Later in the day, the extent ofthe damage became clearer. Flood

waters were rising across New Jer-sey, closing side streets and majorhighways including the New JerseyTurnpike and Interstate 295. InEssex County, authorities used afive-ton truck to ferry people awayfrom their homes as the PassaicRiver neared its expected crest Sun-day night.

Twenty homes on Long IslandSound in Connecticut were de-stroyed by churning surf. The tor-rential rain chased hundreds ofpeople in upstate New York fromtheir homes and washed out 137miles of the state’s main highway.

In Massachusetts, the NationalGuard had to help people evacu-ate. The ski resort town of Wilm-ington, Vt., was flooded, butnobody could get to it becauseboth state roads leading therewere underwater.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seenin Vermont,” said Mike O’Neil, thestate emergency management di-rector.

Rivers roared in New Jerseyand Pennsylvania. In the HudsonValley town of New Paltz, N.Y., somany people were gathering towatch a rising river that authori-ties banned alcohol sales and or-dered people inside. And in RhodeIsland, which has a geographythick with bays, inlets and shore-line, authorities were worriedabout coastal flooding at eveninghigh tide.

The entire Northeast has beendrenched this summer with whathas seemed like relentless rain,saturating the ground and raisingthe risk of flooding, even after thestorm passes altogether.

The storm system knocked outpower for 4 1/2 million peoplealong the Eastern Seaboard. Powercompanies were picking throughuprooted trees and reconnectinglines in the South and had restoredelectricity to hundreds of thou-

sands of people by Sunday after-noon.

Under its first hurricane warningin a quarter-century, New York tookextraordinary precautions. Therewere sandbags on Wall Street, tarpsover subway grates and plywoodon storefront windows.

The subway stopped rolling.Broadway and baseball were can-celed.

With the worst of the stormover, hurricane experts assessedthe preparations and concludedthat, far from hyping the danger,authorities had done the rightthing by being cautious.

Max Mayfield, former directorof the National Hurricane Center,called it a textbook case.

“They knew they had to getpeople out early,” he said. “I thinkabsolutely lives were saved.”

Mayfield credited governmentofficials — but also the meteorolo-gists. Days before the storm evertouched American land, forecastmodels showed it passing more orless across New York City.

In the storm’s wake, hundredsof thousands of passengers stillhad to get where they were going.Airlines said about 9,000 flightswere canceled.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicidebomber blew himself up insideBaghdad’s largest Sunni mosqueSunday night, killing 29 people dur-ing prayers, a shocking strike on aplace of worship similar to the onethat brought Iraq to the brink ofcivil war five years ago.

Iraqi security officials said par-liament lawmaker Khalid al-Fah-dawi, a Sunni, was among the deadin the 9:40 p.m attack.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi,a spokesman for Baghdad’s mili-tary operations command, con-firmed the bombing happenedinside the Um al-Qura mosque dur-ing prayers in the western Baghdadneighborhood of al-Jamiaah. Theblue-domed building is the largestSunni mosque in Baghdad.

“I heard something like a verysevere wind storm, with smoke anddarkness, and shots by theguards,” said eyewitness Moham-mad Mustafa, who hit in the handby shrapnel. “Is al-Qaida able tocarry out their acts against wor-shippers? How did this breach hap-pen?”

That the bomber detonated hisexplosives vest inside the mosqueis particularly alarming, as it isreminiscent of a 2006 attack on aShiite shrine in the Sunni city ofSamarra that fueled widespreadsectarian violence and nearly ig-nited a nationwide civil war. Inthat strike, Sunni militants plantedbombs around the Samarrashrine, destroying its signaturegold dome and badly damagingthe rest of the structure.

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NEWS DEPARTMENT: news@yankton.net12 PRESS DAKOTANthe worldGroup: Gadhafi Forces Killed Detainees

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Retreating loyalists of Moammar Gadhafikilled scores of detainees and arbitrarily shot civilians over the pastweek, as rebel forces extended their control over the Libyan capital,survivors and a human rights group said Sunday.

In one case, Gadhafi fighters opened fire and hurled grenades atmore than 120 civilians huddling in a hangar used as a makeshiftlockup near a military base, said Mabrouk Abdullah, 45, who escapedwith a bullet wound in his side. Some 50 charred corpses were stillscattered across the hangar on Sunday.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the evidence it has col-lected so far “strongly suggests that Gadhafi government forces wenton a spate of arbitrary killing as Tripoli was falling.” The justice min-ister in the rebels’ interim government, Mohammed al-Alagi, said theallegations would be investigated and leaders of Gadhafi’s militaryunits put on trial.

So far, there have been no specific allegations of atrocities carriedout by rebel fighters, though human rights groups are continuing toinvestigate some unsolved cases.

AP reporters have witnessed several episodes of rebels mistreat-ing detainees or sub-Saharan Africans suspected of being hired Gad-hafi guns. Earlier this week, rebels and their supporters did not helpeight wounded men, presumably Gadhafi fighters, who werestranded in a bombed out fire station in Tripoli’s Abu Salim neigh-borhood, some pleading for water.

Police: Soldier Sought In Deaths Kills SelfPHILADELPHIA (AP) — A soldier suspected of killing four people

in Pennsylvania and Virginia was found dead of an apparently self-in-flicted gunshot wound in suburban Philadelphia after a daylong man-hunt during which he fired at and injured officers, authorities said.

The body of Leonard John Egland, 37, of Fort Lee, Va., was foundshortly after 3:30 p.m. Sunday in the Bucks County community ofWarwick Township, where he had been sought since early morning,said Pennsylvania State Police spokesman David Lynch.

Egland fired at officers as he was sought in the Virginia deaths ofhis ex-wife, her boyfriend and the boyfriend’s young son, as well ashis former mother-in-law in Bucks County, police said.

A body found behind a township business under renovationmatched the description and clothing of the suspect, said Mark Gold-berg, police chief in Warwick Township. The coroner had yet to con-firm the body as Egland’s, he said.

Township residents had been asked to stay in their homes andlock doors and cars as local and state police and two SWAT teamssearched for Egland, who evaded authorities as Hurricane Irenelashed the area.

Paul: End Of Gadhafi Presents New Dangers WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul

said Sunday the apparent overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi’s regimein Libya does not justify U.S. involvement there and may end up de-livering al-Qaida what he called “another prize.”

The Texas congressman has made his mark in the presidentialrace as a strict libertarian who would scale back the role of the fed-eral government in domestic and foreign affairs. A recent Gallup pollshows him in third place in the GOP race for the presidency.

Asked on “Fox News Sunday” whether getting rid of Gadhafi was agood thing, Paul conceded that it was but added that Gadhafi’s de-parture did not mean the long-term result would be good for theUnited States. He said that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was alsogood, but that the long-term result in Iraq has not been a success forthe U.S.

“We’ve delivered Iraq to the Iranians,” he said.Paul said troops are already required to ensure order in Libya and

that no one knows who the rebels in Libya represent.

Colin Powell Slams Cheney On New Book WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on

Sunday dismissed as “cheap shots” the criticism leveled at him andothers in Vice President Dick Cheney’s memoir.

It was the latest volley in a clash that stretches back to their firstyears in the George W. Bush administration.

Powell went so far as to say that if Cheney’s staff and others inBush’s White House had been as forthcoming as the State Depart-ment in the case involving CIA operative Valerie Plame, the indict-ment and conviction of Cheney’s friend and former chief of staffnever would have happened.

Powell made the remarks Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” aheadof the Tuesday release of Cheney’s book, “In My Time: A Personaland Political Memoir.” Cheney said in an earlier NBC interview thatthe book would cause “heads to explode” in Washington, a descrip-tion Powell said he expected from a supermarket tabloid and not aformer vice president.

“My head isn’t exploding. I haven’t noticed any other heads ex-ploding in Washington,” Powell said. “From what I’ve read in thenewspapers and seen on television it’s essentially a rehash of eventsof seven or eight years ago.”

‘The Help’ Reigns Again At BO With $14.3M LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Help” remained Hollywood’s top draw

with $14.3 million on a slow late-summer weekend whose businesswas even more sluggish as many East Coast theaters closed to rideout the storm there.

Irene was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Sun-day, but the weekend already was a lost cause for many theaters inits path. Studio executives estimate that about 1,000 theaters shutdown for at least part of the weekend and that business may havebeen off 15 to 20 percent because of the storm.

“It was a wild weekend,” said Dave Hollis, head of distribution atDisney, which released DreamWorks Pictures’ “The Help.” “All thingsconsidered, to kind of come out with business down only 15 to 20percent is something to be pretty thankful for.”

“The Help” has been the No. 1 film for two-straight weekends. Theacclaimed adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s novel about black South-ern maids sharing stories about white employers amid the civil-rights movement raised its domestic total to $96.6 million andshould cross the $100 million mark Tuesday.

Late August often is a dumping ground for movies with slim com-mercial prospects, and Irene cut even further into receipts for theweekend’s three new wide releases.

The Perils Of IreneFlood Worries And Some Relief In Storm’s Wake

CHUCK LIDDY/RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER/MCTNational Park Service Ranger Jeff Goad views the destruction to North Carolina Highway 12 on the north edge of Rodanthe, N.C., Sunday dueto the storm surge from Hurricane Irene.

STEPHEN DUNN/HARTFORD COURANT/MCTTwo thrill seekers are pummeled by the waves crashing over thecauseway, which connects Saybrook Point with Fenwick, Conn., Sun-day after Hurricane Irene swept through the area.

Officials: 29 Dead In SuicideBombing In Iraq Mosque