Scenes from Election Day: America votes

People line up early to vote at Washington Mill Elementary School in Alexandria, Va. (Patrick Smith/Getty Imag …

The most expensive presidential race in American history—some $2.6 billion was spent—is finally coming to an end. The barrage of political ads is quieting, and voters now have the chance to speak.

Polls close in Virginia, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Vermont at 7 PM ET, with other states following close behind. Alaska's polling stations, the last to close, finally shutter at 1 AM Wednesday. In the meantime, we'll be gathering all the latest news about the candidates, polling stations and swing states here.

12:25 PM: You might want to think twice before posting your filled out ballot to Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. Propublica reports that some states have laws that prohibit people from showing their ballots to anyone. Violating the rule can result in having your ballot thrown out. See if it's legal in your state at the Citizen Media Law Project site.

12:18 PM: In Washington D.C., There are reports that some lines are so long at polling sites that people are giving up on voting. How was your polling place? Let us know in the comments.

12 PM: Republican National Committee official Tim Miller is complaining on Twitter that a Philadelphia polling place has put up voting booths right next to a mural of Obama. The location of the polling site is 35th ward-D18 Franklin School, according to the Weekly Standard. Miller wrote that the Pennsylvania GOP has filed a complaint. Electioneering is not allowed within 10 feet of a polling place. The Philadelphia City Commissioners' office has not yet returned our request for comment on the complaints.

Obama mural in Philadelphia. (Tim Miller)

11:40 AM: Elections officials in Pinellas county in Florida mistakenly sent hundreds of robocalls telling voters they had until 7:00 PM Wednesday to vote, the Tampa Bay Times reports. (The last polls close at 8 PM Tuesday in the state.) Elections officials sent a second message to alert voters who received the calls of the mistake. A majority of the county voted Democratic in 2008.

11 AM: A Chrysler official wrote on Twitter that the car company has given its entire workforce the day off to vote. Late last month the company had strongly denied the accuracy of an ad from Mitt Romney's campaign stating that the automaker was moving its Jeep production to China. The company, in fact, said it recently added 1,100 jobs in the swing state of Ohio, where one in eight jobs is connected to the auto industry.

10 AM: All four major candidates have cast their ballots. President Barack Obama voted weeks ago in Chicago as part of his campaign's push to get their supporters to vote early in states that allow it. Voting on Tuesday: Vice President Joe Biden, at a Wilmington, Del., high school; Gov. Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, near their Belmont, Mass., home; and Paul Ryan cast his ballot in his hometown of Janesville, Wis.

9:40 AM: The first election results are in—and it's a tie. In New Hampshire, Dixville Notch's 10 registered votes split evenly 5-5 between Romney and Obama. The small village has cast its ballots at midnight since 1960, giving political junkies an early look at how candidates are faring in the Granite State. President Obama carried the small village in 2008, but Dixville Notch went to George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004.

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Pakistan army chief issues warning in rare message

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's army chief warned against efforts to undermine the military in a rare public statement Monday that analysts interpreted as a response to unprecedented pressure from the government, media and judiciary.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's cryptic message triggered some concern within Pakistan because of the army's history of seizing power in military coups. But experts saw the statement as less of a threat and more of a sign of the shifting power balance in Pakistani politics.

"Armed forces draw their strength from the bedrock of the public support," Kayani told a group of officers at army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi. "Therefore, any effort which wittingly or unwittingly draws a wedge between the people and the armed forces of Pakistan undermines the larger national interest."

The army is still considered the strongest institution in the country, but the generals have slowly ceded power to Pakistan's civilian leaders and judges in recent years. The shift has occurred as the army has been bogged down in a bloody war against a domestic Taliban insurgency.

Several recent actions by the Supreme Court have brought home the end of the army's once inviolable status. In a landmark ruling, the judges recommended last month that the government launch legal proceedings against a former army chief and head of intelligence for allegedly bankrolling politicians in the 1990 election.

The court has also pressured the military for allegedly snatching scores of people off the street in southwest Baluchistan province, where the government faces a separatist insurgency, and holding them without charges.

Kayani appeared to be hitting back at the judiciary in his comments Monday.

"We all agree that strengthening the institutions, ensuring the rule of law and working within the well-defined bounds of the constitution is the right way forward," said Kayani. "Weakening of the institutions and trying to assume more than one's due role will set us back."

The chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Chaudhry, showed no indication of backing down in a speech he made Monday after Kayani issued his statement. He cited the Supreme Court's constitutional "supremacy over all other institutions and authorities."

"Gone are the days when stability and security of the country was defined in terms of number of missiles and tanks as a manifestation of hard power available at the disposal of the state," Chaudhry told a group of civil servants. He said it means providing people with "social security and welfare nets and to protect their natural and civil rights at all costs."

The media has also become more critical of the army, especially after it was unable to stop the U.S. from staging a unilateral raid to kill al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden last year. This scrutiny has made it more difficult for the generals to interfere openly in politics.

The government has applied some pressure by investigating retired army generals for alleged corruption.

"I think it is a turning point in the history of institutional balance in Pakistan," said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. "I think the army feels a little bit isolated and somewhat powerless to manage the institutional balance the way it did for decades."

Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Dawn newspaper, said he thought Kayani's comments were likely driven by pressure from within the army.

"The army is facing a period of unprecedented public criticism of its handling of security affairs and the untouchable status of army officers, and that has created some unease among the rank and file and the leadership," Almeida said. "Kayani was probably trying to allay some of those concerns and reassert himself as the leader who will stand up for his institution."

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Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

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Apple sells 3 million iPads over first weekend

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Walters, Stephanopoulos lead ABC hurricane relief

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Walters, George Stephanopoulos and Mark Cuban are taking out their checkbooks for Superstorm Sandy relief on ABC's "Day of Giving."

ABC said Monday that Walters donated $250,000 to the American Red Cross and Stephanopoulos kicked in $50,000.

Throughout its programming Monday, the network has been urging viewers to give money to the organization to help victims of the storm, which hit New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area particularly hard.

Through late morning, ABC had raised more than $8.3 million, with the biggest gift being $3 million from the Samsung Corp. Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner and star of ABC's "Shark Tank," made an unspecified donation. Other Disney-owned networks, like ESPN, also are participating.

NBC held a telethon on Friday for storm victims that raised nearly $23 million.

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Even fit baby boomers won't escape heart problems

CHICAGO (AP) — Here's a reality check for health-conscious baby boomers: Even among those in good shape, at least 1 in 3 will eventually develop heart problems or have a stroke.

The upside is that that will happen about seven years later than for their less healthy peers.

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

The best odds are in the healthiest adults — those who don't smoke, have diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Still, among 55-year-olds in that category, about a third can expect to develop heart or other cardiovascular problems as they age.

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

The researchers estimated risks older people face for developing these ailments in their lifetime, or by their 80s or 90s. They also estimated how many years they'll live free of heart disease and related problems, depending on the most common risk factors.

Pooling follow-up data from the five analyzed studies, the researchers found that the healthiest 45-year-olds lived up to 14 years longer free of heart ailments than those with at least two risk factors. The healthiest 55-year-olds lived up to about seven years longer than their less healthy peers.

The study was published online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association and released in connection with the American Heart Association conference meeting in Los Angeles. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute paid for the research.

The authors estimated higher lifetime risks than previous studies, but their analysis involved a broader range of ailments, including heart failure and strokes.

While prevalence of heart disease and related deaths have declined nationwide in recent years, more than 82 million Americans — roughly one-third — have some form of cardiovascular disease, according to the American Heart Association.

Most people in the analysis had high blood pressure or at least one of the other risk factors.

The results shouldn't be discouraging, said lead author Dr. John Wilkins, an assistant professor of preventive medicine and cardiology at Northwestern University's medical school in Chicago. Maintaining an optimal lifestyle, by eating sensibly and staying active, is still the best way to live a long, healthy life, he said.

Heart disease remains the nation's leading cause of death, and the study reinforces the idea that "cardiovascular disease is part of the aging process," said Cleveland Clinic heart specialist Dr. David Frid, who was not involved in the research. Bodies wear out, "and ultimately, just exposure to living is going to cause people to develop some of these underlying problems," Frid said.

___

Online:

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

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

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Sandy could cast doubt on election results

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

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

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

Last-minute changes imposed by election officials also could

further arm campaign lawyers looking to challenge the result.

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

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

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

ONE MORE HEADACHE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several experts said they consider that outcome unlikely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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China's Communists endorse Bo Xilai's expulsion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Foxx, Wonder among stars honoring Eddie Murphy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — However riotous the Eddie Murphy stories from Arsenio Hall, Tracy Morgan, Adam Sandler and Russell Brand, the highlight of Spike TV's tribute to Murphy was the comedian's duet with Stevie Wonder.

Murphy joined the subject of one of his most classic impressions for a rousing rendition of Wonder's 1973 hit "Higher Ground" during the taping of the Spike TV special "Eddie Murphy: One Night Only," which is set to air Nov. 14. The Roots served as the house band.

Jamie Foxx, Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock and Keenan Ivory Wayans were also among those paying tribute to Murphy Saturday at the Saban Theater.

Accompanied by a pretty blonde, Murphy beamed throughout the two-hour program, saying he was touched by the tribute.

"I am a very, very bitter man," he said with a beguiling smile. "I don't get touched easily, and I am really touched."

Morgan called Murphy "my comic hero" and came onstage wearing a replica of Murphy's red leather suit from his standup show "Delirious."

"He set the tone for the whole industry a long time ago," Morgan said before taking the stage. "He inspired me in a fearless way."

Sandler was still in high school when he first saw "Delirious," which he described as "one of the most legendary standup specials of all time."

"Everybody on the planet wanted to be Eddie," he said. "He funnier than us. He's cooler than any of us."

Samuel L. Jackson said Murphy "changed the course of American film history" by giving Jackson his first speaking role on the big screen, in 1988's "Coming to America."

"If it weren't for Eddie, we might not have all the wonderful films that I've made," Jackson quipped.

"He is a true movie star," Jackson continued, lauding Murphy's performance in "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop." ''You became an inspiration for all young African-American actors."

The program featured clips of Murphy's standup shows, his film appearances in "Shrek" and "Nutty Professor" and his work on "Saturday Night Live."

Murphy insisted before the tribute that he is retired from performing.

"I'm just a retired old song and dance man," he said, adding that he only makes rare appearances these days. "That's what you do when you're retired: You come out every now and then and talk about the old days."

The 51-year-old entertainer took the stage at the conclusion of the tribute to say he was moved by the honor.

"This is really a touching moving thing, and I really appreciate it," he said. "You know what it's like when you have something like this? You know when they sing happy birthday to you? It's like that for, like, two hours... and I am Eddied out."

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/APSandy .

___

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.

___

AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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