AP IMPACT: More kids skip school shots in 8 states (AP)

ATLANTA – More parents are opting out of school shots for their kids. In eight states now, more than 1 in 20 public school kindergartners aren't getting all the vaccines required for attendance, an Associated Press analysis found.

That growing trend among parents seeking vaccine exemptions has health officials worried about outbreaks of diseases that once were all but stamped out.

The AP analysis found more than half of states have seen at least a slight rise in the rate of exemptions over the past five years. States with the highest exemption rates are in the West and Upper Midwest.

It's "really gotten much worse," said Mary Selecky, secretary of health for Washington state, where 6 percent of public school parents have opted out.

Rules for exemptions vary by state and can include medical, religious or — in some states — philosophical reasons.

Reasons for skipping some school shots vary. Some parents are skeptical that vaccines are essential. Others fear vaccines carry their own risks. Some find it easier to check a box opting out than the effort to get the shots and required paperwork schools demand. Still others are ambivalent, believing in older vaccines but questioning newer shots against, say, chickenpox.

The number of shots is also giving some parents pause. By the time most children are 6, they will have been stuck with a needle about two dozen times — with many of those shots given in infancy. The cumulative effect of all those shots has not been studied enough, some parents say.

"Many of the vaccines are unnecessary and public health officials don't honestly know what the effect of giving so many vaccines to such small children really are," said Jennifer Margulis, a mother of four and parenting book author in Ashland, Ore.

But few serious problems have turned up over years of vaccinations and several studies have shown no link with autism, a theory from the 1990s that has been widely discredited.

To be sure, childhood vaccination rates remain high overall, at 90 percent or better for several vaccines, including those for polio, measles, hepatitis B and even chickenpox. In many states, exemptions are filed for fewer than 1 percent of children entering school for the first time.

Health officials have not identified an exemption threshold that would likely lead to outbreaks. But as they push for 100 percent immunization, they worry when some states have exemption rates climbing over 5 percent. The average state exemption rate has been estimated at less than half that.

Even more troubling are pockets in some states where exemption rates much higher. In some rural counties in northeast Washington, for example, vaccination exemption rates in recent years have been above 20 percent and even as high as 50 percent.

"Vaccine refusers tend to cluster," said Saad Omer, an Emory University epidemiologist who has done extensive research on the issue.

While parents may think it does no harm to others if their kids skip some vaccines, they are in fact putting others at risk, health officials say. No vaccine is completely effective. If an outbreak begins in an unvaccinated group of children, a vaccinated child may still be at some risk of getting sick.

Studies have found communities with higher exemption rates sometimes are places where measles have suddenly re-emerged in outbreaks. Vaccinated kids are sometimes among the cases, or children too young to be vaccinated. Last year, California had more than 2,100 whooping cough cases, and 10 infants died. Only one had received a first dose of vaccine.

"Your child's risk of getting disease depends on what your neighbors do," said Omer.

And while it seems unlikely that diseases like polio and diphtheria could ever make a comeback to the U.S., immunization expert Dr. Lance Rodewald with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it could happen.

"Polio can come back. China was polio free for two decades, and just this year, they were infected from Pakistan, and there is a big outbreak of polio China now. The same could happen here," Rodewald said in an email.

He cited outbreaks of Hib, a disease that can lead to meningitis, among the Amish who don't consistently vaccinate their children. Russia had a huge diphtheria outbreak in the early to mid-1990s, he said, because vaccine coverage declined. "Measles is just visible, but it isn't the only concern," Rodewald said.

For its review, the AP asked state health departments for kindergarten exemption rates for 2006-07 and 2010-11. The AP also looked at data states had previously reported to the federal government. (Most states don't have data for the current 2011-12 school year.)

Alaska had the highest exemption rate in 2010-11, at nearly 9 percent. Colorado's rate was 7 percent, Minnesota 6.5 percent, Vermont and Washington 6 percent, and Oregon, Michigan and Illinois were close behind.

Mississippi was lowest, at essentially 0 percent.

The AP found that vaccine exemptions rose in more than half of states, and 10 had increases over the five years of about 1.5 percentage points or more, a range health officials say is troubling.

Those states, too, were in the West and Midwest — Alaska, Kansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Arizona saw an increase that put that state in the same ballpark.

Exemption seekers are often middle-class, college-educated white people, but there are often a mix of views and philosophies. Exemption hot spots like Sedona, Ariz., and rural northeast Washington have concentrations of both alternative medicine-preferring as well as government-fearing libertarians.

Opposition to vaccines "is putting people together that normally would not be together," observed Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona epidemiologist looking at that state's rising exemption rates.

What many of exemption-seeking parents share, however, is a mental calculation that the dangers to their children of vaccine-preventable diseases are less important than the possible harms from vaccine. Or they just don't believe health officials, putting more stock in alternative sources — often discovered through Internet searches.

"We are being told this by every government official, teacher, doctor that we need vaccines to keep us safe from these diseases. I simply don't believe that to be true. I believe all the diseases in question were up to 90 percent in decline before mass vaccines ever were given. I don't think vaccines are what saved the world from disease. I think effective sewer systems, nutrition, and handwashing (are the reasons)," said Sabrina Paulick, of Ashland, Ore. She's part-time as a caregiver for elderly people in their homes and a mother of a 4-year-old daughter.

Parents say they'd like to reserve the right to decide what vaccinations their children should get, and when. Health officials reply that vaccinations are recommended at an early age to protect children before they encounter a dangerous infection. "If you delay, you're putting a child at risk," said Gerri Yett, a nurse who manages Alaska's immunization program.

Analyzing vaccination exemptions is difficult. States collect data differently; some base their exemption rates on just a small sample of schools — Alaska, for example — while others rely on more comprehensive numbers. So the AP worked with researchers at CDC, which statistically adjusted some states' 2010-11 data for a better comparison.

It's also not clear when an exemption was invoked against all vaccines and when it was used to excuse just one or two shots. CDC officials think the second scenario is more common.

Also, states differ on some of the vaccines required and what's needed to get an exemption: Sometimes only a box on a form needs to be checked, while some states want letters or even signed statements from doctors.

Meanwhile, some parent groups and others have pushed legislators to make exemptions easier or do away with vaccination requirements altogether. The number of states allowing philosophical exemptions grew from 15 to 20 in the last decade.

Some in public health are exasperated by the trend.

"Every time we give them evidence (that vaccines are safe), they come back with a new hypothesis" for why vaccines could be dangerous, said Kacey Ernst, another University of Arizona researcher.

The exemption increases have come during a time when the government has been raising its estimates of how many children have autism and related disorders. Some experts suggest that parents have listened intently to that message, with some believing the growing roster of recommended shots must somehow be related.

"I don't understand how other people don't see that these two things are related," said Stacy Allan, a Summit, N.J., mother who filed religious exemptions and stopped vaccinating her three children.

Several parents said that while they believe many health officials mean well, their distrust of the vaccine-making pharmaceutical industry only continues to grow.

"I wouldn't be one to say I am absolutely certain these things are hurting our children," said Michele Pereira, an Ashland mother of two young girls. She is a registered nurse and married to an anesthesiologist. While her daughters have had some vaccinations, they have not had the full recommended schedule.

"I feel like there are enough questions out there that I don't want to take the chance," she said.

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Associated Press writer Jeff Barnard in Grants Pass, Ore., contributed to this report.

AP IMPACT: NYPD shadows Muslims who change names (AP)

By MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Matt Apuzzo And Adam Goldman, Associated Press – Wed?Oct?26, 9:39?am?ET

NEW YORK – Muslims who change their names to sound more traditionally American, as immigrants have done for generations, or who adopt Arabic names as a sign of their faith are often investigated and catalogued in secret New York Police Department intelligence files, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The NYPD monitors everyone in the city who changes his or her name, according to internal police documents and interviews. For those whose names sound Arabic or might be from Muslim countries, police run comprehensive background checks that include reviewing travel records, criminal histories, business licenses and immigration documents. All this is recorded in police databases for supervisors, who review the names and select a handful of people for police to visit.

The program was conceived as a tripwire for police in the difficult hunt for homegrown terrorists, where there are no widely agreed upon warning signs. Like other NYPD intelligence programs created in the past decade, this one involved monitoring behavior protected by the First Amendment.

Since August, an Associated Press investigation has revealed a vast NYPD intelligence-collecting effort targeting Muslims following the terror attacks of September 2001. Police have conducted surveillance of entire Muslim neighborhoods, chronicling every aspect of daily life, including where people eat, pray and get their hair cut. Police infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups and investigated hundreds more.

Monitoring name changes illustrates how the threat of terrorism now casts suspicion over what historically has been part of America's story. For centuries, immigrants have Americanized their names in New York. The Roosevelts were once the van Rosenvelts. Fashion designer Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz. Donald Trump's grandfather changed the family name from Drumpf.

David Cohen, the NYPD's intelligence chief, worried that would-be terrorists could use their new names to lie low in New York, current and former officials recalled. Reviewing name changes was intended to identify people who either Americanized their names or took Arabic names for the first time, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not respond to messages left over two days asking about the legal justification for the program and whether it had identified any terrorists.

The goal was to find a way to spot terrorists like Daood Gilani and Carlos Bledsoe before they attacked.

Gilani, a Chicago man, changed his name to the unremarkable David Coleman Headley to avoid suspicion as he helped plan the 2008 terrorist shooting spree in Mumbai, India. Bledsoe, of Tennessee, changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad in 2007 and, two years later, killed one soldier and wounded another in a shooting at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark.

Sometime around 2008, state court officials began sending the NYPD information about new name changes, said Ron Younkins, the court's chief of operations. The court regularly sends updates to police, he said. The information is all public, and he said the court was not aware of how police used it.

The NYPD program began as a purely analytical exercise, according to documents and interviews. Police reviewed the names received from the court and selected some for background checks that included city, state and federal criminal databases as well as federal immigration and Treasury Department databases that identified foreign travel.

Early on, police added people with American names to the list so that if details of the program ever leaked out, the department would not be accused of profiling, according to one person briefed on the program.

On one police document from that period, 2 out of every 3 people who were investigated had changed their names to or from something that could be read as Arabic-sounding.

All the names that were investigated, even those whose background checks came up empty, were cataloged so police could refer to them in the future.

The legal justification for the program is unclear from the documents obtained by the AP. Because of its history of spying on anti-war protesters and political activists, the NYPD has long been required to follow a federal court order when gathering intelligence. That order allows the department to conduct background checks only when police have information about possible criminal activity, and only as part of "prompt and extremely limited" checking of leads.

The NYPD's rules also prohibit opening investigations based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment. Federal courts have held that people have a right to change their names and, in the case of religious conversion, that right is protected by the First Amendment.

After the AP's investigation into the NYPD's activities, some U.S. lawmakers, including Reps. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Rush Holt, D-N.J., have said the NYPD programs are blatantly racial profiling and have asked the Justice Department to investigate. Two Democrats on congressional intelligence committees said they were troubled by the CIA's involvement in these programs. Additionally, seven New York Democratic state senators called for the state attorney general to investigate the NYPD's spying on Muslim neighborhoods. And last month, the CIA announced an inspector general investigation into the agency's partnership with the NYPD.

The NYPD is not alone in its monitoring of Muslim neighborhoods. The FBI has its own ethnic mapping program that singled out Muslim communities and agents have been criticized for targeting mosques.

The name change program is an example of how, while the NYPD says it operates under the same rules as the FBI, police have at times gone beyond what is allowed by the federal government. The FBI would not be allowed to run a similar program because of First Amendment and privacy concerns and because the goal is too vague and the program too broad, according to FBI rules and interviews with federal officials.

Police expanded their efforts in late 2009, according to documents and interviews. After analysts ran background checks, police began selecting a handful of people to visit and interview.

Internally, some police groused about the program. Many people who were approached didn't want to talk and police couldn't force them to.

A Pakistani cab driver, for instance, told police he did not want to talk to them about why he took Sheikh as a new last name, documents show.

Police also knew that a would-be terrorist who Americanized his name in hopes of lying low was unlikely to confess as much to detectives. In fact, of those who agreed to talk at all, many said they Americanized their names because they were being harassed or were having problems getting a job and thought a new name would help.

But as with other intelligence programs at the NYPD, Cohen hoped it would send a message to would-be bombers that police were watching, current and former officials said.

As it expanded, the program began to target Muslims even more directly, drawing criticism from Stuart Parker, an in-house NYPD lawyer, who said there had to be standards for who was being interviewed, a person involved in the discussions recalled. In response, police interviewed people with Arabic-sounding names but only if their background checks matched specific criteria.

The names of those who were interviewed, even those who chose not to speak with police, were recorded in police reports stored in the department's database, according to documents and interviews, while names of those who received only background checks were kept in a separate file in the Intelligence Division.

Donna Gabaccia, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, said that for many families, name changes are important aspects of the American story. Despite the myth that officials at Ellis Island Americanized the names of people arriving in the U.S., most immigrants changed their names themselves to avoid ridicule and discrimination or just to fit in, she said.

The NYPD program, she said, turned that story on its head.

"In the past, you changed your name in response to stigmatization," she said. "And now, you change your name and you are stigmatized. There's just something very sad about this."

As for converts to Islam, the religion does not require them to take Arabic names but many do as a way to publicly identify their faith, said Jonathan Brown, a Georgetown University professor of Islamic studies.

Taking an Arabic name might be a sign that someone is more religious, Brown said, but it doesn't necessarily suggest someone is more radical. He said law enforcement nationwide has often confused the two points in the fight against terrorism.

"It's just an example of the silly, conveyor-belt approach they have, where anyone who gets more religious is by definition more dangerous," Brown said.

Sarah Feinstein-Borenstein, a 75-year-old Jewish woman who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was surprised to learn that she was among the Americans drawn into the NYPD program in its infancy. She hyphenated her last name in 2009. Police investigated and recorded her information in a police intelligence file because of it.

"It's rather shocking to me," she said. "I think they would have better things to do. It's is a waste of my tax money."

Feinstein-Borenstein was born in Egypt and lived there until the Suez Crisis in 1956. With a French mother and a Jewish religion, she and her family were labeled "undesirable" and were kicked out. She came to the U.S. in 1963.

"If you live long enough," she said, "you see everything."

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Contact the Washington investigative team at DCInvestigations(at)ap.org

Read AP's previous stories and documents about the NYPD at: http://www.ap.org/nypd

Follow Apuzzo and Goldman at http://twitter.org/mattapuzzo and http://twitter.org/goldmandc

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AP IMPACT: 35,000 worldwide convicted for terror (AP)

At least 35,000 people worldwide have been convicted as terrorists in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. But while some bombed hotels or blew up buses, others were put behind bars for waving a political sign or blogging about a protest.

In the first tally ever done of global anti-terror arrests and convictions, The Associated Press documented a surge in prosecutions under new or toughened anti-terror laws, often passed at the urging and with the funding of the West. Before 9/11, just a few hundred people were convicted of terrorism each year.

The sheer volume of convictions, along with almost 120,000 arrests, shows how a keen global awareness of terrorism has seeped into societies, and how the war against it is shifting to the courts. But it also suggests that dozens of countries are using the fight against terrorism to curb political dissent.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: After the 9/11 attacks, the world launched a war on terror. Here, in the first tally of anti-terror prosecutions ever done, The Associated Press examines how many people have been put behind bars under anti-terror laws, and who they are. AP reporters in more than 100 countries filed requests under freedom of information laws, conducted interviews and gathered data for this story.

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The AP used freedom of information queries, law enforcement data and hundreds of interviews to identify 119,044 anti-terror arrests and 35,117 convictions in 66 countries, accounting for 70 percent of the world's population. The actual numbers undoubtedly run higher because some countries refused to provide information.

That included 2,934 arrests and 2,568 convictions in the United States, which led the war on terror — eight times more than in the decade before.

The investigation also showed:

‧ More than half the convictions came from two countries accused of using anti-terror laws to crack down on dissent, Turkey and China. Turkey alone accounted for a third of all convictions, with 12,897.

‧ The range of people in jail reflects the dozens of ways different countries define a terrorist. China has arrested more than 7,000 people under a definition that counts terrorism as one of Three Evils, along with separatism and extremism.

‧ The effectiveness of anti-terror prosecutions varies widely. Pakistan registered the steepest increase in terror arrests in recent years, yet terror attacks are still on the rise. But in Spain, the armed Basque separatist group ETA has not planted a fatal bomb in two years.

‧ Anti-terror laws can backfire. Authoritarian governments in the Middle East used anti-terror laws broadly, only to face a backlash in the Arab Spring.

"There's been a recognition all around the world that terrorism really does pose a greater threat to society," said John Bellinger, former legal adviser to the U.S. State Department. "Also, more authoritarian countries are using the real threat of terrorism as an excuse and a cover to crack down in ways that are abusive of human rights."

Since 9/11, almost every country in the world has passed or revised anti-terror laws, from tiny Tonga to giant China.

Turkey, long at odds with its Kurdish minority, tops all other countries AP could tally for anti-terror convictions and their steep rise. The Kurdistan Workers' Party is responsible for much of the violence in the country of 75 million.

Naciye Tokova, a Kurdish mother of two, held up a sign at a protest last year that said, "Either a free leadership and free identity, or resistance and revenge until the end." She couldn't read the sign, because she cannot read.

She was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison under anti-terror laws.

"Of course, I'm not a terrorist," said Tokova, who is free on appeal. She was defiant, replying curtly to questions after long pauses.

Turkey passed new and stricter anti-terror laws in 2006. Convictions shot up from 273 in 2005 to 6,345 in 2009, the latest year available, according to data AP got through Turkey's right to information law.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says the country is fair to its Kurds.

"We have never compromised on the balance between security and freedom," Erdogan said.

Turkey clearly reflects the saying that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. What makes a terrorist depends on where you are and whom you ask. In the U.S., the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department don't agree on what terrorism is.

"If anything should have revealed to the world the essence of unacceptable terrorism, it was 9/11. Unfortunately, a decade later, we seem no closer to reaching agreement," said law professor Kent Roach at the University of Toronto.

China considers terrorism part of a vague charge of "endangering state security," and calls strong laws necessary to ensure safety. The people arrested under the laws come mostly from Xinjiang, known as East Turkistan to ethnic Uighurs fighting for an independent homeland.

Two years ago, Uighur entrepreneur Dilshat Perhat warned visitors to his popular Uighur-language website not to post political comments. Even so, someone posted a call for a demonstration in the middle of the night.

Perhat deleted the comments the next day and informed the police, as required. But he was arrested anyway, convicted in a one-day trial and sentenced to five years in prison.

"They wanted to use him as an example, to threaten and show their power to the Uighur people," said Perhat's brother Dilmurat, a graduate student in the U.S. "Inside China, any peaceful protest by the Uighurs is labeled as an act of terrorism by the Chinese government."

The increase in anti-terror prosecutions worldwide reflects how much they have become a weapon, however blunt, against terrorism, but their record is spotty.

Pakistan had the steepest rise in terror arrests of any country the AP examined, with the help of billions of dollars from the U.S. Pakistan amended its terror laws in 2004. Arrests went up from 1,552 in 2006 to 12,886 in 2009, partly because of four military operations that year.

Yet terrorism in Pakistan is still on the rise, and only Iraq beats Pakistan for deaths from terror. One reason may be a conviction rate of only 10 percent in terrorism cases, compared to 90 percent in the U.S.

Like Pakistan, Spain is no stranger to terrorism, but has had some success fighting it. Spain has about 140 convictions a year, according to data from AP's freedom of information request.

ETA, the Basque separatist group, once was responsible for killings every month. Today it is severely weakened.

"The terrorist attacks 10 years ago on the World Trade Center and the Madrid bombings helped forge a strong feeling of rejection toward ETA," said Spanish journalist Gorka Landaburu, who is Basque and himself a victim of an ETA mail bomb in May 2001 that blew off his thumb and fingertips. "Society lost a bit of its fear."

Under tough new anti-terror laws passed after 9/11, convicted terrorists in Spain face a maximum of 40 years, 10 more than for other crimes.

"Every democratic country has to resort at one time or another to exceptional measures to defend itself," said Roman Cotarelo, a political science professor at Spain's Open University.

For Landaburu, the terror is still there, in his pinched brow and in the two bodyguards who follow him. When he gestures with his hands, which he often does, there's a stump where his thumb once was.

But he feels ETA's days are numbered.

"Things are much calmer," he said. "People can breathe more easily."

Anti-terror laws are still playing out in unexpected ways, particularly in the Middle East, long seen as the cauldron of terrorism.

After 9/11, many Middle Eastern countries quickly adopted strict anti-terror laws. Secular Tunisia used its 2003 laws to crack down on piety and protect against Islamic militancy. It convicted 62 people under the laws in 2006, 308 in 2007 and 633 in 2009, according to the U.N.

Former prisoner Saber Ragoubi joined an anti-government group in 2006 because he says he wanted religious freedom. The group was trained by an Algerian group that later declared allegiance to al-Qaida.

Ragoubi says he never held or planned to hold a weapon, but he did support plans to attack the police.

When the police found him, Ragoubi was tried and sentenced to life in prison. For years, he said, he was kicked and beaten, his hands and legs chained to an iron bar in what was called the "chicken on a spit" position. He said he was shackled to a metal chair and electrically shocked, and told his mother and sisters would be raped in front of him if he didn't sign a confession.

"To this day, I don't know how I bore all that torture during that time," said Ragoubi. He was just fitted with two new front teeth to replace the ones kicked out of his mouth by the heavy boot of a prison guard, he said.

Under former leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as many as 2,000 Tunisians were detained, charged or convicted on terrorism-related charges. The U.N. says some were tortured.

But five days after Ben Ali fled in January, the new ministers released everyone convicted under the anti-terror laws, even those who had indeed committed violent crimes.

The role of anti-terror laws in — and against — the Arab Spring continues.

Bahrain and Syria have charged protesters under anti-terror laws. Saudi Arabia, citing concerns about al-Qaida, is considering an anti-terror law with a minimum prison sentence of 10 years for disloyalty to the king.

Ten years after 9/11, the push for a global assault on terrorism still runs strong. Mike Smith, director of the U.N.'s Counter-Terrorism Committee, calls prosecuting terrorists "incredibly important."

But almost everyone, including the U.N. and the U.S., agrees that the cost is some erosion of human rights.

"Originally the approach was the more the merrier, the stronger counter-terror laws, the better for the security of the world. But that was a serious mistake," said Martin Sheinin, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. "Nowadays people are realizing the abuse and even the actual use of counterterror laws is bad for human rights and also bad for actually stopping terrorism."

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AP staff writers who contributed to this report include: Christopher Torchia from Turkey; Christopher Bodeen from China; Paul Schemm from Tunisia; and Ciaran Giles from Spain.

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AP IMPACT: Automation in the air dulls pilot skill (AP)

WASHINGTON – Safety and industry officials worry that there will be more deadly airline accidents traced to pilots who have lost their hands-on instincts as planes become ever more reliant on automation to navigate crowded skies.

The airline industry says hundreds of people have died over the past five years in 51 "loss of control" accidents in which planes stalled during flight or got into unusual positions that pilots could not correct. In some cases, pilots made the wrong split-second decision, with catastrophic results.

One airline captain, Rory Kay, says pilots get so little time to manually fly planes that they're "forgetting how to fly." Kay is co-chairman of a Federal Aviation Administration committee on pilot training.

Regulations that require greater reliance on computerized flying are helping spur the trend.

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AP IMPACT: New danger found in asbestos town (AP)

LIBBY, Mont. – For a decade, the people of Libby have longed for the day when they will be rid of the asbestos that turned their town into the deadliest Superfund site in America.

Now they are being forced to live through the agony all over again, thanks to two giant piles of bark and wood chips on the edge of town.

An Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has known for at least three years that the wood piles were contaminated with an unknown level of asbestos, even as Libby residents hauled truckload after truckload of the material away from the site and placed it in yards, in city parks, outside schools and at the local cemetery. The Environmental Protection Agency did not stop the removal of the material until the AP began investigating in early March.

Regulators still do not know what effect the material could have on public health, but EPA documents obtained by the AP showed that the agency found potentially deadly asbestos fibers in four of 20 samples taken from the piles of scrap wood in 2007. The sprawling piles came from a now-defunct timber mill that took thousands of trees from a forest tainted with asbestos from a nearby mine.

The potential for more contamination has frayed nerves in the town of 3,000 people and further eroded confidence in the government to clean up the mess that to date has killed an estimated 400 people and sickened 1,750.

"We thought we were coming to an end and now we have this issue all over again," said Lerah Parker, who spread dozens of truckloads of the material around her property.

The source of Libby's asbestos was a W.R. Grace vermiculite mine that at its peak produced 2 million tons of ore annually and employed 200 people. Vermiculite stripped from a mountain on the edge of town was shipped around the world to make insulation, only for authorities to later discover the ore was loaded with deadly asbestos.

The EPA has spent more than $370 million over the past 11 years cleaning up Libby. Contractors in moon suits carting off tainted materials have become a constant reminder of the severity of the contamination.

The wood chips and bark became a popular item for anyone in Libby looking to add some landscaping touches to their yards, and for contractors who packaged the product and sold it around the country.

Local officials estimate that 1,000 tons were used in landscaping and for erosion control in Libby. Over the past decade, as much as 15,000 tons were sold and hauled out of town to destinations unknown, according to the economic development official who was selling it.

The EPA is now scrambling to gauge the public health risk and is preparing to issue guidelines about how residents should handle the wood, including warnings not to move or work with the material when it's dry to avoid stirring up asbestos. But the agency has decided it won't track down where the chips went, saying it no longer has jurisdiction because the material is now classified as a commercial product.

Responding to the AP's investigation, Montana U.S. Sen. Max Baucus on Tuesday pledged to launch his own inquiry into the use of the bark and wood chips. The Democrat — a longtime advocate for Libby — said he wanted to find what EPA knew, when they knew it and whether more action was needed to protect public health.

"The people of Libby have already been poisoned in the name of greed and I won't allow them to be poisoned again because of negligence," Baucus said.

The EPA's press office declined repeated requests from the AP to interview senior officials within the agency's Superfund program about removal of the material.

The agency instead offered a written statement saying its prior tests on the material provided "incomplete information" and were too limited to indicate an imminent danger.

The local official who was selling the wood and bark, Paul Rummelhart, dismissed concerns, saying they unnecessarily threatened to undermine economic development in the Libby area, where roughly one in five people are unemployed.

"I've got a file that's three-feet thick on all the (asbestos) sampling that's been going on," Rummelhart said. "If you have a few hits, so what?"

Federal officials have acknowledged that removal of the bark went on for years without their knowledge. Yet the agency absolved the on-scene contractor, CDM, of responsibility, saying the company's workers were not charged with monitoring movement of material into and out of the former mill site.

A CDM spokeswoman, Marlene Hobel, referred questions about the matter back to the EPA.

"We're trying to take a look backward at what's there," EPA regional director Jim Martin said. "We're trying to reconstruct history and see what has been moved and should it have been moved."

The presence of the bark has stoked fears of widespread recontamination just after the EPA in May declared it had reduced the dangers facing Libby.

"How many more years is it going to take?" asked Parker, who suffers from asbestosis, an incurable disease caused by inhaling asbestos fibers that scars the lungs and slowly starves them of air. "Are we supposed to sit here and hold our breath?"

Parker and her husband have been working to restore their property since it was demolished during the cleanup. Over the last several years, they hauled about 30 loads of the bark and wood chips from the former Stimson Lumber Co. mill.

They showed a reporter more than 300 trees they had planted, each one ringed with bark a foot deep. Scattered across the property were thousands of newly planted berry bushes, vines, shrubs and other plants — all ringed with the bark.

The material is easily found around town, where landscapers, city workers and homeowners paid small fees to haul it out. Those who have used it described it as ideal landscaping material — cheap, plentiful and attractive.

After the EPA tested samples from the piles and found evidence of asbestos in 2007, agency scientists never determined just how much contamination was present. Air samples taken from the site were negative.

Truckloads of the chips and bark continued to be shipped from the site as recently as last fall. A pile that witnesses said once towered as high as a four-story building and covered five acres has been reduced to remnants. A second pile, now roughly half gone, still towers at least 20 feet.

Results from additional asbestos sampling on the bark piles are due later this month. The EPA also said it will test the material around town if requested by any homeowner that used it.

Since the AP first questioned the safety of the bark piles, based on concerns raised by residents, the EPA has warned the mill's owner not to sell the material. Regulators said they were told most was used to make fuel pellets that are bagged and sold nationwide at major retailers. Agency officials said it was unknown how dangerous it would be to burn those pellets, since the amount of asbestos in the material was never completely quantified.

But the company that took it says the material was unsuitable for fuel pellets, so it went to a power plant in Canada. Representatives of Eureka Pellet Mills refused to offer specifics to verify the claim, and regulators said they had no intention of tracking down the material.

Two of Eureka's customers, Wal-Mart Inc. and Home Depot, said they were unaware of any problems. Home Depot no longer sells the material, a spokeswoman said. A Wal-Mart spokesman said his company had investigated and was unaware of any contamination.

Libby City Councilman D.C. Orr said the EPA's failure to halt shipments sooner or further investigate the hazards "boggles my mind." Orr, who runs an excavation and contracting business, said he took multiple shipments of the material before learning the EPA had found it to be contaminated.

Those included deliveries to local landscaping businesses and into Orr's yard, where the material lines the ground beneath a swing set used by his grandchildren.

Studies by the EPA and university researchers have found the forests around Libby are tainted with asbestos at least eight miles from the mine. The barbed asbestos fibers lodge themselves in cracks and crevices in the bark until they are released when disturbed or burned.

"We're talking about millions of fibers per square centimeter of bark surface area," said University of Montana researcher Tony Ward. "The question is: What is the dangerous level? There's a lot of people sick up there and you can't argue with that.

"Theoretically it takes just one fiber to get sick."

Timber sale records provided to the AP by the U.S. Forest Service through a Freedom of Information Act request show that trees on more than 9,000 acres have been harvested from the vicinity of the mine since it was acquired by W.R. Grace in 1963.

Those trees produced an estimated 76 million board feet of lumber, the agency said. Some of that wood likely went to other mills in Montana and Idaho, but much of it was processed through the Stimson mill in Libby, Forest Service officials said.

The government for years delayed action in Libby despite rising deaths among locals and widespread evidence that asbestos was to blame.

After the cleanup began in 2000, the EPA waited another nine years before declaring a first-of-its-kind public health emergency in Libby at the prodding of federal lawmakers. Last year alone, a local clinic diagnosed almost 300 people with asbestos-related disease.

EPA officials said they became aware only last year that the contaminated piles at the timber mill site were being sold. A Denver-based member of the agency's cleanup team, Rebecca Thomas, said she saw trucks hauling away material during one of her periodic visits to the site last fall.

Yet the shipments began as early as 2004, according to local officials and residents. They said a steady stream of truck traffic exited the site for years — passing right in front of the main office for one of EPA's lead contractors on the cleanup.

Thomas played down the potential for a health threat from the material that was exported from Libby. Officials suspect the high rate of illness in the town results from the high concentration of asbestos there — conditions not present outside the town.

Once the bark and wood chips left, said EPA spokeswoman Sonya Pennock, they became a commercial product — no longer subject to agency regulation as a hazardous substance.

"We certainly have some legal obligations as well as moral obligations to the community," EPA regional director Martin said. "But our legal authority only goes so far."

The remaining pile of wood chips and bark at the Stimson mill site is smaller but still covers several acres. Rummelhart recently hung "No Trespassing" signs while he awaits further word from the EPA on the amount of asbestos contamination.

Rummelhart said he was "sick and tired of those (asbestos) victims" hampering the town's economic revitalization. He said he intends to sell the material if given the chance.

"We're moving on and moving forward," he said.

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AP IMPACT: Teaching jihad in Indonesian prisons (AP)

PORONG PRISON, Indonesia – A sweeping crackdown on terrorism in the past decade has spawned a new problem in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation: Militants in jail are recruiting new followers to their cause.

Prisons threaten to undermine the progress made against terrorism here since 2002, when nightclub bombings killed 202 people on the tourist island of Bali, many of them Australians and Americans.

The campaign has assumed global importance because of feared links between Southeast Asian terrorist groups and al-Qaida. That possibility was underlined by the January arrest of Bali bombing suspect Umar Patek in Abbottabad, the same Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was killed in May.

The Associated Press was granted two days of unfettered access to Porong prison in early June by the chief warden, who wanted to show that changes were being made to limit the influence of jihadist inmates. While there were improvements, interviews with terrorists and other convicts show how openly the former still court some of the latter.

Porong is a huddle of low concrete buildings set on 40 acres (15 hectares) near Surabaya, the country's second-biggest city. It is home to 27 terrorists — some of the 150 currently held in prisons across the sprawling Indonesian archipelago.

Block F is technically reserved for terrorists but also accommodates about 50 others because of overcrowding. The prison, designed to hold 1,000 inmates, has 1,327.

An elaborate green garden flourishes in the thick heat. Bearded terrorists tend ducks, and fish splash in small ponds. Some militants play sports with other inmates, while others read the Quran or teach Islam to ordinary prisoners.

"We only explain what they should know about jihad," said Syamsuddin, who is serving a life sentence for his role in a gun attack on a karaoke club in Ambon that killed two Christians in 2005. "It's up to them whether to accept it or not."

Syamsuddin was trained in bomb-making by alleged al-Qaida terrorist Omar al-Farouq during Muslim-Christian conflict in Ambon between 1999 and 2002.

Muhammad Syarif Tarabubun, a former police officer, was sentenced to 15 years for his role in the same attack. He laughed easily and smiled broadly as he explained his extremist views. He said he plans to join a jihad in Afghanistan, Iraq or Lebanon after his likely early release in 2013 for good behavior.

"The death of Osama bin Laden will not ruin our spirit for jihad," he said. "We do it not for a figure. We do it for God's blessing."

Radicalization is common in Pakistan's and Afghanistan's overcrowded prisons, where thousands of terrorists and insurgents mix freely with others, according to a 15-country study by the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence.

In the U.S., Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, managed to send inflammatory messages from his prison cell to followers in Egypt. There is debate over whether and how far Islamic radicals are infiltrating U.S. prisons.

One exception may be Saudi Arabia, which is fending off radicalization in prisons through an unusually well-funded and comprehensive program. Its "golden handcuffs" approach of finding wives for captured terrorists and enmeshing them in a web of personal, financial, religious and professional obligations once released is regarded as pioneering.

In Indonesia, experts say, some radicals finish their sentences with an even greater commitment to deadly jihad. Of 120 arrested and 25 killed in raids since February 2010, some 26 had previously been in prison for terrorist acts, according to the International Crisis Group, which researches deadly conflict.

Sidney Jones, one of the group's Southeast Asia terrorism experts, calls Indonesia's prisons the weakest link in the counterterrorism effort. "It's going to undermine everything that the police are doing to break up these networks," she said.

Porong prison, though immaculately clean and far from grim, has ceilings that leak copiously during the rainy season and swarms of mosquitoes at night. Inmates are allowed out of their gray windowless cells from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Within Block F, a small shop is a favorite gathering place.

Nearby, nine men wearing traditional Muslim shirts sit on a floor listening intently to a religious lesson by Maulana Yusuf Wibisono, who stockpiled explosives for a 2004 suicide bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10 people.

These men, part of the ordinary prison population, diligently copy what Wibisono writes on a small white board.

"It's still too early to invite them for jihad," said the 42-year-old terrorist. He is the former leader of the East Java military wing of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group behind the 2002 Bali bombing. "To change their way of life is more important."

Many are in awe of the terrorists' piety and dangerous reputations. Militants also get extra food and other goods, both from supporters and through police attempts at rehabilitation, adding to their sway in prison. Often bearded and clad in robes, sarongs or ankle pants, they stand out from the other inmates.

"Don't judge them as bad guys," said Frans Sandi, who is serving 13 years for murdering his wife. He is a regular at Wisibono's religious instruction. "They are even able to turn bad guys into good."

He is now well versed in the Quran, fasts and never misses the call to pray five times day — things he had never done in the past.

His budding faith is seen by terrorists as a necessary step toward accepting their extremist version of Islam. While his good behavior and piety may earn him an early release, his debt to the radicals could one day see him used as a terrorist enabler.

"These men understand that wider support for their activities is crucial to the longevity of their movement," says "Jihadists in Jail," a report released in May by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "That's why they continue their dakwah (religious outreach) in prison to ensure they can recruit new members and that their own zeal for militant jihad isn't diminished."

Radical preachers, too, have played a role in recruiting behind bars.

In Sukamiskin prison, cleric Aman Abdurrahman won over three students arrested for a hazing death. They were re-arrested last year during a raid on a terror training camp in Aceh province.

Another firebrand cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, was sentenced recently to 15 years for supporting the Aceh camp. Experts say the imprisonment of Bashir, who co-founded Jemaah Islamiyah, is unlikely to stop him from providing crucial spiritual sanction for terrorism.

Though there have been several more attacks since the Bali bombings, none has been anywhere near as deadly. Analysts credit a crackdown that has netted nearly 700 militants since 2000, including police killings of several key leaders.

But Indonesia, where more than 100 million still live in poverty, lacks the resources to mount a comprehensive program to persuade convicted terrorists to renounce violence. And dozens of Jemaah Islamiyah members are due for release in the coming three years.

"In the absence of a really concerted program, ... you are going to see most of them going back to their networks for the simple reason that those networks are based on family ties," said Carl Ungerer, author of the Jihadists in Jail report.

Nur Achmad, the chief warden at Porong, said he was shocked when he took over late last year to see regular inmates moving freely in and out of Block F. Some had changed their appearance, lengthening their hair and beards in imitation of the militants.

"I have to stop this," Achmad said. "I don't want them spreading radicalism to other inmates."

Prisoners from other blocks are now restricted from entering Block F. Those in the block are allowed to study Islam with the militants but under tighter supervision, including what kind of instruction can be given. Closed-circuit television cameras have been installed.

The extremists have protested Achmad's changes in letters to the police and the justice and human rights ministries. He also received threatening text messages, warning him that his daily routine and family's whereabouts were known, and that a network outside the prison could harm him.

Government officials acknowledge that reforming radicals isn't easy. "This program has so far not yielded optimum results," said Ansyaad Mbai, the head of Indonesia's anti-terrorism agency.

Sometimes the best that can be achieved is a shaky commitment not to wage jihad at home — potentially exporting the problem abroad.

For Slamet Widodo, sentenced to five years for his role in a 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12, violent jihad remains an obligation as long as Muslims suffer injustice.

"But now we know Indonesia is not a proper place for the field of jihad," said Widodo, a veteran of al-Qaida military training in the early 1990s in Afghanistan.

He is looking further afield while occasionally attending government-run deradicalization sessions.

"If there is a chance to jihad abroad, I would go," he said. "Why not?"

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Wright in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Jihadists in Jail: http://tinyurl.com/3fhr2u3

View the original article here

AP IMPACT: Populations around US nuke plants soar (AP)

BUCHANAN, N.Y. – As America's nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Yet government and industry have paid little heed, even as plants are running at higher power and posing more danger in the event of an accident, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Populations around the facilities have swelled as much as 4 1/2 times since 1980, a computer-assisted population analysis shows.

But some estimates of evacuation times have not been updated in decades, even as the population has increased more than ever imagined. Emergency plans would direct residents to flee on antiquated, two-lane roads that clog hopelessly at rush hour.

And evacuation zones have remained frozen at a 10-mile radius from each plant since they were set in 1978 — despite all that has happened since, including the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan.

Meanwhile, the dangers have increased.

More than 90 of the nation's 104 operating reactors have been allowed to run at higher power levels for many years, raising the radiation risk in a major accident. In an ongoing investigative series, the AP has reported that aging plants, their lives extended by industry and regulators, are prone to breakdowns that could lead to accidents.

And because the federal government has failed to find a location for permanent storage of spent fuel, thousands of tons of highly radioactive used reactor rods are kept in pools onsite — and more is stored there all the time.

These mounting risks, though, have not resulted in more vigilant preparations for possible accidents.

The AP found serious weaknesses in plans for evacuations around the plants, including emergency drills that do not move people and fail to test different scenarios involving the weather or the time of day.

Some plans are merely on checklists, and never have been tested. In drills, responders typically go to command centers and not to their emergency posts. There is no federal requirement for how fast an evacuation must be carried out.

And disaster planners from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have made dubious assumptions about the public response to a major accident. They insist, for example, that people who are not called upon to evacuate will stay put; they're now saying that they might under some circumstances tell people to hunker down at home even in the 10-mile evacuation zone, and they believe people will do it.

That advice flies in the face of decades of science and policy, millions of dollars in planning and preparations — and common sense.

The advice also conflicts with what U.S. officials told Americans in Japan in March, when an earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to Fukushima and melted fuel in three of its six nuclear reactors.

Japanese officials ordered those living within 12 miles of the site to leave. The U.S. government's advice to its citizens? If you're within 50 miles, you should evacuate. And NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko insisted that this was nothing more than what would be recommended in a similar situation at home.

In fact, under rules in force for more than 30 years, U.S. communities must by law prepare federally reviewed evacuation plans only for those living within 10 miles of a plant. In a severe accident, most of the early deaths — those from radiation sickness, not cancer — are predicted to occur within a 10-mile radius.

Those living within 50 miles, meanwhile, are covered only by an "emergency ingestion zone," where states are required to make plans to ban contaminated food and water — but not evacuate.

After a May 10 tour at the Indian Point nuclear complex, where two reactors operate just 25 miles from New York City's northern border, Jaczko said the 10-mile rule was merely a "planning standard." He said decisions on what to do in the "unlikely event" of an accident would be based on circumstances. "So if we needed to take action beyond 10 miles, that's certainly what would be recommended."

If a 50-mile order were ever issued for Indian Point, it would take in about 17.3 million people — 6 percent of all Americans, according to an AP population analysis. That would include parts of New Jersey and Connecticut and all of New York City, except for a chunk of Staten Island.

Such a mass exodus would be an "enormous challenge" — and a historic feat, said Kelly McKinney, New York City's deputy commissioner of preparedness.

"At no time in the history of man," he said, "has anyone tried to move 17 million people in 48 hours."

___

ANALYSIS PINPOINTS GROWTH

When reactors were being built, starting in the 1960s, they were generally kept away from population centers. Their remote locations were viewed as a fundamental safety feature — protection aimed at "reducing potential doses and property damage in the event of a severe accident," according to federal guidelines.

However, over the decades, millions of newcomers have transformed tranquil woodland or shoreline into buzzing suburbs and bedroom communities.

The AP gathered four sets of population data starting in 1980 through 2010 and used mapping software to calculate growth as part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at nuclear power plants.

Last week, the AP reported that federal regulators, working in concert with industry, have repeatedly weakened or failed to enforce safety standards so old reactors can keep operating. The records review included tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies, test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements.

The AP found in its population analysis that over the decades, plant operators and federal regulators have given surprisingly little thought to nearby population growth.

Officials calculate plant safety margins without considering whether an accident would expose 10,000 or 100,000 people to radiation sickness and cancer. And federal regulators have set no limit for how long evacuations may take for given conditions and locations.

The NRC and FEMA acknowledge that radiation releases can happen within a half hour of an accident. Yet a 2004 study for Indian Point estimated total evacuation time from the 10-mile zone, in the snow that is common during local winters, would take 12 hours.

The federal government has not even required population updates for the evacuation zones, though that would change under a proposal expected to be adopted later this year.

The AP analysis also shows that:

_Four million people now live within 10 miles of the 65 operating sites. (Population in overlapping zones was counted only once for this part of the analysis.) Back in 1980, with 38 nuclear sites, only 1.5 million people lived that close.

_Overall, from 1980 to 2010, the average population in the 10-mile evacuation zones ballooned by 62 percent, from 39,762 to 64,363.

_Populations within the 10-mile radius have more than doubled at 12 of the 65 sites during the same 30-year period.

_The most explosive growth occurred around the two-reactor Saint Lucie complex near Fort Pierce, Fla., where the 10-mile population of 43,332 in 1980 grew 366 percent to 202,010 in 2010. Others in the top five: the two-unit Brunswick complex near the North Carolina coast, which increased 326 percent from 8,164 to 34,782; Monticello, 35 miles from Minneapolis, where population rose 314 percent from 14,130 to 58,538; the two-unit Turkey Point site, 20 miles south of Miami, up 302 percent; and the two-unit San Onofre facility in San Clemente, Calif., up 283 percent.

_Among newer reactors, the biggest jump occurred around Shearon Harris, 20 miles southwest of Raleigh, N.C., where population nearly quadrupled from 24,700 in 1990 to 94,465 in 2010. Three other facilities where populations more than doubled during the same 20-year period are the three-unit Palo Verde site, 50 miles west of Phoenix; two-unit McGuire site, 17 miles north of Charlotte, N.C., and the two-unit Catawba complex in South Carolina, 18 miles south of Charlotte.

_About 120 million people, almost 40 percent of all Americans, live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant, according to the AP's analysis of 2010 Census data.

___

TRAFFIC JAMS ON A GOOD DAY

The geography and population around Indian Point have always been a challenge for emergency planners.

Homes and businesses dot hillsides sloping to the eastern shore of the Hudson River. Along its bank, a curvy, two-lane main artery meanders past traffic lights through quaint town centers suffused with Dutch history and the lore of writer Washington Irving. At rush hour, the roadway crawls with idling cars.

Choke points are everywhere: the narrow Bear Mountain Bridge just north of the plant; the Route 202 slog through old Peekskill; and the Tappan Zee Bridge, which acts as the major river crossing to the south, beyond the 10-mile evacuation zone.

A potential destination for many evacuees, the bridge often backs up with traffic for miles during the morning and evening commutes.

Just a mile to the west across the Hudson, two-lane Route 9W snakes beneath the base of Bear Mountain State Park, offering few escape routes.

Though modest population growth of 32 percent within 10 miles of Indian Point has mirrored the nation's increase as a whole between 1980 and 2010, more people live within this evacuation zone than any other in the country: 268,906, according to the AP analysis.

Population density isn't the only concern. A 2008 Columbia University study discovered a seismic fault line near Indian Point, where another earthquake-prone zone was already known to exist. Yet a steel liner designed to be earthquake-proof has been leaking at the site since 1973.

New York state has fought relicensing. Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the area can't be evacuated in a severe nuclear accident.

Given the local topography — natural and man-made — a quick evacuation would be a challenge.

But when Jaczko's talk of a possible 50-mile evacuation in the United States is brought into the equation, the prospect is truly daunting.

In some accidents, New Yorkers would presumably head west to New Jersey using the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel — passageways that are rarely light on traffic. Any evacuation from the 10-mile zone along those routes could be complicated by a so-called shadow evacuation by those living within 50 miles who defy official instructions to stay put.

There are other fears — that some police and bus drivers would leave instead of stay to help and that parents would rush to schools instead of meeting their children at designated centers outside the evacuation zone.

As with other nuclear sites, the Indian Point emergency plan puts school reception centers outside the 10-mile zone — but not far outside.

Indian Point's lead community evacuation planner, Anthony Sutton, at the Westchester County Department of Emergency Services, acknowledged that area roads couldn't handle the traffic surge from a full-scale nuclear emergency. "I think in a perfect world, we'd all like to see the place in a different location, with all the challenges of evacuating the public around it," he said.

Paul Blanch, a nuclear safety expert who used to consult at Indian Point but now opposes its effort for a 20-year license extension, was more blunt: "No matter what they say, they're not going to be able to evacuate these areas."

John Curry, Indian Point's emergency director, said he believes people can evacuate from the 10-mile zone. But he acknowledges the depth of public skepticism: "It's very difficult, and I don't know how to make them feel any better."

___

SAFETY IN `LOW' NUMBERS

Two dozen of the nuclear sites along the East Coast are within 50 miles of New York, Boston, Washington, Baltimore or Richmond, Va.

"Anyone who lives on the East Coast knows population has grown up around these reactors, and there are certain places where they should never have been built in the first place," said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for environmental group Greenpeace.

For the most part, though, the early sites were favored if they satisfied the criterion of "remoteness from heavily populated areas," according to the NRC's predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1998, federal guidelines said low-population areas were "generally preferred" because they limit exposure to radiation accidents. This was viewed as part of the NRC's philosophy of multiple layers of accident safeguards. NRC regulations continue to require "low population zones" around prospective nuclear sites.

But from the beginning, it was hard to use very remote sites. Sites were desirable when they were still close enough to transportation networks to haul in massive equipment and supplies and near enough to amenities to lure engineers and corporate managers.

The contradiction meant choosing places like the piney hills of Wake County, N.C., where federal regulators gave permission to build Shearon Harris in 1978.

They described the region as a "sparely populated rural area." But it was just 20 miles from Raleigh — and future commuter sprawl — which accounted for the population nearly quadrupling within the 10-mile zone from 1990 (three years after it went online) to 2010.

Complicating things nationwide, government and industry officials also tended to underestimate projected growth — picking numbers that helped win approval for favored sites.

For example, federal regulators predicted in 1973 that the 50-mile population around the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida would expand from 155,900 to only 381,000 by 2020. "The basic rural character of the area is not expected to change in the coming 40 years," the government predicted.

Yet the plant was built in Citrus County on the state's picture-postcard west coast, 70 miles north of Tampa. And by 2010 — 10 years ahead of the predicted timetable — the population had already multiplied by six, to over 1 million, the AP analysis shows.

"These population explosions are very likely to make the evacuation plan unworkable," said anti-nuclear activist Paul Gunter at Beyond Nuclear in Takoma Park, Md., who has pressed for reviews of emergency community planning before relicensing.

Even Dana Powers, a member of the NRC's independent Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, says his group "has had troubles with evacuation strategy assumptions."

U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu recently suggested that the Japanese accident will indeed drive U.S. regulators to pick less populated areas for future nuclear plants.

Emergency readiness was supposed to account for growth and stay up to date. The joint guidance of the NRC and FEMA in 1980 stated that "evacuation time estimates should be updated as local conditions change." In fact, according to AP's review of government records, once plant turbines started humming, little was done to keep planning in step with population increases.

In 2007, then-Commissioner Jaczko acknowledged that some evacuation time estimates had not been updated "in decades."

A proposed rule would require fresh estimated evacuation times with new Census data every 10 years — and after that, with any jumps in population that would increase the time estimate by either 25 percent or 30 minutes.

The proposal also would require an annual update of the population estimate. If adopted as expected, it would be the first overhaul of emergency preparedness rules since 1980.

Given the lack of a required evacuation time, though, any updates might make little difference.

Even with increased concern among federal regulators, challenges remain in the mission to inform the public quickly and accurately.

A FEMA web page entitled "Nuclear Power Plant Emergency," last modified on April 8, states: "Nearly 3 million Americans live within 10 miles of an operating nuclear power plant." That's off by one million people.

Then there is the relatively new and sparsely publicized concession to escalating populations and roads that haven't been upgraded or widened in decades. It's called "sheltering" — if people stay put, maybe they can evacuate later, after the first wave of people has left.

A 2007 Sandia National Laboratories report said excess radiation doses could be reduced if residents simply hunkered down in their homes. However, the report acknowledged that "some contamination and radiation will enter most shelters."

Then, sending another mixed message that could prompt unofficial evacuations, the report continued: If quick evacuation is possible, leaving is "always the most appropriate recommendation."

___

PLAYING WITH NUMBERS

As part of its investigation, the AP has reported that researchers' numbers and assumptions — along with NRC regulations — have been periodically adjusted to keep the reactors within stated limits for operating safety. Similarly, confronted with evacuation troubles, the NRC has minimized the presumed impact of accidents, allowing plants to stay on the power grid.

The studies date back to the early 1980s, when the NRC wanted more guidance about where to locate nuclear reactors. So the agency decided to assess the potential effects of serious accidents on surrounding communities.

Its 1982 report alarmed Congress. At Indian Point Unit 3, the study predicted 64,000 deaths and $314 billion in damages from a bad accident ($700 billion today, adjusted for inflation).

The public was so shaken that the NRC and industry avoided similar analyses for decades.

However, in its Indian Point relicensing proposal, owner Entergy Corp. finally reevaluates some of the numbers. The effects of a bad accident are minimized, according to an AP analysis of those numbers: no more than 2,130 cancer deaths and only $117 billion in economic damages.

Plant spokesman Jerry Nappi went even further when pressed. Contrary to the calculations of planners, he said he didn't "believe a scenario like this is credible or perhaps even possible" with all the protections built into the plant. As for a 50-mile evacuation encompassing New York, he said a 10-mile radius "is already a very conservative planning zone."

Nuclear planners gave similar confident reassurances about their tsunami planning in Japan. And the BP emergency plans left out Gulf of Mexico oil spill scenarios that occurred, even though they supposedly couldn't happen.

Meanwhile, the NRC's partner, Sandia National Laboratories, has again been studying the impact of accidents. The work is still under way, but researchers have tentatively concluded that reactor defenses will work way better than believed in the 1980s.

NRC officials say the conclusion stems from decades of additional research and sophisticated computer modeling. But they also wrap their equations in a ribbon of rosy assumptions:

_Accidents will develop more slowly than thought.

_Buildings designed to contain radiation leaks will hold.

_Emergency plans will work.

_Responders will do their jobs.

_Ninety percent of those told to stay put will obey.

"The magnitude of possible releases from these accidents is much smaller than originally thought," said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell in a preview of the conclusions expected to take final form by 2012.

___

PLANS LACK TEETH

The population boom near nuclear sites cries out for stronger evacuation standards, according to safety watchdogs. But little has been done, thus helping ensure the continued operation of the aging reactors.

While keeping evacuation zones the same size at aging plants, regulators often have allowed the units to run at higher power levels. More power means more radioactivity that could be released in an accident.

Since 1977, all the reactors collectively have upgraded their maximum power output 139 times.

In May, the two Point Beach reactors, on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, were each given permission to increase power levels by 17 percent. Meanwhile, population within 50 miles has grown by 36 percent from 573,050 to 779,140 over the past three decades.

In 2008, the NRC's policymaking commissioners even voted to give lower-level staff the authority to approve sensitive changes that would weaken emergency plans. It had been in the purview of the commission itself.

Today, government regulators verify emergency preparedness of communities essentially by checklists, not by standards for what plans must accomplish. They require that communities show the elements of a good plan, but not that the plan is effective.

For example, evacuation time estimates are required, but there is no standard for how quickly people must be able to leave. Regulators say the estimates will help planners make decisions in a real accident, even in the absence of a standard.

Jim Kish, a FEMA administrator who focuses on emergency preparedness, said in an interview that a standard would put communities in an undesirable "planning box."

"They need the flexibility to make decisions on what to evacuate, and when to evacuate, and how to evacuate," he said.

"I think the NRC wants to make sure that the evacuation side of things doesn't make plants have to close, even if the population grows quickly," said Richard Webster, an environmental lawyer who unsuccessfully fought the relicensing petition at the Oyster Creek reactor in Lacey Township, N.J.

More broadly, the government seems careful to avoid anything fully binding in its planning requirements. It sets a supposed standard that people within 10 miles must be notified of an accident within 45 minutes. But NRC rules also say that's not a guarantee early notification can be provided for everyone.

And notification of an accident within 45 minutes says nothing about how long it will take to flee.

NRC rules also concede there's no guarantee that emergency sirens, "when tested under actual field conditions, will meet the design objective in all cases."

This movable standard makes things easier for plant owners who often struggle to keep warning sirens working from their perches within the 10-mile zones.

FEMA encourages drills for rush-hour traffic, night conditions, or bad weather. But it does not require them, the agency acknowledged.

Heather Heigl, the lead community emergency planner for the area around the Brunswick site in North Carolina, said daylong drills every two years verify that the right people and resources are available, and that communications systems are working.

However, she acknowledged, the exercises don't actually send rescue workers to shelters or police officers to traffic control points. Asked for the estimated evacuation times for her site, she wasn't sure.

"The NRC rubber-stamps these evacuation plans, but they're not based on discernible performance standards," said Alex Matthiessen, president of the Riverkeeper environmental group fighting Indian Point relicensing. "If they applied any kind of meaningful standard in evaluating the emergency plans of the nation's nuclear power plants, there would be no nuclear power plants in this country, at least not in populated areas."

Attorney Webster argued that safety standards should become harder to meet as populations grow around plants like Oyster Creek. (In AP's analysis, population between 1980 and last year increased 269 percent within 10 miles of Oyster Creek, from 36,738 to 135,378.)

During an emergency there, many would be forced to leave in the same direction, away from the Atlantic Ocean, along a highway that a pro-nuclear state senator has called "a two-lane cow path."

Janet Tauro, a nuclear safety activist who lives 18 miles from the plant, wonders: "Picture me with my son on his BMX bike and my daughter at dance class, multiply me by 100,000 — and you have pandemonium."

Helen Henderson, who lives three miles from the reactor, is among the doubters. She said she repeatedly ignored the forms sent home by her children's school certifying that she has read and agrees with the Oyster Creek emergency plan.

Tired of the stream of reminders sent her way, Henderson said she finally wrote back: "Refuse to sign. Evacuation plan will not work."

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org

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Gay-marriage backers: NY vote has national impact (AP)

NEW YORK – Although many obstacles still lie ahead, supporters of same-sex marriage hope a historic victory in New York will build momentum for their cause nationwide.

Legislators approved a bill late Friday making New York the sixth — and by far the most populous — state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Activists hope the vote will help convince judges and politicians across the country — including President Barack Obama — that support of same-sex marriage is now a mainstream viewpoint and a winning political stance.

Fred Sainz of the Human Rights campaign says New York's law "sends the message that marriage equality across the country is a question of `when,' not `if.'"

Action by Congress or the Supreme Court will likely be needed if same-sex marriage is to be recognized nationally.

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