Florida senator denies embellishing family history (AP)

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON and LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, Associated Press Brendan Farrington And Laura Wides-munoz, Associated Press – 7?mins?ago

MIAMI – In Florida, where Cuba and Fidel Castro can be highly combustible political issues, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is defending himself against allegations he embellished his family's story in saying his parents left the island after Castro came to power.

So far, prominent members of the Cuban American community are standing by him, including the head of one of Miami's oldest and most respected exile groups, who said Friday that he is willing to give the rising GOP star and tea-party favorite a pass.

The 40-year-old freshman senator has always publicly identified with the exile community and has a strong following within it. Rubio's biography on his Senate website says he was "born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who come to America following Fidel Castro's takeover." And in a campaign ad last year, he said: "As the son of exiles, I understand what it means to lose the gift of freedom."

But The Washington Post reported that Rubio's parents actually left Cuba in 1956, nearly three years before Castro seized power in a revolution against dictator Fulgencia Batista. Rubio's father was a store security guard when he and his wife left, according to Rubio's staff, and came to the U.S. for economic reasons.

Rubio responded to the story with a statement saying his parents had tried to return to Cuba in March 1961 but quickly left because they did not want to live under communism.

"After arriving in the United States, they had always hoped to one day return to Cuba if things improved and traveled there several times," he said. "In 1961, my mother and older siblings did in fact return to Cuba while my father stayed behind wrapping up the family's matters in the U.S. After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return."

In addition, Rubio has said publicly on previous occasions that his parents left Cuba before the revolution.

Rubio's staff said it would change his Senate website.

The issue is magnified because of the formidable political clout of the Cuban exile community in Florida and the fierce passions in Miami that still surround Castro and the communist island, and because Rubio is often mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick. Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich have said he would make a great running mate.

Democrats are trying to make an issue of it, saying it calls into question Rubio's character. The Florida Democratic Party accused Rubio of "self-serving deception," and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said Rubio has a credibility problem.

"The latest bombshell confirms that Rubio seriously struggles to tell the truth and can't be trusted," said DSCC spokesman Matt Canter.

But Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the GOP National Committee, said the attacks will only strengthen Rubio by causing Republicans to come to his defense. The conservative was elected in 2010 after an upset over the GOP establishment's choice, Gov. Charlie Crist.

"There's no question he has an amazing life story. His family came here to pursue a better life, and that is all accurate. There's folks out there who have seen a great success story and are plotting to figure out how to take him down," Spicer said.

The head of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, Pepe Hernandez, himself an exile and longtime opponent of Castro, said Rubio's parents' initial departure date was unimportant.

"There were a number of people who came here during the Batista regime because they were against Batista somehow," he said. "Then they returned to Cuba when Castro came in because they thought now things were going to change, and then after some time they realized this was not going to happen."

"Maybe their case is not exactly the same. They really came here as immigrants, but the second time the reason was that they couldn't live in Cuba under those circumstances. I don't see any difference between his parents and myself and everyone else who came here."

Former Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who left Cuba as a teenager after the revolution, said the Post story showed "a gross lack of understanding about the Cuban exile experience. The fact is that they would not have left Cuba permanently if not for extreme fear of persecution and in search of freedom, like so many of us did."

Fernand Amandi, a pollster whose company specializes in Hispanic public opinion and works more often with Democrats than Republicans, said the episode alone might not be that damaging, but it could invite further scrutiny of Rubio's record.

"It's a chink in his armor of what was somebody who up to this point had almost uniformly positive and favorable coverage," he said.

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Brendan Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Fla.

Farrington can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bsfarrington

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Lenses shield 9/11 photogs as they capture history (AP)

By ALLEN G. BREED, AP National Writer Allen G. Breed, Ap National Writer – 4?mins?ago

People look at some news photos shot on Sept. 11, 2001, and wonder how those who took them could bear to keep working in the face of such tragedy.

Richard Drew said his lens acts as a filter: "The things are happening over there, on the other side."

Another Associated Press photographer, the late Marty Lederhandler, put it this way: "I let the camera absorb all the disaster or the sadness of an event. It protects ME from the event."

For AP photographers working on Sept. 11, none knew the big picture of what was going on. All knew only what was happening right before their eyes, that it was part of something huge, and that it was their job to record it.

Five whose images of that day became iconic discussed how the photos came about, how endless hours of shooting sporting events, news conferences and everything in between helped prepare them for moments no one could ever have anticipated, and how their lenses helped shield them from the fears — and tears — that would come later.

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After 65 years with the AP, Marty Lederhandler had pretty much seen and done it all.

In 1937, a year after joining the wire service, he'd helped cover the Hindenburg disaster. Seven years later, Lt. Lederhandler waded ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day, two carrier pigeons stowed safely in his bag to wing his undeveloped film back across the English Channel.

On Sept. 11, Lederhandler knew the real story was downtown. But he also knew that his 84-year-old legs wouldn't carry him that far.

He'd covered plenty of fires and explosions. When he couldn't get to the scene, he'd talk his way into someone's apartment and onto the fire escape — anything to get the angle. "You go behind. You go in back. You go up high," he said in a 2006 interview.

Up high! He grabbed his camera and some long lenses, and headed across Rockefeller Plaza, where AP was then based, to the GE Building — now better known as 30 Rock. (AP photo editor Rich Kareckas had suggested going there.)

Lederhandler took the elevator to the 65th floor: the Rainbow Room. Except for waiters setting tables, the place was empty. He marched up to the big window, which offered stunning views of the Empire State Building and the burning twin towers beyond, and began shooting.

After about a half hour, the order came to evacuate. "They didn't know what building was going to be hit next," he recalled.

The frame chosen from his many exposures was shot tight enough to show the massive heft of the towers, the city's tallest skyscrapers, but wide enough to firmly place them in the crowded Manhattan skyline. Of course, Lederhandler had no way of knowing that, by day's end, the Empire State Building would once more dominate that skyline.

He spent the rest of the day helping edit images brought in by freelancers and ordinary citizens.

"The only other story that compares to this is D-Day," he said.

Lederhandler retired three months later. He died last year at 92.

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For Richard Drew, the second week in September always meant just one thing: Fall Fashion Week.

After 23 years in the business, he still looked forward to the twice-yearly fashion show as part of the "diversity of my job" as a New York-based AP photographer. Drew, who shared in the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, had long since learned there was no such thing as a routine assignment.

As a 21-year-old rookie shooter for the Pasadena Independent-Star News, Drew was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, where Robert Kennedy, fresh from winning the California Democratic presidential primary, was shot. Drew was one of only four photographers to capture Kennedy's last moments.

On Sept. 11, Drew was perched on a riser at the end of the runway, waiting for the fashion show to begin, when his cell phone rang.

"A plane's hit the World Trade Center," photo editor Barbara Woike said.

Drew rushed to the subway and took the No. 2 train to Chambers Street. Emerging from underground, he could see smoke now billowing from both towers. He took up a position near a line of ambulances to wait for casualties when suddenly a paramedic shouted, "Look! There's people coming out of the World Trade Center."

But she wasn't pointing down the street. She was pointing up.

"I just sort of clicked into automatic pilot," Drew recalled, "and started taking pictures of the people falling out of the building."

There is a cruel mechanics to capturing such tragedy, and the camera became his filter. The bodies tumbling from the towers were moving very fast, and he worked to keep them in focus.

When he downloaded his images, one stood out: A man in black pants and a white jacket, one leg bent as he plummeted headfirst. It would become known simply as "The Falling Man."

To Drew, it was not a violent image, despite the inherent horror. It was "a very quiet, peaceful moment."

The photo would launch a quest to discover the doomed man's identity — and a public debate about whether such intimate moments should be off-limits. Of all the images from that day, it is one of the least often republished.

Drew thinks he knows why: "I think people react to it, because they can relate to that it might be them."

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Sept. 11 started out for photographer Doug Mills like most days covering President George W. Bush on the road. Wake up before dawn, and go for a run. This day, it was at a golf course in Sarasota, Fla. Then back to the hotel for a quick shower and off to the day's first event — a visit with kids at Emma E. Booker Elementary School.

The motorcade was en route when Mills overheard snatches of a deputy press secretary's cell phone conversation. By the time they reached the school, they knew that a plane — no idea how big — had hit a New York building — no idea which one.

Mills and the other journalists were herded to the back of the classroom. Mills began shooting wide, to capture the president and the children arrayed in front of him.

About five minutes into the event, the classroom door opened, and White House chief of staff Andy Card stepped inside. Mills' antennae immediately went up: Card almost never attended events like this.

Making eye contact, Mills mouthed, "What's going on?"

Card merely held up two fingers.

"We had NO idea at the time what that meant," says Mills. "So, like, `Two minutes, we're leaving?' ... Or, `I'm going to talk to him in two minutes.' ..."

Mills sensed that Card was waiting for the right moment to go up to the president. He quickly switched to a longer lens, and prepared to zoom in tight on Bush.

After a few moments, Card walked to the front of the room, leaned in and whispered something into Bush's right ear. The president's face went blank.

Soon afterward, as the motorcade raced to the airport, Mills edited and sent his images. The classroom event was not televised live, so the AP photo desk grilled Mills about the president's reaction — his words, his facial expressions. When they asked what Card was telling Bush, for the caption, Mills could only say that it was about the planes hitting the twin towers.

"Great job, kid," he remembers AP Washington photo editor Bob Dougherty telling him.

It was only after they boarded Air Force One and began watching CNN that the full import of that morning's event came into focus. A classroom visit that had started out as a routine "photo-op" was now a moment in history.

"If the attacks had happened while we were at the White House," Mills says, "we would have not been there when Andy Card walked into the Oval Office and told the president."

Later, Mills asked Card what exactly he'd whispered into Bush's ear.

"Mr. President," Card said, "a second aircraft has hit the World Trade Center. America's under attack."

"When I hear those words," says Mills, who went to work for the New York Times in 2002, "and when I even say them myself, I get chills."

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Ohio-based AP national photographer Amy Sancetta was in New York City to cover her 10th U.S. Open tennis tournament. She'd spent the week breaking in a pair of brand-new, super-fast Nikon D1H cameras, and was looking forward to some free time.

Sancetta was kneeling on her hotel room floor, stowing her new cameras, when her phone rang. The desk had a report that a plane might have hit one of the World Trade Center towers and asked her to head there.

Her first thought was, "Oh, great. Some guy has driven his little twin-engine plane into the trade center, and it's going to take up my whole day off in the city."

She caught a cab and rode down Broadway until a police barricade stopped her from going farther. By then, the second tower was already smoking. The buildings must be packed, she thought. She got out her 80-200 mm zoom lens and began scanning the rows of windows of the south tower for faces.

Suddenly, she heard a thunderous rumbling. She watched through her lens as the tower's top "kind of cracked and started to fall in on itself."

She could squeeze off only about a half-dozen frames before the tower disappeared. With her subject gone, Sancetta's sports shooter instincts kicked in. When covering a basketball game, it's long lens for the far court, short lens for the near court. She whipped out her other camera with its 14 mm, wide-angle lens and began firing away.

People were rushing past, buffeting her as they ran pell-mell from the rising debris cloud. As the camera whirred and clicked, her mind raced. "I hope my straight ups and downs are straight up and down."

The D1H had a 40-frame buffer, after which the camera would freeze so it could reacquire the images. As she waited, Sancetta suddenly realized that the debris cloud was about to overtake her, and she turned to run. Hurtling down the street, her thought was, "Jeez! If I get hit by that cloud, it's going to ruin my beautiful new cameras."

She ran about half a block, then turned into a parking garage — just as the cloud whooshed past.

When she finally emerged, she stepped into what looked like a "winter wonderland of debris." She began picking her way back toward the trade center, shooting as she went. When she heard a second rumble, she lowered her camera and ran.

At last, she reached the office and was able to see what she had: the beginning of the south tower's end.

And her straight ups and downs were straight up and down.

___

Gulnara Samoilova's shift in the AP photo library didn't start until noon, and she normally slept late. But this day the wail of sirens woke her.

"It just went on and on and on," recalls Samoilova, a native of the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan.

She turned on the TV and was watching at 9:03, when the second plane struck.

Samoilova's apartment was just four blocks from the World Trade Center. She grabbed her camera and a handful of film, and headed into the street.

Entering the south tower, she quickly decided the scene was too chaotic to shoot, and retreated.

Back outside, she was standing right beneath the south tower, its smoking bulk filling her 85 mm lens. She saw the tower begin to crumble and got off one more shot before someone nearby screamed, "RUN!"

The force of the collapse "was like a mini-earthquake," knocking her off her feet. People began trampling her.

"I was afraid I would die right there," the 46-year-old photographer says. She got up just as the cloud was about to envelop her. She dove behind a car and crouched.

Like "a strong wind," the storm of debris rocked the car, filling her eyes, mouth, nose and ears.

"It was very dark and silent," she says. "I thought I was buried alive."

Suddenly, she could hear the fluttering of thousands of pieces of paper. Her sight returned. She had survived.

She changed film and lenses, and as she looked down Fulton Street, other survivors began limping out of the mist. She stepped out from behind the car and began shooting.

In the most powerful image from that sequence, a line of about a dozen people fills the frame. One man holds a jacket over his mouth, while the woman next to him tries to brush debris out of her hair.

"I love that photo," Samoilova says. "To me, it looks like a sculpture. Like, frozen."

She was shooting in black and white. People have asked her if she wishes that photo had been in color.

"It wouldn't matter even," she replies. "They were all covered in dust — the gray dust."

When it was over, Samoilova went back to work in the library. Often after Sept. 11, her job involved going through AP's photos from that day.

"I was crying almost daily."

Eventually, it became too much. Samoilova left the AP in 2003.

Now, she runs her own photo studio, focusing mostly on documentary-style wedding shoots.

"I love weddings," she says. "I get to be part of the happiest days of people's lives."

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Associated Press writers Samantha Gross in New York, Meghan Barr in Cleveland and video journalist David Martin contributed to this story.

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NM fire poised to become largest in state history (AP)

By P. SOLOMON BANDA and SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press P. Solomon Banda And Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press – 1?hr?33?mins?ago

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – With firefighters bracing for another day of strong, erratic winds, a wildfire near the nation's premier nuclear weapons laboratory and a northern New Mexico community was poised Thursday to become the largest in state history.

But fire officials remained confident that the fire would not spread onto the Los Alamos National Laboratory or into the town of Los Alamos. Crews lit brush to create a 10-mile-long burned-out area between the fire and the facility that created the first atomic bomb.

"It's looking good right now," Los Alamos County Fire Chief Doug Tucker said.

The fire has chewed up tens of thousands of acres a day since it started Sunday, charring a total of nearly 145 square miles, or 92,735 acres.

Fire officials believe the blaze will soon surpass the Dry Lakes fire, which burned more than 94,000 acres of the Gila National Forest in 2003.

Crews have contained only 3 percent of the fire near Los Alamos. They were bracing for winds that could gust up to 40 mph Thursday afternoon.

"Every day we continue to see an active fire day, and with those winds it still brings the potential for spotting," fire information officer Sandra Lopez said.

"Those are the conditions these guys and gals that are out there on the fire lines fighting the fire are enduring," she said. "It's rugged, steep country. It's hot, and there are late-afternoon winds."

As firefighters hold the line along the lab's southern border, lab officials are trying to determine the extent of how experiments at the facility have been affected by a shutdown caused by the fast-moving fire.

Lab Director Charles McMillan said Wednesday teams will quickly figure out how things stand as soon as they're able to return.

The lab has been closed since Monday, when the city of Los Alamos and some of its surrounding areas — 12,000 people in all — were evacuated. There was no word on when it would reopen, but it was expected to remain idle at least through Friday.

Officials said the Los Alamos National Laboratory has some 10,000 experiments running at the same time that have been put on hold.

"We have a range of projects, some of them have shorter time deliverable, some of them are years to decades," said McMillan, who last month took over management of the lab that sits atop desert mesas.

The delayed projects include experiments run on two supercomputers, the Roadrunner and Cielo. The National Nuclear Security Administration's three national laboratories — Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore — all share computing time on Cielo, which is among the world's fastest computers.

Also delayed are studies on how climate change affects ocean currents, and on extending the life of 1960s-era B61 nuclear bombs.

The lab also works on such topics as renewable energy and particle physics, solar flares, forensics on terrorist attacks, and studying the AIDS virus at the molecular level to help scientists develop strategies for developing vaccines.

On Monday, about an acre of lab property burned, raising concerns about possible contamination from material stored or buried on lab grounds. As a precaution, the government sent a plane equipped with radiation monitors over the lab. Samples analyzed so far from some of the lab's monitors show nothing abnormal in the smoke.

Lab authorities described the monitoring from the air as a precaution, and they, along with outside experts on nuclear engineering, expressed confidence that the blaze would not scatter radioactive material, as some in surrounding communities feared.

"The nuclear materials are secure," said Penn State University nuclear engineering professor Barry Scheetz, who has served on National Academy of Sciences nuclear review boards and has been to Los Alamos several times. "There's multiple redundancy in the protection of this material."

Anti-nuclear groups have sounded the alarm about thousands of 55-gallon drums containing low-grade nuclear waste — gloves, tools, even paper notes and other contaminated items — about two miles from the fire.

Lab officials said it was highly unlikely the blaze would reach the drums, and that the steel containers can in any case withstand flames and will be sprayed with fire-resistant foam if necessary.

Meanwhile, the economic impact of shutting down the town was already weighing on the minds of Los Alamos officials and business owners.

The lab's employees account for up to 90 percent of the town's commerce, said Kevin Holsapple, executive director of the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce, as well as the local economic development group.

Holsapple did not have an estimate on what the impact would be from the latest fire.

Following a major wildfire in May 2000, the federal government paid out tens of millions to hundreds of businesses to compensate for financial and property loss. Congress approved the payments because the fire was started as a controlled burn on federal land, and got out of control.

"Lightning is not supposed to strike twice in one place," Holsapple said of the second town evacuation in a little over 11 years. "Their preparation in general is better that you would find because of people's experience with this kind of thing."

This time around, that federal government help isn't available.

Gov. Susana Martinez said the state is helping by delaying collection of sales taxes from business affected by the fire.

Other measures being offered to Los Alamos businesses by Holsapple's groups include making interest payments for business loans, as well as support to help business restart.

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Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque and Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

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