Smugglers' Jeep Gets Stuck On US Border Fence

Suspected Mexican smugglers had to abandon their attempt to get into the US after the 4x4 they were in got stuck on top of the 14ft border fence.

US Border Patrol spokesman Spencer Tippets said agents spotted the SUV perched on top of the fence on Tuesday at the border between Arizona and California.

Two people on the Mexican side were trying to free the Jeep when the agents approached. They ran further into Mexico.

The Jeep was empty, but agents say it was probably filled with contraband like marijuana before it got stuck.

The smugglers had built ramps that looked like long ladders to drive up and over the fence.

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Sandy: 'Mass Destruction' In Atlantic City

When the people of Atlantic City emerged from wherever they had been sheltering against Superstorm Sandy, there was only thing they wanted to see.

A stretch of the city's iconic boardwalk, ripped up and thrown inland, has become a nationwide symbol of the devastating impact of nature's assault on the New Jersey shore.

Ever since, locals have been stopping by: Simply to stare in wonder, or pick through what remains of the demolished boardwalk and abandoned buildings knocked over by Sandy.

The beach is littered with all kinds of debris: Massive chunks of timber, long buried maritime metal work, bits of brick wall, even local newspapers from as far back as 1974.

The site, at the end of Atlantic Avenue, has become something of a tourist attraction.

John Paxton outside his storm damaged home in Atlantic City

John Paxton, a lifelong resident of Atlantic City, said: "This is the first time I have been down to see it.  It is devastating, it looks like a bombed-out area.

"It is the first time I've seen mass destruction like this."

Like many, the 75-year-old ignored evacuation warnings. He saw out Sandy in a house which stands alone on a patch of waste ground four blocks from the beach.

He showed us how three feet of flood water had even left the food drawers in the bottom of his fridge filled with foul water. His home of 57 years is now caked in mud and sludge.

He said: "When I saw the road outside had become a river, there was nothing else to do. I went to bed."

Atlantic City has now begun a massive clean-up operation and almost every street is dotted with piles of damp or destroyed furniture and carpets.

A woman walks past storm damage in Atlantic City

Close to the bay, Kathleen Fitzgerald was dragging plastic rubbish bags full of soaking home goods out on to the pavement.

She says this is the first time that the city has been hit badly by a hurricane-like storm after several warnings came to nothing over the years.

"In a way we were lucky," she said. "As far as my family and all my neighbours, no loss of life, no injuries, so everyone did good."

Red Cross volunteers in the city say even those who prepared well for the storm are now running low on resources.

Catherine Barde said: "This has been incredibly difficult for the residents of this community. It is so completely devastating."

But she says that community spirit has helped: "Everyone comes together at a time like this."

It is perhaps a sign of the scale of Sandy that even Atlantic City's famed casinos were forced to close, at a cost of $5 million a day.

They will re-open and the city will re-build with the spirit demonstrated by residents like Shelley Grossman.

When the storm hit her apartment block, she said, residents retired to a safe room: "We were playing bingo during the height of the storm, it was like being on the Titanic, the music playing as the ship was going down.

"But it kept us all calm."

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Sandy: Face To Face With Storm's Devastation

The superstorm came ashore over a thousand miles of coastline to engulf 20 states - and counting.

In each state Sandy has had different consequences for different communities.

In Rockaway Park in the Queens borough of New York, the storm surge was overwhelming.

Like a tsunami, the sea rose by five or six feet, and swept through the town. It dumped much of the beach on the streets, flipped cars and ripped up the boardwalk.

For Frankie Burk, who was watching from a sixth-floor window, it felt like the end of days.

This was the work of God, he said, just as damaging as what terrorists wrought on 9/11 only more spread out.

The night it happened he ventured out in his waders, but was lifted up and pinned to a fence - but not before seeing electricity transformers above him explode down the street.

The fire they ignited was still burning in a block of properties almost completely destroyed.

Sky News found the Van Leirs, a couple who lived round the corner, hugging each other.

The historic Rockaway boardwalk was destroyed

Jan Van Leir was crying - it was too much to see their neighbourhood shops in smouldering ruins, she said. She wondered if the town would ever get its character back.

Rockaway Park is not affluent - it's a carefree seaside beach town say the people who live here. They are pulling together, helping neighbours remove sodden belongings. But the challenge is enormous.

Every building was flooded one way or another. Cars were carried down streets and flipped over. Basements and ground floors have been wrecked.

Further down this narrow peninsula in Breezy Point, people were killed and many homes went up in flames in a fire caused by a flooded electricity station.

On a dark, cold Halloween night for more than eight million Americans we drove back from Rockaway to Manhattan, the power was out for around two-thirds of the way, and it will be for days to come.

Beyond Brooklyn Bridge, Lower Manhattan stood dark and ghostly.

We had seen military helicopters patrolling the skies over Queens, helmeted National Guardsmen touring in Humvees, and scenes of devastation you do not expect to see in America.

If the scientists are right, this is just the beginning. The weather is only going to become more extreme because of climate change.

Ironically that issue has received barely a mention in the election contest that culminates next week. 

The Breezy Point fire razed dozens of homes

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Surfer Escapes Shark By Punching It In The Head

A surfer fought off a shark by punching it on the side of the head - seconds after it had bitten him.

The attack in Eureka, California left Scott Stephens with eight deep lacerations, according to the Times-Standard.

The 25-year-old was paddling on his board 150 yards further out than other surfers when the shark grabbed him and pulled him under water.

He estimates the creature was four feet long and believes it was a juvenile great white.

"The shark came from underneath me, grabbed onto my side, shook me a few times and pulled me under water," he told reporters from his hospital bed.

"I opened my eyes under water and punched the shark on the side of the head a couple of times until it released me. I saw a lot of blood."

He was able to get back onto his board and return to the shore.

Fellow surfers came to his aid when they heard him screaming for help and took him to St Joseph Hospital.

"I really didn't feel much at the time probably because I was in shock. I didn't feel too much pain until I woke up this morning," he said.

Doctors said the surfboard probably took some of the brunt of the bite, possibly keeping the shark's teeth from penetrating organs that would have made surgery riskier and more complicated.

Despite the traumatic experience, Mr Stephens said it will not keep him out of the water.

"I will be very scared, I'm sure," he said. "I'll definitely have some mental barriers to get through. I think it'll be worth it."

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Election: Ohio's Undecided Voters Mull Dilemma

By Gary Mitchell, in Ohio

If retired truck driver Bob Westerfield had his way, the next president of the US would be a man who has been dead for nearly 50 years - John F Kennedy.

Mr Westerfield, 58, is an undecided voter - a precious commodity and exactly the kind of person Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have spent millions trying to woo in the swing state of Ohio.

Most mornings these days, he sips coffee at Kissner's cafe in the small town of Defiance, wearing a frayed stars-and-stripes baseball cap and surrounded mainly by conservatives and Romney supporters.

This is a popular haunt where, for as long as anyone cares to remember, many of the town's men start their day - farmers and labourers perching on stools at the bar, the town's businessmen and politicians sitting together at tables.

A couple come across like conservative caricatures, such as retired college lecturer James Bray, 73, who says Mr Obama is "definitely a Muslim", as if that might be disagreeable. His friends suggest he is joking. (For the record, Mr Obama has said he is a Christian and, according to polls, most Americans believe him.)

Another, who laughs when asked for his name and is definitely not joking, describes Mr Obama as an "anti-American dictator".

Kissner's, a popular haunt in Defiance

Mr Westerfield may not share their devotion to Mr Romney, but he is not an automatic Obama fan either. He regards himself as a Democrat but will not decide who gets his vote until he casts it a few days from now.

"I'm leaning more conservative," he says, glancing above the bar where a large TV is flashing up the latest news on Superstorm Sandy.

"I'd have JFK back if I could. I didn't like the rumours about him and Marilyn Monroe, but I think he'd do a better job than any of them.

"I'm a Democrat surrounded mostly by Republicans in this place, but I'm not bashful. Everybody has the right to have an opinion and I've got every right to vote for the opposite person to everyone else.

"But I can't make my mind up because there's not enough plusses on either side to compensate for the minuses."

Mr Romney "talks a lot but says little", says Mr Westerfield, while Mr Obama's liberal views sit uncomfortably with his strong Christian beliefs. "I don't want to see God taken out of life, out of schools."

He is not alone there. This is Bible Belt country, and strongly conservative Defiance County has leaned towards Republican presidents in recent years.

However, Mr Obama slightly increased the Democratic margin in the county four years ago to above 40%, and it remains to be seen if the jobs saved at the local GM plant after the president's multi-billion-pound car industry bailout in 2009 - opposed by Mr Romney - will translate into votes.

Mr Romney has been pushing hard to maintain the Republican support base here and was in town last Thursday for a rally heaving with 12,000 supporters.

Religion is a big part of life here

In a sign that the former governor of Massachusetts may still have his work cut out for him in Ohio, three of the 10 Kissner's customers who spoke to Sky News described themselves as undecided.

As well as Mr Westerfield, there is Jim Hale, 84, a retired pharmacist, who also describes himself as a Democrat.

"I voted for Obama last time," he says. "That was because I didn't like McCain, and I didn't like McCain because I didn't like (running mate) Sarah Palin.

"I had an automated phone call from her, asking me for her vote. I hung up.

"This time I really can't decide. For me it's all about the economy and jobs. I'm not certain about the job that Obama's done on that. I don't really know about Romney either."

Bill Rose, 65, an insurance agent, is also undecided. "Every small town in the US has a joint like Kissner's - guys like us sitting around, talking," he says.

"Usually it's about football, politics, gossip, who's cheating on who with who, but now that it's election time we talk a lot more politics.

"And you know what? I may be undecided between Obama and Romney, but I'm tempted to just vote Romney to shut these guys up - to get him into the White House so all the bitching will stop.

"I've heard enough of it."

Another regular at Kissner's is Defiance's mayor, Bob Armstrong, a Democrat and popular former barber with a full head of silver hair who likes to hand out free combs embossed with his name.

He thinks people have heard enough of the candidates bashing each other.

"If I had a wish for this election, I would wish that whoever takes that office of the presidency would throw away partisanship and bring the country back together," he says.

"I'd wish that they'd make decisions in the best interests of the country rather than in the interests of politics."

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Saudi Capital Rocked By Gas Tanker Explosion

A fuel tanker has exploded in the Saudi capital Riyadh killing at least 22 people and injuring 111 others.

Witnesses say the vehicle crashed into a flyover triggering an explosion that caused the collapse of a nearby building.

Adjacent buildings were also damaged as well as nearby vehicles.

Based on witness accounts officials say they do not believe there is a terrorist connection.

The civil defence department confirmed the accident occurred when a gas tanker hit a bridge causing a leak and an explosion in a heavy machinery warehouse.

"The truck driver was surprised by a road accident on its route, causing it to crash into one of the pillars of the bridge," said spokesman Captain Mohamed Hubail Hammadi.

The crash took place on a flyover in the city's industrial area.

Over a hundred emergency personnel responded to the blast.

There are fears the number of deaths will continue to rise.

"I was inside the building when the blast came. Then boom, the building collapsed," said  one survivor, Kushnoo Akhtara.

"Furniture, chairs and cabinets blasted into the room I was in."

The 55-year-old Pakistani said he was now helping to find other victims of the explosion.

"My brother is still inside under the rubble. There are lots of people in there," he said.

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Three Killed In Halloween Stampede In Madrid

Three young women have been killed and two are critically ill in hospital following a human stampede at a Halloween party in the Spanish capital of Madrid.

Partygoers were in tears as they battled against a human tide for the exit doors in a panic apparently sparked by someone throwing a flare, according to police and witnesses.

Some of the doors to the Madrid Arena stadium, which has a capacity for up to 10,500 people, had been sealed, one witness at the "Thriller Music Park" party said.

The women who died in the crush, apparently in a passageway in the stadium, were aged between 18 and 25, police officials said.

A witness described chaos with people fighting for a single door, a waiter trying to resuscitate one of the victims on the bar, and security agents pulling at fleeing youngsters.

"It seems to have been provoked by a flare that someone threw into the stadium," a police spokesman said.

One partygoer - Sandra - spoke of what happened."There was a human blockage at the one exit they had because the others were closed so that no-one could go out that way," she told Cadena Ser radio.

"There was only one door, there was a human blockage with a lot of security staff pulling people," she added. "People were crying, crushed, and there was no-one to help that girl: the waiter got up on to the bar and tried to resuscitate her."

Fernando Prados, duty chief of Madrid emergency services, was on duty at the time of the disaster.

"We received a call at about 4am saying that there were several unconscious girls and when arrived there were five girls between 18 and 25 in respiratory arrest," Prados said.

"We performed resuscitation on them and we managed to get a pulse for three of them," he said. One of the women, however, died on the way to hospital.

"There were some stairs," another witness told state television. "There was an avalanche of people and people fell over each other and amassed there and there was a crush."

An employee from a nearby club said he believed there may have been too many people inside.

A police van and several police cars were at the stadium, which was closed off as police inspected the site under the scrutiny of a crowd of photographers and television cameras.

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Stay-At-Home Putin Denies Injury To Blame

Vladimir Putin has been spending a lot more time at home - sparking rumours that a flight with cranes has taken its toll on his fitness.

The Russian president has carved out a macho image over the years with a series of daring stunts – his latest a flight in a motorised hang-glider with migrating cranes.

Newspaper Vedomosti said the feat, which was mocked as a PR disaster, aggravated an old injury, forcing Mr Putin to shelve trips both at home and abroad as well as visits to the Kremlin in recent weeks.

Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied his infrequent trips to the Russian parliament had anything to do with injury.

He insisted the real reason was that he did not want his motorcade to disrupt Moscow's notoriously bad traffic.

Mr Putin has also put off several expected trips abroad, including visits to India, Turkey and Bulgaria.

However, Mr Peskov said there was no single reason behind those changes.

The hang-glider flight was typical of Mr Putin's adventurous media events.

The 60-year-old has cultivated an image of vigour and daring with stunts such as petting a tranquillised polar bear in the Arctic.

Mr Putin, who was installed as president for a third term in May against a background of popular unrest, is also a keen skier and judo afficionado.

Mr Peskov said: "Indeed he pulled a muscle. It happened before Vladivostok. He was suffering from some muscle pain then.

"Actually, we have never tried to conceal it because any athlete has lots of injuries, which, however, do not mean any restrictions of his activities."

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US Election: Superstorm Boost For Obama

Neighbours Clash On Election Race

Updated: 6:01am UK, Wednesday 31 October 2012

By Gary Mitchell, in Ohio

They live on the same sleepy street in a small American town, but the Daegers and the Bates are a million miles apart when it comes to who should be leading their country.

Kenny and Amy Daeger, from the appropriately named Defiance, Ohio, describe themselves as committed conservatives.

They want to vote for Mitt Romney because they are opposed to abortion and gay marriage, fearful for the spread of what they call  "European socialism" to America and hate the idea of their taxes being used to help "people who refuse to help themselves".

The couple along with Kameron, 13, and 11-year-old Courtney - the youngest of their four children - were among 12,000 people who cheered for Mr Romney when the White House hopeful turned up last week in the town, which is surrounded by a large expanse of farmland and small townships in the northeast of the state.

Mr Daeger, who works on the production line at GM's Defiance plant, said he wants to be able to drive his large 4x4, a GMC Acadia, without getting grief from environmental campaigners or regulators.

"I'm not anti-gay," he insists. "But do I think it's normal? No, I can't say it's normal. Marriage is for Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

"We're being taken down the path of your European socialism.

"Our freedoms are being taken away by the government. Our moral fibre is being torn apart."

While the Daegers were waving and cheering in Defiance's high school football arena at the man they hope will be the next US commander-in-chief, and savouring his promises of "big change", Charles Bates was watching baseball on TV.

The 51-year-old lawyer is in a barbershop chorus that had been asked to sing the American national anthem at the rally. He said he turned down the offer "for obvious reasons".

He has always voted Democrat when it comes to presidential elections. And he fears Mr Romney will oversee a return to a "Bush-style" heavy-handed foreign policy if he wins power.

The Daegers - who have lived in Defiance all their lives - are mostly concerned about issues closer to home. They spoke to Sky News around the kitchen table in their attractive, modest home in a leafy estate called Sherwood Forest.

Mr Daeger, who insisted the two families get along apart from their political differences, said: "This election is about choosing democracy by choosing Romney. Otherwise we get bigger taxes, higher gas prices.

"What we want is limits on government's control over us nationally and locally. Obama doesn't believe in that. He's got it all wrong."

Mrs Daeger, 37, a banker, said she feels strongly about abortion and the protection of her religious beliefs.

"We're Catholic, and I don't believe the government should have any say in who lives and who dies," she said.

"People talk about Romney and say he doesn't help women, that he's not the choice for women. I like Romney because he's not giving me the choice to kill my baby. And that's important to me.

"I feel an obligation to help people, but I don't want my sacrifices to be for people who refuse to help themselves."

Mr Bates, whose wife Jennifer, 37, also votes Democrat but prefers to let her husband be interviewed, has a big problem with conservative views on abortion.

He is baffled by Republicans who claim they are "pro-life" but in the same breath pledge their support for the military.

"Pro-lifers will fight to protect an unborn foetus, but they'll have no problem bombing a town in which many children are killed.

"All I'm asking for some is consistency."

He says he sympathises with the Daegers' beliefs that Mr Obama has mismanaged the economy to the point where the country is now $16trn in debt.

"When the economy is sour, it's always the incumbent President who gets the blame," said Mr Bates.

"But anyone with a rational mind can see that he inherited an economy that was already in a tailspin under George W Bush.

"The guy had no business being in the White House."

Mr Bates believes there could be "some validity" to Mr Daeger's claim that America is becoming a "handout society", but doubts whether Mr Romney could manage welfare any better.

Mr Daeger said: "I understand that taxes are necessary. We need a safety net. When I go to pick up my kids, and I see a kid who gets free lunches at school because of their parents' low income, I want to feed that child.

"But when I see their mom's got all the tattoos and $80 piercings and she's talking on her cellphone ... they have the money for all that, but none to feed their kids?"

While Mr Daeger wants more funding for the military and sees the US as a "liberator", America's presence in Afghanistan and its invasion of Iraq are bugbears for Mr Bates.

"There are despots all over the world," said Mr Bates. "But you don't see America going to places like Sudan to remove despots.

"There's no oil there, that's why. There's no oil in Afghanistan either. I don't even know what they do have, so why are we there?"

Mr Bates and his wife, who have three children between them, would appear to be outnumbered by Republican supporters in Defiance, where religion plays a major part in politics and where some will vote against Mr Obama purely because they disagree with his stance on abortion.

In the last election, John McCain won Defiance County by 54.2% to 43.8% - breaking the county's strong history of swinging in the direction of the eventual winner.

But in Mr Obama's increasingly frequent recent rallies in Ohio, a key swing state that both candidates are pushing hard to win, he has been reminding voters about the multi-billion-dollar car industry bailout he supported in 2009, which was designed to prevent the collapse of GM and Chrysler.

His campaign team is hoping that will help him win some new voters in Defiance, where GM's iron foundry makes engine blocks and is one of the town's main employers, with 1,200 staff and hiring.

Mr Daeger, who has worked at GM for 16 years, believes the rescue has done Mr Obama a favour by maintaining loyalty among his Democrat-voting colleagues. But he resents the fact that it was bailed out with taxpayer money, rather than being allowed to go through its own structured bankruptcy.

"I don't think I owe Obama a vote," he said. "For me, social issues in this country are bigger than me or my job. I could always get another job if I lost my job. The other stuff is too important to me."

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Superstorm Sandy: Fuel Shortages Hit Recovery

Long queues have formed at some US petrol stations due to fuel shortages following superstorm Sandy as emergency teams struggle to reach the worst hit areas and restore power to millions.

Tens of thousands of people are stranded in their properties due to flooding three days after the storm battered the East Coast and killed at least 82 people.

At least 37 people died in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed.

In New York, a limited service returned on some train and subway lines, but more than half of the petrol stations in the city and neighbouring New Jersey remained shut due to power outages and depleted fuel supplies.

Even before dawn, long lines formed at petrol stations that were expected to open.

Residents in the flooded city of Hoboken

Nearly 20,000 people have been trapped at home in the New Jersey city of Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from New York City, amid accusations that officials were slow to deliver food and water.

One man blew up an air mattress and floated to City Hall, demanding to know why supplies had not reached residents - at least a quarter of homes there are flooded and 90% do not have power.

National Guard troops have arrived in Hoboken to help evacuate stranded people.

In total, about 4.7 million homes and businesses remain without power, mostly in New York and New Jersey - while miles of coastline, including Atlantic City, was ripped apart by the storm.

Parts of Manhattan remained without power after the superstorm

As the region struggles to recover, a clean-up operation in that state has begun while New York City has taken the first tentative steps to getting back to some form of normality as it re-opens some unaffected parts of the subway system - which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history.

Three of the region's main airports, John F Kennedy, Newark Liberty and LaGuardia, have also opened and are running limited schedules.

Broadway shows have resumed and people packed on to buses that returned for the first time to city streets since the storm.

Electricity outages continue as far west as Wisconsin in the Midwest and as far south as the Carolinas.

The superstorm, which also hit parts of Canada, came ashore over a thousand miles of coastline to engulf 20 states. It is now winding down and its remnants have been felt in the Appalachian mountains.

Sandy brought up to 3ft (1m) of snow to parts of West Virginia and Maryland and several more inches are possible before it dies out for good later this week.

Flood-damaged food is removed from New York shops

Restoring the usually vibrant New York City to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days, while rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks could take considerably longer.

Power company Consolidated Edison says it could be the weekend before power is restored to Manhattan and Brooklyn, perhaps longer for other New York boroughs and the New York suburbs.

There are still only hints of the economic impact of the storm.

Part of a home rests upside-down in Seaside Heights, New Jersey

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted it would cause $20bn (£12.4bn) in damage and $10bn (£6.2bn) to $30bn (£18.5bn) in lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15bn (£9.3bn).

Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers was unprecedented, but it said it planned to restore some service on Friday to and from New York City.

Speaking at a shelter, US President Barack Obama told New Jersey residents that the government will support them "for the long haul".

The bill for Sandy could top $20bn

The region took the brunt of its impact and is among the worst affected areas on the East Coast.

Joined by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Mr Obama -  who described the disaster as "heartbreaking for the nation" - inspected the impact from Sandy, flying high over flooded neighbourhoods and sand-strewn streets.

He told those affected by the storm: "Our hearts go out to the families who have lost loved ones. Their world has been torn apart ... they are in our thoughts and prayers.

"For those like the people I have had a chance to meet on this block, throughout New Jersey and throughout the region whose lives have been upended, my second message is: We are here for you, and we will not forget, we will follow up to make sure that you get all the help that you need until you've rebuilt."

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