Methane warnings ignored before NZ mine disaster

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand coal mining company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels before an underground explosion killed 29 workers two years ago, an investigation concluded.

The official report released Monday after 11 weeks of hearings on the disaster found broad safety problems in New Zealand workplaces and said the Pike River Coal company was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets.

“The company completely and utterly failed to protect its workers,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

The country’s labor minister, Kate Wilkinson, resigned from her labor portfolio after the report’s release, saying she felt it was the honorable thing to do after the tragedy occurred on her watch. She plans to retain her remaining government responsibilities.

The Royal Commission report said New Zealand has a poor workplace safety record and its regulators failed to provide adequate oversight before the explosion.

At the time of the disaster, New Zealand had just two mine inspectors who were unable to keep up with their workload, the report said. Pike River was able to obtain a permit with no scrutiny of its initial health and safety plans and little ongoing scrutiny.

Key said he agrees with the report’s conclusion that there needs to be a philosophical shift in New Zealand from believing that companies are acting in the best interests of workers to a more proscriptive set of regulations that forces companies to do the right thing.

The commission’s report recommended a new agency be formed to focus solely on workplace health and safety problems. It also recommended a raft of measures to strengthen mine oversight.

Key said his government would consider the recommendations and hoped to implement most of them. He would not commit on forming a new agency. Workplace safety issues are currently one of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

In the seven weeks before the explosion, the Pike River company received 21 warnings from mine workers that methane gas had built up to explosive levels below ground and another 27 warnings of dangerous levels, the report said. The warnings continued right up until the morning of the deadly explosion.

The company used unconventional methods to get rid of methane, the report said. Some workers even rigged their machines to bypass the methane sensors after the machines kept automatically shutting down — something they were designed to do when methane levels got too high.

The company made a “major error” by placing a ventilation fan underground instead of on the surface, the report found. The fan failed after the first of several explosions, effectively shutting down the entire ventilation system. The company was also using water jets to cut the coal face, a highly specialized technique than can release large amounts of methane.

The report did not definitively conclude what sparked the explosion itself, although it noted that a pump was switched on immediately before the explosion, raising the possibility it was triggered by an electrical arc.

The now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges it committed nine labor violations related to the disaster. Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 violations and his lawyers say he is being scapegoated.

An Australian contractor was fined last month for three safety violations after its methane detector was found to be faulty at the time of the explosion.

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Despite storm damage, election officials in N.Y., N.J. remain hopeful

NEW YORK (AP) — Power generators are being marshaled, polling locations moved and voting machines hurriedly put into place as officials prepare to hold an national election in storm-ravaged sections of New York and New Jersey barely a week after Superstorm Sandy.

Organizers expressed guarded confidence Sunday that the presidential vote will proceed with no major disruptions in most areas hit by the storm, though it was unclear whether the preparations would be enough to avoid depressed turnout in communities where people still lack power or have been driven from their damaged homes.

Some voters will be casting ballots in places different from their usual polls.

In Long Beach, N.Y., a barrier-island city that was inundated with water during the storm, the number of polling places will be cut to four, down from the usual 11. Residents of the devastated borough of Sea Bright, on the New Jersey shore, will have to drive two towns over to vote.

But with two days to go until Election Day, officials in both states said Sunday that they were overcoming many of their biggest challenges.

Hundreds of emergency generators have been rushed into place to ensure power at polling places, even if the neighborhoods around them are still dark. Electric utilities were putting a priority on restoring power to others and had assured election officials they would be up and running by Monday.

Of the 1,256 polling locations in New York City, only 59 needed to be moved or closed, said Valerie Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the city's Board of Elections. Most were in coastal areas of Brooklyn and Queens or other neighborhoods where buildings normally used for voting had been turned into shelters.

Some New York City leaders remained worried. Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted that the polling-place changes would affect some 143,000 New Yorkers.

"Over the next day, it's going to be critical that the Board of Elections communicate this new information to their poll workers," he said.

The board, which is independent of the mayor's office, has historically had problems opening all voting locations on time, even in a normal year, the mayor noted.

Just east of the city, in Nassau County, Elections Commissioner William Biamonte warned that some voting locations would have a "paramilitary look," with portable toilets, emergency lighting and voting machines running off a generator.

As of Sunday morning, the county had 266,000 homes and business without power — more than anyplace else in the state. Some 30 to 40 polling locations, out of 375 in the county, were expected to be changed because of storm problems.

But Biamonte said he didn't expect that the problems would keep large numbers of people from casting ballots.

"I think people will be voting in less-than-optimal situations, but they will not be voting in a way that disenfranchises them," Biamonte said.

Yet for some residents of the hardest-hit areas, the hassle of having to travel even a few miles to find an open polling place was likely to be one burden too many.

William Agosto, who lost everything he owned when his basement apartment in the Far Rockaway area of Queens flooded, said he hoped to vote but couldn't guarantee he would have the energy or the time.

"I'm going to try," he said, clutching a garbage bag filled with donated clothing. "I have so much on my mind. What I'm going through, it's too much."

On Staten Island, where two polling locations were being relocated due to storm problems, bus driver Jim Holden said the election should be postponed.

"People can't get out to vote. Half these cars are under water," he said.

New Jersey residents driven from their homes by the storm were being given extra voting options. Registered voters will be able to apply for an absentee ballot by fax or email right through 5 p.m. on Election Day, and cast it via fax or email until 8 p.m. Displaced voters can also cast provisional ballots at any polling place in the state.

Monmouth County spokeswoman Laura Kirkpatrick said elections officials there had consolidated some polling locations and moved others, but expected to have working polls for all 53 municipalities come Election Day. She said the county was confident enough that it was encouraging people to vote in person, rather than scramble to file an absentee ballot by email.

"We are looking very good," she said.

Kirkpatrick said officials were somewhat concerned that residents might misunderstand the email voting option and try casting write-in ballots by sending messages to election officials, rather than go through the formal process of obtaining, signing and scanning an official ballot.

John Conklin, a spokesman for the New York Board of Elections, said some counties were training additional poll workers. The companies that make the state's electronic voting machines had sent scores of generators from other parts of the country to ensure enough power. And each polling location will be able to switch to paper ballots, if there is an unexpected loss of power on Election Day.

Utility companies in Connecticut promised that all polling places in that state would have power Tuesday.

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Dizzying array of media streams spotlight election

NEW YORK (AP) — The days of watching Election Night coverage on a single television set may soon be a quaint anachronism.

Americans have an array of alternatives for following returns on Tuesday night. Television news divisions are throwing everything they have into the story. People will be able to construct their own media experiences, seek out desired information instead of waiting for it, participate in conversations and hear analysis that reflects their own perspectives or none in particular.

Virtually all of the media organizations covering the election promise an abundance of information available online, from interactive maps that display state-by-state results to data from exit polls.

It’s expected to be a huge night for social media. And news organizations say they will monitor the conversations and have their own journalists actively participate.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Angioplasty costs are higher at non-surgery hospitals

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Angioplasty to clear blocked arteries costs more at hospitals not equipped for emergency heart surgery, according to a study presented on Sunday at the American Heart Association scientific meeting.

Elective angioplasty is becoming increasingly common at hospitals that do not conduct more complicated heart procedures. During angioplasty, doctors insert a balloon-tipped catheter into an artery and inflate a balloon to open the narrowed blood vessel.

Researchers from Duke University Medical School in North Carolina analyzed billing data from more than 18,000 patients and found that the average cumulative medical costs were $ 23,991 in surgery-equipped hospitals, versus $ 25,460 in those without surgical centers.

“Surprisingly, there was no difference in procedure cost,” said Dr. Eric Eisenstein, lead author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Duke. “We did find a difference in follow-up cost.”

The difference was due mainly to the fact that non-surgery hospitals used intensive care units for post-angioplasty care, as required by the study, and patients treated at these hospitals were more likely to be readmitted nine months after treatment.

“Rising costs of medical care make it very pertinent for us to assess value,” said Dr. Mark Hlatky, director of the cardiovascular outcomes research center at Stanford University.

Eisenstein said, “there is no guarantee that a community hospital can provide angioplasty services at costs comparable with those of major hospitals with on-site cardiac surgery.”

More than 1 million coronary artery opening procedures are performed in the United States each year, according to the American Heart Association.

(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Newspaper discloses new Cameron text messages

LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.

Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.

In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”

Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Who's winning the early voting battle?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama heads toward Election Day with an apparent lead over Republican Mitt Romney among early voters in key states that could decide the election.

Obama's advantage, however, isn't as big as the one he had over John McCain four years ago, giving Romney's campaign hope that the former Massachusetts governor can erase the gap when people vote on Tuesday.

More than 27 million people already have voted in 34 states and the District of Columbia. No votes will be counted until Election Day but several battleground states are releasing the party affiliation of people who have voted early.

So far, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio — five states that could decide the election, if they voted the same way. Republicans have the edge in Colorado, which Obama won in 2008.

Obama dominated early voting in 2008, building up such big leads in Colorado, Florida, Iowa and North Carolina that he won each state despite losing the Election Day vote, according to voting data compiled by The Associated Press.

"In 2008, the McCain campaign didn't have any mobilization in place to really do early voting," said Michael McDonald, an early voting expert at George Mason University who tallies voting statistics for the United States Elections Project. "This time around the Romney campaign is not making the same mistake as the McCain campaign did."

McDonald said he sees a shift toward Republicans among early voters, which could make a difference in North Carolina, which Obama won by the slimmest of margins in 2008, only 14,000 votes. The Republican shift, however, might not be enough to wipe out Obama's advantage in Iowa and Nevada, which Obama won more comfortably in 2008.

In Colorado, Florida and Ohio, get ready for a long night of vote counting on Tuesday.

Romney's campaign aides say they are doing so much better than McCain did four years ago that Romney is in great shape to overtake Obama in many of the most competitive states.

"They are underperforming what their 2008 numbers were and we are overperforming where we were in 2008," said Rich Beeson, Romney's political director. "We feel very good heading into the Tuesday election."

Obama's campaign counters that Romney can't win the presidency simply by doing better than McCain.

"It's not about whether or not they're doing better than John McCain did," said Jeremy Bird, Obama's national field director. "It's about whether or not they're doing better than us."

About 35 percent of voters are expected to cast ballots before Tuesday, either by mail or in person.

Voters always can cross party lines when they vote for any office, and there are enough independent voters in many states to swing the election, if enough of them vote the same way. Still, both campaigns are following the early voting numbers closely, using them to gauge their progress and plan their Election Day strategies.

A look at early voting in the tightest states:

___

Colorado

About 1.6 million people have voted, and Republicans outnumber Democrats 37 percent to 35 percent. Those numbers are a reversal from four years ago at this time. Inevitably, Obama won the early vote by 9 percentage points in 2008, giving him a big enough cushion to win the state, despite narrowly losing the Election Day vote.

Early voting in Colorado is expected to account for about 80 percent of all votes cast, giving it more weight than in other states.

___

Florida

About 3.9 million people have voted, and 43 percent were Democrats and 40 percent were Republicans. For years ago at this time, Democratic early voters had a 9 percentage point lead over Republicans.

Obama won Florida's early vote by 10 percentage points in 2008, getting 400,000 more early votes than McCain, enough to offset McCain's advantage on Election Day.

In Florida, Republicans have historically done better among people who vote by mail, while Democrats have done better among people who vote early in person. For 2012, Florida's Republican-led Legislature reduced the number of in-person early voting days from 14 to eight.

The Obama campaign responded by encouraging more supporters to vote by mail, and Democrats were able to narrow the gap among mail ballots. Democrats quickly took the lead among all early voters, once in-person early voting started. But the margins are slim.

The Obama campaign acknowledges it must do better among Florida's Election Day voters than Obama did on 2008, when McCain won the Election Day vote by 5 percentage points.

___

Iowa

About 614,000 people have voted, already exceeding Iowa's total number of early votes in 2008. So far this year, 43 percent of early voters were Democrats and 32 percent were Republicans.

Four years ago, Obama won the early vote in Iowa by a whopping 27 percentage points, 63 percent to 36 percent. McCain, meanwhile, won the Election Day vote by about 1,800 votes — less than a percentage point. Together, they added up to a 10-point victory for Obama.

Romney's campaign argues that Democrats always do better among early voters in Iowa while Republicans do better among Election Day voters, even when President George W. Bush narrowly carried the state in 2004.

Obama's campaign counters that with early voting on the rise, Romney will be left with fewer Election Day voters to make up the difference.

___

Nevada

About 628,000 people have voted, and 44 percent were Democrats and 37 percent were Republicans. Four years ago, Obama won Nevada's early vote big, 59 percent to 39 percent. Obama also won Nevada's Election Day vote on his way to a comfortable 13-point win over McCain.

The Romney campaign argues that Obama isn't doing nearly as well among early voters in Nevada as he did in 2008. The Obama campaign argues that it doesn't have to.

___

North Carolina

About 2.5 million people have voted, and 48 percent of them were Democrats and 32 percent of them were Republicans. Four years ago at this time, Democrats had a slightly larger lead over Republicans, and Obama won the early vote by 11 percentage points.

Obama lost the Election Day Vote by 17 percentage points in 2008. But the early vote was much bigger than the Election Day vote, resulting in Obama's narrow win.

Obama's campaign cites the big lead for Democrats among early voters, while Romney's campaign argues that even a small shift toward the Republicans could flip the state to Romney.

___

Ohio

More than 1.6 million people have voted, and 29 percent were Democrats and 23 percent were Republicans. Forty-seven percent were unaffiliated, more than enough voters to swing the state to either candidate.

Ohio may once again be pivotal in the race for the presidency. Unfortunately, Ohio's early voting data is limited. Party affiliation in Ohio is based on the last primary in which a voter participated, so new voters and those who don't vote in primaries are listed as unaffiliated.

In 2008, Obama won Ohio by 5 percentage points.

___

Associated Press Senior Elections Research Coordinator Cliff Maceda contributed to this report.

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

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George Lucas’ filmmaking rooted in rebellion

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There’s no mistaking the similarities. A childhood on a dusty farm, a love of fast vehicles, a rebel who battles an overpowering empire — George Lucas is the hero he created, Luke Skywalker.

His filmmaking outpost, Skywalker Ranch, is so far removed from the Hollywood moviemaking machine he once despised, that it may as well be on the forest moon of Endor.

That’s why this week’s announcement that Lucas is selling the “Star Wars” franchise and the entire Lucasfilm business to The Walt Disney Co. for more than $ 4 billion is like a laser blast from outer space.

Lucas built his film operation in Marin County near San Francisco largely to avoid the meddling of Los Angeles-based studios. His aim was to finish the “Star Wars” series— his way.

Today the enterprise has far surpassed the 68-year-old filmmaker’s original goals. The ranch covers 6,100 acres and houses one of the industry’s most acclaimed visual effects companies, Industrial Light & Magic. Lucasfilm, with its headquarters now in San Francisco proper, has ventured into books, video games, merchandise, special effects and marketing. Just as Anakin Skywalker became the villain Darth Vader, Lucas —once the outsider— had grown to become the leader of an empire.

“What I was trying to do was stay independent so that I could make the movies I wanted to make,” Lucas says in the 2004 documentary “Empire of Dreams.” ”But now I’ve found myself being the head of a corporation … I have become the very thing that I was trying to avoid.”

After the blockbuster sale announcement Tuesday, Lucas expressed a desire to give away much of his fortune, donate to educational causes and return to the experimental filmmaking of his youth. Still, the move stunned those who’ve followed him. He’d contemplated retirement for years and said he’d never make another “Star Wars” film.

Dale Pollock, the author of the 1999 biography “Skywalking,” said Lucas disdained the Disney culture in interviews he gave in the 1980s, even though he admired the company’s founder. “He felt the corporate ‘Disneyization’ had destroyed the spirit of Walt,” Pollock said.

Lucas said through a spokeswoman on Saturday that he never said such a thing. But his anti-corporate streak is renowned. In the Lucasfilm-sanctioned documentary “Empire of Dreams”, Lucas says on camera that he is “not happy that corporations have taken over the film industry.”

Growing up in the central California town of Modesto, the independent streak was strong in young Lucas. The family lived on a walnut ranch and Lucas’ father owned a stationery store. But, like his fictional protege Luke, George had no interest in taking over the family business. Lucas and his father fought when George made it clear that he’d rather go to college to study art than follow in his father’s footsteps.

Lucas loved fast cars, and dreamed that racing them would be his ticket out. A near-fatal car crash the day before his high school graduation convinced him otherwise.

“I decided I’d better settle down and go to school,” he told sci-fi magazine Starlog in 1981.

As a film student at the University of Southern California, he experimented with “cinema verite,” a provocative form of documentary, and “tone poems” that visualized a piece of music or other artistic work.

The style is reflected in some of the short films he made at USC: “1:42:08″ focused on the sound of a Lotus race car’s engine driving at full speed and “Anyone Who Lived in a Pretty How Town,” inspired by an e.e. Cummings poem. In later interviews, Lucas described his early films as “visual exercises.”

Lucas’ intellectual explorations led to an interest in anthropology, especially the work of American mythologist Joseph Campbell, who studied the common thread linking the myths of disparate cultures. This inspired Lucas to explore archetypal storylines that resonated across the ages and around the world.

Lucas’ epic battle with the movie industry began after Warner Bros. forced him to make unwanted changes to an early film, “THX 1138.” Later, Universal Pictures insisted on revisions to “American Graffiti” that Lucas felt impinged on his creative freedom. The experience led Lucas to insist on having total control of all his work, just like Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney in their heyday.

“In order to get my vision out there, I really needed to learn how to manipulate the system because the system is designed to tear you down and destroy everything you are doing,” Lucas said in an interview with Charlie Rose.

He shopped his outline for “Star Wars” to several studios before finding a friend in Alan Ladd Jr., an executive at 20th Century Fox. Despite budget and deadline overruns, and pressure from the studio, the movie was a huge success when it was released in 1977. It grossed $ 798 million in theaters worldwide and caused Fox’s stock price at the time to double.

In one of the wisest business moves in Hollywood history, Lucas cut a deal with distributor Fox before the film’s release so that he could retain ownership of the sequels and rights for merchandise. He figured in the 1970s that might mean peddling a few T-shirts and posters to fans to help market the movie. Over the decades, merchandising has formed the bedrock of his multi-billion-dollar enterprise, resulting in a bonanza for Lucas from action figures, toys, spinoff books and other products.

Industrial Light & Magic, the unit he started in a makeshift space in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, moved to the ranch in northern California and lent its prowess to other movies. It broke ground using computers, motion-controlled cameras, models and masks. Its reach is breathtaking, notably among the biggest science fiction movies of the 1980s: “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” ”Poltergeist,” ”Back to the Future,” ”Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” ”Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and more.

“Between him and (Steven) Spielberg, they changed how movies got made,” said Matt Atchity, editor-in-chief of movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.

These days, the talent at ILM has spread around the globe, and many former employees have become top executives at other special effects companies, said Chris DeFaria, executive vice president of digital production at Warner Bros.

“You meet anybody who’s a significant executive or artist at a company, they’ve spent their time at ILM or got their start there. That’s probably one of George’s greatest gifts to the business,” DeFaria said.

Lucas helped make the tools that were needed for his films. ILM developed the world’s first computerized film editing and music mixing technology, revolutionizing what had been a cut-and-splice affair. Pixar, the imaging computer he founded as a division of Lucasfilm, became a world-famous animated movie company. Apple’s Steve Jobs bought and later sold it to Disney in 2006.

But the goliath Lucas created began to weigh on him. Fans-turned-critics felt the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy he directed fell short of the first films. Others believed his revisions to the re-released classics undid some of what made the first movies great.

Giving up his role at the head of Lucasfilm may shield him from the fury of rebellious fans and critics. He said in a video released by Disney that the sale would allow him to “do other things, things in philanthropy and doing more experimental kind of films.”

“I couldn’t really drag my company into that.”

Still, Lucas is not planning on going to a galaxy far, far away.

Speaking on Friday night at Ebony magazine’s Power 100 event in New York, Lucas said: “It’s 40 years of work and it’s been my life, but I’m ready to move on to bigger and better things. I have a foundation, an educational foundation. I do a lot of work with education, and I’m very excited about doing that.”

This week he assured the incoming president of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy that he’d be around to advise her on future “Star Wars” movies —just like the apparition of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi helps Luke through his adventures.

“They’re finishing the hologram now,” he told Kennedy. “Don’t worry.”

___

Liedtke reported from San Francisco. Global Entertainment Editor Nekesa Mumbi Moody in New York contributed to this story.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nurses Who Saved NICU Babies Remember Harrowing Hurricane Night

Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.

On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses’ jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital’s patients, including the NICU nurses’ tiny charges, to evacuate.

“20/20″ recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.

On Monday night, as Sandy’s wind and rain buffeted the hospital’s windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.

For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn’t clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital’s generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.

Vanishing America: Jersey Shore Boardwalks Washed Away Watch Video

“Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine,” Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. “If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby.”

For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn’t breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.

Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby — he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.

“[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure,” Irache said, “and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go.”

One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.

The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies’ lungs.

“We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights,” Zanzotto-Tagle said. “I would say ‘Step, step, step.”

With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.

“We’re not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell … n the dark,” said Claudia Roman. “I was most worried about, ‘Let me not trip on this staircase as I’m carrying someone’s precious child, because that would be unforgivable.”

When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.

“I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink,” she said. “I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube.”

Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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