PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuters) – More than a thousand National Guard troops brought in last year to shore security on the U.S.-Mexico border will go home in June, authorities said on Friday.

President Barack Obama's administration provided 1,200 National Guard troops to back up Border Patrol agents while the government hired more federal border and immigration police and bought additional equipment.

The troops have helped agents gather intelligence as well as providing surveillance and reconnaissance support since they began their deployment last August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Mark Qualia said.

The Guard have helped seize over 14,000 pounds of drugs and contributed to the apprehension of 7,000 illegal immigrants, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said.

Shortly after the first troops began their deployment last August, Obama signed a bill with $600 million in funding to beef up border security.

It provided funds to hire 1,500 additional federal border police, customs inspectors and investigators, as well as two additional unmanned surveillance drones and improved tactical communications systems, Chandler said.

It was not immediately clear how many new border security agents have been hired.

Despite the additional resources, Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer spoke out against the troop drawdown this week, calling it "inexplicable and inexcusable," The Arizona Republic newspaper reported.

Last month Brewer sued the Obama administration, charging it had failed to secure the porous southwest border..

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Greg McCune)

MADISON, Wis (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday temporarily blocked a controversial new law in Wisconsin that strips public employee unions of key collective bargaining rights.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi granted a restraining order stopping official publication of the bill, which was passed by the Midwestern state's Republican-controlled legislature and signed by its Republican Governor Scott Walker last week.

Her ruling did not overturn the law but effectively blocked it while she considered a lawsuit filed by the Dane County district attorney, who has argued Republican lawmakers violated state open meetings laws by failing to give adequate notice of the vote.

Sumi still has to rule on the merit of the lawsuit, which asked that the law be voided. Even if it were overturned, Republicans could return to the legislature, where they control both houses, and pass it again in compliance with the open meetings laws.

"We are confident the provisions of the budget repair bill will become law in the near future," said Cullen Werwie, Walker's spokesman.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican, said an appeal of the judge's restraining order would be filed next week. "The Legislature and the Governor, not a single Dane County Circuit Court Judge, are responsible for the enactment of laws," he said.

POLARIZING LAW

The judge's order gave public workers in the state more time to bargain new and better contracts with municipal authorities -- deals that could allow them to skirt the law's strict measures during the length of those contracts.

The lawsuit, filed by Dane County district attorney Ismael Ozanne, says lawmakers violated the law and state rules by holding a committee meeting with only two hours notice and at a time when the Capitol building was closed to the public.

A companion lawsuit being heard by Judge Sumi says the legislation contained fiscal items that required a quorum in the Senate. Republicans had maneuvered around a boycott of the Senate's 14 Democrats by stripping out what they said were fiscal elements.

State representative Peter Barca, the top Democrat in Wisconsin's Assembly, said Republicans had violated long-standing rules "because they realized how unpopular and undemocratic this legislation was."

The law polarized the state, among the first to give public employees the right to unionize, triggering the biggest protests since the Vietnam War and making Wisconsin a focal point of a national debate over unions and the public purse.

Other states with Republican governors have mulled similar measures curbing collective bargaining by teachers, highway workers, nurses and other public servants.

Walker, who signed the bill after weeks of protests in the state capital, has said it is aimed at protecting taxpayers and employment, arguing it will improve the business climate and help the state's private sector create 250,000 jobs.

He said the state needed the restrictions on bargaining to deal with funding shortfalls as it contended with a $3.6 billion deficit in the upcoming two-year budget.

Critics have questioned whether the bill would save money, saying instead it was a smoke screen to break the unions.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern; Writing by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Paul Simao)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City's firefighting staff would fall to the lowest number since 1980 while its police force would be cut back to its 1992 roster under Mayor Michael Bloomberg's austere budget plan, a report said Friday.

Bloomberg, who has ordered 10 rounds of budget cuts since 2007, pins the city's fiscal health and its future on ensuring its residents' safety and improving public school education.

Budget cuts risk imperiling these priorities, reducing the number of firefighting staff to 10,282, and the number of uniformed police officers to 34,413. Bloomberg's $65 billion budget plan also includes just under 5,000 teacher layoffs.

"The city's ability to deliver needed and expected services while maintaining budget balance may be severely tested if state and federal cutbacks continue to mount," the Independent Budget Office's report said.

The study outlined the harsh fiscal realities driving service cuts, noting that the city has only won back about half of the 131,700 private sector jobs lost during the recession.

"The report shows the mayor has been making the hard decisions necessary to keep a balanced budget and that we face a very difficult road ahead," a mayoral spokesman said.

Thanks to low interest rates and the federal bailout, Wall Street, the city's most important economic pillar, has enjoyed a surprisingly swift and strong return to profitability.

However, that has not been the case for this industry's revenue, the fiscal monitor's report said.

Noting that Wall Street's 2009 revenue was just under $161 billion -- less than half of the $350 billion total in 2007 -- the report said: "Nor do we anticipate much of a rebound over the next few years." The report added: "This does not lend itself to rapid growth in hiring."

Real average wages paid to securities workers fell 27.2 percent in 2008 and 2009 -- "a drop off without precedent, even going back to the Great Depression," the report said. About 64,700 jobs in all sectors of the city's economy should be added this year -- but Wall Street is only expected to hire an average of about 2,800 people a year. The study added:

"The financial industry may become less profitable, and thus generate less tax revenue for the city, as it adapts to the Dodd-Frank regulations as well as new bonus restrictions proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Bankers and brokers may only see their compensation rise a "tame" 8.1 percent a year from 2010 to 2015, versus the 57.6 percent gain seen from 2004 to 2007, the report said.

For the current fiscal year ending June 30, the report forecast a $2.9 billion surplus -- $258 million less than the mayor predicted -- and a $195 million deficit in 2012.

But estimates for the 2012 fiscal year that starts July 1 assume the state comes through with $600 million more aid than Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed. In 2013, the fiscal monitor projects an extra $1 billion of revenue for the city but says its budget gap will climb to $3.9 billion.

Risks to the city's budget the report identified include high fuel prices, which could clip tourism, the difficulty of getting unionized public workers to accept pension cutbacks and productivity increases, and the spiraling cost of Medicaid. The cost of the health plan for the poor, disabled and elderly has not stopped rising for four decades.

Cuomo proposed $2.3 billion of Medicaid cuts, which would hit the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation. The network of public hospitals gets 40 percent of its revenue from Medicaid.

Demonstrating his support for charter schools, Bloomberg proposed that the Department of Education spend $207 million less next year on public school classrooms but an extra $689 million on nonpublic and charter schools and systemwide costs.

The weather also poses a fiscal hazard: Central Park got nearly 61 inches of snow this winter and the storms, coupled with a tornado, cost the city almost an extra $100 million.

(Reporting by Joan Gralla; Editing by Diane Craft)

HONOLULU (Reuters) – Hawaiian tourism, a keystone of the state's economy just starting to rebound from a long slump, is taking a new hit from a plunge in Japanese leisure travel after the devastating earthquake and tsunami there.

Visitor arrivals from Japan, Hawaii's second-largest tourist market outside of North America, dropped 86 percent on Friday immediately following the 9.0 temblor, said Mike McCartney, president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Most of the cancellations came from group tourism, including business meetings and incentive travel.

"The visitor industry was just starting to gain momentum, but that momentum doesn't make up for the loss that businesses are feeling now," McCartney said.

The duration and depth of the post-earthquake drop-off

in Japanese travel remains to be seen, but it is expected to be significant, he told Reuters.

Some 1.2 million Japanese typically visit Hawaii each year, accounting for 18 percent of the Aloha state's tourism and $2 billion in annual revenues.

"Tourism keeps Hawaii moving, economically. We were relying heavily on Asia and the U.S. West," McCartney said, adding, "We're open for business, but first and foremost, we express our sympathy to the people of Japan."

Visitor arrivals from Japan actually crept slightly higher on Tuesday, the first uptick since the quake. But McCartney said this was likely a short-term blip attributed to travelers with prepaid tickets unwilling to forfeit their trips.

He said many Japanese, even those not directly affected by the disaster, could be expected to refrain from traveling for some time out of respect for victims of the tragedy.

Japanese visitor arrivals to Hawaii dropped nearly 16 percent a month after the 6.8 magnitude Kobe quake in January 1995 but by year's end were up nearly 13 percent compared to 1994 levels, the Tourism Authority said.

The latest disaster comes 10 months into a turnaround in Hawaii's tourist industry, which had been on the decline for nearly two years as the national economy suffered through its worst downturn in decades. The H1N1 swine flu epidemic of 2009 also took a heavy toll on travel to Hawaii.

Prior to last week's quake, hotel occupancy rates were in the 90 percent range statewide. This week, they are hovering in the mid- to upper-80-percent range, said Joseph Toy, president of Hospitality Advisors, an Oahu-based hotel consulting firm.

"When the earthquake hit, a lot of flights to Japan were canceled and people from Japan and the mainland were stranded here, so to speak," he said.

As for fears about the possibility of radioactive fallout from Japan's crippled reactors some 3,800 miles across the Pacific, McCartney said he has seen "no impact at all" on tourism so far.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Jerry Norton)

ALBANY, New York (Reuters) – Claiming local school districts are playing "political games," New York's governor on Thursday defended his $1.5 billion cut to education spending.

Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposed cut in state aid to schools -- the largest in history -- is aimed at closing a $10 billion budget gap for the next fiscal year.

Cuomo told reporters on Thursday that his cuts average 2.7 percent per school district, and could be offset by rooting out inefficiencies, using reserve funds and lowering the salaries of superintendents.

"I know there is waste and abuse in the school districts; 2.7 percent in waste and abuse," Cuomo said after a private meeting with legislative leaders. "Districts say 'we don't have any.' I don't believe it."

Teachers' unions and school officials have attacked Cuomo's plan, saying that they've already made steep cuts in recent years, and that unfunded state mandates are driving up costs. Aid was cut by $1.4 billion in 2010 after being frozen in 2009. School districts have also assailed the governor's proposal to cap property tax increases.

Cuomo's comments came only hours after State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli released a report that found most school districts across the state could use their reserves to offset the proposed cuts. But he warned that the practice is a "one-time fix" and would only cover year-to-year cuts and not rising costs.

"Many school districts are going to have to tighten their belts another notch next year and beyond," DiNapoli said in a statement.

PAY CAPS AND MILLIONAIRE'S TAX

In addition to the cuts in aid, Cuomo has proposed a salary cap for school superintendents that would be based on total district enrollment, with a maximum salary of $175,000 per year. The highest-paid superintendent in New York currently makes about $386,000. The superintendent of the Buffalo School District told a reporter earlier this month that he would quit if the cap passes.

"This is not about teachers in a classroom. It is about less bureaucracy, less administrative overhead, less superintendent salary," Cuomo said. "The days where government can just throw money at the problem, raise more taxes and throw more money at the problem, are over."

The state Assembly is seeking a tax surcharge on New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million a year in order to restore $200 million to schools. The state Senate wants to put an additional $260 million toward school aid, in part by rejecting a Cuomo proposal to create $500 million in competitive grant programs for schools. Cuomo has said that he will not back the tax and that the grants are "essential."

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver deflected questions from reporters on Thursday, saying only that "what's important is that we all come to an agreement in the next two weeks," in time for the April 1 budget deadline.

Billy Easton, the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, a nonprofit group backed by teachers' unions, said that the governor's comments are insensitive to the plight of school districts faced with substantial cuts.

"Local schools are slashing programs and preparing pink slips for teachers; it's in the headlines of every paper statewide," he said. "Governor Cuomo is in denial when he says he can cut $1.5 billion from schools without hurting kids."

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Camden, New Jersey, forced to lay off nearly half its police force in a dramatic austerity measure at the start of the year, said on Thursday it will rehire nearly a third of the officers who were let go.

The city can partially rebuild its police force thanks to an infusion of $2.5 million arranged with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Mayor Dana Redd said in a statement.

Fifty of the 168 police officers laid off in January will be rehired, she said.

Camden is one of the nation's most impoverished cities and often ranks among the most dangerous and crime-ridden as well.

Also being rehired are 15 of 67 firefighters who were laid off, the mayor said.

The layoffs came in an effort to bridge the city's $26.5 million budget gap.

A city of about 80,000 people across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Camden was once a thriving manufacturing town. But since 1960s, big factories have closed, taking jobs and leaving little tax base for the city's coffers.

The $2.5 million stems from an agreement for Camden to get funds in lieu of property taxes from the South Jersey Port Corp., a state agency which owns a large chunk of tax-exempt property in the city.

(Reporting by Dave Warner; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jerry Norton)

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – The legal challenge to the new Wisconsin law that curbs the union rights of public workers moved forward on Wednesday with the filing of a formal complaint against the Republican lawmakers who steered the bill through the legislature.

In a court action filed in the state capital of Madison, Ismael Ozanne, the district attorney for Dane County, claims a key meeting of top Republican lawmakers from the Assembly and Senate prior to the bill's passage last week violated Wisconsin's open meetings law.

During that meeting of the so-called joint conference committee, the Republicans, who supported the anti-union measure, separated it from the budget repair bill it had been attached to.

That maneuver allowed the Republican-majority Senate, which had been stymied for weeks after its 14 Democratic members fled to Illinois to delay action on the measure, to quickly pass it without a quorum.

Ozanne claims the joint conference committee meeting took place with less than two hours notice, in violation of state law and the legislature's own rules. He wants the state court to declare the anti-union measure the two houses subsequently passed, and that Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed into law, "void."

Peter Barca, the only Democratic legislator allowed to attend the joint conference committee meeting, said he was "grateful" that Ozanne had filed the complaint and criticized "the way the public has been shut out of this debate time after time."

A spokesman for Scott Fitzgerald, the top Republican in the state Senate, called the complaint a predictable turn of events and said "we are fully confident that it's going to be found that we followed all the laws to a 'T'.. that there was nothing improper."

(Writing by James B. Kelleher; Additional Reporting by John Rondy; Editing by Greg McCune)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, told lawmakers on Wednesday he strongly believes the United States could "mitigate" the impact of a nuclear crisis similar to the one unfolding in Japan.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by David Gregorio)

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) – California lawmakers on Wednesday approved eight of 20 bills making up Governor Jerry Brown's state budget plan but did not take up its cornerstone, legislation asking voters to extend tax increases.

Brown, a Democrat, needs a handful of Republican lawmakers to support his plan for a ballot measure for a special election in June that would ask voters to extend tax increases that expire this year.

Revenue from the extensions would be paired with some $12 billion in spending cuts to help fill a state budget gap that may near $27 billion through mid-2012 and to bolster the state's finances in future years.

Democrats who control the legislature support a tax measure but Republicans oppose it, though some have been in talks with Brown on other matters that many observers in the state capital of Sacramento believe may help him win the votes he needs.

Lawmakers approved bills imposing spending cuts on health and welfare programs, shifting funds between state accounts and other moves to help close the state's budget gap.

California has the largest budget shortfall of any state at a time when weak state finances are a concern for lawmakers in Washington.

Sessions in the state Assembly and Senate were scheduled to resume on Thursday, when lawmakers will take up more of the budget legislation, likely including the sole bill to stall on Wednesday.

That bill proposes putting an estimated $1.7 billion into the state's coffers by scrapping local redevelopment agencies. It did not have enough votes to clear the Assembly so the Senate did not take it up.

(Reporting by Jim Christie)

MADISON, Wis (Reuters) – Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate dropped a threat on Tuesday to deny 14 Democratic counterparts the right to vote in the chamber because they fled to Illinois last month.

In an e-mail sent late Monday to his 18 Republican colleagues, Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald claimed the 14 Democrats were still technically in contempt and that any votes they made in standing committees would not be counted.

"They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition," Fitzgerald wrote, "but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded."

But on Tuesday, Fitzgerald and Senate President Mike Ellis backed off that claim, which the Democrats, who collectively represent about 2.2 million Wisconsin voters, had blasted as "the height of arrogance."

Andrew Wellhouse, a spokesman for Fitzgerald, reiterated the claim that the 14 remain in contempt, and a resolution of the Senate was needed to lift it. But because the Senate is not scheduled to reconvene in full session until early April 5, that will not happen any time soon.

So in the meantime, all the penalties the Republicans slapped on the Democrats in an effort to get them to return to the state, which included $100-a-day fines and a ban on their ability to vote, have been lifted, Wellhouse said.

In late February, the 14 Democrats fled Wisconsin to Illinois to deny their Republican counterparts the quorum they needed to pass the anti-union bill. In response, Senate Republicans held the Democrats in contempt and then used a legislative maneuver to pass the measure without a quorum.

The 14 returned to the state late last week and were greeted as heroes by the estimated crowd of up to 100,000 people who protested the measure in Madison on Saturday.

The protests came after Republican Governor Scott Walker signed into law the measure, which imposes sweeping new limits on collective bargaining for public sector workers and has sparked a national debate over labor relations.

Walker has said the bill, which sharply limits the union rights of public workers and requires them to pay more of their health insurance and pension costs, was needed to help the state close a $3.6 billion budget deficit over two years.

(Reporting by Jeff Mayers and James B. Kelleher; writing by James B. Kelleher)

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) – Utah's governor on Tuesday signed a package of immigration laws including one that would allow a police crackdown on illegal immigrants similar to Arizona's attempt last year.

The laws, approved by Utah's Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month, also would attempt to create a guest worker program.

Opponents of the bills rallied last week in downtown Salt Lake City in an effort to prevent their passage. Chanting and carrying signs that read "Don't Let Utah Become Another Arizona" and "Keep Families Together" the protesters urged lawmakers and the governor to stop the legislation.

"Utah did the right thing. We did the hard thing," Governor Gary Herbert said in signing the laws, which he called "the Utah solution."

The United States is struggling with 12 million illegal immigrants, many of them from Latin America, and growing anger among voters about the jobs they take.

U.S. immigration enforcement has shifted over the years, with the Obama administration choosing to crack down on employers rather than illegal workers themselves.

Herbert called on the federal government to follow Utah's model and enact reform of immigration laws.

But immigration experts said the new Utah laws, except for enforcement, are more show than substance.

"The guest worker stuff is entirely meaningless. It is like a college creating a nuclear free zone. It's meaningless. A state cannot create a guest worker program," said Steven Camarota, research director of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies think-tank in Washington.

Analysts also are skeptical the package will influence policy in Washington, where Republicans who favor enforcement-only measures have control of the House of Representatives and a stronger hand in the Senate.

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said such laws put immigration back in focus.

"But the way forces are balanced in Washington, I don't think it's going to have any real effect on pushing through comprehensive immigration reform," he said.

Legal challenges are expected to a law requiring police to check the immigration status of people stopped for felonies.

That law is similar to one in Arizona that has been the target of a lawsuit by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Herbert hosted an immigration summit last year to lay the foundation for the forthcoming legislative session. The summit brought together religious, business, law enforcement and government leaders to tackle the issue.

"There are those who will say these bills may not be perfect but they are a step in the right direction and they are better than what we had," he said.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration will study distribution policies for a drug to protect against the effects of radiation as part of a review of the implications of Japan's ongoing nuclear disaster, a government spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The new review would reopen a debate sought by safety activists who have called for a greater stockpile of potassium iodide near U.S. nuclear plants.

Debate over the supply has become politically charged, even as U.S. consumers cleaned out some retailers of their stocks of the medicine in recent days with an eye on Japan's struggles to contain the damage at its Fukushima nuclear plant.

Currently 22 U.S. states have stockpiled or requested the tablets known by their chemical name "KI," to be taken by residents within 10 miles of power plants in an emergency.

Nuclear regulators and nuclear industry groups have resisted calls for stockpiles for people in a wider radius, saying planning is better focused on evacuation measures.

In a statement sent late on Tuesday, Dori Salcido, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the government will study "every aspect" of the disaster unfolding in Japan following Friday's massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, and the government's response to it.

"Policy options relating to KI distribution will be among the issues studied," she wrote.

Salcido did not immediately provide more details. The drug is intended to protect against thyroid cancer by stopping the sensitive gland from absorbing some forms of radiation.

U.S. policy was set by a 2002 law that called for distribution of KI to residents up to 20 miles away from reactors. In 2008, the Bush administration waived that requirement, saying evacuation would be a much better option.

JAPAN RECASTS DEBATE

Now critics have renewed the questions, with an eye on the severe quake and tsunami damage to nuclear reactors in Japan. One is Edward Markey, the Massachusetts congressman who wrote the 2002 law.

"We should not wait for a catastrophic accident at, or a terrorist attack on, a nuclear reactor in this country to occur to implement this common-sense emergency preparedness measure," Markey said on Monday.

Markey had previously called on President Barack Obama to expand stockpiles, but got a letter back from the White House last summer that let the Bush administration's position stand.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the U.S. nuclear industry's trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, said it supports the idea that evacuation is the best option.

"Our view quite strongly is that the science doesn't merit KI distribution beyond 10 miles," he said.

Markey spokeswoman Giselle Barry said his staff estimates U.S. agencies have purchased about 2 million KI tablets in the past decade, plus about 400,000 liquid doses for children. Some will expire soon, however.

The drug -- chemically similar to table salt -- is also sold by some pharmacies; a number of them on the West Coast have sold out in recent days, even as public health officials noted that the drug can be dangerous to people with allergies to shellfish or thyroid problems.

Some online suppliers seemed to be doing no better including Anbex.com, which calls its KI tablets "iOSAT. "As of March 14, 2011, Anbex is out of stock of iOSAT. New product expected by April 18, 2011," its website read on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber; editing by Todd Eastham)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California will experience unthinkable damage when the next powerful quake strikes, probably within 30 years, even though the state prides itself on being on the leading edge of earthquake science.

Modern skyscrapers built to the state's now-rigorous building codes might ride out the big jolt that experts say is all but inevitable, but the surviving buildings will tower over a carpet of rubble from older structures that have collapsed.

Hot desert winds could fan fires that quakes inevitably cause, overwhelming fire departments, even as ancient water pipelines burst, engineers and architects say.

Part of the lesson from the disaster that hit Japan on Friday is that no amount of preparation can fully protect a region such as California that sits on top of fault lines.

Even so, critics fear the state may have long skimped on retrofitting older buildings. Yet the cost of cleaning up after a big quake is likely to be much higher than the cost of even the most expensive prevention, they warn.

"Everybody is playing a gamble that something like this won't happen," said Dana Buntrock, associate professor of architecture, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Buntrock, like many others, sees California's past as a present danger. The university is spending more than $300 million to retrofit and renovate its ancient sports stadium, tucked into the hills overlooking the bay.

"There are places where two walls that were aligned in the 1920s have moved a half meter apart," she said.

But the steps that the school is taking are not as common in California as the overwhelming risks might suggest.

The concrete high-rises that rose in the years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were made without adequate reinforcing steel, while homes and apartment complexes that are built atop of ground-floor parking lots are among the most vulnerable structures in the state.

Japan's 8.9 earthquake and the tsunami it unleashed destroyed entire villages and left 10,000 or more dead. That sends shivers up the spines of the engineers and architects who follow California's strategy to withstand a big quake that experts say will surely hit the state one day.

"The question is not if but when Southern California will be hit by a major earthquake -- one so damaging that it will permanently change lives and livelihoods in the region," according to a 2008 study by the United States Geological Survey study.

It predicted 2,000 deaths and $200 billion in damage from a 7.8 southern California quake on the San Andreas Fault.

Geologists say a big earthquake in California would probably top out at a magnitude 8 as the state's fault structures are different from Japan's.

A quake of the 7.8 magnitude in the USGS study would have about 30 times less power than the one that struck Japan.

Forecasters in 2008 saw a 99 percent chance of a 6.7 magnitude quake within three decades, and 46 percent chance of a 7.5 or greater, with Southern California the likely center.

A monster California quake of magnitude 8 had only about a 4 percent probability -- except in far Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. That area has a 10 percent chance of experiencing a magnitude 8 to 9 quake -- Japan-sized -- in the next 30 years.

A repeat of San Francisco's 7.9 magnitude quake in 1906 could take up to about 900 lives, injure thousands and destroy 3,000 residential buildings, a recent report for the city found.

Even a smaller 7.2 quake would cause $30 billion in building damage, $10 billion more in additional costs -- and if fires sweep the city, damage could rise by $4 billion, the report sponsored by the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection concluded. About 27,000 of the city's 160,000 buildings would become unsafe to occupy.

One of the authors of the report, geotechnical engineer Thomas Tobin, reflected that the hot winds of Santa Ana winds blowing from the desert into Los Angeles could intensify a disaster created by a southern California quake.

"If it happens to be a large earthquake on a hot, dry day with the wind blowing, the losses could be huge," he said.

COLLAPSING BOX

Tobin lists several types of "killer buildings" that would sustain the most damage in a California temblor, including older high rises and complexes featuring ground-floor parking:

* Most "tall, beautiful older buildings" built before 1980 that dot the San Francisco skyline were made without reinforcing steel, Tobin said.

* "Soft story" buildings with a ground-floor open garage or retail space also lack adequate bracing. The sturdier box of the upper floors likely would come crashing down on the "soft story."

* "Tilt up" buildings of concrete slab that are pushed upright to create a big box, such as for a grocery store, are among the most vulnerable. Some localities have mandated relatively low-cost reinforcement. Tobin says San Francisco has not.

* Unreinforced brick buildings would collapse easily.

Some of the fixes for such structures are relatively inexpensive, such as tying together tilt-up buildings, he said. So-called "soft story" apartment buildings with five units would cost $10,000 to $20,000 per apartment to fix.

Local governments can offer powerful financial incentives to encourage landlords to make changes, he said, but most don't.

That said, shoring up high rises is pricey, Tobin allows, and retrofitting has been inconsistent.

While California nuclear plants are built to withstand earthquakes and shut down when the earth shakes, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which supports nuclear energy to counter global warming, wants tougher safety measures.

PAST PERFORMANCE

Japan's experience suggests that even the best preparations are no match for the power of nature.

Matthew Hornbach, a geophysicist research associate at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, said he was shocked by the scale of disaster across the Pacific.

"You don't get better prepared than Japan and to see what's going on there now is, I think, a real wake-up call, really, to the U.S.," he said.

California and Japan tend to track each other in requirements for new buildings, but Japan tends to tear down and rebuild frequently, leaving them with a much smaller stock of older buildings, said UC Berkeley's Buntrock.

California's history of repairing quake damage varies.

Former California Governor Pete Wilson said that he waved environmental and other regulations after the 1994 Northridge earthquake - magnitude 6.7. As a result, he managed to get the Los Angeles U.S. 10 highway, the worlds' busiest road, up and running in two months, versus some estimates of two years.

But the Bay Bridge, which partially collapsed in the 7.1 Loma Prieta quake that shook the San Francisco Bay Area five years earlier is still being replaced, said Randy Rentschler, director of legislation and public affairs at the San Francisco-area Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

"One lesson that we can give them (Japan) is how not to do it," Rentschler said. "It took us how many years to do the Bay Bridge? - and it's still under construction," he added.

Aside from the obvious issue of cost, Rentschler said that debate over what to do slowed improvements.

"Local citizens' groups were raising hell about all kinds of things, and they were permitted to get away with it," he said. The replacement for the damaged span of the two-part bridge is set to open in 2013 and engineers say it is designed to withstand an event that occurs once every 1,500 years.

A final lesson from Japan is that the cities are not necessarily the most vulnerable areas. Rural areas of Japan closest to Friday's quake were destroyed by tsunamis while Tokyo fared much better.

Frank Vernon, a geophysics professor and seismology specialist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, described a similar fault far from San Francisco, hundreds of miles up the West Coast.

"The most important lesson in the U.S. and North America is the reminder that we have a similar subduction zone called Cascadia up on the coast of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and very northern California which could do the same thing," he said.

"Some day we will be having this same type of earthquake near our shores," he said.

(For more environmental news see our Environment blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/environment)

(Additional reporting by Kevin Gray, Pascal Fletcher and Tom Brown in Miami and Dan Levine, Jim Christie and Braden Reddall in San Francisco, Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty)

MADISON, Wis (Reuters) – Scott Walker, Wisconsin's newly elected Republican governor, won his battle last week to get the curbs he backed on public-sector unions approved by the state legislature and signed into law.

But the Democratic Party and organized labor, which opposed the bill, show signs of being energized by the setback, which up-ends more than 50 years of collective bargaining by nurses, highway workers, nurses and other Wisconsin public employees.

Mark Pocan, a Democratic member of the Assembly who opposed the Walker bill, told protesters this week: "They may have won the battle, but I guarantee you they've lost the war."

With Republican majorities in both the state Assembly and the Senate making a legislative counter-attack impossible, Democrats and their allies are focusing their hopes on a number of fronts, including eventually a recall campaign for Walker.

"Rock on, keep the faith and don't worry," said one protester, Amy Barlow Liberatore. "Recalls are coming."

Under Wisconsin state law, however, Walker's foes can't even circulate a petition to recall him until January 3, 2012, his one-year anniversary in office.

But a group called United Wisconsin has set up a website (http://www.unitedwisconsin.com/) it says already has 149,000 voters pledge to sign the recall petitions next year. More than 540,000 signatures will be necessary to launch a recall.

As many as 100,000 people protested at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Saturday against the new curbs on public worker unions, and they greeted as returning heroes 14 Democratic lawmakers who had fled the state to stall the measure.

About 70,000 protesters had massed a week earlier, before a legislative maneuver by Republicans in the senate hived off the controversial union measure from a budget bill and pushed it through without a single Democrat present.

"You do not understand," Assembly minority leader Pete Barca told the giant rally on Saturday, addressing Governor Walker. "Rights die hard in America."

Wisconsin was birthplace for some of the first U.S. unions among foundry, shoe and paper workers in the 19th century. It was the first state to pass worker compensation protections in 1911, unemployment compensation in 1932, and public employee collective bargaining rights in 1959, according to the Wisconsin Labor History Society.

The new law, by contrast, strips public sector unions of collective bargaining rights except for wages, with increases limited to the level of inflation. Pay rises above inflation have to be put to a referendum of voters. Unions have to be recertified by annual votes of members and dues collected privately. Health insurance and pension contributions rise.

LAWSUITS, HIGH-COURT RACE ALSO TARGETED

Wisconsin in the last month became the focal point of a national debate over how to restore the finances of U.S. states and local governments struggling under a mountain of debt.

Unions -- a key source of funding for Democrats -- fear the Wisconsin law will bolster Republicans in other states to cut spending by targeting public workers. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Florida and Iowa have similar legislative moves pending.

So while the Wisconsin one-year rule blocks immediate recall efforts against Walker and Republican legislators elected last November, Wisconsin Democrats and their allies are moving on multiple fronts in other ways.

"I have never, never, never seen anything like this," said Scott Becher, a former Republican legislative aide who now runs a political consulting and public relations firm outside the capital. "Democrats have never been more energized."

Democrats are circulating petitions to recall 8 Republican state senators who approved the controversial measure.

Republicans currently enjoy a 19-14 advantage in the state Senate. So if Democrats can flip just three of the districts they're targeting, recalling the Republican senators and getting a Democrat elected, they can take control of the body.

Democrats have also filed a complaint with the district attorney of Dane County, where the Capitol is located, charging the maneuver Republicans used to get the bill passed without a quorum in the Senate violated the state's Open Meetings law.

Democrats have set their sights on the April 5 race for a 10-year term on the state's Supreme Court, where the incumbent, a Republican named David Prosser, faces a Democrat named JoAnne Kloppenburg, whose supporters have joined the protest rallies.

Self-described judicial conservatives have a 4-3 majority on the state high court. So a victory in that race could help Democrats in legal challenges to Walker's anti-union measure.

In a sign of how the union debate may be affecting the political calculus for Republicans, a town hall meeting in Wauwatosa on March 7 hosted by U.S. Representative James Sensenbrenner, a popular conservative Republican who represents the area in Congress, adjourned early because it was besieged by crowds opposed to Walker's measures in Madison.

(Reporting by James B. Kelleher. Editing by Peter Bohan)

MIDDLETOWN, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Judy Stare remembers the day 32 years ago when she and her family fled from the melting core of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island.

On a day when the dangers of a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Japan dominated the front pages in the U.S., the memories of those days in 1979 on the banks of the Susquehanna River came back to haunt her as they did for many in this town of 8,700.

Middletown became the center of attention when Three Mile Island, two miles from its downtown, suffered the most serious nuclear accident in the nation's history.

Stare's three children were teenagers then, in high school in a nearby town, and she remembers yanking them out of school so the family could flee the danger area.

"I told them we might never be back," Stare, 70, recalled over breakfast at the popular Brownstone Cafe here.

She allowed them each to take a favorite thing, and remembers with crystal clarity what they brought: her oldest daughter grabbed a family photo album, her youngest daughter found her favorite doll, and her son brought a golf club. "Just like a man," she laughed.

On March 28, the first day of the accident, a mechanical or electrical failure on the turbine side of the building caused one of Three Mile Island's reactors to shut. To relieve the pressure that then built up, a relief valve opened. The valve should have closed when the pressure decreased but the valve remained open and coolant leaked out.

Operators did not realize the coolant was leaking and in the meantime the uranium fuel rods overheated and began to melt. By the time operators realized the coolant had leaked about half of the reactor core had already melted.

Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear power accident in the United States. The crisis lasted four days and was caused by a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies and component failures.

PEOPLE FEEL SAFER

Since Three Mile Island, U.S. authorities have required a strengthening of plant design and equipment, increased training for plant personnel, and an immediate notification of events, among other things.

Many in Middletown now say they feel safer because of what happened in 1979, including one of Stare's breakfast companions, Bill Taxweiler.

"It's the safest plant in the world," he said, citing the many safety changes that were made at the plant after the drama of that year.

His thoughts were echoed by a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group.

"Three Mile Island unit 1 is one of the best operating plants in the world," wrote spokesman Tom Kauffman in an e-mail.

Originally, Three Mile Island had two units. The accident happened in unit 2, which has been permanently closed ever since.

Even some who live on state Route 441, no more than a few hundred yards from the hulking cooling towers, seem content with how things are now.

A householder working in his yard, the towers dominating the view across the road, said he just never thinks about any possible dangers from the nuclear plant.

Still, many in the town say the events in Japan are prompting them to remember the confusion and loss of trust that happened when they fled the area around the Three Mile Island plant, "We could not believe what we were told," Stare said.

Dan Thomasco, 59, another area resident who was there in 1979, said the Japanese crisis brought back many memories. He recalls he took his three dogs and went camping when the evacuation happened.

Many others, also advised to leave Middletown, he said, decided to wait out the crisis in a bar.

For all of the crisis atmosphere around at the time, a report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, noting that the incident led to no deaths or injuries, explained that estimates of radiological exposure for the 2 million people in the area amounted to about one-sixth of what they might have received from a chest X-ray.

At the time of the crisis, Three Mile Island was owned by General Public Utilities, which has since been taken over. These days the plant is operated by Exelon Corp, the largest owner and operator of nuclear plants in the United States.

The company declined comment on Three Mile Island in light of the Japanese crisis. Instead, it referred calls to the industry trade group, the NEI, which said that the Japanese plants and Three Mile Island are of significantly different design.

(Additional reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York, editing by Martin Howell)

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran will put three Americans facing spying charges on trial for the second time on May 11, an official was quoted Sunday as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

"The next trial session of three Americans who have been charged by espionage will be held on May 11 in Tehran's revolutionary and general court," Alireza Avaiee, head of Tehran's prosecutor's office told IRNA.

Avaiee said the trial, unusually, may be held in public.

Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd were arrested on July 31, 2009, near Iran's border with Iraq and said they had crossed the unmarked border by mistake while hiking.

Shourd was released in September last year on $500,000 bail and returned home. Iran says the move a "humanitarian gesture."

The first trial session was held in February.

The case has added to strains between Iran and the West, already at loggerheads over the Islamic state's nuclear program. The West suspects the program might be aimed at making atomic bombs. Iran denies this and says it needs nuclear technology to meet its booming demand for energy.

(Writing by Ramin Mostafavi; Editing by Louise Ireland)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The death toll rose to 14 on Saturday after a tour bus carrying sleeping gamblers returning from a Connecticut casino flipped over in the Bronx, shearing off its roof.

The National Transportation and Safety Board was investigating what may be a hit-and-run accident involving a tractor trailer.

The NTSB was trying to determine what caused the bus to swerve on Interstate 95 and topple onto a support pole for a highway sign. The pole sliced the bus in half along the windows, severing the rooftop from the vehicle.

None of the 32 people on board escaped death or injury in the horrific crash, said New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

New York City Police said 13 people died at the scene and one other died at the hospital, bringing the death toll to 14. The Fire Department had said earlier that a 15th person had died, but this information was incorrect.

Authorities said several other people with critical injuries and less serious injuries, including the bus driver, were rushed to the hospital.

The crash occurred in the early morning as the bus transported passengers from the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut to New York's Chinatown.

Chung Ninh, 59, said he was sleeping on board the bus when the crash occurred. The New York City resident said he escaped out the vehicle's emergency exit and suffered broken glass cuts on his hands and minor injuries to his back that he got from pulling out other passengers.

"Everyone on the bus (was) asleep," he said. "I wake up, I hear yelling and then I hear 'Boom! Boom!' After that, I see nothing."

Ninh said he tried pulling one woman covered in blood from the bus but it appeared she was dead. He then attended to another man dangling upside down from the crash whose arm appeared to be severed.

Commissioner Kelly said it appeared the bus driver swerved on the road to escape a tractor trailer driver on the highway although it was not clear if both vehicles made contact. Police were searching for the tractor trailer driver, who did not stop after the crash, Kelly said.

The bus, chartered by World Wide Tours, was returning passengers to a stop in New York City's Chinatown. Kelly said police officers who speak Mandarin and Cantonese were on the scene to help families of the victims.

Bloomberg said the city would be providing emergency help to the victims' families throughout the day.

"Our and the entire city's prayers, thoughts and sympathies are with the victims and their families and loved ones," he said.

World Wide Tours issued a statement saying they were working with authorities investigating the crash.

"We are cooperating fully with investigators in trying to determine the exact sequence of events," the statement said. "We are a family-owned company and realize words cannot begin to express our sorrow to the families of those who lost their lives or were injured in this tragic accident."

(Reporting by Aman Ali, editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

SAN FRANCISCO/SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Tsunamis triggered by Japan's devastating earthquake that prompted evacuations on the Pacific coast of North and South America caused flooding as far away as Chile Saturday, but damage was limited.

The tsunami lost much of its energy as it moved thousands of miles (km) across the Pacific Ocean, although governments took no chances and ordered large-scale evacuations of coastal areas, ports and refineries.

Despite the power of Japan's biggest-ever quake and the tsunami from which the toll of dead or missing was expected to exceed 1,800, the tsunami waves were relatively benign as they rolled into the Americas, causing only isolated flooding, and fears of a catastrophe proved unfounded.

The tsunami swept past Chile's remote Easter Island in the South Pacific, generating swells but no major waves. Wooden chalets on Chile's northern coast were damaged and some small boats were swept away when the tsunamis intensified, local television footage showed.

The sea later flooded as far as 330 feet inland in Dichato and Talcahuano, 310 miles south of the capital, Santiago, and near the epicenter of the massive 8.8 magnitude quake that struck Chile in February 2010.

The government stopped residents from returning to their coastal homes until Saturday afternoon as a precaution.

But the damage appeared relatively mild and officials on Saturday reopened copper exporting ports that had been closed as a precautionary measure ahead of the tsunami and recalled large ships sent out to sea to avoid damage.

"The alert is now over. People can be confident the danger is over," said government spokeswoman Ena Von Baer, adding fishermen should remain cautious because of swells and currents.

Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, a wildlife sanctuary and popular tourist spot, suffered some damage to infrastructure, and several harbors in California were hit.

Frank Boyle, president of Peru's port authority, said the northern port of Paita and the southern ports of Ilo and Matarani were reopened.

Peru's key central mining port of El Callao remained closed, as did the southern port of Pisco, where Reposl exports natural gas. Another mining terminal used by Shougang Hierro Peru was still out of action.

"The situation's going to be evaluated and on the basis of that, we'll gradually be reopening the ports," Boyle told Reuters.

U.S. HARBORS SMASHED

About 35 boats and most of the harbor docks were damaged in Crescent City near the California border with Oregon, where waves were more than 6 feet. Santa Cruz south of San Francisco sustained about $2 million in damages to docks and vessels, emergency management officials said.

A 25-year-old man was swept out to sea while standing on a sandbar at the mouth of the Klamath River in California.

The port of Brookings-Harbor, the busiest recreation port on the Oregon coast, was largely destroyed, said operations manager Chris Cantwell. "Right now we are in the middle of a big mess," he said. "The surge pulled some (boats) out to sea, about a dozen sank and we've got boats everywhere sitting on top of one another and all over the place."

In Hawaii, 3,800 miles from Japan, the Big Island of Hawaii sustained the most damage, with about 12 homes destroyed or badly damaged, a civil defense official said. Water rushed over the sea wall in Kailua-Kona on the big island, flooding a hotel and destroying some businesses. There was about $1 million damage to the Kailua-Kona pier.

On the island of Oahu, which was hit by four tsunami waves, a boat harbor suffered about $1 million in infrastructure damage when docks were torn away with vessels still attached.

Ecuador took extreme precautions after President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency across the Andean nation on national television and urged residents to move inland.

Oil firm Petroecuador also halted production, but navy officials said Friday night the risk of danger had passed.

Mexico reopened its Pacific ports Saturday afternoon, including its oil-exporting port of Salinas Cruz in the southern state of Oaxaca, its main container port, Manzanillo, and the cruise ship harbor at Los Cabos, the government said.

Mexican officials said high waves had hit the northwestern Pacific coast but there were no reports of damage.

(Reporting by Reuters correspondents in the Americas; Writing by Ross Colvin and Robin Emmott; Editing by Simon Gardner and Peter Cooney)

HAVANA (Reuters) – U.S. aid contractor Alan Gross has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against the Cuban state, state-run television reported on Saturday, in the latest setback to relations between two Cold War enemies.

A panel of judges reached the decision after a two-day trial last week in which prosecutors said Gross was involved in what the government described as a U.S.-funded "subversive project" to "topple the Revolution."

The case was the latest flare-up in U.S.-Cuba relations that have been sour since a 1959 revolution put Fidel Castro in power.

Gross, 61, was convicted of "acts against the independence and territorial integrity of the state" for working to set up clandestine Internet networks for Cuba dissidents using "sophisticated" communications technology.

Prosecutors sought a 20-year sentence for the longtime development worker, who has been jailed since his arrest in Havana on December 3, 2009.

The United States, which has contended from the beginning that Gross was only setting up Internet access for the island's small Jewish community, reacted angrily to the decision.

"Today's sentencing adds another injustice to Alan Gross's ordeal. He has already spent too many days in detention and should not spend one more," White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

"We urge the immediate release of Mr. Gross so that he can return home to his wife and family," Vietor said.

U.S. spokeswoman Gloria Berbena at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana said Gross was "in Cuba helping average Cubans connect with the rest of the world. It is appalling that the Cuban government seeks to criminalize what most of the world deems normal, in this case access to information and technology."

Gross's attorney Peter Kahn said the Gross family was "devastated by the verdict and harsh sentence announced today."

"Alan and his family have paid an enormous personal price in the long-standing political feud between Cuba and the United States. We will continue to work with Alan's Cuban attorney in exploring any and all options available to him, including the possibility of an appeal," he said in a statement.

Few details of the trial have been released, but the television report said Gross told the court he had been "used and manipulated" by DAI, the Maryland-based company that had contracted him to work in Cuba.

DAI had a contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to conduct projects aimed at promoting political change on the Caribbean island.

Gross accused DAI of having put him in danger and his current situation of "ruining the life and economy of his family," Cuba said in a statement last week at the end of the trial.

His detention brought to a halt a mild warming in U.S.-Cuba relations after U.S. President Barack Obama took office and the United States has said it will not undertake any more initiatives with the Caribbean island until Gross is free.

MANY TARGETS

Cuban prosecutors said Gross targeted young people, universities, religious groups, women's groups, racial groups and cultural types.

Gross worked in Cuba on a tourist visa under a controversial U.S. AID program aimed at promoting political change on the island.

The programs have been criticized in the United States for doing little more than provoking the Cuban government.

Cuba views the activities as part of the longstanding U.S. efforts to subvert the government and has made them illegal.

Although Internet access is limited in Cuba, a recently leaked video of a Ministry of Interior briefing showed an expert saying the Internet was the latest front in the two countries' long ideological war.

Some observers think a political solution will be reached that will allow Gross to go free soon. But others believe Cuba has little interest in improving relations with the U.S., which has imposed a trade embargo against the island since 1962.

Judy Gross, who attended the trial, has pleaded for her husband's release on humanitarian grounds because their 26-year-old daughter and Alan Gross's 88-year-old mother both have cancer.

She said Gross, who looked gaunt when he was seen going into the trial, has lost 90 pounds (41 kg) in prison and has physical ailments.

Cuba was expected to use the trial to put a spotlight on U.S. activities on the island, but instead aired two television programs showing what it portrayed as U.S. treachery on the island.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu and Vicki Allen)