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)