Blue Island man's son survives Sandy

Jim Salapatek grew anxious as he waited for his phone to ring Monday morning.

His 28-year-old son, Drew, was among the 16 crew members on the HMS Bounty, a tall ship that sank off the coast of North Carolina as Cyclone Sandy blew ashore.

"I didn't know what phone call I was going to get," he said. "I had no idea if he was one of the missing crew members."

Salapatek, a Blue Island resident, said he was relieved when his son finally called to report that he had made it safely to land. He said Drew was in good health and would return home in a couple of days.

"He's doing fine," Salapatek said. "The crew is safe. They just need time to heal."

Drew was not available for comment Tuesday.

The Bounty's longtime captain, Robin Walbridge, remained missing Tuesday evening, and the body of deckhand Claudene Christian was found Monday evening, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard deployed ships and airplanes to search for the 63-year-old captain Tuesday, though 15-foot waves hampered their efforts.

"At this time we are optimistic that we will find the captain alive," said Petty Officer 1st Class Brandyn Hill.

The 180-foot-long replica 18th-century sailing vessel, built for the 1962 film version of "Mutiny on the Bounty," rolled over in 18-foot waves about 90 miles off the North Carolina coast.

Hill said two Coast Guard helicopters rescued the 14 surviving crew members around 6:30 a.m. Monday. Several hours later they found Christian, 42, unresponsive. She was later declared dead.

Salapatek said his son joined the crew of the Bounty two years ago after a series of humanitarian missions to Cuba and Haiti sparked his interest in sailing. He said the ship was Drew's home and the crew his second family.

"You get to be more than friends," he said. "They're putting their lives into their fellow crew members' hands. The bonds that develop in these people are phenomenal."

Despite the trauma Drew has endured, Salapatek expects his son will keep sailing.

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New York City braces for wall of water

After days of seeming to take a looming superstorm in stride, New Yorkers gathered supplies or tried to get out of the way as forecasters warned that a wall of water could hit the nation's largest city.

Facing a seawater surge of anywhere from 6 to 11 feet from Hurricane Sandy, the city shut down its mass transit system, closed its schools and ordered hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes Sunday. Some New Yorkers packed grocery stores for water and food and scrambled to get out of flood zones, while others insisted they weren't going anywhere.

Clutching a white pillow in her left hand and two computers in another, Alyssa Marks rushed to get to the subway before it stopped running Sunday evening. She'd gotten cash but had no time to get toiletries and water.
"I'm nervous, but I'm also excited," she said as she left her apartment in a lower Manhattan evacuation zone for a friend's place on higher ground.

Ralph Gorham watched the sea get rough, but he planned to weather the storm at the Red Hook Lobster Pound, the seafood business he co-owns in a low-lying part of Brooklyn.

"I'm not leaving. My house is here. My business is here," he said. "When the bell tolls, you live with it."

Warnings about the superstorm - a predicted combination of Sandy, a wintry system moving in from the West and cold air streaming down from the Arctic - took on a much more ominous tone Sunday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's environmental protection chief, Louis Uccellini, called the projected storm surge "the worst-case scenario" for New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey.

It threatened to swamp parts of lower Manhattan, flood subway tunnels and knock out the underground network of power, phone and high-speed Internet lines that are the lifeblood of America's financial capital.

The New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial markets are shutting down Monday as Hurricane Sandy bears down on the nation's largest city.

The NYSE's parent company said late Sunday that the shutdown might be extended through Tuesday "pending confirmation," according to exchange operator NYSE Euronext.

"If you don't evacuate, you're not just putting your own life in danger - you are also endangering the lives of our first responders who may have to come in and rescue you," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday as he announced a mandatory evacuation affecting 375,000 people in low-lying areas from the beaches of Queens to the glassy high-rises of Battery Park City. "This is a serious and dangerous storm."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo deployed National Guard troops to the city and Long Island. Consolidated Edison weighed the possibility of shutting down power in parts of lower Manhattan to protect equipment. Broadway shows were canceled for Sunday and Monday. One small hospital was being evacuated, while several others were moving patients to higher floors.

America's biggest public school system, which serves 1.1 million students, was ordered closed Monday, while many of the schools opened Sunday as emergency shelters.

It marked the second time in 14 months that New York City has faced a scenario forecasters have long feared: a big hurricane hitting the city or a bit south, such that the cyclone's counterclockwise winds drive water into miles of densely populated shoreline.

Hurricane Irene ultimately came ashore as a tropical storm in Coney Island, with a 4-foot storm surge that washed over parts of the southern tip of Manhattan but didn't wreak the havoc that officials had feared, although it caused tremendous damage elsewhere. Some experts have said that a surge 3 feet higher could have caused huge damage.

Bloomberg announced evacuations around 11:30 a.m., telling people to be out just 7.5 hours later. By 7 p.m., subways and buses were shut down, leaving more than 5 million mostly carless daily riders on their own to get to higher ground.

For those who refused to leave, they mayor had a message.

"They won't be arrested. But I would argue they are being very selfish," Bloomberg said, noting rescue crews will still try to help them if they are flooded. "We aren't going to leave them to die. We are going to save them."

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Facebook's mobile surprise allays growth fears

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc grew mobile advertising revenue several times in the third quarter, a faster-than-expected pace that helped drive shares in the world's No. 1 social network nearly 13 percent higher.

Facebook said on Tuesday that it now gets 14 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile ads, helping to reassure investors that the social network is beginning to figure out how to earn money off smartphone and tablet users.

Mobile ad revenues totaled roughly $150 million, up from an estimated $40 million to $50 million in the second quarter and almost nothing in the first.

"This certainly dispels the most bearish view, that Facebook couldn't monetize people on phones or tablets," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert Baird & Co.

"In about a six-month period they've actually started to generate decent revenues form their mobile applications," Sebastian added, though he said Facebook still needs to show that its mobile ads can command the same rates as its traditional ads and that they can deliver results for marketers.

Mobile advertising has been among the key investor concerns hanging over Facebook, helping slash more than $40 billion off its market value since its May IPO. As its users increasingly access the social network with their smartphones, Facebook has struggled to transition its business to mobile devices.

The mobile ads helped reignite Facebook's overall advertising business during the third quarter, following several consecutive quarters of slowing revenue growth that raised questions about Facebook's long-term prospects.

Advertising revenue increased 36 percent to $1.09 billion, up from 28 percent growth in the second quarter. But revenue from its payments and other businesses increased just 13 percent to $176 million.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 28-year-old chief executive who created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, said mobile was the "most misunderstood aspect" of the company and took issue with the "myth" that Facebook could not earn money on mobile.

"Over the long run we're going to see more monetization per time spent on mobile than on desktop," Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday.

The company's shares leapt nearly 13 percent to $21.97 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

Facebook said it had crossed the 1 billion threshold for monthly active users by September 30, of which 604 million were mobile users, a gain of 61 percent from a year earlier.

The shift to mobile has challenged many of the Web industry's top companies. Google Inc is the No.1 provider of smartphone software with its Android operating system. But the company missed Wall Street's revenue targets in the third quarter, with some analysts blaming the shortfall on its increasing reliance on lower-priced mobile ads.

Social game maker Zynga Inc, which announced layoffs of 5 percent of its staff on Tuesday, has suffered as it struggles to translate its hit games to mobile devices and as the use of its games on Facebook's service declines.

NOT PLEASED WITH GAMING

Zynga's woes were visible in Facebook's results, with Facebook's payments revenue from the maker of Farmville down 20 percent year on year.

Zuckerberg said he was not pleased with revenue from gaming, but said that beyond Zynga - which accounts for 7 percent of Facebook's total revenue - the situation was brighter.

"The interesting thing is that the rest of the games ecosystem has actually been growing. Our monthly payments revenue from the rest of the ecosystem increased 40 percent over the past year, since payments has been adopted," he said.

Zuckerberg also said Instagram, the photo-sharing app that Facebook acquired for roughly $750 million this year, now has 100 million users, up from 27 million when Facebook bought the company.

Facebook posted a net loss of $59 million or 2 cents a share in the three months ended September 30 after booking a big provision for income taxes. Excluding share-based compensation and income tax adjustments, it earned 12 cents a share, a penny higher than the average analyst expectation.

Facebook Finance Chief David Ebersman said the company would continue to invest aggressively during the fourth quarter, though the company did not provide a specific financial outlook, in keeping with its previous practice.

Ebersman said that the total number of ads that Facebook delivered in the third quarter increased 27 percent year-on-year and that the average price per ad increased 7 percent.

Facebook's third-quarter mobile revenue marked a big jump from the second quarter, when Facebook said that it was generating more than $1 million a day from a new class of ads that appear in users' newsfeeds. Facebook said that roughly half of that revenue was from mobile ads, suggesting that mobile advertising revenue totaled $45 million in the second quarter.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan said that Facebook's mobile ad revenue was impressive, but said that Facebook needs to proceed carefully so as not to damage the user experience by overloading its service with too many ads.

And he said that Facebook's desktop PC advertising business appeared to have shrunk by about $40 million from the second quarter. Rohan said he would rather see the desktop ad business remain stable as the mobile ad business grows.

Facebook's third-quarter revenue of $1.26 billion was a hair above the average analyst expectation of $1.23 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

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HTC DLX phablet teased in photoshopped forgeries

You may be having a freak-out session right this minute over a set of “spy shots” released to the press via Android Central – if you’ll have a closer look, you’ll see some photoshop magic. These images show the HTC DLX with a 5-inch display, 4G LTE from Verizon, Beats Audio integrated, back-facing camera with single LED flash, and a rather thin/tall body overall. All of this photoshopped nonsense doesn’t disprove, on the other hand, that Verizon could be planning their next big DROID Incredible device.

The name HTC DLX is an extension of what we’ve seen in Japan with the HTC J Butterfly, a 5-inch smartphone with rather similar specifications to the one we’re seeing here. This USA version of the device takes the name DELUXE_J from the code-name given to the J Butterfly and turns it into DLX for Verizon. It’s not yet known whether Verizon will keep this name or extend their DROID dominance over their chosen ones here in the States. Expect a possibility of the name DROID Incredible X as well.

As far as how real/false these images are, you’ve only to compare them to the images of the HTC J Butterfly that has been offered up for hands-on experiences over in Japan already this past week. The ease in which one could forge these photos is too much to ignore. That lovely little rectangle near the main lens is also rather telling on the back of the handset. That said, again, we’ve heard enough about this phone to believe that these mock-ups are close enough anyway – thusly, let the rumors continue.

This device has been tipped to be working with a display that’s comparable in sharpness to the iPhone 5, has a 12 megapixel camera on the back (perhaps 8 megapixels for the USA, given the trends), and a 2 megapixel camera on the front. The processor inside is almost certainly going to be the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro as we’ve seen in the LG Optimus G, and 2GB or RAM has been displayed inside – just enough of a motor to play all your favorite racing games very, very wide.

HTC’s first Verizon phone in many moons here in the HTC DLX will be rolling out with 16GB of internal storage, almost certainly a microSD card slot for expansion up to 64GB extra (or 32, you never know), and you’ll have at least a 2500mAh battery inside – removable, of course. Inside you’ll have Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Sense 4+, and one whole heck of a lot of pixels up front.


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Jon Jones, Chael Sonnen discuss UFC title fight

Chael Sonnen made no apologies Wednesday about gaining the next title shot against Ultimate Fighting Championship light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones.

“So what if I talked my way into it,” Sonnen said during a UFC conference call that included Jones and UFC President Dana White a day after the April 27 bout was announced.

“Welcome to life. … None of these guys” complaining “wanted to fight Jon Jones. Not one of these guys said, ‘I’ll fight Chael.’ And I have no problem taking a tune-up fight, and slapping any of those guys around. … I can talk. I talked a cat out of a tree today. Good for me. Chalk one more up for the bad guy.”

The quick-witted, occasionally sharp-tongued Sonnen, 35, was subjected to some ridicule by mixed martial arts fans and UFC fighters for landing the lucrative assignment of fighting Jones and participating as the opposing coach to Jones in the next version of the FX reality television series “The Ultimate Fighter,” which will begin filming later this month in Las Vegas.

Sonnen lost his last bout, a middleweight title shot against longtime champion Anderson Silva.

Temecula’s Dan Henderson, who was scheduled to fight Jones on Sept. 1 before suffering an injury, expressed frustration on his Twitter account that he was bypassed by Sonnen for Jones’ next fight.

“I guess I should just quit training to win fights and to be exciting for the fans, and just go to … talking school,” Henderson wrote.

Former light-heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida won an August bout at Staples Center that was supposed to make him Jones’ next opponent, but Machida balked at fighting Jones in September.

Likely sensing a ratings winner starring the UFC’s most skilled fighter against its most personable challenger, an FX executive announced on Wednesday’s call that the cable network will shift “The Ultimate Fighter” off Friday nights to another weekday evening when the series debuts in early January.

The 25-year-old Jones (17-1) successfully defended his light-heavyweight belt for the fourth time Sept. 22 with a fourth-round submission of veteran Vitor Belfort.

Jones’ right arm was badly twisted by a first-round armbar, however, and he said a recent visit to a Los Angeles physician revealed “tears” around the elbow that require a layoff from MMA training and physical therapy.

He said for that reason, and the fact he was irked by criticism he received for not accepting Sonnen as an opponent after Henderson’s injury -- the UFC then took the unprecedented act of scrapping its Sept. 1 card at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas -- a Sonnen fight made most sense.

“Beating Chael will help me to have closure of this whole situation,” Jones said. “I absolutely know I can beat Chael, with my skill-set, youth, my versatility. I’m a championship fighter and Chael is not.”

Sonnen and Jones gave a glimpse of the banter that will continue through “The Ultimate Fighter” on the call.

Sonnen (28-12-1) said while Jones is “the best fighter I’ve ever seen,” he hasn’t defeated a worthy challenger, even though Jones’ victories have come against former champions Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Machida, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans.

“He hasn’t beat anybody until he beats me,” said Sonnen, whose greatest performance in the octagon was his near upset of Silva in 2010. “I’m the man. And I’m the man because I say I’m the man.”

Answered Jones: “This has nothing to do with the belt. Chael’s not getting close to the belt. It’s about putting him into irrelevance.

“Chael’s an interesting guy. I respect how he gets what he wants, all except championships. He’s a good talker, good for the sport. Extremely disrespectful. But I’ll be doing Chael and a lot of people a favor, showing he has a gift for gab, but not athletic talent.”

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Kobe Bryant helps out Alex Rodriguez

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Kobe Bryant was busy scoring 31 points in 29 minutes of the Los Angeles Lakers' 114-80 exhibition loss to the Utah Jazz on Tuesday night at the Honda Center.

The New York Yankees' 2-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series was a world away. But the struggles of his friend Alex Rodriguez were not.

"We spoke a couple of days ago," Bryant said of Rodriguez, whom he befriended on the set of a commercial a few years ago. "You can only control what you can control. You go out there and do the best job you can. If they take you out of the lineup, it's really on you to be a good teammate and support the other guys, which he's good about doing."

But that's not exactly what Bryant said when he called Rodriguez, who was benched for Game 3 on Tuesday night because he's hit .143 in the ALCS and .130 in the playoffs with no RBIs.

No, that conversation went more like this:

"I just say to him, 'You're Alex Rodriguez. You're A-Rod. You're one of the best to ever do it,'" Bryant said. "I think sometimes he kind of forgets that and wants to try to do the right thing all the time. Which is the right team attitude to have. But other times you really have to put your head down and say, 'Hell with it' and just do your thing.

"Hopefully the next game they'll kind of give him a chance, maybe put him back at third and let him respond to the pressure, which I think he'll do."

Although both are among the best to ever play their respective sports, Bryant and Rodriguez would seem to be very dissimilar.

"We're different," Bryant said. "But you're talking about, 'He's one of the best to ever play.' I think really the difference is, sometimes he forgets he's the best. ... Where, I don't."

Bryant laughed at the self-deprecating comment, then continued on to explain how the two men are in some ways the same.

"We know what it takes to get to that level," he said. "The consistency, the sacrifice, the work ethic, the constant scrutiny, that's something we all have in common -- from golf to cycling to swimming to basketball to baseball."

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Giant Florida eyeball belonged to a swordfish, state says

It looks like the big blue eyeball found on a Florida beachlast week was cut out of a swordfish hauled in by a deep-sea angler, the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said Monday.

A beachcomber found the softball-sized eyeball on the sand in Pompano Beach, Florida, on Wednesday, speculating that perhaps it came from a squid.

But experts who examined the eyeball made their call of swordfish based on the its size (softball), color (blue) and structure (presumably swordfishy), according to a statement from Joan Herrera, curator of collections at the agency's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.

Based on straight cuts on the bone around the eyeball, Herrera said, experts think an angler cut it out of a swordfish and tossed it overboard.

The half-ton fish are frequently found in the Florida Straits off South Florida at this time of year, according to the statement.

DNA testing is being done to confirm the finding, the agency said。

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Mice Can ‘Sing’ and Learn Songs Just like Humans

And you thought those singing mice in Babe were just movie magic.

It turns out not only that mice can pour forth sweet music, but that they can lean new songs in different keys, reports the BBC. Instead of singing in three-part harmony, however, scientists have discovered that male mice housed together actually learn to sing in unison — on the same pitch.

It’s long been known that male mice serenade their ladies during courtship. But until now, it was believed that the little mammals were essentially a broken record; they couldn’t change the order or pitch of their piece. The new research, published in the journal Plos One, suggests that mice may indeed modify their melodies — a talent previously thought to be confined to songbirds, whales, dolphins, sea lions, bats, elephants and humans.

The researchers from Duke University also found that the mice are using the same part of their brain to vocalize that humans do. ”In mice we find that the pathways that are at least modulating these vocalisations are in the forebrain, in places where you actually find them in humans,” lead researcher Dr. Erich Jarvis told the BBC. Their skills, he says, are intermediate “between a chicken and a song bird or even a nonhuman primate and a human.”

So does this mean you’ll be able to hear (and perhaps hum along) to mouse music? Unfortunately not: their ultrasonic songs are inaudible to the human ear.

To listen to a recording of male mouse seductions songs modified so humans can listen in, pop on over to the BBC.

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Fungal Meningitis Outbreak: 170 Cases, 14 Deaths

Two more people have died from fungal meningitis linked to tainted steroid injections, raising the death toll for the outbreak to 14.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today reported that 169 people in 11 states have contracted fungal meningitis after receiving spinal injections of methylprednisolone acetate for back pain. One person has contracted a joint infection after receiving an injection for ankle pain.

For a map of cases by state, click here.

As many as 14,000 people may have been exposed to the suspect steroid, made by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. Fifty sealed vials of the drug, obtained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, were found to contain fungus. The firm has recalled all of its products and shut down operations.

Seventy-six clinics in 23 states that received methylprednisolone acetate from the recalled lots have been instructed to notify all affected patients. The "potentially contaminated injections were given starting May 21, 2012," according to the CDC.

Forty-nine of the fungal meningitis cases -- six of them lethal -- have been reported in Tennessee. Cases have also been reported in Michigan, Virginia, Indiana, Maryland, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, New Jersey and, most recently, Idaho.

Meningitis affects the membranous lining of the brain and spinal cord. Early symptoms of fungal meningitis, such as headache, fever, dizziness, nausea, sensitivity to light, stiff neck, weakness or numbness, slurred speech and pain, redness or swelling at the injection site can take more than a month to appear.

The longest duration from the time of injection to the onset of symptoms in the current outbreak is 42 days, according to the CDC's Dr. Benjamin Park.

"But we want to emphasize that we don't know what the longest will be," he said, adding that patients who received injections of the recalled drug should be wary of the subtle symptoms "for months."

Fungal meningitis is diagnosed through a lumbar puncture, which draws cerebrospinal fluid from the spine that can be inspected for signs of the disease. Once detected, it can be treated with high doses of intravenous antifungal medications.

People affected by the current outbreak are being treated with two different types of antifungal medications until the type of fungus causing the infection -- aspergillus or exserohilum -- can be identified.

"These drugs are very strong and can be very difficult for patients to tolerate over time," said Dr. J. Todd Weber, incident manager of the Multistate Meningitis Outbreak at the CDC, adding that the agency is working with experts on the dose and duration of the treatments.

The CDC has confirmed one case of aspergillus meningitis and 10 cases of exserohilum meningitis. It's unclear how the fungi landed in the steroid vials.

Unlike bacterial meningitis, fungal meningitis is not transmitted from person to person and only people who received the steroid injections are thought to be at risk.

The CDC also reported the possibility of joint infections, as methylprednisolone acetate is also used to treat ankle, knee and shoulder pain. One person in Michigan developed an infection after receiving an injection of the recalled steroid in the ankle, but CDC officials are still investigating the source of the infection.

"We may see additional patients coming in with infection of the joints," said Weber, adding that symptoms of fungal joint infections include fever and swelling, redness or pain at the injection site.

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Toyota undaunted by latest massive global recall

Toyota executives were unfazed Thursday by the overnight recall of 7.43 million vehicles over faulty power window switches that can cause fires, calling it a sign the Japanese company had learned from its mistakes and was becoming quicker and more transparent.
TOKYO —

Toyota executives were unfazed Thursday by the overnight recall of 7.43 million vehicles over faulty power window switches that can cause fires, calling it a sign the Japanese company had learned from its mistakes and was becoming quicker and more transparent.

They said the models affected by the biggest single recall in Toyota Motor Corp.'s 75-year history were all made before global quality controls were beefed up in 2010. The change followed a series of massive recalls, mostly in the U.S., over sticky gas pedals, faulty floor mats and defective braking.

"We are not proud of recalls. But there is nothing wrong with recalls per se. Hiding anything would be the problem," Shigeru Hayakawa, a senior executive, told The Associated Press. "We are dealing with problems more expediently."

Hayakawa and other executives were at a gala event in Tokyo to launch the flagship Lexus LS luxury model. The recall was not mentioned anywhere in the formal presentation.

But the news of the massive recall cast a shadow over the festivities. The sheer size of the latest recall evoked memories of the fiasco in 2009 and 2010, which had prompted Toyota to pay $48.8 million in fines for its slow response.

Another problem was that Toyota initially said the window switch problem hadn't caused any injuries. But documents filed by U.S. safety regulators showed customers reported 161 fires and nine injuries. There have been no crashes or deaths.

Toyota spokesman Keisuke Kirimoto said the public relations division at headquarters that dealt with the recall announcement was not aware of the nine injuries reported at the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It was an embarrassing but honest error, he said.

NHTSA began looking into window switch problems with two Toyota models in February after noticing a higher than normal number of complaints. Most fires were minor, although one destroyed a Camry. Several owners reported that they were afraid to drive their vehicles because of the threat of fires. NHTSA said Wednesday the investigation remains open pending a review of recall documents.

The recall, spanning more than a dozen models sold around the world produced from 2005 through 2010, include the Camry, the top-selling car in the U.S. It's bigger than the 7 million vehicles recalled two years ago for floor mats that can trap accelerator pedals and cause unintended acceleration.

The new problem centers on the power window switch, which is inside the driver's door and controls when a window is opened or closed. Toyota said grease wasn't applied evenly to the switch during production, causing friction and sometimes smoke and fire.

The Toyota recall "takes some of the sheen off its recovering brand image and should have a financial impact," Standard & Poor's analyst Efraim Levy wrote in a note to investors. Toyota shares shed 1.3 percent in Tokyo trading.

Toyota said it did not know yet how much the latest recall would cost. But it was expected to be smaller than the 170 billion yen ($2 billion) to 180 billion yen ($2.2 billion) Toyota says it shouldered in recall costs for the accelerator, floor mat and brake problem in 2010.

Kiyotaka Ise, president of Lexus International, said the company was so intent on avoiding a repeat of the recall mess of two years ago it had held back rolling out models, including the LS, by several months.

That's why the Lexus model rollouts were coming out so quickly, one after the other, in recent months, and Toyota has channeled major resources into quality checks, he said.

"We are extremely sorry we have inconvenienced our customers," he said in an interview with the AP. "But we have been taking action to never repeat that kind of quality problem again."

Most of the complaints were about a sticky feel to the switches while pushing the button to raise or lower the window, but there also were complaints of the smell of smoke, according to Toyota. Using grease bought at a store to try to fix the problem had made the problem worse in some cases, it said.

The recall includes 2.5 million vehicles in the U.S., where it covers about half the models sold under the Toyota and Scion brands, but it spans all major regions, including Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia.

Analysts said it was too early to tell whether the latest recall would dent Toyota sales, which have been roaring back this year not only from the recall damage, but also from the tsunami and quake disaster last year in northeastern Japan, which had destroyed key suppliers and hobbled global production.

Toyota reclaimed the title of the world's top-selling automaker during the first half of this year, wresting the crown from General Motors Co. Toyota sold 4.97 million vehicles globally in the first half, beating GM by about 300,000.

---

AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed to this report from Detroit.

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