Door-to-Door Search for Suspected Cop Killer

More than 100 police officers were going door-to-door and searching for new tracks in the snow in the hopes of catching suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner overnight in Big Bear Lake, Calif., before he strikes again as laid out in his chilling online manifesto.

Police held a news conference late Thursday, alerting the residents near Big Bear Lake that Dorner was still on the loose after finding his truck burning around 12:45 p.m. local time.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said the authorities can't say for certain he's not in the area. More than half of the 400 homes in the area have been searched by police, who are traveling in two-man teams. Bachman urged people in the area to not answer the door, unless you know the person or law enforcement in uniform.

After discovering Dorner's burning truck near a Bear Mountain ski resort, police discovered tracks in the snow leading away from the vehicle. The truck has been taken to the San Bernardino County Sheriffs' crime lab.

Read More About Chris Dorner's Allegations Against the LAPD

Bachman would not comment on Dorner's motive for leaving the car or its contents, citing the ongoing investigation. Police are no aware of Dorner having any ties to others in the area.

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She added that the search in the area would continue as long as the weather cooperates. However, a snowstorm was forecast for the area. About three choppers were being used overnight, but weather conditions were deteriorating, according to Bachman.

Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, is suspected of killing one police officer and injured two others Thursday morning in Riverside, Calif. He was also accused of killing two civilians on Sunday. And he allegedly released an angry "manifesto" airing grievances against police and warning of coming violence toward cops.

In the manifesto Dorner published online, he threatened at least 12 people by name, along with their families.
"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will leave to deadly consequences for you and your family," Dorner wrote in his manifesto.

One passage from the manifesto read, "I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty."

"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," it read. "I'm terminating yours."

Hours after the extensive manhunt dragged police to Big Bear Lake, CNN's Anderson Cooper said Dorner had sent him a package at his New York office that arrived on Feb. 1, though Cooper said he never knew about the package until Thursday. It contained a DVD of court testimony, with a Post-It note signed by Dorner claiming, "I never lied! Here is my vindication."

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It also contained a keepsake coin bearing the name of former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton that came wrapped in duct tape, Cooper said. The duct tape bore the note, "Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton."

Bratton told Cooper on his program, "Anderson Cooper 360," that he believed he gave Dorner the coin as he was headed overseas for the Navy, Bratton's practice when officers got deployed abroad. Though a picture has surfaced of Bratton, in uniform, and Dorner, in fatigues, shaking hands, Bratton told Cooper he didn't recall Dorner or the meeting.

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Khamenei rebuffs U.S. offer of direct talks

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's highest authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday slapped down an offer of direct talks made by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden this week, saying they would not solve the problem between them.

"Some naive people like the idea of negotiating with America, however, negotiations will not solve the problem," Khamenei said in a speech to officials and members of Iran's air force carried on his official website.

"If some people want American rule to be established again in Iran, the nation will rise up to face them," he said.

"American policy in the Middle East has been destroyed and Americans now need to play a new card. That card is dragging Iran into negotiations."

Khamenei made his comments just days after Joe Biden said the United States was prepared to meet bilaterally with the Iranian leadership. "That offer stands but it must be real and tangible," Biden said in a speech in Munich.

With traditional fiery rhetoric, Khamenei lambasted Biden's offer, saying that since the 1979 revolution the United States had gravely insulted Iran and continued to do so with its threat of military action.

"You take up arms against the nation of Iran and say: 'negotiate or we fire'. But you should know that pressure and negotiations are not compatible and our nation will not be intimidated by these actions," he added.

Relations between Iran and the United States were severed in 1979 after the overthrow of Iran's pro-western monarchy and diplomatic meetings between officials have since been very rare.

ALL OPTIONS STILL "ON THE TABLE"

Currently U.S.-Iran contact is limited to talks between Tehran and a so-called P5+1 group of powers on Iran's disputed nuclear program which are to resume on February 26 in Kazakhstan.

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said he was skeptical the negotiations in Almaty could yield a result, telling Israel Radio that the United States needed to demonstrate to Iran that "all options were still on the table".

Israel, widely recognized to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has warned it could mount a pre-emptive strike on Iranian atomic sites. Israel sees its existence as directly threatened by the prospect of an nuclear-armed Iran, given Tehran's refusal to recognize the existence of the Jewish state.

"The final option, this is the phrasing we have used, should remain in place and be serious," said Meridor.

"The fact that the Iranians have not yet come down from the path they are on means that talks ...are liable to bring about only a stalling for time," he said.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is entirely peaceful but Western powers are concerned it is intent on developing a weapons program.

Many believe a deal on settling the nuclear issue is impossible without a U.S.-Iranian thaw. But any rapprochement would require direct talks addressing many sources of mutual mistrust that have lingered since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

Moreover, although his re-election last November may give President Barack Obama a freer hand to pursue direct negotiations, analysts say Iran's own presidential election in June may prove an additional obstacle to progress being made.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams; Editing by William Maclean and Jon Boyle)

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CapitaMalls Asia Q4 net profit dips 10% on-year

SINGAPORE: Shopping mall developer and operator CapitaMalls Asia announced on Thursday a 10 per cent on-year decline in its fourth-quarter net profit.

The company attributed the drop mainly to lower fair value gains from investment properties in China and Singapore, as well as impairment losses in India and higher finance costs.

Net profit for the quarter fell to S$184.8 million from S$205.4 million a year ago.

Revenue for Q4 rose 71.4 per cent to S$113.6 million from S$66.3 million the year before.

The company cited its acquisition of Olinas Mall in Tokyo, additional stakes in three malls in Japan and higher management fees for its revenue increase.

In addition, CapitaMalls posted a record profit of S$546 million for 2012 -- a 19.7 per cent jump from the S$456 million booked the year before.

The developer said more than 50 per cent of its malls in China started operations in 2012.

Besides opening seven malls in China, the company also opened two new malls in Singapore -- The Star Vista and JCube. It also enhanced existing properties like Bugis+ and The Atrium@Orchard.

The CEO of CapitaMalls Asia, Lim Beng Chee, said the firm will focus on opening five new malls in 2013 -- two in China, two in Singapore, and one in India.

He expects the company's key markets in Singapore, China and Malaysia to continue to grow this year, with robust growth in China.

"If you look at China, I think the growth is going to be strong, particularly because our business is focused on what we call 'middle-class shopping'... So mostly everyone can come to our mall to enjoy a meal (or) go to the supermarket... I think this is going to be very positive," said Mr Lim

The company has a pan-Asian portfolio of 102 shopping malls across 52 cities in five countries -- Singapore, China, Malaysia, Japan and India.

CapitaMalls stocks closed down more than 4 per cent at S$2.08 a share on Thursday on the Singapore Exchange.

- CNA/jc

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Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen stepping down

Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen.

(Credit:
Alcatel-Lucent)

Alcatel-Lucent announced today that Ben Verwaayen is resigning after serving four years as the Franco-American network equipment maker.

The imminent resignation of Verwaayen, who will stay on while the company's board searches for a replacement, was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.

"Alcatel-Lucent has been an enormous part of my life," Verwaayen said in a company statement. "It was therefore a difficult decision to not seek a further term, but it was clear to me that now is an appropriate moment for the Board to seek fresh leadership to take the company forward."

Verwaayen, the former head of BT Group PLC, was tapped in September 2008 to be chief executive in a bid to turn around the fortunes of the company, which had lost more than half its value since the former rivals started operating as a single entity in December 2006.

The Paris-based telecommunications equipment maker soon embarked on a significant restructuring as it tried to position itself to dominate telecom infrastructure in a post-recession world. But the past six years have been tough on the networking-equipment sector, particularly for the combined company, which has struggled to compete with the likes of Sweden's Ericsson and Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei.

When the company reveals its 2012 financial results later today, analysts expect a decline in quarterly operating income of more than $1 billion -- its seventh consecutive year of negative cash flow, according to the Journal.

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Blizzard could dump 2 feet of snow in New England

CONCORD, N.H. A blizzard heading to New England could make travel nearly impossible and dump up to 2 feet of snow on a region that has seen mostly bare ground this winter.

The snow will start Friday morning, with the heaviest amounts dumped on the region that night and into Saturday as the storm moves through New England and upstate New York, the National Weather Service said.

CBS News weather consultant David Bernard said Wednesday that New York may possibly get snow in the six to 10-inch range. He added that it's a little bit early and that the storm is really going to crank as we go Friday into Friday night.

A blizzard watch for parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island said travel may become nearly impossible because of high winds and blowing snow.

"This has the potential for being a dangerous storm, especially for Massachusetts into northeast Connecticut and up into Maine," said Louis Uccellini, director of the weather agency's National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

Uccellini, who has written two textbooks on northeastern snowstorms, said Wednesday it was too early to tell if the storm would be one for the record books. But he said it will be a rare and major storm, the type that means "you can't let your guard down."

The storm would hit just after the 35th anniversary of the historic blizzard of 1978, which paralyzed the region with more than 2 feet of snow and hurricane force winds from Feb. 5-7.

No one is wishing for a repeat, but skiers, snowmobilers and other outdoor enthusiasts were hoping for just enough snow to turn around a disappointing season.

The snowmobile season in northern New England started off strong, but after rain and warm temperatures last month, many trails in Maine turned essentially to thick sheets of ice, said Maine Snowmobile Association Executive Director Bob Meyers.

Play Video

Blizzard on the way

"People got a taste of it, and there's no question they want some more," he said.

Nearly all of Vermont's snowmobile trails opened after Christmas but riding lately has been limited to hard-to-reach mountain areas. Riders hope this week's storm will bring enough snow to cover bare and icy patches.

"I'd say maybe 75 percent of the trail system may be back up and running if we got a good 8-inch storm," said Matt Tetreault, trails administrator for the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers.

Thanks to the ability to make their own snow, the region's larger ski resorts aren't as dependent on natural snowfall, though every bit helps. At Mount Snow in Vermont, spokesman Dave Meeker said the true value of Friday's storm will be driving traffic from southern New England northward.

"It's great when we get snow, but it's a tremendous help when down-country gets snow," he said. "When they have snow in their backyards, they're inspired."

Assuming the snow clears out by the weekend with no major problems, ski areas in Massachusetts also were excited by the prospect of the first major snowstorm they've seen since October 2011.

"We'll be here with bells on," said Christopher Kitchin, inside operations manager at Nashoba Valley Ski Area in Westford, Mass. "People are getting excited. They want to get out in the snow and go snow-tubing, skiing and snowboarding."

Tom Meyers, marketing director for Wachusett Mountain Ski Area in Princeton, Mass., said that at an annual conference of the National Ski Areas Association in Vermont this week, many participants were "buzzing" about the storm. He said the snow will arrive at an especially opportune time — a week before many schools in Massachusetts have February vacation.

"It is perfect timing because it will just remind everybody that it is winter, it's real, and get out and enjoy it," Meyers said.

Still that may be too late for Michael Amarello, director of the Horse Hill 7K snowshoe race, which is scheduled for Saturday in Merrimack, N.H. He said Wednesday that he hadn't yet decided whether to postpone the race, but was leaning in that direction. Race organizers wouldn't have time to mark the course if it's snowing hard Friday afternoon, he said.

"We want snow, but we don't want snow Friday night — we want snow today or tomorrow!" he said.

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Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline that originally was tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.

His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), suggests he might testify under oath and give full details to USADA of how he cheated for so long.

"We have been in communication with Mr. Armstrong and his representatives and we understand that he does want to be part of the solution and assist in the effort to clean up the sport of cycling," USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart said in a written statement this evening. "We have agreed to his request for an additional two weeks to work on details to hopefully allow for this to happen."

Neither Armstrong nor his attorney responded to emails seeking comment on the USADA announcement.

The news of Armstrong's possible and unexpected cooperation came a day after ABC News reported he was in the crosshairs of federal criminal investigators. According to a high-level source, "agents are actively investigating Armstrong for obstruction, witness tampering and intimidation" for allegedly threatening people who dared tell the truth about his cheating.

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The case was re-ignited by Armstrong's confession last month to Oprah Winfrey that he doped his way to all seven of his Tour de France titles, telling Winfrey he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career and then lied about it. He made the confession after years of vehement denials that he cheated.

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If charges are ultimately filed, the consequences of "serious potential crimes" could be severe, ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams said -- including "possible sentences up to five, 10 years."

Investigators are not concerned with the drug use, but Armstrong's behavior in trying to maintain his secret by allegedly threatening and interfering with potential witnesses.

Armstrong was previously under a separate federal investigation that reportedly looked at drug distribution, conspiracy and fraud allegations -- but that case was dropped without explanation a year ago. Sources at the time said that agents had recommended an indictment and could not understand why the case was suddenly dropped.

"There were plenty of people, even within federal law enforcement, who felt like he was getting preferential treatment," said T.J. Quinn, an investigative reporter with ESPN.

The pressures against Armstrong today are immense and include civil claims that could cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Armstrong is currently serving a lifetime ban in sport handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and today was the deadline he was given to cooperate under oath if he ever wanted the ban lifted.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

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ABC News' Michael S. James contributed to this report.

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Tunisia protests after government critic shot dead

TUNIS (Reuters) - A Tunisian opposition politician was shot dead on Wednesday, sending protesters onto the streets of cities nationwide two years after the uprisings that swept Tunisia's president from power and inflamed the Arab world.

The headquarters of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, which rules in a fractious coalition with secularists, was set ablaze after Chokri Belaid, an outspoken critic of the government, was gunned down outside his home in the capital.

Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, who said the identity of the attacker was not known, condemned Belaid's killing as a political assassination and a strike against the "Arab Spring" revolution. Ennahda denied any involvement by the part.

Despite calls for calm from the president, 8,000 protesters, massed outside the Interior Ministry, calling for the fall of the government, and thousands more demonstrated in cities including Mahdia, Sousse, Monastir and Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution, where police fired teargas and warning shots.

"This is a black day in the history of modern Tunisia ... Today we say to the Islamists, 'get out' ... enough is enough," said Souad, a 40-year-old teacher outside the Interior Ministry in Tunis. "Tunisia will sink in the blood if you stay in power."

The small North African state was the first Arab country to oust its leader and hold free elections as uprisings spread around the region, leading to the ousting of the rulers of Egypt, Yemen and Libya and to the civil war in Syria.

But like in Egypt, many who campaigned for freedom from repression under autocratic rulers and better prospects for their future now feel their revolutions have been hijacked by Islamists they accuse of clamping down on personal freedoms, with no sign of new jobs or improvements in infrastructure.

HARDSHIP

Since the uprising, the government has faced a string of protests over economic hardship and Tunisia's future path, with many complaining hardline Salafists were taking over the revolution in the former French colony dominated previously by a secular elite under the dictatorship of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Last year, Salafist groups prevented several concerts and plays from taking place in Tunisian cities, saying they violated Islamic principles, worrying the secular-minded among the 11 million Tunisians, who fear freedom of expression is in danger.

Declining trade with the crisis-hit euro zone has also left Tunisians struggling to achieve the better living standards many had hoped for following Ben Ali's departure. Any further signs of unrest could scare off tourists vital to an industry only just recovering from the revolution.

"More than 4,000 are protesting now, burning tires and throwing stones at the police," Mehdi Horchani, a Sidi Bouzid resident, told Reuters. "There is great anger."

Jobless graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010 in the city, 300 km (180 miles) southwest of Tunis, after police confiscated his unlicensed fruit cart, triggering the "Jasmine Revolution" that forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia less than a month later, on January 14, 2011.

President Moncef Marzouki, who last month warned the tension between secularists and Islamists might lead to "civil war", canceled a visit to Egypt scheduled for Thursday and cut short a trip to France, where he addressed the European Parliament.

"We will continue to fight the enemies of the revolution," the secularist leader told European Union lawmakers in Strasbourg.

Belaid, who died in hospital, was a leading member of the opposition Popular Front party. A lawyer and human rights activist, he had been a constant critic of the government, accusing it of being a puppet of the rulers in the small but wealthy Gulf state of Qatar, which Tunisia denies.

"Chokri Belaid was killed today by four bullets to the head and chest," Ziad Lakhader, a leader of the Popular Front, told Reuters. "Doctors told us that he has died. This is a sad day for Tunisia."

DENIES INVOLVEMENT

Ennahda Prime Minister Jebali said the killers wanted to "silence his voice".

"The murder of Belaid is a political assassination and the assassination of the Tunisian revolution," he said.

Party President Rached Ghannouchi denied any involvement in the killing. Belaid said earlier this week that dozens of people close to the government attacked a meeting of his party.

"Is it possible that the ruling party could carry out this assassination when it would disrupt investment and tourism?" Ghannouchi told Reuters.

He blamed those seeking to derail Tunisia's democratic transition after a 2011 uprising. "Tunisia today is in the biggest political stalemate since the revolution. We should be quiet and not fall into a spiral of violence. We need unity more than ever," Ghannouchi said.

He accused secular opponents of stirring up sentiment against his party following Belaid's death. "The result is burning and attacking the headquarters of our party in many areas," he said.

French President Francois Hollande condemned the shooting, saying he was concerned by the rise of violence in Paris's former dominion, where the government says al Qaeda-linked militants linked to those in neighboring countries have been accumulating weapons with the aim of creating an Islamic state.

"This murder deprives Tunisia of one of its most courageous and free voices," Hollande's office said in a statement.

Riccardo Fabiani, Eurasia analyst on Tunisia, described it as a "major failure for Tunisian politics".

"The question is now what is Ennahda going to do and what are its allies going to do?" he said. "They could be forced to withdraw from the government which would lead to a major crisis in the transition."

Marzouki warned last month that the conflict between Islamists and secularists could lead to civil war and called for a national dialogue that included all political groupings.

Ennahda won 42 percent of seats in a parliamentary election in 2011 and formed a government in coalition with two secular parties, the Congress for the Republic, to which President Marzouki belongs, and Ettakatol.

Marzouki's party threatened on Sunday to withdraw from the government unless it dropped two Islamist ministers.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Writing by Alison Williams; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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Thousands of Indonesian workers protest for better conditions

JAKARTA : In Indonesia, thousands of workers took to the streets in five major cities including the nation's capital Jakarta on Wednesday.

Those in Jakarta, who were mostly from the Federation of Metal Workers' Union, made several demands including having universal healthcare and their right to protest.

They are demanding that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issue a presidential decree that would lead to universal health insurance for all Indonesians by 2019.

This health insurance programme has been approved and will start as of 2014 but the Presidential decree required has yet to be issued.

Said Iqbal, President, Federation of Indonesian Metal Workers' Union, said: "If a government regulation and Presidential decree, which was supposed to be issued last November, is not introduced then steps for universal healthcare cannot begin. That's why the government is obliged to introduce the necessary regulations by late February, which includes guaranteeing that employers pay for their workers' insurance premium fees and that the poor will be able to receive government's healthcare."

One of the other demands made is a guarantee for a pension fund for labour workers from 2015

The workers are also calling for the provincial government to raise the number of components in the reasonable cost index from around 60 to 80 components.

This index is used as a benchmark to determine minimum wage increases for next year.

The workers are also objecting to two bills on national security and social organisation being deliberated in Parliament

They claim that if these two bills are passed then it will curb their right to protest in the streets citing security reasons.

If their demands are not met, the next major rally will be on 26 February by the Indonesian Labour Workers Association, the biggest labour union in Indonesia.

The union has warned that if its demands are not met by the end of April, then there will be an all out labour rally across the nation on Labour Day, 1st May.

- CNA/ch

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Amateur effort finds new largest prime number

A tiny portion of the 48th Mersenne prime, a number more than 17 million digits long. Written as text, the entire number is a 22.5MB file.

(Credit:
illustration by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has scored its 14th consecutive victory, discovering the largest prime number so far.

The number, 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1, is a digit that's 17,425,170 digits long. That's big enough that if you want to see the full text, you'll have to brace yourself for a 22.5MB download.

GIMPS, a cooperative project splitting the search across thousands of independent computers, announced the find yesterday after it had been confirmed by other checks. At present, there are 98,980 people and 574 teams involved in the GIMPS project; their 730,562 processors perform about 129 trillion calculations per second.

The project has a lock on the market for mongo new prime numbers. The discoverer of this particular prime is Curtis Cooper, a professor at the University of Central Missouri who runs the prime-hunting software on a network of computers and who's found record primes in 2005 and 2006. It's not just his effort that's important, though; it relied also on others' machines ruling out other candidates.

A prime number is divisible only by itself and the number 1. Once a mathematical curiosity, primes now are crucial to encrypted communications. Mersenne primes are named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk born in 1588 who investigated a particular type of prime number: 2 to the power of "p" minus one, in which "p" is an ordinary prime number.

Cooper's find is the 48th Mersenne prime so far discovered. GIMPS has found the 14 largest Mersenne primes, the organization said.

Discovering Mersenne primes is not a get-rich-quick scheme, though Cooper won a $3,000 prize. It could be more lucrative at some point: An Electronic Frontier Foundation award of $150,000 will go to the discoverer of the first prime number with at least 100 million digits. It's already awarded prizes for primes 1-million and 10-million digits, and it's got a $250,000 prize queued up for a billion-digit prime.

GIMPS is steadily advancing on the bigger numbers.

In 1998, the project found 2^3021377-1, a number 909,526 digits long. By 2001, GIMPS found the 39th Mersenne prime, a number 4,053,946 digits long. The 43rd Mersenne prime, which Cooper's effort found, is a 9,152,052-digit numeral.

Searching for prime numbers is a project that can easily be split across countless computers through an idea called distributed computing. Not all computing chores are so amenable to cooperation, though.

Some, such fluid dynamics research that can be used to model nuclear weapons explosions or
car aerodynamics, can be run on closely independent computing nodes connected by a high-speed network.

Other computing chores can't be broken down into parallel tasks at all, a problem given that power-consumption limits stalled processor clock speed increases in recent years.

A computer-science idea called Amdahl's Law, named after mainframe computer designer Gene Amdahl, shows the limits of parallel computation. If some portion of a computer program can't be sped up by parallel processing, at a certain point throwing more processors at the problem will stop producing any speedup in the computation.

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Sandy storm victims react to proposed home buyout

(CBS News) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - One hundred days ago, the Northeast was hit by a left hook from superstorm Sandy.

This week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed spending $400 million to buy up and demolish thousands of those homes, so the property can be turned back into wetlands.

Homeowners have mixed feelings about the proposal.

For 11 years, Joe Monte worked two jobs and spent weekends renovating his Staten Island home. Weeks after he finished last fall, superstorm Sandy swept eight feet of water inside.

"I came into the house with paper towels and some Fantastic, and I stood in the middle of the room and called my wife and I told my wife, 'There's nothing to clean here, there's nothing to do. It's done,'" Monte said.

A picture of a house heavily damaged by superstorm Sandy on Staten Island, 100 days after the storm hit.

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CBS News

Monte welcomes Cuomo's proposal to buy up properties like his in flood-prone areas.

"This isn't my dream, the poison that's in this home, the destruction that took this neighborhood. How could you even stay here?" he said. "How could you even live in this neighborhood?"

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But about 30 miles away in Long Beach, N.Y., Fran Adelson plans to stay and rebuild. She, too, lost almost everything in the storm.

"We live here. This is where our homes are, this is where our children were raised, this is where our families are, this is where the businesses that we go to are," she said.

Fran Adelson

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CBS News

She believes the governor should be looking at ways to help people stay in their communities.

"We would rather see Cuomo spend the money on helping us rebuild than offering to buy people's property," Adelson said.

But Joe Monte says he's had enough. He's walking away.

"I hate that I lost neighbors in my neighborhood," he said. "Three people died in this neighborhood. I hate everything about it. I could never come back here ever again."

Gov. Cuomo's buyout proposal still has to be approved by the federal government. If it is approved, the governor's office says they won't force people to sell their property -- but those who do decide to stay would be offered grants to rebuild their homes.

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