iPhone Keeps Tracking Data

Two researchers said they have uncovered a hidden file on Apple Inc. iPhones that keeps a record of where the phone has been autoclave and when it was there—a database that is unencrypted and stored by default.

The security experts, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, also created a program that lets iPhone owners see what the device has stored about their whereabouts. The maps produced by the program show details stretching back months.

It's not clear why the data are stored on the devices. There's no evidence the information is transferred to Apple. The company didn't respond to a request for comment.

"Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device has been storing a long list of locations and time stamps," said Mr. Allan, a technology author, in a post on the website of technology publisher O'Reilly Media.

Mr. Allan and Mr. Warden, a former Apple employee, were expected to present their findings Wednesday at a conference hosted O'Reilly Media. The Guardian newspaper also reported on their discovery.

The news follows a Wall Street Journal investigation last December which cold room revealed that smartphone apps expose personal details about their users. An examination of 101 apps showed 56 sent the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent, and 47 sent location information. Companies receiving that information included Apple, Google Inc. and advertising networks.

Wednesday's research looks not at specific apps but at data collected during general use.

The researchers say the database they uncovered is restored each time an iPhone owner backs up the phone, even if the person switches to a new iPhone. IPhones and iPad 3G models running the latest version of Apple's iOS operating system have the database on it, they say. The file is transferred to any computer synced to the phone or tablet, the researchers say.

The latest version of Apple's operating system, iOS 4, heralded the impact crusher launch of Apple's mobile-advertising platform. Apple has previously said it uses location data to serve ads and provide certain services. The company says this can be prevented by turning off location services.

Wireless providers have long collected similar location data, which is important to have for call routing and for billing. But they store the data securely and the data aren't saved on phones.

The researchers say they found the database when looking into how they might make a graphic that displayed mobile data. "At first we weren't sure how much data was there, but after we dug further and visualized the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements," they wrote.

The researchers said Apple hadn't responded to them about the electronic ballast issue. Mr. Warden worked on desktop software for the company for five years, he said. "We're both big fans of Apple's products, and take no pleasure in uncovering this issue," the researchers wrote.

Gerard Smith – TV on the Radio bassist – dies aged 34

TV on the Radio bassist Gerard Smith has died of lung cancer, only a month after announcing that he was stainless steel pipe taking time off from the US art rock band to get treatment.

The band cancelled five upcoming tour dates in Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver in support of their well-received fourth studio album Nine Types of Light, which debuted at No 12 in the Billboard charts.

The Guardian's review of the album said: "You only need hear opener Second Song – which somehow blends an alt-country melody with a cosmic funk chorus requesting 'every lover on a mission, shift your known position' – to realise this Coach Bags band are still light years ahead of their peers."

Smith joined the group full time in 2005, just in time to record their album Return to Cookie Mountain, which saw them break through to mainstream success. A message posted on the band's website said he had been diagnosed with cancer after their latest album was finished. He was 34.

The band wrote on their website in March: "Gerard has been undergoing treatment and will be unable to participate in the upcoming tour … [He] is fortunate enough to have health insurance and is receiving excellent medical care. We appreciate your concern and support for Gerard and his family."

His death has been announced in a statement on the site.

"We are very sad to announce the death of our beloved gearbox friend and bandmate, Gerard Smith, following a courageous fight against lung cancer. Gerard passed away the morning of April 20th, 2011. We will miss him terribly," reads the statement.

players adjourned until May 16

Court-ordered mediation between the NFL and locked-out players lasted another five hours damper Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan adjourned talks until May 16.

"We're going to be back here on May 16 to continue the mediation, and I think everybody thinks it was helpful," NFL Players Association outside counsel Jim Quinn said. "And that's really where we are."

When asked for the reason for the almost-monthlong break in talks, Quinn responded, "That's what the judge wanted, and we follow what the judge wants."

The next step in the process should come shortly, with Judge Susan Nelson due to rule on the players' request for an injunction to lift the NFL lockout. Also scheduled before the resumption of mediation is the May 12 hearing on the fate of the television-revenue case, over which U.S. District Judge David Doty will preside.

The sides met for 26 total hours over four days, trying to settle the led flexible strip consolidated Brady et al v. National Football League et al and Eller et al v. National Football League et al antitrust cases. It was the first set of face-to-face talks between the sides in 34 days, and the next break is set to encompass another 26 days.

"There are a lot of uncertainties right now," NFL general counsel Jeff Pash said as the league-imposed lockout hit its 40th day. "When we're back together, we'll know more. People's legal positions will be clearer. The network case is not a major factor, has never been a major factor, as far as our thinking goes.

"But we'll be back here ready to make a deal, because that's the only way that we're going to solve this problem, by having a comprehensive labor agreement, by setting out all the terms, addressing all the issues and getting it wrapped up so we're not spending all our time in court."

Nelson emphasized April 6 that she will rule on the players' motion for an injunction to lift the NFL lockout in "due course," and that decision has loomed over these talks. She said at the time that she expected to rule in "a couple weeks." It now has been two weeks.

"I think fans want solution. I want solutions," he said. "I think the players want solutions, and I think the teams want solutions. That's why we have to be working at it in negotiations and figuring out how to get to that point."

Over the four days of mediation, seven of the 10 members of the league's labor committee made appearances, with co-chairman Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers and Pat Bowlen of the Denver Broncos joined by cable ties Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Green Bay Packers CEO Mark Murphy the last two days. Commissioner Roger Goodell also was part of the league's contingent, as were Broncos president Joe Ellis and Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay.

NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith returned to the talks Wednesday after tending to a family emergency Tuesday, and current players Mike Vrabel and Ben Leber also were in attendance, as they have been throughout this mediation.

Goodell said all parties involved remain committed to ending the league's first work stoppage since 1987.
Pash wouldn't delve into the condition of talks between the league and players.

"You can't measure this like a stock table, what's going up or down on any given day. But it's always a positive to be able to talk to people," Pash said. "I don't think it's ever too early to talk, I don't think it's ever too early to state positions, and sometimes you have to state them multiple times and you have to really listen to the other side multiple times.

"I think this was a valuable process, I don't think a single minute of it was wasted time, and I think the effort and the sincerity and the creativity that the chief magistrate judge brought to the process was exemplary and is going to be very helpful to us down the road."

The NFL released its 2011 regular-season schedule after golf irons Tuesday's mediation session, and Goodell has maintained an optimistic tone. He spoke to New York Giants season-ticket holders Wednesday in a conference call during a break in mediation, telling them, "We're planning to play a full season, and we're going to negotiate as hard as we can to get that done."

"I do feel very positive about the 2011 season, and I think everybody has come here with the idea of having a 2011 season, and it's just not been easy to get to that point," Eller said. "I think everybody is working hard to that goal, and seeing them work to that end makes me much more optimistic. I would certainly say we're going to have a 2011 season."

The NFL's season is scheduled to open Sept. 8, with the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers hosting the New Orleans Saints, and that's less than five months away, with free agency, trades and other roster decisions still up in the air with the lockout in place.

"We have to identify the solutions and get it done," Goodell said. "It is tough for me to project. We're going to continue to make the preparations for the season and work as hard as we can to solve those issues in advance so we can play every game and high pressure sodium lamp every down of the season."

Hall of Fame defensive end Carl Eller, the lead plantiff in one of the antitrust cases against the league, echoed Goodell's optimism, even with talks now shelved for nearly a month.

Smith said he was unaware of the report, and Vrabel said he hadn't heard of it, either, although he did say that players "do have a seat, with Ben and me."

The Sports Business Journal reported Wednesday that a group of about 70 "mid-tier" players was considering hiring a law firm to get a seat at the mediation table, upset that talks broke off last month after 16 days in front of a federal mediator in Washington. However, NFL Network calls to about a dozen player agents revealed nothing to confirm the report.

"That's why we're here," Vrabel said. "... We're players here to exercise bike represent the players, and De works for us. They do (have a seat). And I think if they're unhappy with that seat, we have to vote in a new executive committee and a new board of reps."

Scientists ask: Is the kilo losing weight?

Ensuring a pound of butter is indeed a pound, or a gallon of milk a full gallon, has long been the OBD2 code scanner province of government agencies that deal with weights and measures. But now it seems scientists are having a little trouble with the golfball size piece of metal that is used to set the standard weight for a kilogram, or kilo.

Americans might not think the definition of a kilo affects them, but it does. Since 1893 “the pound has been defined as a derived measure of the kilo,” says Richard Davis, formerly the kilogram specialist with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and then the secretary of the Consultative Committee for Mass and Related Quantities.

A bunch of these prototypes have been made over the years, seven of which are kept in a triple-locked vault at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres, with one known as the International Prototype.

Not that the 50 micrograms will affect someone buying a pound of coffee in America or a kilo of potatoes in Germany. “It’s a pretty small effect, it’s the weight of a small grain of sand and this has no consequence,” says Michael Stock, director of the autoclave International Bureau’s Electricity Dept. “It’s only people working at the highest levels of science who will be affected.”

The problem is that as these prototypes have been taken out and weighed, which last happened in 1990, something odd has turned up — their weights began diverging. The international prototype, for example, weighed 50 micrograms less than the others, meaning it had lost weight or the others were getting heavier, or they were all moving a bit — no one knows for certain. And no one knows what caused the changing weights either.

But to scientists, for whom very precise measurement is important, it’s a big deal. So they decided to start working on a new standard based on a universal constant— a measure that relies on science principles rather than on an object whose size or other properties could change from one sample to another.

The standard for a meter, for example, is now defined as “the length of the path axial fan traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.” Again, even for Americans who don’t know a kilometer from a kleptomaniac, this is an issue because the official definition of a foot is exactly 0.3048 meters.

The whole system is based on a group of scientists in France who, after the revolution of 1789, started to set up a universal measurement system to get away from the hodgepodge of measurements then existing in Europe, many of which were based on things like the length of the current king’s arm. “What do you do when you get a new king?” says Stock.

There are seven base units in the International System of Units (things like seconds, meters, degrees) and every one of them but the kilo has one of these universal constant definitions. Only the kilo, the definition of which was adopted in 1889, is still defined by a man-made artifact — in this case a cylinder of metal made up of 90% platinum and 10% iridium that’s 1.54212598 inches high by 1.54212598 inches in diameter. Which, by definition, weighs exactly one kilo.

The system began to be adopted by the rest of the world in the 19th century when industrialization and international trade made having similar measuring systems important.

But finding a universal constant for a kilo isn’t as easy as it might seem.

One suggestion was to create a precise sphere of pure silicon that weighed exactly one kilo, then count the number of silicon atoms it contained and define a kilo as the weight of that many silicon atoms. But while that sounds simple, it turns out to be technically very difficult.

Another idea was to base it on a relationship with an esoteric concept in physics cone crusher called the Planck Constant, something even Stock had trouble expressing in layman’s terms. But, he assured a reporter, it works. And it would allow scientists to create a definition of the kilogram based on a universal physical constant.

Except that the experiments to establish it may be a little beyond science just yet. Groups in the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland and France have been doing the experiments and so far they have not come up with the same number.

“That’s the problem,” says Stock. “There are different results and they don’t agree.”

It is unlikely that the universe is shifting under our feet, the researchers say. More that our measuring ability isn’t quite up to capturing the extremely small thing being measured here.

For now, the kilo stays linked to the platinum/iridium cylinder locked away electronic ballast outside Paris. The meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures, which could adopt a new definition of the kilo, is scheduled for 2015. Asked whether we can expect a definitive kilo by then, Stock smiles. “Probably yes, but good science takes time.”

April 29 for next-to-last shuttle launch

NASA’s next-to-last space shuttle flight is set to begin late next week, and special preparations are under way in case the commander’s wife, wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is able to attend.

Endeavour is scheduled to blast off April 29 on its final voyage, the second last stainless steel pipe before the shuttle program ends. Mission managers set the launch date Tuesday.

The mission will be led by Mark Kelly, Giffords’ husband. He is awaiting doctors’ permission for his wife to attend the afternoon launch.

Giffords was critically wounded in Tucson, Ariz., three months ago and has been undergoing extensive rehabilitation at a hospital in Houston, home to Kelly and the rest of the astronaut corps.

Launch director Mike Leinbach said he hopes Giffords comes and stressed it would not be a distraction to his team.

“There’s a whole separate team working that issue,” Coach Bags he told reporters. “Hope she comes, but I don’t know if she will or not.”

Leinbach said there are security issues to deal with if Giffords travels to Florida for the liftoff. “Where does she go and how many people … there are just all kinds of things.”

“I hope she comes,” he added. “That would be cool.”

Kelly took a monthlong leave from NASA to be at his wife’s hospital bedside. He’s flown three times before in space, most recently in 2008. Crew families view launches at Kennedy Space Center from a restricted area, so Giffords likely will not be seen publicly if she attends.

The six-man crew will arrive Tuesday, shortly before the start of the countdown. Liftoff is scheduled for 3:47 p.m. the following Friday.

Endeavour will fly to the International Space Station and deliver a $2 billion particle physics experiment. The mission is scheduled for 14 days, but NASA expects to add two bonus days once the shuttle is in orbit.

It will be the 134th shuttle mission overall and the 25th for Endeavour, NASA’s youngest shuttle. It was built to replace Challenger, which was gearbox destroyed during liftoff in 1986.

The top of Endeavour’s wings still look factory fresh, Leinbach said. But the external fuel tank has been through a lot — namely, Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Part of the roof caved in at the New Orleans assembly plant and struck the tank. To commemorate the rebuilding effort, a picture showing a shuttle soaring through the eye of a hurricane was attached to the tank, the first such logo in shuttle history.

Leinbach said emotions are high as the shuttle program draws to a close. Only one other launch remains, by Atlantis at the end of June.

Earlier this month, 535 contractor workers were laid off in the latest round of cutbacks.

“That put a little bit of a somber mood on the team, I’d say, but we’re dealing damper with it,” Leinbach said. “The emotional aspect is very, very real. It’s very difficult to put into words.”

Leinbach said Kennedy Space Center got “a big boost” last week when NASA said Atlantis would go on display at its visitor center. The shuttle-winning museums were announced last week on the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch. Discovery is going to a Smithsonian branch in suburban Washington, and Endeavour will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

NASA is under presidential direction to hand over orbital trips to commercial companies, so it can focus on expeditions to asteroids and Mars. For the next few years at least, American astronauts will continue to fly Russian capsules to and from led bulbs the space station, paying tens of millions of dollars per seat.

super rich see federal tax drastically

As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes cold room than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation's tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.

There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no jaw crusher federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

"It's the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center, which generated the estimate of people who pay no income taxes.

The sheer volume of credits, deductions and exemptions has both Democrats and Republicans calling for tax laws to be overhauled. House Republicans want to eliminate breaks to pay for lower overall rates, reducing the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Republicans oppose raising taxes, but they argue that a more efficient tax code would increase economic activity, generating additional tax revenue.

President Barack Obama said last week he wants to do away with tax breaks to lower the rates and to reduce government borrowing. Obama's proposal would result in $1 trillion in tax increases over the next 12 years. Neither proposal included many details, putting off hard choices about which tax breaks to eliminate.
In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent electronic ballast watchdog within the IRS.

More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007. More than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent. Still, the wealthy have access to much more lucrative tax breaks than people with lower incomes.

Obama wants the wealthy to pay so "the amount of taxes you pay isn't determined by what kind of accountant you can afford."

Eric Schoenberg says to sign him up for paying higher taxes. Schoenberg, who inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker, has joined a group of other wealthy Americans called United for a Fair Economy. Their goal: Raise taxes on rich people like themselves.

Shoenberg, who now teaches a business class at Columbia University, said his income is usually "north of half a million a year." But 2009 was a bad year for investments, so his income dropped to a little over $200,000. His federal income tax bill was a little more than $2,000.

"I simply point out to people, 'Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?'" Schoenberg said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee stainless steel pipe , said he has a solution for rich people who want to pay more in taxes: Write a check to the IRS. There's nothing stopping you.

"There's still time before the filing deadline for them to give Uncle Sam some more money," Hatch said.
Schoenberg said Hatch's suggestion misses the point.

"This voluntary idea clearly represents a mindset that basically pretends there's no such things as collective goods that we produce," Schoenberg said. "Are you going to let people volunteer to build the road system? Are you going to let them volunteer to pay for education?"

The law is packed with tax breaks that help narrow special interests. But many of the biggest tax breaks benefit millions of American families at just about every income level, making them difficult for politicians to touch.

The vast majority of those who escape federal income taxes have low and medium incomes, and most of them pay other taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and retail sales taxes.
The share of people paying no federal income tax has dropped slightly the past two years. It was 47 percent for 2009. The main difference for 2010 was the expiration of a tax break that exempted the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits from taxation, Williams said.

In 2009, nearly 35 million taxpayers got a tax break for paying interest on their home mortgages, and nearly 36 million taxpayers took the $1,000-per-child tax credit. About 41 million households reduced their federal income taxes by veterinary syringes deducting state and local income and sales taxes from their taxable income.

About 36 million families cut their taxes by nearly $35 billion by deducting charitable donations, and 28 million taxpayers saved a total of $24 billion because their income from Social Security and railroad pensions was untaxed.

"As a matter of policy, there would be a lot of ways to save money and actually make these things work better," said Leonard Burman, a public affairs professor at Syracuse University. "As a matter of politics, it's really, really difficult."

The euro is facing new difficulties

Katainen, 39, has had challenges before: as finance minister in the coalition before Sunday's election he steered Finland through a recession.

He also has steadily moved his center-right party closer to the center stainless steel pipe and has now given it the leadership of government for the first time in 20 years.

But forming a new coalition which matches his europhile inclinations with the more euro-skeptic stance of True Finns leader Timo Soini will be hard.

Katainen, who grew up in a small town in central Finland and was a part-time teacher before entering local politics in his early 20s, noted that Finnish parties had always worked for compromises.

"It is our duty to form a majority government," he said on Sunday.

The election result showed Katainen's National Coalition Party narrowly won the election, gaining 43 seats in parliament, just topping the main opposition Social Democratic Party's 42 seats. The True Finns won a hefty 39 seats.

The biggest party in the outgoing coalition, the Center Party, suffered a big defeat and said it would go into opposition. Katainen will likely turn to the True Finns and the Social Democrats when he veterinary syringestries to build a new coalition.

Strongly pro-European, Katainen is a vice president of the European People's Party (EPP), a grouping of center-right parties in the European Parliament.

His party wants a cut in corporate tax to help create jobs and boost economic activity. It is also the most eager to promote nuclear power projects in the Nordic country.

As Finland's public debt is set to rise, the party is seeking to stabilize long-term finances by reforms such as raising the retirement age and halving the number of municipalities.

Retirement is a likely deadlock, since Social Democrats have said they will not enter a government that plans to raise the minimum age.

Tax cuts will be difficult to agree with both the Social Democrats and True Finns.

In talks with fellow finance ministers to create a stability mechanism for Europe, Katainen had to balance between Europe's hopes to lean more on triple-A-rated countries including Finland, and growing euro-criticism at home.

Since taking the party helm at age 32, Katainen has led the National Coalition, traditionally Finland's conservative party with ties to business, in a more liberal direction, Coach Bags winning new supporters among younger middle-class voters.

He cuts an image of a clean living and energetic family man and father of two. His dapper appearance is in stark contrast to the burly and folksy Soini.

Because of his schoolboy looks, Katainen has had to endure the nickname "Jyrki-boy" borrowed from a popular Finnish song and struggle to emerge from the shadow of former party leader and presidential candidate Sauli Niinisto and his cohorts.

He came into his own as party leader in 2008 when he sacked his foreign minister, Ilkka Kanerva, a National Coalition veteran politician, after Kanerva's text messages to an erotic dancer were splashed over the Finnish press.

Katainen replaced Kanerva at the foreign ministry with Alexander Stubb, another of a younger generation of media-savvy liberal internationalists in the National Coalition.

The two close friends smiled while checking Sunday's results together from an iPad at party celebrations.
But with Katainen as prime minister and Stubb as autoclave a possible foreign minister again, their balancing act with EU and domestic pressure is going to get trickier than before.

The deadly storms kill at least 45 people

Askewville, N.C., a town of a few hundred in rural Bertie County, awoke to near total destruction Sunday morning after a powerful, unusually large tornado touched down and then swept across 6 miles, flattening autoclave everything in its path, killing 11 people and injuring 50 more.

“It is devastating,” County Manager Zee Lamb said Sunday after surveying the damage in his 700-square-mile county. “We’ve had hurricanes, floods. We’ve had tornadoes before. But we’ve never seen anything like this.”

The county has shifted from search and rescue to recovery, he said. “People are already starting to clean up the debris, but it’s a real big mess.”

Tornadoes, high winds and flooding rains ripped across the South for three days, killing at least 45 people in six states Thursday through Saturday in the deadliest storm outbreak to hit the USA in more than three years. The Storm Prediction Center noted 243 initial reports of tornadoes in 13 states — an “astounding” number, Weather Channel meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said.

Severe storms in February 2008 killed 57 people across the Southeast.

The tornado that struck Bertie County was one of 62 in North Carolina, causing “significant damage” in 26 counties, according shaded pold motor to Julia Jarema, North Carolina Emergency Management spokeswoman. The state confirmed 23 deaths.

The storm hit the state late Saturday morning, and more continued into the evening.

“ We still don’t have a full grasp of what the damage is,” Jarema said.

Initial assessments found more than 65 homes destroyed and more than 600 damaged, but not all counties had reported, she said. Streets were blocked by downed trees and power lines, and more than 250,000 homes and businesses had lost power. A coordinating officer from the Federal Emergency Management Administration arrived Sunday.

“There is a lot of damage, and there are a lot of people who are hurting impact crusher physically and emotionally right now,” Jarema said.

In Bertie, the tornado destroyed at least 75 buildings, Lamb said. One extended family lost four homes and their business, he said.

“It’s just so spread out and so destroyed, he’s not going to be able to salvage much. The whole area is flattened. There’s nothing left,” Lamb said. “The debris is spread out over miles. There’s stuff in trees.”
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency after the storm caused flash flooding, power outages and, in Carroll County, a mudslide. Nine counties reported damage to homes and businesses,
downed trees and power outages. Waynesboro City and four counties reported flash flooding. The state confirmed five storm-related deaths.

One tornado touched down Saturday night at the switchyard of a Surry, Va., nuclear power station, cutting off electricity and triggering a shutdown of two reactors, according to a statement issued by Dominion Virginia Power. The company reported no release of radioactive material and notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “They shut down exactly as they are designed to do,” NRC spokesman Joey Ledford said. “There is no danger.”

The Surry power station in southeastern Virginia, across the James River from historic Jamestown, generates 1,598 megawatts of electric power . The tornado did not strike the two reactors, which are housed in steel-reinforced concrete containment buildings designed to withstand tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, the company said.

Meteorologists attributed the storms’ ferocity to cold air from the Plains colliding with warm, humid air from the electronic ballast Gulf of Mexico. Weather Channel meteorologist Mark Ressler predicted more strong storms with tornadoes, high winds and hail Tuesday in eastern Kansas, eastern Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee.