YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Dense smoke from a wildfire burning in and around Yosemite National Park on Saturday hampered both suppression efforts and the prized views sought by holiday weekend tourists.

For the first time since the blaze broke out in a neighboring forest two weeks ago, smoke obscured Yosemite Valley, home to the park's most popular landmarks, spokeswoman Kari Cobb said.

"I'm in Yosemite Valley right now, and I cannot see the cliffs around me," Cobb said. "The wind has shifted and smoke is impacting the entire park. We have been lucky until now."

All the campgrounds in the Valley still were full as of Saturday morning, despite the thick blanket and burning smell that permeated the area and was expected to linger until at least Monday, she said.

As a health precaution, visitors were being asked to scale back their outdoor recreation plans and avoid strenuous activities or even stay indoors.

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A look at the area of the Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park in California. ; 3c x 5 inches; 146 mm …

Meanwhile, firefighting aircraft were grounded most of the morning because of low visibility caused by the smoke, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Mark Healey said. The blaze had scorched 348 square miles of brush, oaks and pines and 11 homes, as of Saturday, an area larger than the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose combined.

Of that total, 94 square miles of wilderness have burned in the northern section of Yosemite, up from 75 square miles a day earlier.

The fire was 40 percent contained.

Although containment efforts proceeded on a positive note overnight, officials became concerned Saturday about a 150-acre spot fire that crossed a road and prompted an evacuation order for homes near the west entrance of Yosemite, Healey said.

Once planes and water-dropping helicopters were cleared to take off again, the worry lifted some along with the evacuation order.

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In this Friday, Aug. 30, 2013 image provided by the U.S. Forest Service, a member of the BLM Silver …

"Air operations are going full-blast to bring this fire under control," Healey said late Saturday afternoon.

The cause of the fire, which started August 17 and has claimed the most acreage in the Stanislaus National Forest, is under investigation.

Healey said fresh firefighters were being brought in to replace tired crews, but that officials did not plan to reduce the nearly 5,000 people assigned to the blaze.

The wildfire is the largest now burning in the United States and is the fifth-largest in California history.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — A Syrian state-run newspaper on Sunday called President Barack Obama's decision to seek congressional approval before taking military action against Bashar Assad's regime "the start of the historic American retreat."

The gloating tone in the front-page article in the Al-Thawra daily followed Obama's unexpected announcement on Saturday that he would ask Congress to support a strike punishing the Assad regime for allegedly unleashing chemical weapons on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus last week. The decision marked a stark turnabout for the White House, which had appeared on the verge of ordering U.S. forces to launch a missile attack against Syria.

"Whether the Congress gives the red or green light for an aggression, and whether the prospects of war have been enhanced or faded, President Obama has announced yesterday, by prevaricating or hinting, the start of the historic American retreat," Al-Thawra said.

The paper, which as a government outlet reflects regime thinking, also claimed that Obama's reluctance to take military action stems from his "sense of implicit defeat and the disappearance of his allies." The daily said the American leader worries about limited intervention turning into "an open war has pushed him to seek Congress' consent."

Syria's minister for reconciliation issues, Ali Haidar, echoed that line.

"Obama has given himself a chance to take a step backward by talking about Congress' approval and to search for other parties to participate in the attack," Haidar told The Associated Press by telephone. "In other words, he wants to keep brandishing the sword of aggression on Syria without fully giving up the idea of an attack and even without setting a definite date for the aggression."

Over the past week, the U.S. Navy moved warships into the eastern Mediterranean as the Obama administration considered its options. But with everything in place, Obama opted to take get the backing of Congress before launching military strikes, saying he believes taking that path will make the U.S. "stronger."

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President Barack Obama talks about the crisis in Syria to media gathered in the Rose Garden of the W …

Congress is scheduled to return from a summer break on Sept. 9, and in anticipation of the coming debate, Obama challenged lawmakers to consider "what message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price."

The White House has sent Congress a draft of a resolution seeking approval for a military response to "deter, disrupt, prevent and degrade" the Assad regime's ability to use chemical weapons going forward. The Senate will hold hearings next week so a vote can take place after Congress gets back to work.

The president's strategy carries enormous risks to his and the nation's credibility, which the administration has argued forcefully is on the line in Syria. Obama long ago said the use of chemical weapons was a "red line" that Assad would not be allowed to cross with impunity.

British Prime Minister David Cameron charted a similar course last week by asking the House of Commons to support military action against Syria, only to suffer a stinging defeat.

Across the Atlantic, Obama's speech sparked calls for French President Francois Hollande, who supports an armed response against Syria, to seek parliamentary approval before taking military action. Hollande is not constitutionally required to do so. France's parliament is scheduled to debate the issue Wednesday, but no vote is scheduled.

For some in Syria's opposition who had put great hope in U.S. strikes, Obama's decision to postpone proved a source of despair and prolonged the torment of when — and if — Washington will act.

"Obama's speech yesterday made us feel worthless," said 29-year-old Damascus resident Nasib, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals.

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President Barack Obama makes a statement about the crisis in Syria in the Rose Garden of the White H …

"The government here doesn't care, they're genuinely not scared, they're not gloating. So it's only provocative to us people who sit here scared, not knowing when to expect the strike," he said. "I had to tape my windows so they wouldn't break. I know people who prepared sleeping pills to give to their kids the night of the attack so they can sleep and not be scared."

For others, Obama's choice was seen as simply business as usual from a country that they say has done nothing to halt the massive trauma and bloodshed gripping Syria.

"We weren't putting too much hope in the U.S strike," said Mohammed al-Tayeb, an opposition activist in Eastern Ghouta. "America was never a friend of ours, they're still an enemy."

In the buildup to the potential strikes, the opposition and Damascus residents say the Assad regime moved it troops and military equipment out of bases to civilian areas.

The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said in a statement Sunday that the army repositioned rocket launchers, artillery and other heavy weapons inside residential neighborhoods in cities nationwide.

Two Damascus residents the AP spoke with confirmed the regime troop movements. One woman said soldiers had moved into a school next to her house and she was terrified.

With U.S. strikes no longer looming, the U.N. probe into the attack has at least a week and a half to analyze samples it took during on-site investigations before the specter of military action comes yet again to the fore.

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President Barack Obama arrives to make a statement about Syria in the Rose Garden at the White House …

The head of the U.N. team, Swedish professor Ake Sellstrom, is to brief U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later Sunday. The group of experts collected biological and environmental samples during their visits to the rebel-held Damascus suburbs that were hit in the Aug. 21 attack.

The inspectors left Syria on Saturday and arrived in The Hague, Netherlands. The samples they collected in Syria are to be repackaged and sent to laboratories around Europe to check them for traces of poison gas. The U.N. says there is no specific timeline for when their analysis will be completed.

There are widely varying death tolls from the suspected toxic gas attack. The aid group Doctors Without Borders says at least 355 people were killed, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring groups says it has identified 502 victims by name. A U.S. intelligence assessment says the attack killed 1,429 civilians, including more than 400 children.

In Cairo, Arab League foreign ministers were to hold an emergency session Sunday evening to discuss Syria. Last week, the 22-nation bloc condemned the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus but said it does not support military action without U.N. consent.

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Lucas reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Yasmine Saker in Beirut contributed to this report.

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Follow Ryan Lucas on Twitter at www.twitter.com/relucasz

Syrian state-run paper: Obama in 'retreat'

The daily gloats over the president's decision to seek congressional approval for a military strike against Syria.
Warships still in position

An aerial view shows Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and its contaminated water storage tanks (bottom) in Fukushima, in this August 20, 2013 file photo taken by Kyodo. REUTERS/Kyodo/Files

By Tetsushi Kajimoto

TOKYO (Reuters) - Radiation near a tank holding highly contaminated water at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has spiked 18-fold, the plant's operator said on Sunday, highlighting the struggle to bring the crisis under control after more than two years.

Radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour - enough to kill an exposed person in four hours - was detected near the bottom of one storage tank on Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co, also known as Tepco, said.

An August 22 readings measured radiation of 100 millisieverts per hour at the same tank. Japanese law has set an annual radiation exposure safety threshold of 50 millisieverts for nuclear plant workers during normal hours.

Last month, Tepco revealed that water from the tank was leaking. Japan's nuclear regulator later raised the severity of the leak from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level 3 "serious incident" on an international scale for radiation releases.

The Fukushima Daiichi power plant north of Tokyo was devastated by a tsunami on March 11, 2011 that resulted in fuel-rod meltdowns at three reactors, radioactive contamination of the air, sea and food and the evacuation of 160,000 people.

It sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.

While there were no new leaks found at the tank, a Tepco spokesman said another leak had been detected from a pipe connecting two other tanks nearby.

"We have not confirmed fresh leakage from the tank and water levels inside the tank has not changed," the Tepco spokesman said. "We are investigating the cause."

Tepco said the radiation measured was beta rays, which would be easier to protect against than gamma rays.

The Tepco spokesman also said the higher level of radiation from the latest reading was partly because investigators had used a measuring instrument capable of registering greater amounts of radiation.

Instruments used previously had only been capable of measuring radiation up to 100 millisieverts, but the new instruments were able to measure up to 10,000 millisieverts.

Radiation of 220 millisieverts was also recorded near an adjacent storage tank, where a reading of 70 had been registered last month.

Radiation of 230 millisieverts was detected from the new leak from the pipe connecting two nearby tanks, a new measurement of 70 was taken from another, separate storage tank.

Those tanks are built of steel plates stuck together by bolts - the same structure as the tank that was found last month to have leaked 300 tons of highly toxic water.

With no one seeming to know how to bring the crisis to an end, Tepco said last week it would invite foreign decommissioning experts to advise it on how to deal with the highly radioactive water leaking from the site.

Japan has also signaled it might dip into a $3.6 billion emergency reserve fund to help pay for the clean-up of a situation the chief cabinet secretary has described as "deplorable".

Its nuclear regulator has also expressed fear that the disaster was beyond Tepco's ability to cope in some respects.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida visited Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of the 1986 disaster, hoping to apply lessons learned there to Fukushima.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

Radiation spikes at stricken nuclear plant

Levels high enough to kill an exposed person in four hours were detected near a tank, the operator says.
Pipe leak found

Marijuana Ruling Could Signal End of Prohibition on Pot

It's legal to light up in Colorado and Washington, and soon smoking pot could be legalized across the country following a decision Thursday by the federal government.

After Washington state and Colorado passed laws in November 2012 legalizing the consumption and sale of marijuana for adults over 18, lawmakers in both states waited to see whether the federal government would continue to prosecute pot crimes under federal statutes in their states.

Both Colorado and Washington have been working to set up regulatory systems in order to license and tax marijuana growers and retail sellers, but have been wary of whether federal prosecutors would come after them for doing so. They are the first states to legalize pot, and therefore to go through the process of trying to set up a regulatory system.

Consumption and sale of marijuana is still illegal in all other states, though some cities and towns have passed local laws decriminalizing it or making it a low priority for law enforcement officers. There are also movements in many states to legalize pot, including legalization bills introduced in Maine and Rhode Island, discussion of possible bills in states including Massachusetts and Vermont, and talk of ballot initiatives in California and Oregon.

But on Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that it would not prosecute marijuana crimes that were legal under state law, a move that could signal the end of the country's longtime prohibition on pot is nearing. "It certainly appears to be potentially the beginning of the end," said Paul Armantano, deputy director of the pot lobby group NORML.

The memo sent to states Thursday by the DOJ said that as long as states set up comprehensive regulations governing marijuana, there would be no need for the federal government to step in, a decision that will save the Justice Department from having to use its limited resources on prosecuting individuals for growing or smoking marijuana.

"This memo appears to be sending the message to states regarding marijuana prohibition that is a recognition that a majority of the public and in some states majority of lawmakers no longer want to continue down the road of illegal cannabis, and would rather experiment with different regulatory schemes of license and retail sale of cannabis," Armantano said.

Richard Collins, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that the memo from the DOJ points out specifically that the federal government will only walk away from marijuana crimes in states where there is a solid regulatory system for the drug's growth and disemenation.

For other states to mimic the systems in Colorado and Washington, they will first have to get legalization laws on their ballots or in their state houses, which could post a challenge, he said.

While Colorado and Washington have not yet set up their regulatory systems, both states will likely sell licenses to farmers who want to grow marijuana as well as to manufacturing plants and retail sellers. The marijuana will also likely be taxed at each stage of its growth, processing, and sale.

"In both Colorado and Washington, legalization was done by citizens with no participation by elected representatives until they had to pass laws to comply with the initiative. In other initiative states I would expect such measures - I would expect a new one in California, for instance - and roughly half the states permit this and the rest don't.

"In the states that do have initiatives I expect efforts to get it on the ballot. The other half it will be much tougher. It's hard to get elected representatives to do this," Collins said.

Armantano is more optimistic about the spread of legalized pot. He compared the DOJ's announcement to the federal government's actions toward the end of alcohol prohibition in America a century ago, when states decided to stop following the federal ban on alcohol sales and the federal government said it would not step in and prosecute crimes.

"For first time we now have clear message from fed government saying they will not stand in way of states that wish to implement alternative regulatory schemes in lieu of federal prohibition," Armantano said.

He predicted that within the next one to three years, five or six other states may join Colorado and Washington in legalizing the drug, setting the stage for the rest of the country to follow.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, was disappointed with the Justice Department's decision, but said that he had already reached out to set up meetings to talk with leadership in the department and he was "open to discussion" about the benefits.

"I would tell you that certainly the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers oppose legalization," he said, "but that is not to say that we're not willing to have a conversation about it. It is, from our perspective, a gateway drug and opinions to the contrary don't have the weight of fact behind them."

"We want to talk to (the DOJ) about their thought process and ours and where the disconnect is," he said. "From our perspective the only fault with the status quo is that we aren't making a bigger dent and we'd like to make a bigger one."

Marijuana may soon be legal in U.S.

Smoking pot could be decriminalized across the country after a recent decision by the Justice Department.
What it will take