TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranians chanted "Death to America" and burned the U.S. flag after weekly prayers in Tehran on Friday despite their new president's outreach to the West and promises of moderation and easing of tensions with the outside world.

The chants, customary after Friday services in the Iranian capital, reflect the challenges facing President Hassan Rouhani as he tries to build on the groundbreaking exchanges with Washington that included a telephone chat last week with President Barack Obama — a gesture aimed at ending three decades of estrangement between the two countries.

Rouhani's overtures have been hailed by both Iranian reformists and the country's conservative clerical leadership.

But a wide array of Iranian hard-liners opposes any improved contact with the Unites States. Diplomatic relations between the two were cut after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, when militants held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

During prayers Friday in Tehran, the master-of-ceremonies led the crowd into chants of "Death to America" at least twice from the podium.

The chant was then repeated several times by a group of worshippers who rallied after the ceremony, burning the American and Israeli flags, as they do almost every week.

However, Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi, a cleric who led the prayers, tried to strike middle ground, saying that America and Iran should "join hands" in a struggle to overcome sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy.

Sedighi criticized Washington over the threat of new punitive measures against Iran and urged Obama to "come and work with" Rouhani in lifting the sanctions, which the cleric said had hurt not only people in Iran but also in the wider region, the U.S. and Europe.

Though Sedighi said Iran would not pull back from its "peaceful nuclear rights," he expressed hope that Rouhani's policies would "save the region and the world from a dead-end and a crisis."

Iran has faced repeated rounds of U.N. sanctions over its disputed nuclear program, which the West suspects is geared toward producing an atomic weapon. The country is also living under tough U.S.-led oil and banking sanctions that have slashed oil exports by half and shut Tehran out of the international financial system.

Tehran denies it wants nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear activities are only for peaceful purposes such as power generation and cancer treatment.

In a visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly last week, Rouhani agreed to restart nuclear talks with the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany in Geneva later this month.

Another speaker on Friday, Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi who is part of an advisory council to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the U.S. decided to work things out with Iran through diplomacy because of the crisis it faces over Syria's conflict.

"But, honestly, we also need them," Harandi said, referring to Americans. "We would like to have an opening that would remove these oppressive sanctions."

When the crowd erupted into another "Death to America" chant, Harandi said: "I did not raise that slogan that you are chanting."

Despite their president's outreach to the West, hard-line Iranians still engage in an act that arouses anger in the U.S.
'Death to America!'

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Blizzards rolled into parts of Wyoming and South Dakota on Friday, bringing the snow-savvy states to an unseasonably early wintery standstill by closing highways and schools, and even forcing a tourist town to cancel its annual Octoberfest's polka-dancing bar crawl.

A foot of snow had fallen in western South Dakota's scenic Black Hills by early Friday, though residents were bracing for as much as 3 feet of the wet, heavy snow and wind gusts of up to 70 mph. The storm system spawned a tornado the night before in Nebraska and was threatening to push thunderstorms as far east as Wisconsin.

Julie Lee said she and fellow members of her White Rose Band are accustomed to snow, just "not for the fourth of October." They had barely unloaded their instruments in South Dakota's Old West casino town of Deadwood before snow started falling and closed the area's only interstate.

"Our car is like an igloo," said Lee, who sings and plays the clarinet and saxophone for her North Dakota-based polka band. "I'm glad we got everything out."

Town officials decided to postpone its annual Octoberfest, including Friday night's dancing-and-singing pub crawl and Saturday's Wiener Dog Races and Beer Barrel Games. But Lee and her accordion-playing husband, who had planned to set up in one of the casino bars, still planned to entertain stranded guests. "You can only gamble for so long," she said.

The typically bustling Pilot Travel Center near Rapid City, about 40 miles southwest, was like a ghost town Friday morning. Store general manager John Barton guessed that drivers were likely heeding forecasters' warnings to stay off the roads.

The blowing snow was picking up outside the truck stop along Interstate 90, which was closed for about 30 miles thanks to a storm that was gaining strength as it moved in from Wyoming, where the interstate was also closed. Conditions were expected to deteriorate throughout the day.

"Yesterday we were really busy," Barton said. "I think a lot of people got ahead of it."

Although early October snowfalls aren't unusual, a storm of this magnitude happens only once every decade or two on the Plains, National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Trimarchi said.

"I couldn't say when the last time we've had one like this. It's been quite a while," Trimarchi said.

In Wyoming, reports of 5 to 10 inches of snow were common with higher amounts in the mountains. Hundreds of miles highways, including parts of interstates 25 and 90, were closed.

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This NOAA satellite image taken Thursday, October 03, 2013 at 11:00 AM EDT shows a developing storm …

"I've lived in Wyoming my whole life and I've never seen it like this this early," Patricia Whitman, shift manager at the Flying J truck stop in Gillette, said in a telephone interview Friday morning. "Usually the first snow is like Halloween."

Whitman said her truck stop's parking was full with travelers waiting out the storm.

"I know several of the businesses nearby are completely closed because they can't even get workers into work — it's pretty nasty," she said.

The snow also snapped tree limbs that knocked out power lines, causing thousands of people to lose power.

Forecasters urged people trying to travel to carry survival kits and to stay in their vehicles if they get stranded.

"These are just really dangerous conditions," Steve Rubin, of the National Weather Service, said Friday.

Large hail and powerful winds were forecast to hit northwest Oklahoma later Friday, while heavy rain settled in parts of Iowa and was expected to swoop northeast across the region into Wisconsin, where warnings were issued for dense fog.

In Nebraska, a tornado that touched down Thursday night damaged homes and businesses in several communities, knocked out power and toppled trees. But no injuries have been reported.

Motorists were being advised to stay off the roads in western South Dakota, where the I-90 were closed between Sturgis and the Wyoming border. Officials said the road will remain closed until storm conditions improve and crews are able to clear the highway.

The Department of Transportation also advised no travel on some other roadways in the region.

___

Associated Press writers Chet Brokaw in Pierre, S.D., Steve Paulson in Denver and Bob Moen in Cheyenne, Wyo., contributed to this report.

Rare early storms pummel the Midwest

A foot of snow blankets the South Dakota Black Hills in a weather event that happens only every decade or two.
Tornado in Nebraska

By Kathy Finn

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders for low-lying areas south of New Orleans on Friday as a weakened Tropical Storm Karen closed in on the Louisiana coast after disrupting U.S. energy output in the Gulf of Mexico.

Karen's top winds were holding at 50 mph, down from 65 mph a day earlier, and National Hurricane Center forecasters in Miami said the storm was expected to strengthen somewhat but remain a tropical storm.

Oil output in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico had been cut in half as oil and gas firms shut platforms and evacuated some workers in preparation for the storm. The Gulf accounts for about 19 percent of U.S. oil production and 6 percent of natural gas output.

The mayor of Grand Isle, Louisiana, clamped a mandatory evacuation on the popular vacation and fishing destination on a barrier island south of New Orleans. Evacuations were also ordered in Lafourche Parish in the south, and residents in much of Plaquemines Parish, southeast of New Orleans, were told to be out of their homes before nightfall.

The Sand Dollar Motel and Marina on Grand Isle was a frenzy of activity on Friday as boaters scrambled to get their vessels to higher ground and marina employees secured the premises.

"It's already pouring here and the wind is real strong," said marina owner Susan Gaspard, who added that squalls had been hitting all morning.

Karen's projected path shifted slightly westward and it was expected to move ashore over Louisiana on Saturday night and into Mississippi and then Alabama on Sunday.

By late Friday afternoon, the storm was centered about 235 miles south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River. It was moving north-northwest but was forecast to turn to the northeast as it crossed the coast.

At the Port of New Orleans, cargo operations continued normally but the harbor pilots who guide ships through the mouth of the Mississippi had ceased operations.

"No ships are coming in or out the mouth of the river," said port spokesman Matt Gresham.

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Tropical Storm Karen is seen in this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES Eas …

Carnival Cruise Line officials announced that two ships that had been due to arrive in New Orleans over the weekend, the Carnival Elation and Carnival Conquest, could be delayed until Monday. Guests onboard were being kept apprised and the ships were sailing at a safe and comfortable distance from the storm, the company said.

'GOOD SQUALL'

The governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama declared states of emergency to speed storm preparations and the Federal Emergency Management Agency recalled some furloughed workers to assist.

The storm was expected to dump up to 6 inches of rain in its path and to push a surge of seawater over the shoreline, the hurricane center said.

"The tide's already high, so we know we will get water. We're just trying to put everything up as high as we can," said Gaspard on Grand Isle.

Ralph Atkins, owner of Southern Fish & Oyster Co on a downtown dock in Mobile, Alabama, said he expected to see a "good squall" from Karen but nothing he couldn't deal with.

"Our big trouble is water. Water can build up and make it bad," Atkins said. "It's just another day in the fish business. Nature just needs to take a bath every now and then," he added.

At Alabama's Grand Mariner Marina on Dog River and Mobile Bay, boaters were tying down the larger vessels with double ropes and putting the smaller ones on trailers to haul them up the river to sheltered coves.

"It's like New York City at lunch time here. We are really busy," said marina manager Steve Penny. "We are doing everything we can to make room for 4 to 6 feet of water. Anything we can move, we get out."

Marina workers were adding fuel to their 8,000-gallon (30,280-liter) tanks to weigh them down and keep them from floating away.

A hurricane watch for the coast from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Destin, Florida was dropped. Tropical storm watches and warnings were still in effect in other areas including metropolitan New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. Tropical storms carry winds of 39 mph to 73 mph.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton in Miami, Verna Gates in Birmingham, Alabama; and Jeanine Prezioso in New York; Editing by Tom Brown and Jim Loney)