Sutherland added that he was prepared to meet with Warne and discuss the 43-year-old's criticism of CA's player rotation policy and his claim that "rubbish" decisions were turning Australian cricket into a "big joke".

After venting his initial anger on Monday, Warne reiterated his views a day later.

"As I said last night we need cricket people running the team & who understand cricket & what's required at the top level, not muppets," he tweeted on Tuesday.

Warne questioned the logic of having former rugby union international Pat Howard as the board's high performance manager but Sutherland threw his weight behind the former Wallaby back.

"I have every confidence in Pat Howard and his team, and what they're doing," Sutherland told local media on Tuesday.

"Personally I find it a little bit disappointing to read about that (Warne's criticisms) in the fashion that I have.

"Ideally you'd like to be able to sit down with Shane and understand a little bit more deeply his opinions."

Australia won all three tests in a recent series against Sri Lanka but were held 2-2 in the subsequent one-day internationals after resting skipper Michael Clarke for the first two matches.

The hosts, however, lost both Twenty20 internationals and were left debating the merits of a controversial rotation policy CA has introduced to manage injuries and the workload of their frontline players.

While Warne insisted Australia needed to field their best 11 players every time they stepped out, fast bowling great Dennis Lillee has backed CA's approach.

"He's 100 percent in agreement with the selection panel with managing the load and development of players," Sutherland said of Lillee, who captured 355 wickets in 70 tests.

"Who's right here?

"You've got Shane Warne saying one thing, Dennis Lillee saying another. It's not a black and white issue."

Warne retired from test cricket in 2007 after taking 708 wickets in 145 tests. (Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; Editing by John O'Brien)

Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that the federal government should not blame law abiding gun owners for the acts of criminals by enacting new gun control legislation.

"Law-abiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent or deranged criminals. Nor do we believe the government should dictate what we can lawfully own and use to protect our families," LaPierre will say Wednesday, according to prepared remarks released by the NRA.

"Proposing more gun control laws - while failing to enforce the thousands we already have - is not a serious solution to reducing crime," LaPierre will add at the first Senate hearing on gun violence since the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month.

LaPierre will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing titled, "What Should America Do About Gun Violence?" alongside Mark Kelly, husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot two years ago in a deadly shooting that left six people dead, including members of her congressional staff.

Get more pure politics at

In anearlier this month, Giffords and Kelly said they are working towards reforms such as universal background checks for gun sales and limiting the sale of high-capacity magazines.

On the issue of universal background checks, an initiative promoted by the Obama administration, LaPierre will argue that they "will never be 'universal' because criminals will never submit to them."

LaPierre will advocate for the NRA's proposal to place armed guards in every school across America, saying there's a need to create "an immediate blanket of security for our children."

ABC News' Mary McGuire contributed to this report.

A January 2013 survey by Sodexo, , a leading provider of integrated food and facilities management services with 6,000 locations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, listed the third trend to look for in 2013 was, Inspiring a Connection to People, Community and Brand .

Most talented (workplace) candidates today are often seeking more than just a paycheck. They are looking for values match. Companies are finding they can attract, motivate and retain top talent by creating meaningful work environments, the report said.

Thats exactly what Joe DeRosa and his Midwest chain of DeRosas Restaurants, which operates under a variety of names, did when they brought in Marketplace Chaplains to help their employees and family members.

Having Chaplains who know our employees, personally and on a confidential level from weekly worksite visits, to share their joys and sorrows, brings peace of mind, said Togie, a longtime DeRosa HR executive. For me, knowing they (chaplains) are a phone call away at any time, for any reason, be it a joyful or sorrowful one, they are there to lift us up and that not only makes them part of our corporation but part of our family.

One study of recent college hires found that 86% of them would consider leaving an employer whose social responsibility fell short of their expectations. Another Sodexo survey found that 71% of all new employees arrived on the job with high levels of engagement, but after six months it dropped to 57%.

In todays busy times and leaders wearing more hats, than ever, the peace of mind having Chaplains on our team to assist with needs of the employees is truly a gift, Togie added.

Mike Matetich, owner of Jupiter Chevrolet, said With the hustle and bustle of todays business world, its very comforting when an employee comes to me and says Thank You for caring about me and my family by having the Chaplains service.

When my employees personal problems are being dealt with and they are focused on their work, then they are able to provide much greater customer service, which leads to very high customer satisfaction, added Shannon Rodden, owner of No Limit Motors with North Texas five dealerships.

The revenue, profit growth, Return on Investment (ROI) of companies with programs focusing on social responsibility are 10% greater than those companies without them, according to a Watson Wyatt consultation survey in 2008.

Marketplace Chaplains based in Dallas, Texas, has a staff of over 2,700 chaplains serving in more than 23 different industry types, in 44 states, 932 cities, 4 other countries and 1 commonwealth, and2,843 client service locations, caring for over half a million employees and their family members.

A recent Harvard Business School article stated that customer loyalty, not simply customer satisfaction, was the key to a truly successful, sustainable business.It also highlighted that customer loyalty came from the added value and services which were produced by loyal employees who felt valued when company leadership extended care and their values to their staff.

Its clear that the trend for 2013 businesses is the same for every year - take care of your employees needs, both at their workplace and home, with the use of Marketplace Chaplains and they will take care of the company, which benefits both, said Dick De Witt, President and COO of Marketplace Chaplains.

For more information on this fast-growing international and domestic corporate strategic initiative featured on NBC Nightly News, CNN, Washington Post, the New York Times and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, visit .

For more information or to arrange an interview with a client company or local chaplain, contact Art Stricklin at artstricklin@mchapusa.com or 1-800-775-7657.

Art StricklinMarketplace Chaplains1-800-775-7657

U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.

The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.

The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.

Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.

They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.

One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.

A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.

Among the findings:

The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason:After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.

Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.

Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.

The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.

Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.

Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.

The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.

Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.

"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.

It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."

___

Online:

American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

So Yanamura volunteered to join the Army to prove his loyalty.

Nearly 70 years later, that same government honored him and the thousands of other Japanese-Americans who served in World War II with one of its most elite rewards: the Congressional Gold Medal.

Starting this weekend in New Orleans, the medal is going on a yearlong national tour that will spread the stories of the veterans, their sacrifices and their triumphs. The tour is organized by the Smithsonian in partnership with the National Veterans Network, a coalition of Japanese-American veteran and civic organizations.

Irene Hirano Inouye said her late husband U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, who lost his right arm fighting with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy saw the tour as an important way to tell others what happened.

"For a lot of younger people, World War II is like ancient times," Inouye said in a telephone interview. "We have to remember that there are a lot of younger people who just have not been exposed to the story."

Congress last year awarded the medal collectively to men who served in three segregated units of mostly Japanese-Americans: the 100th Infantry Battalion nicknamed the Purple Heart Battalion because of the casualties it endured the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service. Besides these units, it was rare for Japanese-Americans to serve in other parts of the U.S. military.

The 442nd which absorbed the 100th Infantry during the war is the most highly decorated military unit in U.S. history for its size and length of service. Soldiers of the 442nd and 100th both fought in Europe.

Linguists in the Military Intelligence Service served in the Pacific, interrogating Japanese prisoners and deciphering maps, soldier diaries and other documents.

Japanese-Americans were at first not allowed to serve, rendered ineligible for the draft because of their "enemy" status.

But in 1943, the government decided to allow some to volunteer.

The Army put out a call for 1,500 to come forward; more than 10,000 raised their hands.

Yanamura's homeroom teacher (also Japanese-American) told his class all 18-year-olds should volunteer to prove their loyalty.

"I went home from school and talked to my father. He said, without any hesitation, 'You must volunteer. You got to show your loyalty,'" Yanamura said.

He first joined the 442nd but switched to the MIS after realizing he would be more useful as a linguist than as an infantryman.

He was awarded the Bronze Star for using a loudspeaker to successfully coax 1,500 civilians and 150 soldiers in the village of Maehira to surrender during the Battle of Okinawa.

He never spoke much of his actions until recently, modestly saying "we really didn't do much." And he at first doubted whether he should be honored by the same award given to George Washington and other American heroes.

But he's come to accept the medal as an apology to men who risked their lives even though their country treated them as enemies and imprisoned their families in concentration camps.

"Despite all that, we still went ahead and performed outstandingly," he said. "From that standpoint, I guess, we should be thankful that the recognition has been made, though a long time later."

Inouye said her husband, who died last month at the age of 88, would tell school groups the U.S. continues to evolve and grow, noting he became a senator even though he was once declared an enemy alien.

"A lot of those lessons are what the real meaning of an exhibition like this is," she said.

Yanamura, now 88, and Inouye will attend a ceremony opening the exhibition on Saturday at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The medal will travel to museums in Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Chicago and Houston over the next year.

About half of the sector's 75,000 jobs in the United States had been expected to disappear if the wind production tax credit had been allowed to expire at the end of last year, according to trade group the American Wind Energy Association.

"There will be a lot of activity that wouldn't have otherwise occurred," said David Burton, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld who works on the tax aspects of financing renewable energy projects.

The extension and several other clean energy tax breaks came out of a Senate Finance Committee "tax extenders" bill in August and was included, along with a host of other business tax incentives that industries had been pushing for all year, in the deal to avert the "fiscal cliff."

The tax break provides an income tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity produced by utility-scale wind turbines, helping it compete with power generated from cheap fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

Importantly, the credit was changed to allow project developers to claim it when they begin construction, rather than only once turbines are up and running. It addresses the stop-start nature of the tax credit and takes into consideration the two years it can take to develop a wind farm.

"That's a huge difference," said Lance Markowitz, a senior vice president in the leasing and asset finance division of Union Bank, a unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Markowitz added that he knows of several wind projects that will go forward that likely would not have without an extension of the tax credit. However, he cautioned that the industry still faces challenges such as weak power prices and an environment in which many utilities are close to fulfilling their state mandates for renewable energy generation and therefore are no longer required to buy more clean power.

The last-minute extension has already taken a toll on the industry, according to AWEA's interim chief executive, Rob Gramlich, who said some of the industry's jobs would not be saved.

"Some of the damage was certainly done," he said.

Manufacturers like Denmark's Vestas Wind Systems A/S, for instance, decreased their U.S. workforce in 2012 in anticipation of the tax credit expiring.

"Our order intake, like everyone else in the industry, saw a decrease in 2012," said Andrew Longeteig, a spokesman for Vestas' North American operations.

BIG HELP FOR SMALL GREEN INDUSTRIES

Allowing projects to claim the tax credit when they begin construction will be a big boon to less developed technologies like geothermal and biomass.

"They are less developed so tend to be looked at by investors as being riskier," said Michael Bernier, a senior manager at Ernst & Young who specializes in renewable energy tax credits. "Providing that certainty of 'OK, we're going to get this tax credit,' that helps you mitigate your risk."

The change could spur about $4 billion of new investment in geothermal projects, said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

It remains to be seen how the federal government will define projects "under construction" and able to qualify for the tax credit. A popular solar power incentive, before it expired, allowed developers to qualify if they incurred five percent of the total project costs even if actual construction had not started.

"The Obama administration was very supportive of those guidelines and will push hard for those same guidelines," said Burton.

The bill to avert the fiscal cliff also included extensions of tax credits for electric vehicle chargers for individuals and businesses and electric motorcycles.

(Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

The source, who asked not to be identified, emphasized that the income tax rate increase would be in exchange for "significant entitlement reforms/spending cuts." Entitlement programs include Medicare and Medicaid healthcare for the elderly and poor and Social Security retirement benefits.

The White House has not accepted Boehner's proposal, according to another source. Under current law, the top tax rate is scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent on January 1, unless Congress extends the current 35 percent, as Republicans had been urging.

(This story was fixed to correct current tax rate to 35 percent from 36 percent)

(Reporting By Richard Cowan; editing by Philip Barbara)

A lot of kids must sit on Santa's lap before he can hop in his sleigh on Christmas Eve, but Santa has to be extra careful during flu season if he wants to stay healthy into the New Year.

John Sullivan, a professional Santa Claus in Chicago, said he never turns down a child, even if the child's nose is runny.

for our Santa interactive.

"I'll see him. I'll talk to him," Sullivan said. "That's just a risk that frankly comes with the job Santa can't go around wearing a surgical mask!"

Since children actually exhale more flu virus than adults because their immune systems are immature, Santa and other people who work with children are at greater risk for coming down with the flu, said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

"Of course, Santa is leaning over the child and listening carefully. He's in the breathing zone of all these children," Schaffner said. "They come into very close contact with a myriad of children, and children are the great distributor of respiratory viruses."

Not only do children exhale more of the virus in each breath than adults do, but they also exhale it longer:24 hours before they start feeling sick until after they feel better.

"It is likely because children are experiencing these viruses probably for the first time, and that their immune systems are not trained to combat the viruses and shut down the virus production mechanism quickly," Schaffner said.

Schaffner said it's important for professional Santa performers like Sullivan to get their flu shots, keep up their fluids and get enough sleep and exercise during the holiday season so that their bodies can fight the flu if they come in contact with it.

Sullivan has been Santa Claus every holiday season for more than two decades, and he never misses a flu shot, he said. He started in malls and now does private events at homes, offices and daycares.

"A lot of times when you pick up a baby, you can feel in their lungs that there's congestion," he said. "I'll tell the parent the baby has cold Frankly, if I'm Santa, I never reject a child."

He said he's gotten mild colds, but nothing serious, and he's always mindful to avoid getting other people sick if he's not feeling well.

Want to know if cold remedy cocktails actually work?

Near Orlando, Greg Thompson runs The Santa Company, which has seven Santas, including Thompson himself, who has been dressing as Santa since he was 14. ("I'd discovered Santa's secret, so I decided I wanted to be him.") That first year, Thompson was 129 lbs., so his grandmother helped him stuff a pillow under his puffy jacket to complete the costume.

Although Thompson's size may have been a problem, the flu wasn't, he said. In fact, The Santa Company hasn't had anyone call out sick since it was founded in 1999.

"We have not had it happen yet - knock on wood - but if someone were to come in and say, 'Greg, I'm just sick and I can't come in,' we'd make sure to have a Santa for him," Thompson said. "We're more concerned about people bringing their kids to us. If a kid is obviously sick, you can look at him and tell, sometimes."

Of the 80 appearances The Santa Company does each year, Thompson does about a quarter of them. When a child approaches Thompson-as-Santa with a runny nose and red eyes, Thompson said he will ask the child to sit down in front of him instead of on his lap.

"I'll be happy to speak with him," he said.

Thompson added that his Santas always wear clean gloves as part of the classic red suit with white trim, and they cough only into their elbows.

But Schaffner said gloves can quickly become contaminated, and probably don't offer much protection against the virus as Santa touches a child and strokes his beard or touches his nose. Even surgeons are taught to wash their hands after they remove gloves, he said.

"They are at risk. There's no doubt about it," Schaffner said. "But maybe Santa's beard and mustache can act like a filter and keep the virus out," he joked with a laugh.

Santa is magical, after all.

But then you get a movie like "Jack Reacher," which makes you hate it. And then love it. And then hate it again, going back and forth like some crazy tennis match until all that's left is to make a list of pros and cons to see how it all shakes out:

I hated ... the fact that the movie opens with a mass shooting. Yes, it's not the fault of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (adapting Lee Child's novel "One Shot") that his movie is opening in the wake of the Newtown school massacre. But it is - and you should be forewarned that the very first scene in this movie involves a gunman firing a high-powered rifle into a crowd of passersby outside of PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

I loved ... that after I got over my initial discomfort at this unfortunately timed development, I was able to admire the clinical efficiency with which McQuarrie captures the opening crime, the subsequent investigation and the arrest of a suspect, all in five or so very economical minutes.

I loved ... how, when said suspect refuses to talk or to sign a confession but instead scrawls "GET JACK REACHER" on a legal pad, this origin-story movie takes its time to show us our hero's face, instead depicting him waking up in a Florida hotel room with a lady, seeing the perp on CNN, walking into Goodwill for a new wardrobe and hopping a bus to Pennsylvania before revealing him as, ta-da! Tom Cruise, ladies and gentlemen!

I loved ... seeing two of my favorite current character actors, Rosamund Pike ("An Education," "Made in Dagenham") and David Oyelowo ("Middle of Nowhere") score a big paycheck by getting cast in a flashy Hollywood movie.

I hated ... watching them get stuck playing, respectively, The Girl and The Cop Who Is Not as Awesome as Jack Reacher.

I loved ... the airport-novel way that the plot unravels into onion layer after onion layer of conspiracy and misdirection and hidden motives, and that at the center of the onion we find none other than legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog, playing a creepy Russian kingpin missing fingers after his stint in a Siberian prison.

I hated ... that said conspiracy plot makes less and less sense the more I think about it, and that all the setups and frame-ups wind up seeming like a very complicated way to perform a fairly prosaic crime.

I loved ... the no-nonsense car chase in which the cops pursue Reacher, who is in turn pursuing the real bad guys who have set him up, even though the lead-in to this chase involves Reacher miraculously catching up to henchman Charlie (the exceedingly forceful Jai Courtney), who has a several-mile head start in a city where he could have driven off in any direction.

I loved and hated ... the music by Joe Kraemer, which occasionally underscores the crime scenes with all the piano-chords-of-doom and strings-of-danger you'd imagine in an old Quinn Martin-produced 1970s cop show, but then at other times works itself into so much of a lather that it overpowers whatever's happening visually.

I loved ... how surprisingly funny "Jack Reacher" is, from a throwaway gag regarding the name of an auto parts store (my favorite out-of-nowhere joke in 2012 since the billboards in "21 Jump Street") to a fight scene that becomes slapstick brilliance to Cruise's unbreakable deadpan to the much-needed third-act incredulity injected into the film by Robert Duvall as a salty old gun-range owner.

So yes, ultimately, my enjoyment of "Jack Reacher" winds up outweighing my dislike, but it was a bumpy road to get there. If you're ready for that kind of jostling, take the trip yourself.

Those singers set a serious tone Wednesday night, wearing mostly black and gray onstage as they encouraged people to call and donate money to those affected by the devastating storm that took place in late October, killing about 140 people and damaging millions of homes and properties in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other areas.

Alicia Keys, who grew up in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, closed the night with her New York anthem, "Empire State of Mind," as doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers and others joined the piano-playing singer onstage. They ended the night chanting "U.S.A."

Keys was one of two women who performed at "The Concert for Sandy Relief." Diana Krall backed McCartney, who sang his solo songs, Beatles songs and played the role of Kurt Cobain with Nirvana members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear during the nearly six-hour show.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off the night, performing songs like "My City of Ruins," ''Born to Run" with Bon Jovi and some of Tom Waits' "Jersey Girl."

"I pray that that characteristic remains along the Jersey shore because that's what makes it special," the New Jersey-born rocker said, referring to how the Jersey Shore attracts an ethnic and economic melting pot of people.

E Street band guitarist Steven Van Zandt said backstage that musicians and entertainers always show up when tragedy hits.

"It's more personal because literally the Jersey Shore is where we grew up ... but we'd be here anyway," he said. "You don't see oil companies here, you don't see insurance companies here, the Wall Street guys, with all due respect, they're not waiting in line to help anybody, so we're here."

The sold-out show was televised live, streamed online, played on the radio and shown in theaters all over the world. Producers said up to 2 billion people were able to experience it live.

But the night wasn't all serious: Comedy helped break up the weightiness of Sandy's devastation, including jokes from Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, Stephen Colbert and Adam Sandler, who performed a hilarious parody of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Even Coldplay's Chris Martin brought on the jokes.

"I know you really wanted One Direction," Martin said of the popular British boy band. "But it's way past their bedtime."

Martin was joined onstage by Michael Stipe, as they sang R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion." And there was another collaboration with Roger Waters and Eddie Vedder on "Comfortably Numb."

The participants, many natives of the area and others who know it well, struck a defiant tone in asking for help to rebuild sections of the New York metropolitan area devastated by the storm. About half of the performers were British.

"This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden," said Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones, who performed two songs. "If it rains in London, you've got to come and help us."

Waters, who has lived in New York for 11 years, said "there's a great feeling of camaraderie" backstage and that he's excited he could help those who are suffering.

Richie Sambora said he "had to hold back tears" when he visited New Jersey and saw the devastation. "My mom's house (in Point Pleasant, N.J.) got trashed. They had to evacuate her. She's living with me until we fix it up."

Most of the acts performed about four tunes. McCartney performed for 40 minutes and The Who were onstage for 30. They weaved Sandy into their set, showing pictures of storm devastation on video screens during "Pinball Wizard." Pete Townshend made a quick revision to the lyrics of "Baba O'Riley," changing "teenage wasteland" to "Sandy wasteland."

Joel performed one of his most recognizable songs, "New York State of Mind," changing many of the words to localize, mentioning Breezy Point and Oceanside. His "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)" sounded prescient, with new Sandy-fueled lyrics smoothly fitting in. He was also the only artist to mark the season, working in a little of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Kanye West's performance gave the crowd a different sound, as the music lineup was heavily weighted toward classic rock, which has the type of fans able to afford a show for which ticket prices ranged from $150 to $2,500. Even with those prices, people with tickets had been offering them for more on broker sites such as StubHub, an attempt at profiteering that producers fumed was "despicable."

Proceeds will go to the Robin Hood Foundation, which said it raised $30 million from ticket sales and sponsors ahead of the concert. The organization also stressed that the earnings will get to those who need assistance.

"We will make sure that that money goes out right away to the most affected (places) in New York City, New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut," David Saltzman, the organization's executive director, said backstage. "The money that we raised from this concert will be distributed in the days, weeks and months, not years."

Robin Hood is working through existing organizations that "know what to do and know their communities," he said. Saltzman added that Fuse TV, which is owned by Madison Square Garden, was giving its YouTube revenues earned from airing the concert to the victims, and that StubHub has donated $860,000 from fees from those selling tickets.

The sold-out "12-12-12" concert was shown on 37 television stations in the United States and more than 200 others worldwide. It was to be streamed on 30 websites, including YouTube and Yahoo. The theaters showing it included 27 in the New York region.

___

Online:

http://www.121212concert.org/

___

AP Writer John Carucci contributed to this report.