The toxic waste would outlive every one of us, and may last forever. 

The EPAs revised draft assessment, which considered independent scientific review as well as 233,000 public comments, found that Pebble Mine would devastate the natural habitat of the 37.5 million sockeye salmon that spawn annually in the Bristol Bay watershedthe largest remaining wild salmon population on the planet. 

Fishermen, environmentalists, and Native communities in Alaska are largely united in opposition to the mine, citing the sustainable salmon fishery in Bristol Bay that generates 480 million in annual economic impact and supports 14,000 fishing and processing jobs.

Instead of paintbrushes, she uses $10 million jet engines from a Learjet to hurl blues and purples with a force that creates intense power and heat.

"The timing of the velocity and the heat and the paint and so many other conditions is what creates art," she told The Associated Press on Tuesday from a tarmac in West Palm Beach.

Von Anhalt began creating such one-of-a-kind and pricey artwork in 2006 after studying the work of her mentor and late husband, Prinz Jurgen von Anhalt of Germany, who is credited with creating this type of artwork about three decades ago.

In a tight black Lara Croft-inspired pant suit, Princess von Anhalt grabs plastic bottles and jars of paint as she slowly makes her way across the tarmac to the blank canvas as planes take off nearby. With a small jet parked about two car-lengths away, she stands close enough to the canvas to touch it.

Von Anhalt then raises her empty hand to motion for the pilot to speed up the engine, and the splattering begins.

Hurled into the air at a ferocious velocity, paint collides with canvas and slowly drips in different directions in Florida's humidity.

The power of the engine and the heat of the creative process, Von Anhalt said, are addictive.

"When I'm in the midst of the creation, I don't think of the force," she said. "I don't think of the danger. I don't think of the heat. I'm caught up in the moment. It's addicting and you don't want to stop."

Flexjet, a private jet services company, partnered with the Jet Art Group to create different artworks to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Learjet.

Von Anhalt has created about three dozen pieces so far, but declined to say how much her paintings go for.

"It's a passion like a hurricane, like a tornado," she said. "And the more that the color gets laid down, the more I can see and predict what the painting is going to be." Other times, she admitted, she is surprised to see which direction the paint goes in the wind. "That's the emotion. It's an addiction. And how do you describe that? It's better than anything else."

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Follow Suzette Laboy on Twitter: (at)SuzetteLaboy

"If we do not have effective integration in our hemisphere, if we don't have the best education systems, the best regulatory systems, if we don't coordinate our activities, then we're going to fall behind other regions in the world," Obama said. "I'm confident that we can compete."

"When you look at the scale of business that's being done currently, it's creating jobs in the United States, it's creating jobs here," said Obama, who stressed trade and economic issues during his day and a half each in Mexico and Costa Rica. "What we want to do is to continue to find ways to enhance that relationship," get ideas and improve and foster small-business development.

"We now live in a very competitive 21st century world," Obama said at a forum on economic growth and development that was organized by INCAE, a prominent business school in Costa Rica, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

In addition to its economic aims, the trip Obama's first to the region since winning re-election served as a nod to the vast Hispanic population back home, which heavily supported Obama in the 2012 election and which retains strong family and cultural ties to Latin America.

In his radio and Internet address released Saturday, Obama also made the case that deepening economic ties with the Americas will mean more jobs in the United States, where the economy continues its slow recovery from the worst downturn since the 1930s.

"One of the best ways to grow our economy is to sell more goods and services made in America to the rest of the world," Obama said in the address. "That includes our neighbors to the south."

At the forum, Obama also discussed the benefits of early childhood education and investments in renewable energy during a brief question-and-answer session with some of the business leaders, students and civil society leaders in the audience.

Asked twice about education, Obama pointed to his proposal to significantly expand pre-kindergarten education, calling it the single most effective way to boost educational outcomes in the U.S., despite the dual challenges of paying for it and ensuring high-quality programs.

Obama included a nearly $1-per-pack federal tax on cigarettes to pay for expanded pre-K in the budget proposal he sent Congress last month, but told the forum he wasn't sure whether it would pass. Republicans in Congress are resistant to new taxes and to expanding the scope of government.

Energy was another area Obama said was ripe for cooperation between the U.S. and Central America, which has high energy costs but also substantial renewable energy resources. He alluded to decisions facing his administration about whether to allow U.S. natural gas to be exported to countries that don't have free-trade agreements with the U.S. He urged the enhanced cooperation on technology, infrastructure and the expertise needed to advance a long-term transition from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy.

"If any of us find good answers to renewable energy, that will spread like wild fire, and everybody will ultimately benefit," Obama said.

Another recurring theme during the trip was the U.S. effort to overhaul its immigration laws, an issue of intense interest among Latinos in the United States, including those who voted to give Obama a second term, as well as those in Mexico and Central America.

The vast majority of the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S. are from Latin America, about 6 million of them from Mexico alone. Obama supports legislation that would give those immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship and he told Univision in an interview aired Friday that he would not sign a bill that did not provide such a pathway. Republicans are demanding greater border security.

"The truth is, right now, our border with Mexico is more secure than it's been in years," he said in the radio address. "We've put more boots on that border than at any time in our history, and illegal crossings are down by nearly 80 percent from their peak in 2000."

The immigration legislation should be a compromise, he said, "which means that nobody got everything they wanted including me."

Even as he tried to stay focused on economics and immigration, Obama couldn't escape the issue of drugs and violence wracking the region. He said Friday that the U.S. and Latin America share "common effects and common responsibilities" for the troubles and argued to his dinner companions that his country is suffering from the drug epidemic as well.

"If you go to my hometown of Chicago, and you go to some neighborhoods, they're just as violent, if not more violent than some of the countries at this table in part because of the pernicious influence of the drug trade," he said.

Drug-fueled violence remains an undeniable part of daily life in many parts of the region. Costa Rica has fared better than many of its neighbors, but it worries about spillover from nearby countries. Honduras, for example, now has the highest homicide rate in the world, with about 7,200 people murdered last year in the tiny nation of 8 million people, most in drug-related crime.

Obama acknowledged the role of U.S. demand for drugs and said his administration has spent $30 billion to reduce demand in recent years. But he acknowledged that the United States remains a "big market" and that "progress is sometimes slower than we'd like it to be."

He has argued that economic prosperity is the best antidote to drug and gang violence and, by extension, to the illegal immigration the U.S. is seeking to control.

In the Republican's address Saturday, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory argued that Washington should learn from Republican governors how to make government work efficiently. He said governors need Washington to give states more flexibility, independence and accountability, and called on Obama to show more leadership.

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Follow Jim Kuhnhenn on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn

Fashion houses including PPR's Gucci, Giorgio Armani and Prada are among the top names showing their womenswear 2013-14 autumn-winter collections, taking up the baton from catwalk shows in London.

"I have great hopes for this country after the political and economic debacle of the last months," cashmere goods maker Brunello Cucinelli told Reuters at his showroom.

The colorful crowd of fashion critics and bloggers descending on Milan will mix this year with Italian voters heading to the ballot box on February 24-25 to choose a new government and decide the country's future economic path.

Italy came close to a major debt crisis in November 2011 before Silvio Berlusconi stood down as prime minister and was replaced by technocrat Mario Monti.

"There is a need to clean up politics and give small businesses the incentives to hire people," Maurizio Modica, co-designer at Italy's brand Frankie Morello, told Reuters.

Sales of Italian fashion goods are forecast to drop 3.5 percent to around 58 billion euros ($77 billion) this year, after falling 5.4 percent in 2012, according to preliminary data by textile and fashion body Sistema Moda Italia (SMI).

Gucci, the first big name brand to show, proposed a fetish aesthetic for its sensual collection, with sculpted dresses in materials such as python skin.

Creative head Frida Giannini, who is expecting her first baby in a couple of weeks, was inspired by the idea of a "femme fatale" for her show, which also featured evening gowns with colorful feathers stitched on black lace.

For the morning, Giannini showed sporty jackets embroidered with three-dimensional leaves.

Fashion house Frankie Morello presented a "dark lady" for its youthful collection, which featured black blouses covered with mirror shards and stiff fabrics in geometric patterns.

"I am confident that this edition of the Milan womenswear week will confirm the positive signs of recovery that we saw in January during the menswear shows," Mario Boselli, chairman of Italy's fashion national chamber, said in a statement.

He said he expected orders for the autumn-winter collections would improve as the recession eases in 2013.

Foreign markets will make up the mainstay of the revenue, with exports expected to reach record levels in terms of value, surpassing the previous record in 2000. Non-EU countries such as China will outpace EU members for the first time, SMI said.

"These forecasts are based on a scenario that there will be no fiscal shocks in 2013 and the government to be named after the election will couple fiscal austerity with measures to boost spending in the second half of the year," SMI said.

The fashion week, which ends on Tuesday, will also include shows from Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli.

($1 = 0.7487 euros)

(Editing by Alison Williams)

The move is seen as part of international sanctions on the country over its disputed nuclear program. The West has imposed banking and insurance sanctions on Iran since it suspects Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

At a Tehran shopping mall, owners of mobile phones and tablets said Thursday that they had received the message via email from the company late the night before. Retailers said they had no power over the decision.

"We have heard about it, but we are only responsible for hardware here, not software and apps," shopkeeper Bijan Ashtiani said.

In the message, Samsung said that it cannot provide access to the store, known as Samsung Apps, in Iran because of "legal barriers." It apologized to customers in emailed statement seen by the Associated Press on Thursday.

Samsung's offices in Tehran could not be immediately reached for comment due to the weekend there, and its headquarters in South Korea did not immediately respond to a request.

The decision quickly provoked ire on social media.

"Samsung is to stop its apps in Iran, oh how we appreciate our officials," wrote Bahareh, a Twitter user blaming Tehran's policy. Another, named Armin, pointed at the technology giant itself, saying: "Now, Samsung's sanctions honor us as well!"

Samsung spokesman Chris Jung in Seoul declined to comment.

Unlike Apple, Microsoft and Adobe, Samsung has provided localized services to Iranians in their native Persian language. In 2012, Finnish communications giant Nokia stopped its services in the country.

The case involving Kenneth Bae, who has been in North Korean custody since early November, further complicates already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington following weeks of heightened rhetoric and tensions.

The trial mirrors a similar situation in 2009, when the U.S. and North Korea were locked in a standoff over Pyongyang's decision to launch a long-range rocket and conduct an underground nuclear test. At the time, North Korea had custody of two American journalists, whose eventual release after being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor paved the way for diplomacy following months of tensions.

Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, according to official state media. In North Korean dispatches, Bae, a Korean American, is called Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling of his Korean name.

The exact nature of his alleged crimes has not been revealed, but North Korea accuses Bae, described as a tour operator, of seeking to overthrow North Korea's leadership.

"In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK with hostility toward it," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Saturday. "His crimes were proved by evidence. He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment."

DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. No timing for the verdict issued at the austere Supreme Court in Pyongyang was given.

Friends and colleagues described Bae as a devout Christian from Washington state but based in the Chinese border city of Dalian who traveled frequently to North Korea to feed the country's orphans.

At least three other Americans detained in recent years also have been devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the regime.

Under North Korea's criminal code, crimes against the state can draw life imprisonment or the death sentence.

In 2009, American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to hard labor for trespassing and unspecified hostile acts after being arrested near the border with China and held for four months.

They were freed later that year to former President Bill Clinton, who flew to Pyongyang to negotiate their release in a visit that then-leader Kim Jong Il treated as a diplomatic coup.

Including Ling and Lee, Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released.

"For North Korea, Bae is a bargaining chip in dealing with the U.S.," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea. "The North will use him in a way that helps bring the U.S. to talks when the mood slowly turns toward dialogue."

As in 2009, Pyongyang is locked in a standoff with the Obama administration over North Korea's drive to build nuclear weapons.

Washington has led the campaign to punish Pyongyang for launching a long-range rocket in December and carrying out a nuclear test, its third, in February.

North Korea claims the need to build atomic weapons to defend itself against the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea and over the past two months has been holding joint military drills with South Korea that have included nuclear-capable stealth bombers and fighter jets.

Diplomats from China, South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Russia have been conferring in recent weeks to try to bring down the rhetoric and find a way to rein in Pyongyang before a miscalculation in the region sparks real warfare.

South Korean defense officials said earlier in the month that North Korea had moved a medium-range missile designed to strike U.S. territory to its east coast.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the three-year Korean conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. Because Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations, the Swedish Embassy in North Korea represents the United States in legal proceedings.

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Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee in Pyongyang, and Sam Kim and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Lee, AP's Korea bureau chief, at www.twitter.com/newsjean and Sam Kim at www.twitter.com/SamKim_AP.

Following his acclaimed debut last year, the pressure has been stacked on the Belgian designer to deliver again in what is only his second ready-to-wear show in one of the most influential jobs in fashion. And Friday saw Simons live up to expectations.

He confidently evolved the angular portions of previous seasons' work into softer, more saleable silhouettes. The new Bar jacket, looser and in trendy wool denim, seemed to point to a man who's finally settled in to his role.

This season was the supplest fusion so far of his minimalism and the house's ultra-femininity and curves.

Fall-winter 2013-14 saw a parade of "memory dresses," some 48 looks that delved into the iconic houndstooth, peplums, and Monsieur Dior's original '40s designs. They hit the catwalk outside Paris' Hotel des Invalides, reimagined, alongside enormous mirror ball decor.

Like thought bubbles, the reflective spheres set the tone for the musing, which included an embroidered tulle bustier A-line dress, an archive piece called "Miss Dior 1949" reworked in hip embroidered black leather. Elsewhere, blown-up houndstooth had a surreal quality, in vertical slices down column silhouettes. It was a great re-working of the classic pattern first used by the house in the late '50s.

The more muted palette of black, white, pale pink and navy was further proof of his evolution. After all, while at Jil Sander, it was Simons who started the bright color trend.

There was plenty of imagination, like prints and embroideries of surreal eyes and tears that resembled ants, reminiscent of Salvador Dali. However, the show could have done without motifs by Andy Warhol, like a sparking stiletto print, which sometimes jarred as overly adolescent, and a tad tacky.

Overall, the show was a success; one step further on in Dior's mission statement for the designer, to "propel its iconic style into the 21st century."

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Thomas Adamson can be followed at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Strong demand for mobile broadband equipment in Latin America will keep Ericsson's plant in Brazil at full capacity this year, says a senior executive at the telecom equipment manufacturer.

Mobile phone operators in Brazil are scrambling to improve their networks after heavy scrutiny from regulators because of poor service and a lack of investment in mobile infrastructure in recent years. The problems came despite a ballooning client base in Latin America's biggest economy.

But strong demand for faster, smartphone-friendly networks in neighbouring countries is also fuelling a growing need for mobile equipment elsewhere in the region.

"We see a growing demand in Latin America, both in 3G and 4G," said Andre Gildin, Ericsson's market intelligence director for the region, referring to the higher-speed networks that Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and other countries are rolling out.

The Swedish-based company expects 3G equipment to make up most of the demand this year in Brazil. Demand for 4G equipment is growing too as the industry begins building the country's fourth-generation mobile network.

The 4G effort is beginning in cities that in June will host football games during the Confederations Cup. The contest is a prelude to next year's World Cup, a much bigger event that is expected to strain Brazil's mobile telephone networks.

In 2012, about 40,000 pieces of mobile signal transmission equipment were produced at Ericsson's factory in the state of Sao Paulo. That took the factory to its production limit, a level that should be reached again by the end of the year.

"Our expectations are to finish this year with a similar number", Gildin said in an interview this week.

Half of this year's production will supply the Brazilian market, he added, while the rest would be exported to other Latin American countries. Big customers include operators in Mexico, which is implementing its 4G network, and Colombia, which is expanding both 4G and 3G services.

Argentina, Chile and Peru are also improving their mobile phone networks.

Ericsson says it has about 40 percent of the market in Brazil for 3G equipment. While the 3G network still has a long way to go in the country, the initial steps toward 4G services are helping the company get an early lead in that segment too, Gildin said.

Ericsson provides telecom gear, both 3G and 4G, to all four major Brazilian mobile operators - Telefonica's Vivo, Oi, Telecom Italia's TIM and America Movil's Claro.

Claro and Oi recently started to offer 4G services. Vivo and TIM are expect to announce their 4G plans next week.

Anatel, the Brazilian telecoms regulator, gave operators a deadline of next Tuesday to launch their 4G networks in the cities that will host the Confederations Cup.

(Editing by Paulo Prada and Peter Cooney)

Kovalchuk discussed his return before the opening faceoff of a game that could knock the Devils out of the playoff race.

If the Devils lose in regulation, they will be eliminated from the postseason just a year after playing in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Kovalchuk injured his right shoulder during a game against the Panthers on Mar. 23 and missed the last 11 games. The Devils' playoffs hopes took a major hit while he was out. They went 1-6-4, with the only win coming on Thursday night against Philadelphia.

Scoring was a factor in the slump. The team had 19 goals in 11 games.

The couple believes it's unlikely there ever will be a full answer explaining why a man gunned down 26 people inside the Newtown, Conn., school last year. But they feel more research into brain health and how a propensity for violence is manifested could help prevent future tragedies.

"When we started reaching out to scientists to talk about the underpinnings of violence and how this particular factor played a role in what happened to us, there is some, but no real, research going on this field," Hensel said.

On Monday, they announced a scientific advisory board for the Avielle Foundation, which was established with the goal of reducing violence. While some other victims' families have immersed themselves in the push for tighter gun restrictions, Avielle Richman's parents see the foundation named for their curly-haired daughter as their response to a tragedy that has launched advocacy work on many fronts, including school safety and mental illness.

The Dec. 14 massacre was carried out by 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who killed 20 first-graders and six educators inside the school with a military-style semi-automatic rifle before committing suicide. The isolated, socially awkward Lanza played first-person shooter video games in a weapon-filled house where he lived with his mother, according to search warrants released last month, but authorities have not described a possible motive or released details of any medical condition that might shed light on his actions.

Avielle, a girl who loved horses, Harry Potter and the color red, had moved to Connecticut with her family about two years before the shooting. Her father kept a blog called "Avielle's Adventures," telling friends about a trip to a Thanksgiving Day parade, her 6th birthday at a horse stable, a road trip to Iowa.

Jeremy Richman is a researcher at the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. Hensel, his wife, is a medical writer with her own company. The foundation is a way for them to harness their training and skills and to channel their grief.

"I think the best way to help from a tragedy such as this is by action where your strengths lie," Hensel said. "This is our motivation now. We will never stop being parents to Avielle."

The Avielle foundation, funded through donations and grants, aims to raise $5 million this year and begin reviewing its first grant applications later this year.

One member of the foundation's advisory board, Terrie E. Moffitt, said science on the origins of violence has been neglected by federal agencies that provide research grants.

"Families of individuals with autism, ADHD, learning problems or schizophrenia demand that funding agencies support research into these disorders," said Moffitt, a neuroscience professor at Duke University and at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. "Families of violent individuals don't."

The other members of the board announced Monday are R. John Krystal, chair of the psychiatry department at the Yale University School of Medicine, and James Blair, chief of the unit on affective cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health.

The Avielle Foundation says it hopes to remove stigmas for people seeking mental health aid, develop the concept of a "brain health check-up," and identify behavioral and biochemical diagnostics for detection of people at risk of violent behaviors.