NEW YORK — A menacing spring storm punished the Northeast for a second straight day Monday, dumping more than 8 inches of rain on Central Park and sending refrigerators and pickup trucks floating down rivers in one of the region’s worst storms in recent memory.

The nor’easter left a huge swath of devastation, from the beaches of South Carolina to the mountains of Maine. It knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and was blamed for at least nine deaths nationwide, including a New Jersey man who drowned inside a car.

The storm showed no immediate sign of letting up. The National Weather Service predicted showers through Wednesday night in the New York City area, with rain mixed with snow at times.

The storm was especially harsh in the Westchester County suburbs north of New York City and in New Jersey, where the state was placed under a state of emergency.AP

SEAL HUNTS

Protest groups pull out after uneventful event

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Groups protesting Canada’s commercial seal hunt have pulled out of Newfoundland, bringing an unusual calm to the annual slaughter despite fears it would be one of the fiercest in years.

Sealers and animal welfare activists had been bracing for potentially violent confrontations on the ice floes, but poor ice conditions and a lower harp seal quota combined to cool tempers in the most uneventful seal hunt in recent memory.

The last group of protesters left the province Sunday.

The hunt is continuing off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland in a region called the Front, where 70 per cent of this year’s quota of 270,000 seals will be taken. But many sealing vessels have been hindered by thick sheets of ice blocking them in.AP

NIGERIA ELECTIONS

Barred opposition candidate back in presidential race

ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s Supreme Court ruled Monday the country’s vice president, who had fallen out with the president and his powerful party, should be allowed to run for president, throwing the race into disarray only days before the vote.

The decision in favor of Vice President Atiku Abubakar came after violence and fraud charges during weekend state elections underlined questions about the state of democracy in Africa’s most populous country.

Saturday’s election should set up the country’s first handover of power between elected civilians since its independence from Britain in 1960. But Nigeria’s democratic experiment could be imperiled if its 62 million voters see the balloting as tainted.

The electoral commission had barred Abubakar after an executive panel established by President Olusegun Obasanjo said Abubakar stole government funds. Abubakar denies the allegations.AP

GERMAN MILITARY

Defense Ministry calls video ‘absolutely unacceptable’

BERLIN — Germany’s Defense Ministry said Monday an army instructor’s order to a soldier to imagine being accosted by blacks in New York’s Bronx borough while firing a machine gun was “absolutely unacceptable” but denied it was a symptom of widespread racism.

The instructor who issued the command, recorded on a video circulating on the Internet, was under investigation, a ministry spokesman said.

The clip shows an instructor and a soldier dressed in camouflage in a forest. At first, the instructor tells the soldier to imagine gunning down terrorists trying to hijack an airplane. The soldier fires several rounds.

Then the instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. ... Act.”

The soldier fires his machine gun and yells an obscenity several times in English between bursts. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.AP

WORKERS FREED

Iran releases 2 Swedes imprisoned for spying

TEHRAN, Iran — Two Swedish construction workers who had been convicted of espionage and imprisoned in Iran for taking photographs of military installations were released Monday after being pardoned, a Swedish lawmaker in Tehran said.

An Iranian Justice Minister said last May the two had been convicted of photographing military installations and sentenced to three years in prison apiece. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said earlier Monday that the sentence had been only two years.

By releasing the prisoners, Iran may be trying to defuse anger in Europe over its seizure last month of 15 British sailors off the Iraqi coast. Iran held the sailors for 13 days before releasing them under intense international pressure.AP