East Coast | featured news

President Barack Obama has spent months trying to balance his re-election bid with running the government. Now, just when his campaign needs him the most, with little more than a week before the election, his official job is beckoning.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency offers tips on how to prepare for Hurricane Sandy and other tropical storms. Sandy is expected to be especially disastrous when it merges with a winter storm system, bringing powerful winds, rain, snow and storm surge along the Eastern Seaboard.

The pre-Halloween hybrid weather monster that federal forecasters call "Frankenstorm" is looking more ominous by the hour for the East Coast, and utilities and local governments are getting ready....

Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say....

U.S. gasoline prices at the pump are poised to drop by year end, if history is any guide, as refineries resume production, Europe exports more fuel to the East Coast and Americans drive less. Prices at service stations may fall about 6.3 percent to $3.54 a gallon, according to eight years of seasonal data compiled by Bloomberg. Gasoline deliveries to the U.S. from Europe may rise 35 percent, according to the median of eight estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Demand has declined an average of 3.6 percent from July through December during the past five years, Energy Department data show.

The M&T Bank Corporation has agreed to buy Hudson City Bancorp for $3.7 billion in cash and stock, expanding M&T's reach on the East Coast.

A minor earthquake has rattled the same Virginia area that was at the center of last year's East Coast quake.

The summer heat just won't quit, with another scorcher forecast for the Midwest Friday. The sweltering temperatures may have claimed at least two lives so far, bringing back memories of the 1995 heat wave that killed hundreds. Much of the Midwest, and even parts of the East Coast are suffering.

Across the Midwest and up and down the East Coast, millions of people are living without power. And they are not happy about it. More than 900,000 households remain without power early Wednesday in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio, the states hardest hit by the storm Friday night that packed 80-mph winds.

At least 2.3 million people across the Northeast found themselves without electricity after an unusual autumn storm dumped record amounts of snow. More than 2.3 million customers from Pennsylvania through New England had no electricity, according to reports, as the region was lashed by surprisingly high winds and snowdrifts. In Manhattan, tree branches snapped under the weight of wet snow, piling up along 5th Avenue and toppling across and obstructing the walkways of Central Park.