Gunmen kill 18 in bus attack in southwest Pakistan

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QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen riding on two motorcycles opened fire on a bus at a small fuel station in southwest Pakistan on Friday, igniting a massive blaze and leaving 18 dead, a Pakistani official said.

Abdul Mansoor Kakar said all 16 people on the bus, including eight women and three children, were killed and the bodies badly burned. The vehicle had been parked next to fuel drums that ignited during the attack, starting a fire that engulfed the bus and killed two in a nearby car.

The attack took place in the town of Khuzdar in the province of Baluchistan.

No one claimed responsibility and the motive of the attack was unclear, Kakar said, adding that the incident was under investigation but no arrests were made.

Khuzdar is located 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. The region has experienced a decades-long insurgency by nationalists who demand greater autonomy and a larger share of the province's natural resources.

The province is also thought to be home to many Afghan Taliban militants.

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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APNewsBreak: Cusack developing Rush Limbaugh film

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor and outspoken liberal John Cusack is developing a movie about conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cusack's production company said Friday.

The working title is "Rush," Cusack's New Crime Productions confirmed, offering no other details.

Hollywood director Betty Thomas, who's set to work on the film, said the production company is putting finishing touches on a script that will star the actor. Production is set for next year, Thomas said.

Limbaugh is in the front ranks of colorful and provocative media figures. Earlier this year, Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a "slut" and a "prostitute" on air for arguing to Democrats in Congress that health plans should pay for contraception.

This week, the host mocked Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his "bromance" with Obama after Christie praised the president's response to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Cusack as Limbaugh isn't typecasting, politics aside. Cusack is a slender, dark-haired 46-year-old, while Limbaugh is 61, balding and portly. But Hollywood's makeup experts have probably had greater challenges.

A publicist for Limbaugh said Friday he would check with the host for comment. The agency representing Cusack, Creative Artists Agency, declined comment on the project.

Cusack's credits range from the teen flick "Sixteen Candles" to offbeat films like "Being John Malkovich." He attended President Barack Obama's 2008 inauguration but has criticized Obama over his military and civil liberties policies.

Thomas is a former actress ("Hill Street Blues") and an Emmy-award winning director ("Dream On") whose big-screen films include Howard Stern's "Private Parts" and "The Brady Bunch Movie."

Thomas' latest project is an online series, "Audrey," that is showing on the YouTube channel WIGS.

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Floods render NYC hospitals powerless

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NEW YORK (AP) — There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York. And yet two of the city's busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power.

Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.

The closures led to dramatic scenes of doctors carrying patients down dark stairwells, nurses operating respirators by hand, and a bucket brigade of National Guard troops hauling fuel to rooftop generators in a vain attempt to keep the electricity on.

Both hospitals, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, were still trying to figure out exactly what led to the power failures Thursday, but the culprit appeared to be the most common type of flood damage there is: water in the basement.

While both hospitals put their generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood, other critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.

Both hospitals had fortified that equipment against floods within the past few years, but the water — which rushed with tremendous force — found a way in.

"This reveals to me that we have to be much more imaginative and detail-oriented in our planning to make sure hospitals are as resilient as they need to be," said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The problem of unreliable backup electricity at hospitals is nothing new.

Over the first six months of the year, 23 percent of the hospitals inspected by the Joint Commission, a health care facility accreditation group, were found to be out of compliance with standards for backup power and lighting, according to a spokesman.

Power failures crippled New Orleans hospitals after Hurricane Katrina. The backup generator failed at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., after the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew through the state in 2011. Hospitals in Houston were crippled when Tropical Storm Allison flooded their basements and knocked out electrical equipment in 2001.

When the Northeast was hit with a crippling blackout in 2003, the backup power at several of New York City's hospitals failed or performed poorly. Generators malfunctioned or overheated. Fuel ran out too quickly. Even where the backup systems worked, they provided electricity to only some parts of the hospital and left others in the dark.

Afterward, a mayoral task force recommended upgrading testing standards for generators and requiring backup plans for blood banks and health care facilities that provide dialysis treatment.

Alan Aviles, president of New York City's Health and Hospitals Corp., which operates Bellevue, said that after a scare last summer when Hurricane Irene threatened to cause flooding, Bellevue put its basement-level fuel pumps in flood-resistant chambers.

It still isn't clear whether water breached those defenses, but when an estimated 17 million gallons of water rushed through loading docks and into the hospital's 1-million-square-foot basement, the fuel feed to the generators stopped working. The floodwaters also knocked out the hospital's elevators.

For two days, National Guardsmen carried fuel to the generators, but conditions inside the hospital for patients and staff deteriorated anyway. The generators were designed to supply only 30 percent of the usual electrical load at the hospital, leaving a lot of equipment and labs hobbled. The hospital also lost all water pressure on Tuesday. Nearly 700 patients had been evacuated by Thursday afternoon.

"The precautions we had taken to date had served us well," Aviles said. "But Mother Nature can always up the stakes."

NYU Langone Medical Center had also tried to armor itself against floods.

All seven of the generators providing backup power to the parts of the hospital involved in patient care are only a few years old and are on higher floors. The fuel tank is in a watertight vault. New fuel pumps were installed just this year in a pump house upgraded to withstand a high flood, said the hospital's vice president of facilities operation, Richard Cohen.

"The medical center invested quite a bit of money to upgrade the facility," he said.

The pump house remained "bone dry," Cohen said. But water shoved aside plastic and plywood defenses and infiltrated the fuel vault, where sensors detected the potentially damaging liquid and shut the generators down. "The force of the surge that came in was unbelievable. It dislodged our additional protection and caused a breach of the vault as well," Cohen said.

The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.

Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.

"It didn't really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble," he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, "I thought, 'We'll have power upstairs. We're an operating room.'"

He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a "med sled."

"There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside," he said. "I can't say that they were very well prepared for it."

That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.

Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone's generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.

Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital's power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital's power needs.

"It's a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it," Cohen said.

___

AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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Bloomberg cancels marathon amid outcry

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Eric Gordon will be out 4-6 weeks with a knee injury reports Yahoo! Sports' @SpearsNBAyahoo --> http://t.co/JXGOWjyv
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No pigeons, planes, pingpong balls at China meet

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BEIJING (AP) — Don't roll down the taxi windows. Don't buy a remote-controlled plane without a police chief's permission. And don't release your pigeons.

Beijing is tightening security as its all-important Communist Party congress approaches, and some of the measures seem downright bizarre. Kitchen knives and pencil sharpeners reportedly have been pulled from store shelves, and there's even a rumor that authorities are on the lookout for seditious messages on pingpong balls.

The congress, which begins Nov. 8, will name new leaders to run the world's most populous country and second-largest economy for the next decade. Most of the security measures have been phased in in time for Thursday's opening of a meeting of the Central Committee, the roughly 370-member body that is finalizing preparations for the congress.

China always tightens security for high-profile events, like much of the rest of the world. London, for instance, restricted air traffic during the Olympics.

But many of Beijing's rules seem extraordinary, perhaps in an effort to smooth a once-a-decade transition that has already been bumpy.

Bo Xilai, once a candidate for the all-powerful Politburo's Standing Committee, suffered a spectacular fall from grace in which his wife was convicted of murder. One of President Hu Jintao's closest aides was demoted, apparently after his son was killed alongside two partially dressed women in an accident in his Ferrari. Meanwhile, protests over pollution, land seizures and local corruption continue across the country.

Human rights groups report that activists and petitioners are being rounded up ahead of the congress. But the broader security measures may best illustrate how China is trying to leave absolutely no room for disruptions.

The government has blocked searches for the phrase "18th Party Congress" on websites including China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo. Internet posters manage to get around that by using characters that sound like "party congress." One substitute: "Sparta."

Taxi drivers have been told to remove window handles, to avoid sensitive parts of the city and not to open their windows or doors if they pass "important venues." Some taxi drivers, but not all, have been told to ask passengers to sign a "traveling agreement" if they want to go near Tiananmen Square.

A man who answered the phone at Wan Quan Si taxi company in the south of the capital said the rule applies to all taxi companies in Beijing. He declined to give his name.

Beijing investment company worker Li Tianshu said she didn't believe colleagues' claims that door handles had been removed until she got into a taxi herself the other day.

"There were no handles for three of the four windows," she said. "The driver told me that their company asked them to do it to prevent passengers spreading leaflets. The driver complained that if they don't take the handles away or the passengers throw leaflets out of the taxis, they will be fired."

Citizens have taken to Weibo to post photos of doors with handles crudely ripped off. Liu Shi, a client manager in a mass communication company, wrote that the taxi driver had told him that power to electronic window buttons would also be cut.

A memo circulating on Weibo warned taxi drivers to be on guard against passengers who may want to cast balloons with slogans or throw "pingpong balls with reactionary words." It was unclear who issued the memo and its authenticity could not be confirmed.

A man who wouldn't give his name at Tong Hai taxi company in central Beijing said it had received orders "from higher authorities" to reinforce security measures and a memo, but he wouldn't elaborate.

Police in the capital are asking that Chinese show their ID cards and foreigners their passports when buying remote-controlled model aircraft over safety concerns, the official Global Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

One toy store owner said authorities had told him to stop selling medium and large-sized planes.

"This kind of plane can't fly over long distances and it can hardly carry anything," said Chen Ziping, holding up a model about half a meter (half a yard) long. "They just told me to stop selling it and I have to follow the order."

The Global Times quoted an unnamed police officer from Aoyuncun station in Chaoyang district as saying that people wanting to buy model planes during the congress should go to the vendor's local police station to register. When the buyer receives approval from the station's police chief, he can make the purchase, the officer said.

Still, they won't be allowed to fly model planes in the city, and balloons also are on the blacklist, the newspaper said. It cited another officer from Chaoyang district Public Security Bureau as saying that pigeon owners must keep their birds in their coops during the congress.

Chen Jieren had a run-in with the security rules Sunday after the handle of his knife broke while he was cooking dinner. He took his ID card to the supermarket, knowing that people must show identification when buying knives during sensitive periods.

"Well, it didn't work this time," Chen said in a telephone interview. "I was told by the police that no more knives can be sold, not even pencil sharpeners. And I don't think the shopkeeper was kidding, because several days ago I saw myself that police were asking the sales assistants in the stationer's not to sell pencil sharpeners.

"I went back and got an old knife and tried to sharpen it. I guess I have to live with it until the Congress finishes," he added, glumly.

Wang Ye, an engineer from Beijing who lives in Shanghai, was planning on returning to his home city to run a marathon, but it was postponed with no word on when it might be held. The date of a marathon in the eastern city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, was also changed.

"There is no official explanation, but we all know that it is due to the 18th Congress," he said. "(The Beijing marathon) has been held regularly for the past 31 years.

"I guess I will give up running competitions in China and try to attend more abroad," said Wang. "At least they tell me the schedule one year before the event."

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Apple rolls out iPad mini in Sydney to shorter lines

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Aldean, Church, Bryan unite to kick off CMA Awards

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Country music's fastest rising stars Jason Aldean, Eric Church and Luke Bryan kicked off the Country Music Association Awards by joining forces.

Playing with a large American flag behind them, the trio of performers teamed up on Aldean's new single "The Only Way I Know" from his new album "Night Train" and earned a standing ovation.

Most of country's top stars were on hand Thursday night at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena for the celebration, with many slated to perform. Taylor Swift arrived in a detailed red lace dress to some of the night's loudest cheers and mingled with fans who had made signs to draw her attention.

Still to come were a tribute to Willie Nelson featuring Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Blake Shelton and Lady Antebellum and performances by most of the night's top nominees.

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Floods render NYC hospitals powerless

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NEW YORK (AP) — There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York. And yet two of the city's busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power.

Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.

The closures led to dramatic scenes of doctors carrying patients down dark stairwells, nurses operating respirators by hand, and a bucket brigade of National Guard troops hauling fuel to rooftop generators in a vain attempt to keep the electricity on.

Both hospitals, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, were still trying to figure out exactly what led to the power failures Thursday, but the culprit appeared to be the most common type of flood damage there is: water in the basement.

While both hospitals put their generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood, other critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.

Both hospitals had fortified that equipment against floods within the past few years, but the water — which rushed with tremendous force — found a way in.

"This reveals to me that we have to be much more imaginative and detail-oriented in our planning to make sure hospitals are as resilient as they need to be," said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The problem of unreliable backup electricity at hospitals is nothing new.

Over the first six months of the year, 23 percent of the hospitals inspected by the Joint Commission, a health care facility accreditation group, were found to be out of compliance with standards for backup power and lighting, according to a spokesman.

Power failures crippled New Orleans hospitals after Hurricane Katrina. The backup generator failed at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., after the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew through the state in 2011. Hospitals in Houston were crippled when Tropical Storm Allison flooded their basements and knocked out electrical equipment in 2001.

When the Northeast was hit with a crippling blackout in 2003, the backup power at several of New York City's hospitals failed or performed poorly. Generators malfunctioned or overheated. Fuel ran out too quickly. Even where the backup systems worked, they provided electricity to only some parts of the hospital and left others in the dark.

Afterward, a mayoral task force recommended upgrading testing standards for generators and requiring backup plans for blood banks and health care facilities that provide dialysis treatment.

Alan Aviles, president of New York City's Health and Hospitals Corp., which operates Bellevue, said that after a scare last summer when Hurricane Irene threatened to cause flooding, Bellevue put its basement-level fuel pumps in flood-resistant chambers.

It still isn't clear whether water breached those defenses, but when an estimated 17 million gallons of water rushed through loading docks and into the hospital's 1-million-square-foot basement, the fuel feed to the generators stopped working. The floodwaters also knocked out the hospital's elevators.

For two days, National Guardsmen carried fuel to the generators, but conditions inside the hospital for patients and staff deteriorated anyway. The generators were designed to supply only 30 percent of the usual electrical load at the hospital, leaving a lot of equipment and labs hobbled. The hospital also lost all water pressure on Tuesday. Nearly 700 patients had been evacuated by Thursday afternoon.

"The precautions we had taken to date had served us well," Aviles said. "But Mother Nature can always up the stakes."

NYU Langone Medical Center had also tried to armor itself against floods.

All seven of the generators providing backup power to the parts of the hospital involved in patient care are only a few years old and are on higher floors. The fuel tank is in a watertight vault. New fuel pumps were installed just this year in a pump house upgraded to withstand a high flood, said the hospital's vice president of facilities operation, Richard Cohen.

"The medical center invested quite a bit of money to upgrade the facility," he said.

The pump house remained "bone dry," Cohen said. But water shoved aside plastic and plywood defenses and infiltrated the fuel vault, where sensors detected the potentially damaging liquid and shut the generators down. "The force of the surge that came in was unbelievable. It dislodged our additional protection and caused a breach of the vault as well," Cohen said.

The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.

Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.

"It didn't really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble," he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, "I thought, 'We'll have power upstairs. We're an operating room.'"

He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a "med sled."

"There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside," he said. "I can't say that they were very well prepared for it."

That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.

Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone's generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.

Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital's power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital's power needs.

"It's a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it," Cohen said.

___

AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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Fuel scarce as East Coast struggles to recover

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NEW YORK/SEASIDE HEIGHTS, New Jersey (Reuters) - Rescuers searched flooded homes for survivors, drivers lined up for hours to get scarce gasoline and millions remained without power on Thursday as New York City and nearby towns struggled to recover from one of the biggest storms to hit the United States.


New York subway trains crawled back to limited service after being shut down since Sunday, but the lower half of Manhattan still lacked power and surrounding areas such as Staten Island, the New Jersey shore and the city of Hoboken remained crippled from a record storm surge and flooding.


At least 95 people died in the "superstorm" that ravaged the Northeastern United States on Monday. Officials said the number could rise as rescuers searched house-by-house in coastal towns.


"I worked all my life, and everything I had is right there," said Bob Stewart, 59, standing on the Jersey Shore beach in the town of Seaside Heights and looking at the pile of debris that was once his home. "I put my life right there."


New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said on Thursday that nearly a 1,000 people had been rescued by authorities.


In blackened New York City neighborhoods, some residents complained there was a lack of police and feared an increase in crime. Some were also concerned about traffic safety. New York police officials were not immediately available to comment.


"People feel safe during the day but as soon as the sun sets, people are extremely scared. The fact that Guardian Angels are on the streets trying to restore law just shows how out of control the situation is in lower Manhattan," said Wolfgang Ban, owner of Edi & The Wolf restaurant in Manhattan's Alphabet City neighborhood.


The Guardian Angels are a group of anti-crime volunteers.


More than 15 people in the borough of Queens were charged with looting, and a man was charged on Thursday with threatening another driver with a gun after he tried to cut in on a line of cars waiting for gas, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.


The financial cost of the storm promised to be staggering. Disaster modeling company Eqecat estimated Sandy caused up to $20 billion in insured losses and $50 billion in economic losses, double its previous forecast.


At the high end of the range, Sandy would rank as the fourth costliest U.S. catastrophe ever, according to the Insurance Information Institute, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the September 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Andrew in 1992.


POWER OUT, GAS SHORTAGE


The presidential campaign was back in full swing on Thursday after being on hold for several days because of the storm. President Barack Obama, locked in a tight race with Republican challenger Mitt Romney head of next Tuesday's election, appeared to gain politically from his disaster relief performance.


Christie, a vocal Romney supporter, praised Obama, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a political independent, endorsed Obama on Thursday.


In New York, U.N. headquarters suffered severe damage and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered recovery help to the United States and Caribbean nations affected by the storm.


The hunt for gasoline added to a climate of uncertainty as Sandy's death toll and price tag rose.


"I'm so stressed out," said Jessica Bajno, 29, a teacher from Elmont, Long Island, who was waiting in line for gas. "I've been driving around to nearby towns all morning, and being careful about not running out of gas in the process. Everything is closed. I'm feeling anxious."


Some residents may lack electricity for weeks. New York utility Consolidated Edison restored power to 250,000 customers, with 650,000 others still in the dark.


The vast majority will be restored by the weekend of November 10-11, but "the remaining customer restorations could take an additional week or more," the company said.


Advertising creative director Chris Swift, 37, lost power in his apartment in Manhattan's Chelsea district on Monday and by Thursday he was so fed up he got on a bus to Boston.


"I tried 20 (New York City) hotels on foot as couldn't call them with no battery left on my phone, but they were all booked. I tried to get to (friends in) Brooklyn but cabs would not take me as they we're running out gas," he said.


About 4.6 million homes and businesses in 15 U.S. states were without power on Thursday, down from a record high of nearly 8.5 million.


More deaths were recorded overnight in the New York borough of Staten Island, where authorities recovered 17 bodies after the storm lifted whole houses off their foundations. Among the dead were two boys, aged 4 and 2, who were swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters, police said.


In all, 39 people died in New York City, officials said.


"It was like living through Titanic but on ground," said Krystina Berrios, 25, of Staten Island, looking at her bedroom caked in mud, furniture upended. "You would never think in a million years having to live through something like this."


JERSEY SHORE FLOORED


Sandy started as a late-season hurricane in the Caribbean, where it killed 69 people, before smashing ashore in the United States with 80-mile-per-hour (130-kph) winds. It stretched from the Carolinas to Connecticut and was the largest storm by area to hit the United States in decades.


In New Jersey, where entire neighborhoods in oceanside towns were swallowed by seawater and the Atlantic City boardwalk was destroyed, the death toll rose to 13.


Floodwaters receded from the streets of Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, leaving behind a smelly mess of submerged basements and cars littering the sidewalks.


"The water was rushing in. It was like a river coming," said Benedicte Lenoble, a photo researcher from Hoboken. "Now it's a mess everywhere. There's no power. The stores aren't open. Recovery? I don't know."


New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi will headline a benefit concert for storm victims Friday on NBC television, the network announced.


The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to cover 100 percent of emergency power and public transportation costs through November 9 for affected areas of New York and New Jersey, up from the traditional share of 75 percent.


More than 36,000 disaster survivors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have applied for federal disaster assistance and more than $3.4 million in direct assistance has already been approved, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.


The Pentagon was airlifting power restoration experts and trucks from California to New York to assist millions of people still living in darkness.


Fuel supplies into New York and New Jersey were hit by idled refineries, a closed New York Harbor, damages to import terminals, and a closed oil pipeline.


The scarcity of fuel, electricity and supplies made cleanup more daunting for barrier towns.


Seaside Heights residents who obeyed the mandatory evacuation order were cut off from their homes. The entire community was submerged by the storm surge, which washed over the island and into the bay that separates it from the mainland.


Chris Delman, 30, saw a photograph of his house in a local newspaper on Wednesday. It was still standing.


"We ain't living in Seaside no more, that's obvious," Delman said. "I just want to know what I have left."


(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaus throughout the U.S. Northeast; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jim Loney and Peter Cooney)


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