The worst of Superstorm Sandy may be over, but it’s left a trail of extensive – and expensive – devastation behind. Lost business and damages will cost up to $60 billion to fix, says forecasting firm HIS Global Insight. The costs include an estimated $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business, AP reports. What’s worse is that most homeowners will have to... 

A highly disturbing Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today claims that a top US Secret Service Agent (USSS) assigned to President Obama’s protective detail was “suicided” over fears he was about to release highly damaging information regarding the White Houses’ release of classified information to Hollywood producers, whose movie about the raid that killed... 

A major oil spill has occurred in the strait of water separating Staten Island, NYC and the state of New Jersey. The spill, of more than 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel, reportedly occurred in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. The Coast Guard said the incident occurred in the Arthur Kill tidal strait as fuel leaked from the Motiva oil tank facility, according to a report by NBC New York. Some 200 people... 

An election official goes through the steps to check voting machines for accuracy. Voters in Ohio and Kansas have said that some voting machines used in early voting are changing Romney votes for Obama, two separate reports said Wednesday. According to the Marion Star, early voter Joan Stevens tried to cast her ballot for Mitt Romney, but the machine kept defaulting to Barack Obama. “Upon selecting... 

“Jill Stein has been released from jail,” says Tar Sands Blockade say in their Twitter Jill Stein, a presidential candidate from the Green Party, has been arrested in Texas while attempting to resupply protesters camping out in trees to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, according to anti-pipeline activists. The Tar Sands Blockade activists said she was released soon after being taken to the Wood... 

How many people have ever been born? You’ve wondered this. You may have heard it said that there are more people alive today than have died in all of human history, but this is not true. According to calculations by demographer Carl Haub, about 107 billion people have been born up until now, and 100 billion of them are dead. You are among the lucky 6.5 per cent of humanity that is still alive. For... 

While high winds and rain brought on by superstorm Sandy tormented residents along much of the East Coast, the state of West Virginia was blanketed in a freak snowstorm as a result of the weather. Roughly a quarter of a million people across West Virginia lost power on Monday as Sandy caused extreme weather conditions across a large chunk of the US. More than a dozen counties across West Virginia... 

Scores of Twitter users have flooded the social networking site announcing their plans to go on looting sprees once Hurricane Sandy makes landfall, as the New York National Guard announced it would put troops on duty in Long Island to prevent such activity. 1,175 New York National Guard troops have been mobilized to “provide command and control and logistical support” in New York City, Long Island,... 

Millions of Americans are preparing to lose electricity as Hurricane Sandy speeds up the East Coast, but downed power lines might be the least of their worries: the projected path of the storm has Sandy hitting as many as 26 nuclear plants. More than two dozen nuclear facilities up and down the East Coast could be ravaged by a storm expected to be of epic proportions this week. Arnie Gundersen, the... 

Hurricane Sandy has forced evacuations all the way up Eastern Seaboard, though it has yet to make landfall. As many as 50 million people could end up in harm’s way, with New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Virginia already seeing flooding. ­The storm, which the National Hurricane Center now ranks as a category 1, is set to make landfall along the New Jersey coast Monday evening, with hurricane-force... 

Beluga white whale, NOC American scientists have identified a male beluga whale capable of making human-like sounds and spontaneously mimicking human conversations. According to a paper published online in Current Biology, researchers heard a nine-year-old whale named NOC emitting sounds octaves below normal ones. The discovery occurred when a diver at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California... 

It has been brought to our attention by Michael Treis that a call for UN Troops to guard polling places or election headquarters by the current administration. Any persons wearing UN insignia of any form within 100 feet of any polling place or election headquarters are to be placed under citizen arrest & turned over to the local sheriff. Any resistance to such arrests or UN Troops upon US streets... 

American CEOs call the Congress to ‘stabilize the debt’ Chief executives of more than 80 major US corporations, including Aetna, Goldman Sachs, Macy’s and Boeing are joining forces to pressure Congress to bring down the federal deficit by raising taxes and cutting spending. ­The CEOs call on the policymakers to prepare a fiscal plan that would “stabilize the debt as a share of the... 

Opposite phenomena were detected by satellites of the U.S. space agency. The study was the first to calculate the total thickness of sea ice in the Southern Ocean from space. NASA indicates that between 1978 and 2010, the extent of the Antarctic grew by 17 square kilometers each year but this growth rate is not as great as the decline in the Arctic. The satellites of the U.S. space agency showed two... 

An ominous report prepared by the Hydrometeorological Centre of Russia (HCR) on the “Frankenstorm” (aka Hurricane Sandy) barreling towards the Northeastern United States warns that this superstorms origins lie in the near complete collapse of the Deep Southerly Return Flow (DSRF) of the Gulf Stream this past week due to the unprecedented melting of the Greenland Icecap. The Gulf Stream, together...