HURRICANE

Extensive flooding remained in parts of New Jersey on Tuesday. Passaic County in the northern part of the state and Mercer and Middlesex Counties in the central part were particularly hard-hit, with water reaching the roofs of some houses.

Two men who ventured out into the storm on Saturday night (and were subsequently reported as missing) were found dead on Monday afternoon.

The recovery from Hurricane Irene in the U.S. has only just begun, but another tropical disturbance, Tropical Storm Katia, is slowly strengthening over the eastern tropical Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Metro-North train service was partly restored on Tuesday, but several lines remained down, and the Port Jervis Line was expected to be crippled for months because of flooding from Hurricane Irene.

Connecticut's utilities, maintenance, and emergency crews continued to play catch-up Tuesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, reducing the number of customers without power to about 420,000.

The storm arrived just as many farmers were planning to harvest corn, cotton, tobacco and other crops.

By Tuesday, the death toll from Irene had risen to at least 40. The sharp increase from initial reports of 25 casualties came as a number of drowned bodies were recovered and several more people electrocuted by downed power lines.

Irene left a path of destruction up the East Coast from North Carolina to Vermont. Here's a look at the damages as each state begins to cleanup in the aftermath of the storm.

The federal government will distribute emergency supplies across Vermont to people and communities still feeling the effects of Hurricane Irene, which is threatening to become the state's worst natural disaster since the historic 1927 flood.

According to reports, these weary travelers may be stuck for days as airlines stagger to get back on schedule.

Long Beach, NY is getting ready to host the Quiksilver Pro New York Surf Competition, the world's first $1 million professional surfing event.

Amid a sluggish U.S. job market, a patch-work recovery in the housing market sector, and now damage from Hurricane Irene, it's understandable if U.S. investors are hesitant regarding deploying new money to the stock market. Where's the Dow Jones Industrial Average headed from here?

As states along the East Coast begin to clear away Hurricane Irene's wreckage, Washington began a fresh round of budget sparring over how to help pay for the cleanup.

Irene ran through 10 states on the East Coast, damaging several communities, including some in New York and New Jersey, with winds and floods. It is believed that Irene claimed 25 lives as of Monday and caused between $7 billion and $13 billion in damages.

Michele Bachmann claims she was speaking in jest when she said that Hurricane Irene and last week's earthquake in Virginia were signs from God that the United States needed to cut spending. But it seems more indicative of a clever tactic: making an outlandish statement and disavowing it once it has achieved its purpose.

Energy firms along the Eastern Seaboard scrambled on Monday to resume operations after Hurricane Irene left 5.5 million customers without power.

After Hurricane Irene forced a massive shutdown of mass transit in New York City, subway service has been fully restored citywide, NBC New York reported.

The hard-working maids of The Help hung on to the top of a storm-battered box office over the weekend and beat a trio of new releases with $14.3 million in domestic ticket sales, studio estimates released on Sunday showed.

The New York Blood Center, which serves more than 20 million people in New York City, Long Island, the Hudson Valley and New Jersey, is the first blood bank to suffer from an urgent need of blood donors because it lost an estimated 2,000 donations during the Hurricane Irene storm.

Jose Sierra, 68, was found floating in a City Island marina on Sunday morning, just a few hours after the hurricane tore through the area.

Irene does damage to 1,400 cell towers, but for the most part, telecom infrastructure was left alone.