STORM

Washington's never-ending budget battle threatened to snarl the recovery from Hurricane Irene as a top Republican said on Monday that any federal aid will have to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere.

Amazon is preparing to take on Apple's iPad in a head-to-head battle that promises to get interesting soon -- as soon as Amazon launches its new tablet, possibly as early as October. If you thought the discontinued TouchPad's brief success as a $99 fire sale product as the first realistic competitor to Apple's iPad was interesting, you haven't seen anything yet. Amazon has shown the company can be successful with a mass consumer tablet-like product -- the Kindle e-reader.

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.

Dominion Resources Inc., which generates 28,200 megawatts of electricity and operates 6,300 miles of electric transmission lines in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and New England, said Monday nearly all its customers who suffered Hurricane Irene-related outages will have power restored by the end of the day Friday.

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.

There's an axiom that says, A crisis brings out the best and the worst in the human condition. And that was certainly the case with Hurricane Irene.

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

Irene brought sustained winds of 60 mph, a five-foot storm surge and dumped 12 inches of rain on the city.

New York City was slowly getting back to business as usual on Monday after Hurricane Irene but hundreds of thousands of people who normally travel in from the surrounding area faced a hellish commute as flooding knocked out some transit routes.

Tropical Storm Irene battered Vermont state with heavy rains late on Sunday, forcing hundreds of evacuations even as the storm's winds lost strength.

In the wake of Hurricane Irene, airlines are struggling to resume a normal schedule, particularly in New York City.

Investors appear to be relieved that the destruction wrought by the storm turned out to be less than feared.

Hurricane Irene, which ravaged through 10 states on the East Coast, left countless communities from North Carolina to New Jersey damaged, flooded and sans power as photos of the aftermath emerged.

Not disguising his complete aversion to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said he believes the country would be better off without it.

Hurricane Irene could cost U.S. state and local governments billions of dollars in damages, but funds from the federal government might ultimately cover much of this expense.

Hurricane Irene prompted a death toll of at least 25 across eight states, the Associated Press reported. States of Emergency were declared in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Maryland, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

Claims by Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck that last week's earthquake and hurricane were merely attempts by God to get our attention aren't funny. Nevertheless, Bachmann says her quote was only made in jest. Some of us aren't laughing, however.

President Barack Obama said Monday he is continuing to direct Hurricane Irene recovery and rebuilding efforts, as federal, state, and local officials assess damage in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, even as Northeast states like Vermont and New Jersey continue to get people out of harm's way of rising flood waters.