Frankenstorm, Hurricane Sandy | featured news

Congress is sending a $50.5 billion emergency relief measure for Superstorm Sandy victims to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The House has approved a $50.7 billion measure for Superstorm Sandy victims. The 241-180 vote sends the measure to the Senate which is expected to take it up next Tuesday. Northeast lawmakers from both parties have been pressing for the aid for more than two months.

The House has overwhelmingly approved $9.7 billion to pay flood insurance claims for the many home and business owners flooded out by Superstorm Sandy. The vote came more than two months after the storm hit and days after Northeast Republicans erupted over House Speaker John Boehner's decision to delay an earlier vote.

The Congressional members, including Republicans, noted their outrage that the Republican leadership did not present the $60.4 billion package already passed by the Senate for a House vote.

Americans spent more online in November to start the holiday season and began to replace cars and rebuild in the Northeast after Superstorm Sandy.

The world's attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, Web surfers searched in huge numbers to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver.

There's new evidence that some of the impact of Superstorm Sandy could have been prevented. A bi-partisan report says that for more than three decades New York politicians were repeatedly warned to prepare for a coming superstorm like Hurricane Sandy but those warnings were ignored.

The bottom is falling out of economic forecasters' expectations for U.S. economic growth in the final months of 2012. And if some of the more bearish estimates prove accurate, it will be the weakest rate of growth since the start of 2011.

On the day federal money for superstorm Sandy victims' hotel stays were scheduled to run out, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it would continue paying hotel bills another two weeks, easing the anxiety of thousands of displaced New York and New Jersey residents.

The 2012 hurricane season has come to an end and it's another one for the record books, above and beyond the destruction of Sandy. There were 19 named storms in what meteorologists consider an above-average year that tied as being the third most-active season since 1851. The season runs from June 1st to November 30th, although tropical storms can and do sometimes develop outside those dates.