Hurricane Sandy Eyes DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia And New York Photos

A fast-strengthening Hurricane Sandy churned north Monday, raking ghost-town cities along the Northeast corridor with rain and wind gusts. Subways and schools were closed across the region of 50 million people, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was deserted, and thousands fled inland. Forecasters expected the monster hurricane to make a westward lurch and aim for New Jersey, blowing ashore Monday night and combining with two other weather systems to create an epic superstorm. Its projected path put New York City and Long Island in the danger zone for a huge surge of seawater made more fearsome by high tides and a full moon. "This is the worst-case scenario," said Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By late morning, the storm's top winds had strengthened to 90 mph. It was about 200 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J., where the emptied-out streets were mostly under water and where an old section of the historic boardwalk broke up and washed away. Authorities moved to close the Holland Tunnel, which connects New York and New Jersey, and a tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Street grates above the New York subway were boarded up, but officials worried that seawater would seep in and damage the switches.
Because the storm is so big, with tropical storm-force winds extending almost 500 miles from its center, it could upend daily life for big cities and small towns alike across the Northeast – including Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston – and as far west as the Great Lakes. Up to 3 feet of snow was forecast for the West Virginia mountains. Millions of people in the storm's path stayed home from work. Subways, buses and trains shut down, and more than 7,000 flights in and out of the East were canceled, snarling travel around the globe. Hundreds of thousands of people were under orders to flee the coast, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City, but authorities warned that the time to get out was short or already past. "I think this one's going to do us in," said Mark Palazzolo, who boarded up his bait-and-tackle shop in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., with the same wood he used in past storms, crossing out the names of Hurricanes Isaac and Irene and spray-painting "Sandy" next to them. "I got a call from a friend of mine from Florida last night who said, `Mark, get out! If it's not the storm, it'll be the aftermath. People are going to be fighting in the streets over gasoline and food.'" President Barack Obama declared emergencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, authorizing federal relief work to begin well ahead of time. He promised the government would "respond big and respond fast" after the storm hits.

10 Ways To Soothe A Sore Throat

A sore throat can be the first sign of a cold, a side effect of strained vocal cords, or an indication of something more serious (like strep throat). More from Health.com: Superfoods That Fight Colds Stop a Cold in Its Tracks Healthy Chicken Soup Recipes Regardless of the cause, your immediate concern when soreness strikes is how to get relief, fast. You may be tempted to run to your doctor, but some of the best treatments are home remedies and over-the-counter meds, says Jeffrey Linder, M.D., an internist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston. Here are 10 to try the next time you're feeling scratchy, hoarse or just plain sick.

Andrew Sullivan Clashes With George Will On ABC 'This Week'

Andrew Sullivan clashed with ABC News' George Will during the roundtable discussion on ABC's Sunday public affairs program "This Week." During a conversation on race and the 2012 election, Sullivan charged that if "Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans," the electoral map will look "like the confederacy entirely." He added, "You put the map of the Civil War over the electoral map, you've got the Civil War." Will disagreed. "Democrats have been losing the white vote constantly since 1964, so that's not new," he said. He then added that there were two ways to explain the discrepancy in caucasian individuals who voted for [President] Obama in 2008, but not again in 2012. One explanation, Will said, was that "a lot of white people who voted for Obama in 2008 watched him govern for four years and said, 'Not so good, let's try somebody else.'" He then described the alternative explanation, and dubbed Sullivan's statement the "confederacy hypothesis...those people somehow for some reason in the last four years became racist." "No, that's not my argument at all, George," Sullivan said. "I'm just pointing out the fact that the white people who've changed their minds happen to be in Virginia and Florida. And if you actually look at the map—" "But that is not true," Will interrupted. Sullivan attempted to continue but Will said, "Andrew has made an empirical statement that is checkable and false, which is that the people moving, or the white people moving away are in those two states."

Paul McCartney Says Yoko Ono Wasn't Responsible For Breaking Up The Beatles

Yoko Ono has long been targeted as a scapegoat to lay blame for the breakup of The Beatles, but Paul McCartney is saying she wasn't the cause. "She certainly didn't break the group up, the group was breaking up," McCartney says in an interview with David Frost which is airing on Frost's TV show next month. McCartney admits in the interview that it was hard to have Ono constantly around, but also credits her with much of Lennons success such as writing "Imagine," saying, "I don't think he would have done that without Yoko." While Frost first interviewed McCartney in 1964, this most recent interview was one of the longest the Beatles great has ever given. For more, head over to The Guardian. Photos courtesy of Robert Whitaker on behalf of LIFE Books