San Francisco: Twitter users flocked to the micro-messaging network this week as Hurricane Sandy swept through the eastern US seaboard, sending more than 20 million tweets about the storm between Saturday and Thursday, the company said. This far exceeds the 13.7 million tweets sent during the Super Bowl in February, typically the largest media event of the year.
Founded in 2006, Twitter has sought to position itself as a "second screen" media product that users can pull up on their smartphones while watching events like the Super Bowl or the Olympics on television. But the service has shone as a communication channel during major disasters, such as in the wake of the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
Twitter, which has been susceptible to occasional outages, stayed up glitch-free this week, serving at times as a vital source of information for afflicted residents.
The number of times that users in New York City loaded their home timeline from a mobile device peaked around 9 PM on Monday night, around the time an explosion at a Consolidated Edison transformer knocked out power, more than doubling the total from the previous two days, the company said, without providing details. ...
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02:58 PM, Nov 03, 2012
New York: Frustration grew for superstorm Sandy's victims in the U.S. Northeast on Friday, many of whom were left with no power, no gasoline and little information about when their shattered lives might return to normal. While Manhattan prepared to host the annual New York City Marathon on Sunday, acute gasoline shortages in the city's storm-battered outer boroughs and New Jersey led to long lines and short tempers. Tankers finally...
11:20 PM, Nov 02, 2012
Cairo: Some anti-American Muslim clerics have cast the deadly Superstorm Sandy as divine punishment for a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad or for other perceived ills of American society. The remarks by some on the fringe brought a backlash from other Muslims who said it was wrong to relish the suffering of others. In Egypt, one radical cleric described the hurricane as revenge from God for the crude, anti-Islam film...
02:21 AM, Nov 02, 2012
Washington: The US on Wednesday dismissed as "hollow" the offer of humanitarian aid for superstorm victims from JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind and for whom the US has offered a bounty of $10 million. "As you all well know, Saeed is believed to be behind organising the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack in which 166 people were killed, including six Americans. That is why he is...
01:39 AM, Nov 01, 2012
New Delhi: With two major airports in the US reopening after being hit by superstorm Sandy, Air India and Jet Airways on Wednesday announced resumption of their flights to New York and Newark from Thursday. Air India would operate AI-101 Delhi-New York and AI-191 Mumbai-Newark (EWR) flights in the wee hours on Thursday, while Jet Airways would operate its flights 9W-228 and 9W-227 to and from EWR via Brussels, spokespersons...
09:50 PM, Oct 31, 2012
New York: Sandy split New York City in two. The massive storm left people damp, miserable and in the dark in the lower part of the city. Yet in much of the rest of Manhattan, life was almost normal, albeit without some of the usual urban comforts. Almost every street below Times Square in the city's Midtown district lost power on Monday night after an explosion at a Consolidated Edison...
06:40 PM, Oct 31, 2012
New York: Superstorm Sandy knocked out a quarter of the cell towers in an area spreading across 10 states, and the situation could get worse, federal regulators said Tuesday. Many cell towers that are still working are doing so with the help of generators and could run out of fuel before commercial power is restored, the Federal Communications Commission said. The landline phone network has held up better in the...
10:44 AM, Oct 31, 2012
Washington: Millions of people awoke to scenes of destruction wrought by Sandy after the powerful storm smashed into the eastern United States, destroying buildings, flooding streets, and cutting power to parts of the nation's most densely populated regions. Deaths At least 39 people were reported killed in eight states along the eastern seaboard by Sandy, which dropped just below hurricane status before making landfall on Monday night in New Jersey....
05:36 AM, Oct 31, 2012
New York: Here is a look at how the behemoth storm Sandy affected the nation's largest city and its suburbs. A day after the storm hit, New Yorkers were coping with flooding in some areas, digging out from the mucky leftovers of receding waters in others and bracing for days without power. Wall Street: With power out to more than 750,000 New Yorkers, much of the nation's financial capital was...
03:21 AM, Oct 31, 2012
Washington: Superstorm Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. In the long run, the devastation the storm inflicted on New York City and other parts of the Northeast will barely nick the US economy. That's the view of economists who say a slightly slower economy in coming weeks...
01:19 AM, Oct 31, 2012
New York: 01.57 am IST: Sandy and its aftermath continue to wreak havoc on air travel. At Chicago O’Hare International Airport, airlines have canceled close to 500 flights to and from the East Coast. Locally, some local flights are experiencing delays because of strong winds. 01.40 am IST: About 7.915 million customers are without power in 15 states and the District of Columbia, according to figures compiled by CNN from...
09:20 PM, Oct 30, 2012
Islamabad: A Pakistani militant leader with a $10 million US bounty on his head has offered aid to Americans hit by superstorm Sandy. Hafiz Saeed says his organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, is prepared to send volunteers, medicine and food if allowed by the United States. Saeed said in a written statement Tuesday that it is a religious duty under Islam to help Americans affected by the storm, even if the US has...
07:27 PM, Oct 30, 2012
Amritsar: As superstorm Sandy hit the US East Coast affecting millions of people, an international Sikh forum on Tuesday announced that gurudwaras in the country have been turned into shelter homes for the affected. American Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (AGPC) said that arrangements have been made in Gurudwaras for providing food, water and shelter to those affected by the storm. "As the gurudwaras are often situated in large compounds, having enough...
06:09 PM, Oct 30, 2012
The massive storm that started out as Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast and morphed into a huge and problematic system affecting millions of people. Here's a snapshot of what is happening or expected, state by state. Carolinas The US Coast Guard rescued 14 members of a crew forced to abandon a tall ship off the North Carolina coast. One of the crew members was found hours later and...
11:55 AM, Oct 30, 2012
New York: Hurricane Sandy will close US stock markets for a second day on Tuesday, as Wall Street turned its attention to whether markets would be able to resume functioning on the month's final trading day on Wednesday. US stock markets closed on Monday due to weather for the first time in 27 years. Bond markets closed early, at noon, as winds and waves from Hurricane Sandy lashed the Eastern...
11:46 AM, Oct 30, 2012
New York: 9:21 pm IST: The White House has said that US President Barack Obama will remain in Washington on Wednesday to monitor the response to Hurricane Sandy and will not participate in campaign events that had been scheduled in Ohio. 8:55 pm IST: At least 21 people have died as a result of superstorm Sandy in the United States. 8:41 pm IST: New York City schools will be closed...
07:27 AM, Oct 30, 2012
New York: Much of New York was plunged into darkness Monday by a superstorm that overflowed the city's historic waterfront, flooded the financial district and subway tunnels and cut power to nearly a million people. The city had shut its mass transit system, schools, the stock exchange and Broadway and ordered hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to leave home to get out of the way of the superstorm Sandy...
07:23 AM, Oct 30, 2012
Atlantic City: Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline and hurled a record-breaking 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City on Monday, roaring ashore after washing away part of the Atlantic City boardwalk and putting the presidential campaign on hold. Just before its center reached land, the storm was stripped of hurricane status, but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still...
05:55 AM, Oct 30, 2012
New York: Okay so officially this storm has kicked into a higher gear, in New York. We still have a few hours to go till the big moment -- 8-ish or so is when it's expected to hit. "The most severe part of the storm is now beginning," says Mayor Mike Bloomberg, addressing a news conference again at 5.45 Monday evening EST saying the time for evacuation and re-location is...
03:39 AM, Oct 30, 2012
New York/Rehoboth Beach: Hurricane Sandy, one of the biggest storms ever to hit the United States, lashed the densely populated East Coast on Monday, shutting down transportation, forcing evacuations in flood-prone areas and interrupting the presidential campaign. Fierce winds and flooding racked hundreds of miles of Atlantic coastline and heavy snows were forecast farther inland at higher elevations as the center of the storm moves ashore along the coast of...
02:32 AM, Oct 30, 2012
