While your humbled (by Sandy) editor's NYC apartment is still without power, I've made it to a power outlet and Wi-Fi and finally catching up with some of the impact of the storm on the U.S. and Canada, with 107 people dead and an estimated $20 billion in damages and $30 billion in lost business:

• FCC estimates that storm took down 25% of cell towers in 10 states
• FTC warns consumers to avoid home repair and charity scams
• JFK and Newark airports have reopened for some flights as airlines pin hopes on Thursday flights
• NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg reopened the New York Stock Exchange in first post-Sandy trading day
• NYC subway stations in lower Manhattan are still underwater as MTA estimates it's losing $18 million/day
• NYC schools remain closed
• President Obama stops at FEMA en route to New Jersey to assess damage
• Ford Motor Company donates $50,000 to relief efforts
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac vow to aid those whose homes were damaged or destroyed
• NYC-based tech startups including Foursquare grapple with keeping their businesses going
• Con Edison is working around the clock to restore power, as calls for free public Wi-Fi increase
• Some NYC stores, restaurants and businesses (at least above 23rd Street) see surge in business, along with e-commerce sites
• Fast food restaurants and other businesses in Sandy's path struggle in aftermath
• American Apparel criticized for hosting Sandy online sale, while Urban Outfitters offends with Sandy tweet

A snapshot of how Hurricane Sandy is impacting the U.S. today, as states shut down transit systems and schools, and many businesses are closed or letting employees work from home as the northeast is in lockdown mode: 

• An estimated 7,500 flights have been cancelled
• Chase and Citibank are waiving fees for customers in Sandy's path
• Google cancelled NYC Nexus launch event
• YouTube is live-streaming the Weather Channel's coverage
• Insurance industry braces for (potentially) billions of dollars in losses
• NFL and other sports impacted
• NYSE and NASDAQ cease trading as European stocks hit by knock-on
• New York Broadway shows and other performances go dark
• Oil prices are falling as gasoline climbs
• Starbucks has closed locations
• HMS Bounty movie ship sinks, as crew rescued by Coast Guard (update: two still missing)

Chalk this up as a "black"-letter day for Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald, as the company beat analysts' forecasts with its quarterly profit and P&G stock rose to its highest level in four years. After several months of unrelenting pressure on McDonald over the company's less-than-stellar performance, no one would blame him for enjoying the rest of the afternoon.

McDonald has been battling slipping sales, market share and margins in many of P&G's brands with newly hatched plans to cut costs, renew product innovation, and narrow the focus onto key markets, products and countries. He's also being prodded by critics such as hedge-fund investor Bill Ackman, who's got a $1.8-billion stake in the company and wants changes fast, and the P&G executive retiree who wrote a 13-page letter of complaint that he sent recently to McDonald. And it didn't help that Warren Buffett this week commented that "the jury is out right now" on the company.

Yet in announcing per-share earnings of $1.06 for the fiscal first quarter that beat last year's $1.01 a share and analysts' expectations of a 96-cent quarter, P&G appeared to benefit from progress in all of McDonald's key areas of concern, including boosting productivity and widening gross margins.Continue reading...

It took years of work and sacrifice to win seven straight Tours de France, but it only took a minute for all seven to be taken off the record of the now-disgraced Lance Armstrong.

The announcement finally came Monday morning that cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union (which couldn't catch Armstrong red-handed through 218 tests) was erasing the famed rider’s slate since there was plenty of evidence that Armstrong himself hadn’t exactly been clean during his cycling days, and was banning him for life from competing in the sport.

The man who made the Nike anti-doping commercial above has denied it vehemently, of course, but his fellow riders have one by one decided to talk about what they saw him do and how they were, well, Strongarmed into cooperating, as the New York Times reported in a damning recap of their testimony.In the wake of the ICU decision, one of Armstrong's last remaining sponsors — Oakley — announced it's severing ties with the cyclist.Continue reading...

Can Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner break the sound barrier by falling from the edge of space? That is the question on everyone's mind as Baumgartner, backed by Red Bull, attempts to become the first human to break the sound barrier unaided by a vehicle.

In a huge leap (literally) for science and brand sponsorships, Red Bull is funding the historic attempt that will see Baumgartner jump out of a balloon above Roswell, New Mexico. He plans to the jump from a height of over 120,000 feet, and will be free-falling towards earth at an estimated 700mph, as soon as the high winds let him actually make the jump. Watch for updates on Twitter and live here. (Update: Today's mission was cancelled "due to strong winds" and has been rescheduled for Oct. 14.)

Like Baumgartner, the execs at Red Bull like to help folks break boundaries. Whether it is helping a few people rave into the wee hours, funding the creation of one of the most incredible Rube Goldberg-esque bits of tomfoolery ever, expanding its flavor menu or funding a daredevil's plunge nearly 23 miles to Earth, Red Bull seems game for, well, pretty much anything.Continue reading...

Americans purchased 636.5 billion cigarettes way back in 1981. A good chunk of them were likely sucked in by the slew of air-traffic controllers that President Reagan fired. Or maybe it was all the people coming out of the year’s fifth most-popular film, “Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams.” Or those taking a break after getting down to Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.” 

It’s hard to know just where all those cigarettes were going, but that year found Americans purchasing more of the so-called cancer sticks than any other. Since then, of course, there has been a long battle to help people ditch tobacco products in the hopes of bringing down the numbers of death from cancer. 

It appears that the anti-tobacco movement is working, just as the FDA is ready to ramp up a massive new five-year, anti-smoking campaign in the U.S. According to a new report from the Federal Trade Commission, cigarette purchases in America fell to an all-time low of 281.6 billion in 2010.Continue reading...

American Apparel is no stranger to controversy over the years, showcasing its "Made in America" (for now?) garments on young models, risqué poses, nudity and other provocative images that have given the brand and its Canadian founder, Dov Charney, a bad reputation — most of all as a businessman, with a lifeline investment by billionaire George Soros making headlines earlier this year.

Whether it's another way to be provocative or at least unexpected, the brand has been expanding its casting calls for models, staging a (disastrous) contest for plus-size models, hiring its first transgender model (in partnership with GLAAD, no less) and now upturning ageism with the new face for its "advanced basic" line: 60-year-old actress Jacky O’Shaughnessy, who was spotted by an AA staffer in New York.Continue reading...

It's the third year in a row that brand executives have worried about the "c" word — as in "confidence." Consumer confidence, to be exact.

In the wake of last week's tough U.S. jobs numbers for May, there's more discussion among brands whether the economy this year will follow the pattern of the last couple of years: a first-quarter strengthening followed by relative anemia in the following months.

Only this year, while the American economic recovery has at least seemed on track, brands are more worried about negative influences from abroad.

"The headwinds we face on both the top and bottom lines, such as austerity measures in Europe, higher commodity costs in the U.S., and slowing growth in Asia, do remain," Don Thompson, new CEO of McDonald's, told securities analysts last week, according to Nation's Restaurant News. "I'm confident in our ability to navigate these near-term headwinds, because we've faced these situations before."

Thompson told the analysts that McDonald's long-running Plan to Win best practices platform, established by his predecessor as CEO, Jim Skinner, will be up to the challenge of any softening in consumer confidence, using local innovations scaled across the company's entire global system, for instance.Continue reading...