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Sandy. All that, and there's another storm coming.
• Where to house potentially tens of thousands of people left homeless by the storm is the most pressing crisis, as cold weather sets in.
• "It's not going to be a simple task. It's going to be one of the most complicated and long-term recovery efforts in U.S. history," said Mark Merritt, president of Witt Associates, a Washington crisis management consulting firm founded by former Federal Emergency Management Agency director James Lee Witt.
• FEMA said it has already dispensed close to $200 million in emergency housing assistance and has put 34,000 people in New York and New Jersey up in hotels and motels. But local, state and federal officials have yet to lay out a specific, comprehensive plan for finding them long-term places to live. And given the scarcity and high cost of housing there and the lack of open space, it could prove a monumental undertaking.
• Sandy killed more 100 people in 10 states but vented the worst of its fury on New Jersey and New York. A week after the storm slammed the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, more than 1 million homes and businesses remained without power.
• ___

• BEIRUT (AP) -- Syria's state-run TV reports that gunmen have assassinated the brother of the parliament speaker.
• The report on Tuesday said Mohammed Osama Laham was killed in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan. It did not say when it happened, but a Syrian official said Laham was killed Monday night.
• The TV and the Syrian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, said Laham was a brother of Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham.
• A number of officials and top army officers have been assassinated in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March last year.
• ___

• JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) -- Staff Sgt. Robert Bales spent the evening on his remote outpost in southern Afghanistan with fellow soldiers,

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