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• NEW YORK (AP) -- Faced with the prospect of days without power and swaths of the city plunged into darkness at night, police brought in banks of lights and boosted patrols to reassure victims of a monster storm that they won't be victims of crime.
• Some prominent galleries in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood hired private security and apartment building superintendents suddenly became guards. In Coney Island, about 100 police officers stood on corners or cruised in cars to guard a strip of vandalized stores and a damaged bank, to the relief of shaken residents.
• "We're feeling OK, but at first we felt worried," 12-year-old Oleg Kharitmov said Tuesday as he walked his dog with his parents by the bank. "I'm pretty happy that the cops are here."
• The precautions came on a second powerless night after the city was battered by Hurricane Sandy on Monday night and residents grappled with how long it would take to get back to normal -- or at least New York's version of normal.
• "Clearly, the challenges our city faces in the coming days are enormous," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as officials warned that power might not be back until the weekend for hundreds of thousands of people accustomed to a life carried by subway, lit by skyline and powered by 24-hour deli.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- It may look to America like President Barack Obama is off the campaign trail. He's really not.
• By commanding the response to a ferocious October storm a week before the election, Obama is employing a political advantage in the race to be president.
• He is the president.
• Clearly, Obama's imperative to act transcends the election. Superstorm Sandy's wrath is real. At a time of death and danger, any president is expected to lead for the people of every state, battleground or otherwise.
• Yet in a political sense -- and politics are absolutely part of this -- Obama has a remarkable last-minute chance to campaign for his job just by doing his job.

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