David Letterman did not get many laughs for his latest monologue - the Late Show host told his jokes to a mostly empty Ed Sullivan Theatre. Jimmy Fallon taped Late Night without an audience, too, as Hurricane Sandy disrupted a wide swathe of New York's bustling entertainment industry. City officials said all film permits for Monday and yesterday were revoked because of the hurricane. Production on at least nine TV shows was affected, including Gossip Girl, Person of Interest and Elementary, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report also took Monday night off, and Broadway's 40 theatres were left in the dark yesterday. AP
Exelon declared an alert at its New Jersey Oyster Creek nuclear power plant due to a record storm surge, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said, and warned that a further water rise could force the country's oldest working plant to use emergency water supplies to cool spent uranium fuel rods. The alert - the second-lowest of four NRC action levels - came after water levels at the plant rose by more than two metres, potentially affecting the pumps that circulate water through the plant, an NRC spokesman said. A further rise could submerge the service water pump motor that is used to cool the water in the spent fuel pool. Reuters
Several of the most popular US news and gossip websites, including Gawker and Huffington Post, went offline overnight because of a New York power outage. The websites were knocked offline after the electricity supplier ConEd cut power in parts of lower Manhattan, where many are hosted. Huffington Post worked around the blackout by publishing updates on Twitter and Facebook - including a hand-drawn "front page" - while the gadget site Gizmodo ran a liveblog despite the technical glitches. The Guardian