Everybody Loves the iPad Mini

The reviews for the latest hyped-about Apple device are in and, surprise surprise, everybody thinks it’s amazing. The iPad Mini was announced last week after a seemingly never-ending torrent of rumors about its existence, and with just two days left before the device hits store, the embargo on the reviews was just lifted. Like we said, the reaction, so far, is expectedly ecstatic.

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It’s so pretty!

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This is more or less the first thing out of any reviewers mouth (or fingertips) when talking about a new Apple device. We get it. Apple makes beautiful objects. How beautiful? “If the iPhone 5 is reminiscent of jewelry, the iPad mini is like a solidly made watch,” wrote The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky. “The iPad mini’s paint job is similar to the iPhone’s, but smoother, and on the black version I tested has a glint of blue and purple to it in certain light. It looks dangerous, and it feels great.”

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It’s so small!

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So the big thing about the iPad Mini is that it’s smaller. This feels incredibly obvious, but tech bloggers are still blown away by just how much smaller it is. It’s really small! “The most striking thing about the mini is in how thin and light it is. It is really thin and light,” wrote Bloomberg Businessweek’s Rich Jaroslovsky. “Crazy thin and crazy light, even.” We saw this one coming, Rich. Impossibly thin has been Apple’s jam ever since the MacBook Air debuted in 2008, and after the iPhone 5 stunned reviewers with its lack of heft, we should have expected the iPad Mini to be truly mini. As Jaroslovsky points out, though, it impressively beat competitors on weight and thickness — it’s 21 percent lighter than the Kindle Fire HD and 30 percent thinner — despite having a larger screen.

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It’s so comparable!

At this point in time, it feels wildly cliché to drop the whole “It’s just like the iPad only smaller!” line, but it’s so wildly true. Everyone seems thrilled that the iPad Mini has instant access to the 275,000-plus iPad apps as well as the 700,000 iOS apps currently on the market. That’s mostly because, the smaller package also sports the same screen resolution as the iPad 2. It’s not jaw-droppingly sharp like the Retina display or anything, but it’ll do. 

Come to think of it, though, this lower resolution screen is a real down side. The Kindle HD is a little bit thicker and heavier, but Transformers 2 looks awesome on the high resolution screen. Maybe the difference isn’t that big a deal, though. “Apple insists the device does better than standard definition, if you are obtaining the video from its iTunes service, since iTunes scales the video for the device, so it will render somewhere between standard definition and HD,” explained The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. “In my tests, video looked just fine, but not as good as on the regular iPad.”

It’s kind of expensive!

The $ 329 the iPad Mini is not the $ 199 Kindle Fire HD, and it is not the $ 199 Google Nexus 7. It’s significantly more expensive, but it’s also built out of aluminum and glass rather than plastic. Expensive is bad, right? No, silly goose. We’re talking about an Apple product here. The fact that it cost so much is practically generous on Apple’s part. “By pricing the Mini so high, Apple allows the $ 200 class of seven-inch Android tablets and readers to live (Google Nexus, Kindle Fire HD, Nook HD),” wrote David Pogue at The New York Times. “But the iPad Mini is a far classier, more attractive, thinner machine. It has two cameras instead of one. Its fit and finish are far more refined. And above all, it offers that colossal app catalog, which Android tablet owners can only dream about.”

Class, glass and apps. All in the iPad Mini. Get in line now.

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“Community” returning to old time slot in February

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – “Community” will return Thursday, February 7 to its previous timeslot after a long absence from NBC‘s lineup.

NBC confirmed the show’s return date soon after star Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Shirley on the ensemble comedy, announced the news on Twitter.

“Guys, #Community officially has an airdate: Thursday, February 7th at 8pm!,” tweeted the actress. NBC also announced several others return and premiere dates Tuesday.

The move means the network has abandoned its plans to move the show to Friday nights. “Community” will take the place of “30 Rock,” which will have completed its 13-episode final season by February.

“Community” was scheduled to move to Fridays beginning on October 19. But NBC opted to delay the Friday debut of “Community” and “Whitney” so it could devote itself to promoting its new fall comedies.

When one of them, “Animal Practice,” was cancelled, its timeslot went to “Whitney,” and the fate of “Community” was left up in the air.

Despite the long delay – “Community” hasn’t aired since the spring – the Thursday timeslot is good news for the show since Fridays usually draw much lower ratings.

NBC fired “Community” creator and showrunner Dan Harmon at the end of last season. Though it is critically acclaimed and has many diehard fans online, that hasn’t translated into many viewers.

NBC’s entertainment chairman has said that the network wants to focus more this season on broad comedies than on its quick-witted but odd Thursday shows, which tend to struggle for ratings.

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Fresenius Medical Care warns on profits

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s largest dialysis group, cut its estimates for sales and profits this year to take account of the impact of a strong U.S. dollar on earnings outside the United States.

FMC said on Wednesday it now expected 2012 revenue and net profit to be as much as 2 percent below its original forecast of about $ 14 billion and $ 1.14 billion respectively. The company had said previously a deviation of plus or minus 2 percent from its goal was possible.

The group, which dominates the U.S. dialysis clinics market along with rival DaVita Inc., also reported a 3 percent drop in third quarter net income to $ 270 million. This fell short of analysts’ average forecasts of $ 285 million.

The company reports in U.S. dollars because it derives about two thirds of its revenue from North America and the value of its revenues from Europe declines when the dollar rises against the euro.

Equinet Bank analyst Edouard Aubery said it was “quite unusual” for FMC to miss analysts’ forecasts. “We would stay away from the stock today,” Aubery said.

FMC’s shares were down 3.5 percent.

The company also revealed plans to take a $ 70 million one-off charge that will be excluded from its full-year earnings outlook. This mainly relates to FMC’s plans to buy itself out of a fixed-price contract for iron drugs that have become cheaper.

These drugs treat low levels of iron in the body that typically affect dialysis patients.

FMC’s parent company Fresenius, the diversified healthcare group, reported slightly higher than expected adjusted net income on Wednesday, supported by growth at its generic drugs and hospitals divisions.

Adjusted net income in the first nine months of the year rose 21 percent to 682 million euros ($ 885 million). That was above the average estimate of 675 million euros in a Reuters poll.

Fresenius still expects 2012 net income up by between 14 and 16 percent, adjusted for currency swings and excluding the effects of a failed takeover of Rhoen-Klinikum AG.

Fresenius last month raised the full-year profit outlook for its generic infusion drug unit Kabi for the third time this year as it benefits from rivals’ supply shortages.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Andreas Kröner and Maria Sheahan. Editing by Jane Merriman)

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An Anxious Wall Street Readies Its Reopening

4:15 pm., Oct. 30, 2012 — Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, for the first time since 1888 weather has stopped U.S. stock trading for two straight days. With the exception of at least one brave, renegade Starbucks (SBUX) outlet, Sandy’s 90-mile-per-hour winds and storm surge left swaths of New York feeling time-warped back to the Gilded Age. The markets have gone dark on the anniversary of the Crash of 1929’s Black Tuesday.

Back then, of course, Twitter hadn’t yet finished its beta testing. Last night, one wag used that buzzing forum to quip that lower-Manhattan habitués Citigroup (C) and Goldman (GS) may have to be bailed out a bit more literally than last time.

What’s to come: the weeks-long hassle of co-location, telecommuting, and rerouting to account for closed subway stations. But since “Wall Street” spans farther than it used to—from the bond desks of Newport Beach, Calif., to Connecticut hedge fund country, flooding a few Manhattan skyscrapers’ lobbies isn’t the fatal blow to the markets it might once have been. Domestic equity trading is now spread across 13 exchanges and dozens of private broker-run venues.

Even so, Sandy could jolt Greater Wall Street into an anxiety and volatility it hasn’t felt for months. Complacency has dominated equity and debt markets for much of 2012. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up 12 percent, having traversed September and October with nary a quiver. Fixed-income markets are getting their dregs scraped, with junk bonds looking drunk and desperate portfolio managers chasing yield in Puerto Rico. The world’s been lulled into a prolonged sense of “risk-on.” Next week’s presidential election could truly go either way. Details of a possible resolution to the national fiscal cliff are anyone’s guess.

So the idea that Wednesday’s planned, weather-permitting reopening of New York’s stock exchanges could succumb to tech glitches is an especially scary one. “Do you really want to open up the market and have these potential issues right before the election, right before month end?” Matt McCormick, who helps oversee $ 7.3 billion at Cincinnati-based Bahl & Gaynor, asked Bloomberg News. “I’d rather be slow and correct than fast and wrong and really wrong. It’s better to be conservative.”

A market that’s 25 years removed from the technical meltdown of the Crash of ’87 is still disturbingly vulnerable to trading disasters. Witness the August software error at Knight Capital Group that nearly bankrupted the market maker, or the embarrassing opening delays Nasdaq (NDAQ) experienced in its May debut of Facebook (FB) shares.

Bats Global Markets had to scotch its initial public offering when it couldn’t get its shares to trade on its own exchange. Then there’s the still-unresolved mystery behind the Flash Crash of 2010.

“I’m a little surprised that the exchanges couldn’t secure the technology needed to keep the market operating,” says Dominic Salvino, a specialist on the CBOE floor for Group One Trading, the primary market maker for VIX options. “It seems unreasonable that the nation’s financial markets have to shut down just because everyone has located themselves within five miles of each other in New Jersey. A snowstorm in Chicago wouldn’t shut down trading on the East Coast.”

Forgive the pun, but the NYSE (NYX) lies in uncharted waters. The last comparable closure of the storied exchange was during the blizzard of March 12 and 13, 1888. Ninety years later, the exchange closed for a day and a half after a February 1978 snowstorm.

So all fingers are crossed for Wednesday. The good, albeit mercenary-sounding, news is that traditionally, hurricanes have not hindered market gains. According to Standard & Poor’s (MHP), the S&P 500 gained an average of 3.9 percent during the three months following each of the 13 costliest U.S. hurricanes and added 5.8 percent over the subsequent six months. As Sam Stovall, S&P’s New York-based chief equity strategist, wrote in a note: “Equities are more likely driven by wider-reaching global events than localized natural disasters.”

For what it’s worth, this gorgeous rainbow was just spotted over lower Manhattan.

—Roben Farzad

Farzad is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

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Syrian air force on offensive after failed truce

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian warplanes bombed rebel targets with renewed intensity on Tuesday after the end of a widely ignored four-day truce between President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces and insurgents.

State television said “terrorists” had assassinated an air force general, Abdullah Mahmoud al-Khalidi, in a Damascus suburb, the latest of several rebel attacks on senior officials.

In July, a bomb killed four of Assad‘s aides, including his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and the defense minister.

Air strikes hit eastern suburbs of Damascus, outlying areas in the central city of Homs, and the northern rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, activists said.

Rebels have been attacking army bases in al-Hamdaniya and Wadi al-Deif, on the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan.

Some activists said 28 civilians had been killed in Maarat al-Numan and released video footage of men retrieving a toddler’s body from a flattened building. The men cursed Assad as they dragged the dead girl, wearing a colorful overall, from the debris. The footage could not be independently verified.

The military has shelled and bombed Maarat al-Numan, 300 km (190 miles) north of Damascus, since rebels took it last month.

“The rebels have evacuated their positions inside Maarat al-Numaan since the air raids began. They are mostly on the frontline south of the town,” activist Mohammed Kanaan said.

Maarat al-Numan and other Sunni towns in northwestern Idlib province are mostly hostile to Assad’s ruling system, dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Two rebels were killed and 10 wounded in an air strike on al-Mubarkiyeh, 6 km (4 miles) south of Homs, where rebels have besieged a compound guarding a tank maintenance facility.

Opposition sources said the facility had been used to shell Sunni villages near the Lebanese border.

“WE’LL FIX IT”

The army also fired mortar bombs into the Damascus district of Hammouria, killing at least eight people, activists said.

One video showed a young girl in Hammouria with a large shrapnel wound in her forehead sitting dazed while a doctor said: “Don’t worry dear, we’ll fix it for you.”

Syria’s military, stretched thin by the struggle to keep control, has increasingly used air power against opposition areas, including those in the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Insurgents lack effective anti-aircraft weapons.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said he will pursue his peace efforts despite the failure of his appeal for a pause in fighting for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

But it is unclear how he can find any compromise acceptable to Assad, who seems determined to keep power whatever the cost, and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels equally intent on toppling him.

Big powers and Middle Eastern countries are divided over how to end the 19-month-old conflict which has cost an estimated 32,000 dead, making it one of the bloodiest of Arab revolts that have ousted entrenched leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The United Nations said it had sent a convoy of 18 trucks with food and other aid to Homs during the “ceasefire”, but had been unable to unload supplies in the Old City due to fighting.

“We were trying to take advantage of positive signs we saw at the end of last week. The truce lasted more or less four hours so there was not much opportunity for us after all,” said Jens Laerke, a U.N. spokesman in Geneva.

The prime minister of the Gulf state of Qatar told al-Jazeera television late on Monday that Syria’s conflict was not a civil war but “a war of annihilation licensed firstly by the Syrian government and secondly by the international community”.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said some of those responsible were on the U.N. Security Council, alluding to Russia and China which have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad.

He said that the West was also not doing enough to stop the violence and that the United States would be in “paralysis” for two or three weeks during its presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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SEC taking deeper look at Nasdaq’s Facebook plan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Securities regulators are taking a closer look at Nasdaq OMX’s $ 62 million plan to compensate brokers who suffered losses from the exchange operator’s botched handling of Facebook‘s initial public offering.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was instituting proceedings to more closely review the plan in light of the “legal and policy issues raised” by other market players.

“The Commission believes that questions are raised as to whether Nasdaq‘s accommodation proposal… would promote just and equitable principles of trade, protect investors and the public interest, and not be designed to permit unfair discrimination between customers, issuers, brokers, or dealers,” the SEC wrote in a notice posted online on Monday.

A Nasdaq spokesman declined to comment on the SEC’s decision to extend the timeframe for reviewing the proposal. However, on the company’s earnings call earlier this month, Nasdaq Chief Executive Bob Greifeld said he anticipated such a move by the SEC.

“To the extent the SEC requires more time, then we would agree to that, so I’m not here to predict what they may do, but end of the year is a reasonable guess,” Greifeld said at the time.

Market-makers like Knight Capital Group Inc, UBS AG, Citigroup Inc, and others, say they collectively lost around $ 500 million on May 18 when Facebook first debuted on public markets. A technology issue delayed the IPO for 30 minutes and in the interim, many orders were not included in the opening cross.

That led to delays in many clients’ orders being put through and hours-long waits for confirmations.

Some orders were lost all together, while others were entered repeatedly when market-makers did not receive the electronic confirmations they expected. Those usually arrive within seconds.

Nasdaq has since disclosed that the SEC’s enforcement division is investigating the series of events leading up to the $ 16 billion IPO.

Nasdaq had originally drafted a $ 40 million compensation plan for brokers who lost money, but later raised it to $ 62 million amid criticism that the amount was too low.

Since then, some market-makers and brokers have said they would back the amended proposal. But other market participants have continued to balk at the sum being offered.

The SEC’s latest announcement that it will “institute proceedings” to determine whether or not to approve or disapprove Nasdaq’s proposal is a new, procedural change created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

The law aimed to streamline the process for the commission to review rule changes filed by exchanges, which act as self-regulatory organizations.

It requires the SEC to either approve, disapprove or institute such proceedings for proposed rule changes no more than 45 days after an exchange submits it for consideration.

If the SEC does not act within the 45 days, the rule automatically gets approved. In this case, the deadline for the SEC to act was October 30.

Typically the SEC will institute proceedings to more closely review rule changes if they are novel, complicated or somewhat more controversial.

A decision to institute proceedings “does not indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions,” the SEC said in its notice.

The SEC will seek additional public comments to help it reach a final decision on whether to accept Nasdaq’s compensation plan proposal.

The agency said among the main complaints it has already received from commenters include concerns about the “limited categories” of claims eligible for compensation, Nasdaq’s method for determining losses and a requirement for member firms to waive all claims against the exchange operator for their losses.

(Reporting By Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Jennifer Merritt)

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Israeli-Palestinian drama ‘The Other Son’ wins Tokyo Film Fest

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Lorraine Levy‘s Palestinian/Israeli drama, “The Other Son,” won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix, the top award at the 25th Tokyo International Film Festival, on Sunday night. Levy also took home the best director honors at the festival, which marks the final go-round for festival chairman, Tom Yoda.

The special jury prize went to Kang Yi-kwan’s “Juvenile Offender.” Seo Young-joo, who stars in the film, was awarded the best actor prize. The best actress award went to Neslihan Atagul for “Araf – Somewhere in Between.” Tetsuaki Matsui‘s “Flashback Memories 3D,” about a Japanese didgeridoo player who loses his memory, took home the audience award. The Toyota Earth Grand Prix for the best nature-themed fiction or documentary was given to Valerie Berteau’s “Himself He Cooks.”

“All the films were excellent,” said Roger Corman, president of the international competition jury. “They each demonstrate the glory and power of cinema to entertain, inform, and teach us.”

For the first time this year, TIFFCOM, the market arm of the festival took place in Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo Bay. At TIFFCOM, there were 227 exhibiting companies from 25 countries and regions, up from last year’s 20 countries, with 111 of those entities were new exhibitors.

At the close of the festival, Yoda reflected back on his five years as chairman.

“It is the fifth year since the introduction of the Green Carpet and the Toyota Earth Grand Prix. It is also the 25th memorable year for us. On such as special year, I am very happy to have had the world respected Roger Corman leading the member of the jury,” he said.

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NYU Medical Center Evacuated

Paramedics and other medical workers began to evacuate patients from New York University Langone Medical Center due to a power outage caused by Tropical Storm Sandy, followed by a failure of backup generators at the hospital, New York City officials said Monday night.

About 200 patients, roughly 45 of whom are critical care patients, were moved out of NYU via private ambulance with the assistance of the New York Fire Department, city officials said. ABC News’ Chris Murphey reported a long line of ambulances outside of NYU Langone waiting to transport patients to other hospitals in the city.

The hospital had a total of 800 patients two days ago, some patients were discharged before tonight’s evacuation, which was described by emergency management officials as “a total evacuation.”

NYU Medical Center Forced to Evacuate Over 200 Patients Watch Video

According to ABC’s Josh Haskell, 24 ambulances lined the street, waiting to be waved in to pick up patients from NYU Langone Medical Center. “Every 4 minutes a patient comes out and an empty ambulance pulls up. The lobby of the Medical Center is full of hospital personnel, family members, and patients,” Haskell reports.

The patients were moved to a number of area hospitals and according to officials at NYU, the receiving hospitals would notify family members.

Sloan Kettering Hospital spokesman Chris Hickey confirmed to ABC News’ Gitika Ahuja that it is receiving 26 adult patients from NYU, at their request. Hickey said she didn’t know whether they had been admitted yet or what their conditions were.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital spokesman Wade Bryan Dotson said it is also accepting patients from NYU at both campuses, Columbia and Weill Cornell.

Meanwhile, ABC News affiliate WABC captured footage of patients being evacuated; among the first patients brought out of the hospital on gurneys was a mother and her newborn child.

On Monday morning, NYU Langone Medical Center had issued a press release that indicated the hospital’s emergency preparedness plan had been activated and that there were “no plans to evacuate” at the time.

Shortly after the reports of an evacuation at NYU Langone, city officials reported that a second major New York City hospital, Bellevue Hospital, was about to lose backup power due to a generator failure.

Requests for more information from NYU Langone Medical Center spokespeople were not immediately returned.

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Hitachi buys UK nuclear project

30 October 2012 Last updated at 08:43 ET

The UK’s nuclear expansion plans have been boosted after Japan’s Hitachi signed a £700m deal giving it rights to build a new generation of power plants.

Hitachi is to buy Horizon Nuclear Power, which was intending to build reactors on existing sites at Wylfa, Anglesey, and Oldbury, near Bristol.

Hitachi is buying Horizon from Germany’s E.On and RWE, which are withdrawing from the UK nuclear market.

Prime Minister David Cameron said it was a major step for the UK.

“This is a decades-long, multi-billion pound vote of confidence in the UK, that will contribute vital new infrastructure to power our economy.

“It will support up to 12,000 jobs during construction and thousands more permanent highly skilled roles once the new power plants are operational, as well as stimulating exciting new industrial investments in the UK’s nuclear supply chain. I warmly welcome Hitachi as a major new player in the UK energy sector,” he said.

UK engineering companies Babcock International and Rolls-Royce have signed preliminary contracts to join the Hitachi deal, which the Japanese company said should be completed by the end of November.

There will then be regulatory issues to clear, but once Hitachi’s reactor design is approved by the necessary authorities the company intends to build 6 gigawatts of nuclear capacity, with the first plant generating power in the first half of the next decade.

Up to 6,000 jobs are expected to be created during construction at each site, thousands more in the supply chain, and a further 1,000 permanent jobs at both locations once operational.

Dependency

The Horizon venture, based at Brockworth, Gloucester, currently employs about 90 people and was set up in 2009 as part of the drive to meet the UK’s carbon reduction goals and secure energy demand as old power plants are decommissioned.

But RWE and E.On put the business up for sale in March after Germany’s move to abandon nuclear power in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

A consortium made up of EDF and British Gas-owner Centrica has maintained its interest but the two companies have still to decide whether to build two reactors at Hinckley Point, Somerset.

Companies involved in the nuclear industry have expressed caution over entering the UK market. Because of the huge capital costs, stretched over many years, companies want some certainty over how much they might be paid for the electricity generated by their plants.

Last week, the chief executive of EDF, Vincent de Rivaz, told MPs that his company needed safeguards from the government that the finances of future nuclear deals would be “fair”.

Delays over decision-making and financing have led to doubts that new power capacity will come on stream before existing plants go offline. A so-called “energy gap” is likely to lead to rising prices and a greater dependency on gas imports.

Earlier this month, the energy regulator Ofgem warned that the UK risks running out of energy generating capacity in the winter of 2015-16. Its report predicted that the amount of spare capacity could fall from 14% now to only 4% in three years.

However, the government said that its forthcoming Energy Bill would ensure that there was secure supply.

With so many uncertainties still to be resolved, investment in the UK nuclear sector was still a “leap of faith”, said George Borovas, head of nuclear projects at global law firm Pillsbury. So, he said, Hitachi’s decision was a “significant… vote of confidence in the UK nuclear programme”.

‘Milestone’

Hitachi’s proposed facilities will use its advanced boiling water technology, which is already used in four reactors in Japan. Mr Borovas said this technology was a “proven success”, adding: “This should be very helpful with respect to its licensing in the UK and also opens up the possibility of significant export credit agency and commercial financing from Japan.”

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said: “Hitachi bring with them decades of expertise, and are responsible for building some of the most advanced nuclear reactors on time and on budget, so I welcome their commitment to helping build a low-carbon, secure-energy future for the UK.”

Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint called on the government to use this as an opportunity to encourage investment in nuclear research and design.

Unions also welcomed Hitachi’s move, with Mike Clancy, general secretary designate of Prospect, saying: “The Horizon venture is an important milestone in securing future low-carbon energy generation capacity within the UK and its importance to local and national economies cannot be overstated.

“While Hitachi’s advanced boiling water reactor design has yet to undergo the UK’s generic design assessment approval process, it is a proven technology and therefore any construction in the UK will benefit from lessons learned from its construction in Japan.”

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Cuba’s 2nd city without power, water after Sandy

HAVANA (AP) — Residents of Cuba‘s second-largest city of Santiago remained without power or running water Monday, four days after Hurricane Sandy made landfall as the island’s deadliest storm in seven years, ripping rooftops from homes and toppling power lines.

Across the Caribbean, the storm’s death toll rose to 69, including 52 people in Haiti, 11 in Cuba, two in the Bahamas, two in the Dominican Republic, one in Jamaica and one in Puerto Rico.

Cuban authorities have not yet estimated the economic toll, but the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported there was “severe damage to housing, economic activity, fundamental public services and institutions of education, health and culture.”

Yolanda Tabio, a native of Santiago, said she had never seen anything like it in all her 64 years: Broken hotel and shop windows, trees blown over onto houses, people picking through piles of debris for a scrap of anything to cover their homes. On Sunday, she sought solace in faith.

“The Mass was packed. Everyone crying,” said Tabio, whose house had no electricity, intermittent phone service and only murky water coming out of the tap on Monday. “I think it will take five to ten years to recover. … But we’re alive.”

Sandy came onshore early Thursday just west of Santiago, a city of about 500,000 people in agricultural southeastern Cuba. It is the island’s deadliest storm since 2005′s Hurricane Dennis, a category 5 monster that killed 16 people and did $ 2.4 billion in damage. More than 130,000 homes were damaged by Sandy, including 15,400 that were destroyed, Granma said.

“It really shocked me to see all that has been destroyed and to know that for many people, it’s the effort of a whole lifetime,” said Maria Caridad Lopez, a media relations officer at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Santiago. “And it disappears in just three hours.”

Lopez said several churches in the area collapsed and nearly all suffered at least minor damage. That included the Santiago cathedral as well as one of the holiest sites in Cuba, the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre. Sandy’s winds blew out its stained glass windows and damaged its massive doors.

“It’s indescribable,” said Berta Serguera, an 82-year-old retiree whose home withstood the tempest but whose patio and garden did not. “The trees have been shredded as if with a saw. My mango only has a few branches left, and they look like they were shaved.”

On Monday, sound trucks cruised the streets urging people to boil drinking water to prevent infectious disease. Soldiers worked to remove rubble and downed trees from the streets. Authorities set up radios and TVs in public spaces to keep people up to date on relief efforts, distributed chlorine to sterilize water and prioritized electrical service to strategic uses such as hospitals and bakeries.

Enrique Berdion, a 45-year-old doctor who lives in central Santiago, said his small apartment building did not suffer major damage but he had been without electricity, water or gas for days.

“This was something I’ve never seen, something extremely intense, that left Santiago destroyed. Most homes have no roofs. The winds razed the parks, toppled all the trees,” Berdion said by phone. “I think it will take years to recover.”

Raul Castro, who toured Cuba’s hardest-hit regions on Sunday, warned of a long road to recovery.

Granma said the president called on the country to urgently implement “temporary solutions,” and “undoubtedly the definitive solution will take years of work.”

Venezuela sent nearly 650 of tons of aid, including nonperishable food, potable water and heavy machinery both to Cuba and to nearby Haiti, which was not directly in the storm’s path but suffered flash floods across much of the country’s south.

Across the Caribbean, work crews were repairing downed power lines and cracked water pipes and making their way into rural communities marooned by impassable roads. The images were similar from eastern Jamaica to the northern Bahamas: Trees ripped from the ground, buildings swamped by floodwaters and houses missing roofs.

Fixing soggy homes may be a much quicker task than repairing the financial damage, and island governments were still assessing Sandy’s economic impact on farms, housing and infrastructure.

In tourism-dependent countries like Jamaica and the Bahamas, officials said popular resorts sustained only superficial damage, mostly to landscaping.

Haiti, where even minor storms can send water gushing down hills denuded of trees, listed a death toll of 52 as of Monday and officials said it could still rise. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe has described the storm as a “disaster of major proportions.”

In Jamaica, where Sandy made landfall first on Wednesday as a Category 1 hurricane, people coped with lingering water and power outages with mostly good humor.

“Well, we mostly made it out all right. I thought it was going to be rougher, like it turned out for other places,” laborer Reginald Miller said as he waited for a minibus at a sunbaked Kingston intersection.

In parts of the Bahamas, the ocean surged into coastal buildings and deposited up to six feet of seawater. Sandy was blamed for two deaths on the archipelago off Florida’s east coast, including a British bank executive who fell off his roof while trying to fix a window shutter and an elderly man found dead beneath overturned furniture in his flooded, low-lying home.

___

Associated Press writers Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana, David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica, and Jeff Todd in Nassau, Bahamas, contributed to this report.

___

Peter Orsi is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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