Communities on the East Coast planned for hurricane Irene with help from analysts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA forecasters use data from federally-funded weather satellites to predict storms. One of those satellite programs is facing deep cuts in the latest round of congressional belt-tightening.

One of the nation's largest gas companies Pacific Gas & Electric is to blame for an explosion that killed eight people and burned down a neighborhood in California's Bay Area last year. That's the unanimous finding of the National Transportation Safety Board. The panel says substandard welds and other safety problems date back to the mid-1950s and that regulation was lax.

President Obama spoke to the 93rd annual convention of the American Legion in Minneapolis Tuesday. The president laid the groundwork for the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and for his speech next week on jobs and the deficit. GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry addressed the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in San Antonio, Texas.

Hurricane Irene is likely to cost billions of dollars. The storm did damage but not as much as some had feared. Will the sales of batteries and flashlights – and then repair costs – give the economy a needed boost?

Hurricane Irene left millions of people up and down the East Coast without electricity. Power companies say it could be a week before service is restored everywhere. At Dominion Power in Virginia, repair teams are working 16 hour shifts.

David Greene has the Last Word in business.

Russia and Exxon have reached an agreement that opens the way for oil exploration in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. And it allows the Russians access to projects in other parts of the world, including the United States. David Greene talks to journalist Julia Ioffe, who's covering the story in Moscow.

You've likely seen the commercials for vehicle service contracts on TV promising to save customers thousands of dollars in repairs to their older cars and trucks.

And St. Louis is like the Silicon Valley of those vehicle service contract companies. But while the industry continues to thrive, Missouri's Better Business Bureau logged almost 1,000 complaints about it last year alone.

For more than a century, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was known as the hospital that catered to presidents and generals. Eisenhower was treated and died there. So too did Generals "Black Jack" Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall.

But in recent years, Walter Reed was shorthand for scandal.

A 2007 series that dominated the front page of The Washington Post told of decrepit housing and wounded soldiers left to fend for themselves.

August brought a grim new statistic from Afghanistan: The death of at least 66 U.S. soldiers, making it the deadliest month for U.S. troops in nearly 10 years of war.

Nearly half of those casualties were the result of the rare shootdown of a Chinook helicopter packed with U.S. Navy SEALs. Of the remaining casualties, many were caused by what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDS — homemade land mines, bombs and booby traps.