About 3.5 million people were expected to crowd the route of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York on Thursday while an additional 50 million watched from home.

A jetpack-wearing monkey and a freakish creation from filmmaker Tim Burton are two of the big new balloons that will make their inaugural appearances, while Mary J. Blige, Cee Lo Green, Avril Lavigne and the Muppets are scheduled to take the stage at the end of the route in Herald Square.

Macy’s parade will feature more than 40 other balloon creations, 27 floats, 800 clowns and 1,600 cheerleaders.

The parade began at 77th Street and heads south on Central Park West to Seventh Avenue, before moving to Sixth Avenue and ending at Macy’s Herald Square.

NEW YORK — It’s a recipe for mass power outages: up to 15 inches of snow forecast in parts of the Northeast on Saturday — much of it landing on trees that have yet to shed their leaves in fall.

“We’re expecting this very heavy and wet snow, and a lot of it,” Chris Warren, a Weather Channel meteorologist, told NBC News. “And when it lands on the leaves it weighs down the branches, you get the branches snapping, falling on power lines. When it’s all said and done by Sunday millions of people could be in the dark.”

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO — The number of donors who raise big money for President Barack Obama jumped in the last three months as he builds a war chest for what will likely be the costliest presidential election ever.

At least forty-one people have raised at least half a million dollars for the president, compared to 27 in Obama’s first report, according to an analysis of campaign data released Friday.

The big donors, known as “bundlers,” are typically well-connected people who pledge to gather tens of thousands of dollars for a candidate

Former Goldman Sachs executive Jon Corzine and Dreamworks Animation chief executive executive Jeffrey Katzenberg are on Obama’s elite list and raised $500,000 or more.

GILBERT, Ariz. — One of those who kicked off her shoes and slithered her way through the multihued plastic tubes of a fast-food restaurant playground here one recent morning was not enjoying herself in the least. In fact, she had a frown on her face. “It’s bad,” Erin M. Carr-Jordan said, swab in hand, as she collected
samples from a surface that she would later deliver to a lab for
microbial testing. Nearby, a restaurant worker diligently sanitized
tabletops and banisters outside the play area, but he did not appear to
use his rag and spray bottle inside the children’s maze.

Six-year-olds often times forget their own last names, but I remember Tuesday, September 11, 2001, like it was last week. I remember wearing my favorite jumper and my mother braiding my hair. I remember eating scrambled eggs off a yellow plate. And then I remember the radio anchor said, ‘Wow! Have you guys seen what’s on TV?’ My mother flipped it on, just in time to see the second plane collide with the South Tower. We saw the fireball burst from the building. The six-year-old that I was screamed and covered my ears. That day at school, few of us understood that our lives had changed. Many of my fellow first-graders thought it was something from a movie, a big joke. But I remember walking past the teacher’s lounge, and hearing them all crying and praying, and I knew it was no joke. It was real.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Italian automaker Pagani was to begin selling its $1 million, 700 horsepower Huayra supercar in the U.S. later this year but federal safety regulators have said “Not so fast.”

Pagani had applied for an exemption from federal auto safety rules requiring child-safe “advanced” airbags, arguing that complying with the rule would have caused “substantial economic hardship,” according to documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

NEW ORLEANS — BP is arguing that victims of last year’s Gulf oil spill should not be paid any more claims for future losses because the areas affected by the spill have recovered and the economy is improving.

The British oil company makes its case in a 29-page document filed
with the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which administers the $20 billion
fund for victims.

It criticizes several aspects of the fund’s policies and claims that
at some times it has paid victims more than is allowed under the federal
Oil Pollution Act.

(CNN) — It’s called the “Walmart of Weed.”

This newest big-box store is devoted to selling marijuana-growing equipment.

Its biggest outlet yet is to open Wednesday in Phoenix, where Arizona voters approved medical cannabis last fall.

The weGrow Store will be the first outside California, where medical weed has long been legalized. None of the chain’s three stores sell the drug. Instead, they unabashedly promote medical marijuana by offering “everything — from supplies to services — that cultivators need to grow it,” the company says.

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) — Roland Marbaugh wrote 509 pages of his tales of war — from the swampy Solomon Islands in World War II to the frozen Chosin Reservoir in Korea.

His son typed them all up on an electric typewriter in the 1980s but unpublished, Marbaugh’s stories remained largely in his mind. Until now.

Marbaugh’s story will soon be among 600 others on Witness to War, a virtual library of Americans in combat. When his testimony is posted in a few days, viewers will be able to hear the former Marine captain, now a spry 91, recount harrowing tales with photographic precision.

In Siberia, a simple rainstorm can turn a road into not just mud but quicksand. Snow drifts close roads for months, and streams come and go. The vehicle of choice? The six-wheel Trekol, a two-ton amphibian with pillow-soft tires.
The key to the Trekol‘s
fortitude are its tires — engineered with a special rubber compound to
operate with just 1.5 pounds per square inch of air pressure, about a
tenth of air pressure at sea level and well below the 25-35 psi used in
most vehicle tires.el Trekol, a two-ton amphibian with pillow-soft tires.