NPR News

This past week has been filled with some truly tragic stories of loss and devastation in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. There are also a few stories of near misses and disasters averted. Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, fortunately has one of the latter.

Following Superstorm Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has received good grades from politicians and even some survivors of the storm. In part, that's due to lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.

For Staten Island resident Deb Smith, whose house was flooded by the storm surge from Sandy, FEMA has been a savior.

The last unemployment report before the election came out Friday, and the news was middling: Unemployment ticked up to 7.9 percent.

The private sector created more than 180,000 new jobs, but state and local governments resumed laying workers off. That discrepancy is part of a longer-term trend.

For a few years now, private sector employment has been growing, but since mid-2010, state and local governments have eliminated roughly half a million jobs.

For the first time since it began in 1970, the New York City Marathon will not take place.

Marathon officials and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had initially insisted that Sunday's race would go on despite the devastation caused by Sandy. But mounting opposition forced the organizers to change their minds Friday.

All week, the group that organizes the race, the New York Road Runners, kept saying the marathon would go on. But on Friday night, Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg made this announcement:

More questions for the panel: The check is in the apocalypse, Fact checking with Cokie.

Carl Kasell reads three quotes from the week's news: Sandy Visits Times Square; Yes, Virginia, The Election Is Almost Over; Mickey Strikes Back!

Our panelists answer questions about the week's news: First up: The Politics of Dating.