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Holiday flights scrapped as massive winter storm sweeps US

Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

| By AFP | Kamil Krzaczynski with Issam Ahmed in Washington |

More than 1,500 flights were canceled across the United States by Thursday morning as a massive winter storm upended holiday travel plans with a triple threat of heavy snow, howling winds and bitter cold.

At least five states — Kentucky,  Missouri,  Oklahoma, Georgia and North Carolina — have already implemented emergency plans and others were likely to follow.

“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Joe Biden told reporters at a White House briefing on the weather and transport turmoil.

“This is serious stuff,” he added, urging people to heed warnings from local authorities.

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Blinding whiteouts and hazardous road conditions were already being seen in parts of the country slammed by a dangerous Arctic front.

AccuWeather forecasters have said the storm could rapidly strengthen into what is known as a “bomb cyclone” through a process known as “bombogenesis,” when the barometric pressure drops and a cold air mass collides with a warm air mass.

National Weather Service (NWS) forecaster Michael Charnick tweeted a video showing drivers struggling along a highway between Colorado and Wyoming, where the temperature with wind chills plummeted to -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40C).

The NWS released key safety messages on its Twitter account, warning snow squalls — bursts of moderate to heavy snow lasting an hour or two — had already happened or were expected from the Central Plains to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

“People exposed to extreme cold are susceptible to frostbite in a matter of minutes,” the agency cautioned.

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“Areas most prone to frostbite are uncovered skin and the extremities, such as hands and feet. Hypothermia is another threat during extreme cold.”

Blizzard conditions stranded 100 motorists in Rapid City and Wall in South Dakota, the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office tweeted.

“NO TRAVEL advised,” the sheriff’s office added.

In Minneapolis and Saint Paul, more than eight inches (20.3 centimeters) of snow accumulated over a 24-hour period, the NWS said in a Thursday morning update.

In Buffalo, New York, forecasters called it a “once-in-a-generation storm” with wind gusts of more than 65 miles per hour (105 kilometers per hour), wind chills as low as 10 to 20 degrees F below zero, and power outages.

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Holiday travel peak

The storm comes as the Transportation Security Administration said it expects holiday travel volume to be close to pre-pandemic levels, with the busiest day on Thursday, three days before Christmas.

The majority of US flight cancellations have so far been at Chicago O’Hare or Denver, both international hubs.

American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines had already taken steps to issue weather waivers to allow passengers to change their flights without fees.

The American Automobile Association estimated that more than 112 million people will travel 50 miles or more from home between Friday and January 2, the vast majority of them — 102 million — by car.

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International

China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.

That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”

“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.

Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”

In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”

This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.

The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.

Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.

For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.

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International

Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants

The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.

According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.

The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”

The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.

The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”

These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.

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International

Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”

“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.

The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.

“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.

Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.

“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.

The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.

Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.

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