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Thursday, December 22, 2022

Wake-Up Call: Winter Storm To Impact Every State


A winter weather system and cold blast is set to impact nearly every state and bring what the National Weather Service is calling a 'once in a generation event' to the United States - crippling travel just days before Christmas. The strengthening storm will bring more than a foot of snow and possible blizzard conditions to the Midwest, as the weather service warns of 'life-threatening' wind chills for millions. More than 90 million people are under winter weather alerts and more than 87 million are under wind chill alerts. The alerts stretch across 37 states, dipping as far south as the Texas/Mexico border.  Denver is opening recreation centers and libraries as daytime warming shelters (below) on Thursday and Friday for local to escape the wild weather. Thursday is expected to be the most difficult day for travel with more than one thousand flights across the US cancelled, according to FlightAware.


A major winter storm and cold blast will impact nearly every state and bring what the National Weather Service is calling a “once in a generation type event” that will cripple travel on some of the busiest travel days of the year. The strengthening storm will bring more than a foot of snow and possible blizzard conditions to the Midwest, as the weather service warns of “life-threatening” wind chills for millions.

More than 90 million people are under winter weather alerts and more than 87 million are under wind chill alerts. The alerts stretch across 37 states, dipping as far south as the Texas/Mexico border. The number of people under winter alerts and wind chill alerts has grown to over 100 million people, or roughly a third of the US population, according to the National Weather Service. The cold will stick around for Christmas weekend, making this the coldest Christmas in roughly 40 years for portions of the Plains and Midwest.


➤Z TO CONGRESS: 'YOUR MONEY IS NOT CHARITY': "Your money is not charity. It is an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way," Zelenskiy told a joint session of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, speaking in English. The world is too interconnected to allow any country to stand aside and feel safe, Zelenskiy said as he appealed for bipartisan support.

Earlier, Zelenskiy, wearing his trademark olive green trousers and sweater on his first foreign wartime visit, met President Joe Biden, who called for support to keep flowing in 2023. The United States also announced another $1.85 billion in military aid for Ukraine, including a Patriot air defence system to help it ward off barrages of Russian missiles. Zelenskiy said the Patriot system was an important step in creating an air shield.

Earlier in the day, President Biden pledged the U.S. would continue to help Ukraine defend itself. His administration announced a $1.85 billion aid package that for the first time includes a Patriot air-defense system. Zelensky’s eight-hour visit to Washington, his first trip outside his home country since Russia’s invasion last February, comes on the 300th day of the conflict. The Ukrainian president is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress at 7:30 p.m. ET. Members of Congress are slated to provide an additional $44.9 billion for Ukraine and NATO allies through a fiscal 2023 spending bill.


➤BAHAMAS JUDGE OKs CRYPTO'S EXTRADITION:  Sam Bankman-Fried has arrived in the U.S. to appear before court on charges relating to the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Late Wednesday, U.S. authorities said two top former executives of FTX and its affiliated trading firm Alamada Research had pleaded guilty to fraud.

The ex-girlfriend of disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and a co-founder of FTX pleaded guilty to fraud charges in the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange and are both cooperating with federal prosecutors, officials announced Wednesday night. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund company Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, pleaded guilty to the criminal offenses before Bankman-Fried landed in New York to face his own charges, Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. The charges filed against the pair were “in connection with their roles in the frauds that contributed to FTX’s collapse,” Williams said.

➤THE JANUARY 6TH COMMITTEE REPORT:  The full report of the special Congressional committee that examined the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2020, is due to be released today. The report is expected to be massive. It will include transcripts of every interview before the committee, including many not shown in the televised hearings. Earlier this week, the committee released an executive summary that concluded that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, President Donald Trump, who many others followed.” They described the event as part of an overall scheme to overturn the results of the presidential election. The committee has sent a trove of evidence to the Justice Department. According to CBS News, the committee made four criminal referrals to the Justice Department against Trump: Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; Conspiracy to Make a False Statement, and "Incite," "Assist" or "Aid and Comfort" an Insurrection.

➤GOP ISSUES SCATHING REPORT ON 1/6 SECURITY:  House Republicans issued a scathing report Wednesday exposing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s key role in the catastrophic security and intelligence failures that left the US Capitol vulnerable to a violent attack on January 6, 2021. Days after Pelosi’s Jan. 6 select committee recommended insurrection charges against former president Donald Trump over the Capitol riot, Republicans have hit back with a counter-investigation apportioning blame for the internal security breakdown on Jan. 6 to Pelosi and a dysfunctional Capitol Police intelligence division.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021,” says the report, which is based on a trove of texts and email messages, and testimony from Capitol Police leaders and rank-and-file officers. House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, who answered to Pelosi as one of three voting members of the Capitol Police Board, “succumbed to political pressures from the Office of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrat leadership,” was “compromised by politics and did not adequately prepare for violence at the Capitol.” Pelosi and her staff “coordinated closely” with Irving on security plans for the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, but Republicans were deliberately left out of “important discussions related to security.” 

➤TRUMP’S TAX BILLS, YEAR BY YEAR: For at least six years, former President Donald Trump declined to release information about his personal taxes. Now a Congressional committee is doing it for him. A summary of his taxes for 2017 through 2020 was released this week by the House Ways and Means Committee, which received them only after a long court battle. They will be released in full by the end of the year. 

Here are some highlights from the summary:
  • In 2017, Trump paid $750 in federal taxes, using the deduction for carrying over losses from previous years to offset his income.
  • In 2018 and 2019, he paid a combined total of $1.1 million in federal taxes. According to reporting published earlier by The New York Times, this was a departure from the previous decade, during which he paid little or no income taxes. He paid zero federal taxes in 2020, reporting business losses of more than $16 million during his last year in the White House.
The Ways and Means Committee wants to know why Trump’s taxes were not actively audited during his presidency, as is required by law. The committee is questioning many details of his tax returns, such as a $70,000 personal expenses deduction for hairstyling during his years on “The Apprentice.”


🚨FORMER FORT WORTH OFFICER GETS 12 YEARS FOR MANSLAUGHTER: A former Fort Worth police officer has been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for killing a resident, Atatiana Jefferson, with a shot through the window of her home. Aaron Dean was convicted of manslaughter in her death. The officer, who is white, was responding to a call from a neighbor about an open door in her home. The victim, who was Black, was disturbed by the noise and appeared at a window with a gun. Body camera footage showed that he called out to her to put her hands up but immediately fired the fatal shot.

➤MARS LANDER GOES SILENT: The Mars InSight lander that has been beaming observations about the Red Planet for more than four years has gone silent, NASA has confirmed. Scientists at NASA said they had thought the end was coming for some time, as dust on the spacecraft’s solar panels were preventing it from recharging. Its final message, relayed by NASA, was a poignant one: “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”


➤COMMON RED DYE IN FOOD IS RISK FOR IBD: A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has revealed that a common red dye in food can increase the risk of inflammatory bowel diseases, which affect some three million Americans, according to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. The additive, denoted as Red 40 or Allura red on ingredients label, is the most prevalent dye used in many popular snacks and drinks, including Skittles, Doritos and Pepsi, as well as some cosmetics.

While the use of food coloring has increased over the years, studies on its effect in the gut are few thus far. “What we have found is striking and alarming, as this common synthetic food dye is a possible dietary trigger for IBDs,” said McMaster University researcher Waliul Khan, the study’s senior author, in a statement. “This research is a significant advance in alerting the public on the potential harms of food dyes that we consume daily.”  The Ontario, Canada, team studied a group of mice fed high doses of Red 40 for 12 weeks — which researchers claimed was an appropriate model for humans in Western countries, where food coloring is typically a large part of people’s diets.

⚾METS SWIPE CARLOS CORREA FROM GIANTS: The New York Mets just stole free-agent shortstop Carlos Correa right out from under the noses of the San Francisco Giants. The Giants were about to announce their deal with Correa when they abruptly postponed the press event because a “medical issue” had come up in his physical. Enter the Mets with a 12-year, $315 million offer for Correa to play third base.

⚾CALL HIM CAPTAIN JUDGE: Aaron Judge has been named captain of the New York Yankees. He’s the team’s 16th captain and the first to be named since Derek Jeter in 2014. The announcement came shortly after Judge signed the $360 million deal that will keep him with the Yankees through 2031.

🏈CHARGES AGAINST ANTONIO BROWN DROPPED: A misdemeanor domestic violence charge against Antonio Brown has been dropped, along with an arrest warrant that had been filed against him. The Florida State Attorney’s Office said the prosecution will not proceed. Brown won the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020. But the wide receiver’s last appearance on the field was on January 2nd, when he made a dramatic exit from the Buccaneers game against the New York Jets after an argument on the sideline.

🏈CARDINALS’ MCCOY RULED OUT OF SUNDAY’S GAME: Arizona Cardinals third-string Trace McSorley will finally get his first game as quarterback after nearly four seasons in the NFL. He’ll start in Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Colt McCoy is still in the concussion protocol after suffering a head injury in last Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos. Kyler Murray has been nursing a knee injury since Week 14.

🏈STEELERS LEGEND FRANCO HARRIS DIES: Franco Harris, the former Pittsburgh Steelers running back and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, has died at the age of 72. Exactly 50 years ago this Saturday, Harris pulled off a feat that lives on in legend as “The Immaculate Reception.” During a divisional playoff game against the Oakland Raiders, Harris grabbed a pass thrown by Terry Bradshaw and ran it for a game-winning touchdown with seconds left in the fourth quarter. He’ll be honored Saturday at halftime in the Steelers game against the Raiders.
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