An Ignoble Experiment: Extreme winter weather hitting millions across the US

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Friday 01.07.22

Here's a tip if you are among the millions of people quitting your job: Don't cash out your 401(k)! As tempting as it may seem, there are other options that will give you better returns in the long run. Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On With Your Day.

By AJ Willingham

Drivers stuck on the Western Kentucky Parkway due to winter weather conditions.

Extreme weather

More than 60 million people are under winter weather alerts across the US as several storm systems grip the country. On the West Coast, record-breaking rain and snowmelt in Washington and California are causing river flooding and avalanches. Across much of the South, dropping temperatures are causing icy road conditions that have led to massive backups and accidents in states like Kentucky, where a more than 20 car pile-up yesterday brought traffic to a halt. On the East coast, a fast-moving winter storm is expected to drop several inches of snow on New York, Massachusetts and parts of the mid-Atlantic this weekend. Forecasters say this will create even more disruptions, including school closures, flight cancellations and problems for emergency responders.

Capitol riot

House Democrats seem to be interested in highlighting the effects of last year's Capitol insurrection as part of their midterm election strategy, even though some are still debating how much to actually talk about the attack on the campaign trail. Yesterday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee rolled out a new messaging on its website declaring "Republicans incited an insurrection." The site also highlights the 139 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election, and GOP lawmakers who may have promoted election lies. Meanwhile, we're still learning more about what happened during the attack. An unnamed former Trump White House official says former President Donald Trump initially did not want to tweet "stay peaceful" as the riot got out of hand. Leaders of the House committee investigating the insurrection say they're not ruling out the possibility of concluding Trump's actions on January 6 constituted a crime.

Kazakhstan

The President of Kazakhstan has ordered security forces to "kill without warning" in an effort to crush to violent protests raging in the country. What began as demonstrations against rising fuel prices has grown to include larger, long-simmering political grievances. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, however, claims the increasingly violent conditions were caused by "terrorists" and "specialists trained in ideological sabotage." Dozens of people have been killed in the violence. Tokayev has appealed to the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization for assistance. The unrest, which experts say is an inevitable consequence of a government ignoring the needs and pleas of its people, is also posing a problem for Russia -- which maintains close relations with Kazakhstan and relies on a spaceport there.

Coronavirus

The CDC predicts more than 84,000 people in the US could die of Covid-19 over the next month. Health experts say this forecast may not even fully account for the emergence of the Omicron variant and the spike in cases linked to holiday travel. Yesterday, the World Health Organization said global coronavirus cases "increased sharply" last week in comparison to the previous week. In New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, authorities have announced new crackdowns on large gatherings, prohibiting singing and dancing in pubs, clubs, and restaurants. But in California, local health officials say next month's Super Bowl is expected to go ahead as planned in Los Angeles despite the latest surge of cases in the region.

India

Six people were killed and more than 20 hospitalized after inhaling toxic gas caused by an illegal dump of waste chemicals at a dyeing and printing mill in India. Local officials say they think the chemicals, which were offloaded from a tanker near the mill, reacted with other chemicals in the water to produce the deadly leak. Police are investigating, but have yet to make any arrests. In 1984, India suffered the world's worst industrial disaster when methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide factory in the city of Bhopal, killing more than 5,000 people and injuring more than half a million others.

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$1,400

That's the amount Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received in a federal stimulus payment. The US Attorney's Office of Massachusetts has filed a request to have that stimulus payment and other funds in Tsarnaev's inmate trust account turned over to his victims while he serves a life sentence in Colorado. Four people were killed and hundreds of others were injured after Tsarnaev and his brother set off two bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013.

You can't love your country only when you win. You can't obey the law only when it's convenient. You can't be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.

President Joe Biden, in a fiery speech yesterday commemorating the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. Biden thoroughly denounced participants in the riot and made the rare move of denouncing former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy -- without naming him outright.

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