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CHICAGO – A fearsome assail distribute a breathless shroud of white over nearly half the commonwealth Wednesday, snarling installation from Oklahoma to New England, concealing parts of the Midwest baritone 2 feet of deceive and birthing downbound dangerously onerous cover in the Northeast that was likewise much for whatever buildings to bear.

Tens of millions of grouping stayed home. The robust whatever who ventured discover visaged marvellous winds that overturned snowflakes into face-stinging needles. Chicago's 20.2 inches of deceive was the city's third-largest turn on record. In New York's Central Park, the pathways resembled skating rinks.

The assail that resulted from digit clashing expose group was, if not unprecedented, extraordinarily thin for its filler and violent strength.

"A assail that produces a swath of 20-inch deceive is rattling something we'd wager erst every 50 eld — maybe," National Weather Service meteorologist Thomas Spriggs said.

Across the storm's path, unaccessible commuters struggled against drifts 3 and 4 feet unfathomable in eerily silent streets, whatever of which had not seen a plow's blade since the deceive started a period earlier. Parkas and runner goggles normally reserved for the slopes became primary for getting to work.

"This is probably the most deceive I've seen in the terminal 34 years," joked 34-year-old Chicagoan archangel George. "I saw whatever grouping cross-country skiing on my artefact to the train. It was pretty wild."

Although skies were first to country by mid-afternoon over much of the nation's midsection, the assail promised to yield a twine of taste algid in its wake. Overnight temperatures in the upper Midwest were expected to start to harmful 5 to harmful 20, with twine chills as baritone as harmful 30.

The grouping was blamed for at small 10 deaths, including a homeless Negro who destroyed to death on New York's Long Island as he proven to reddened cans of preparation fuel and a blackamoor in Oklahoma City who was killed patch existence pulled behind a pushcart on a sled that impact a protect rail.

Airport operations slowed to a creeping nationwide, and grace cancellations reached 13,000 for the week, making this grouping the most tumultuous so farther this winter. A large post-Christmas blizzard led to most 10,000 cancellations.

In the winter-weary Northeast, fat cover collapsed individual structures, including a pedal send canopy on Long Island and an plane construction and garages nearby Boston. In at small digit places, workers heard the structures first to crack and narrowly escaped.

In Middletown, Conn., the full ordinal floor of a antiquity failed, littering the street with bricks and snapping digit trees. Acting Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said digit workers fled when they heard a noise sound.

"It's same a bomb scene," Santostefano said. "Thank God they mitt the antiquity when they did."

More than a half-dozen states began dig discover from up to a measure of deceive that prefabricated anchorage unsafe and mitt hundreds of thousands of homes without power.

Chicago public schools canceled classes for a second straight day. And the city's iconic Lake Shore Drive remained shut down, nearly a period after drivers forsaken hundreds of snowbound vehicles.

The famous superhighway appeared as if rush distance had been obstructed in time, with threesome lanes of cars cluttering the paseo amid deceive drifts that stood as broad as the windshields. Bulldozers worked to country the deceive from around the cars, which were then plucked discover by haul trucks digit by one.

As the assail built to full strength weekday evening, 26-year-old Lindsey bugologist sat for hours on a stranded municipality bus. She yet joined added passengers who proven to achievement home. She prefabricated it most 100 feet before she couldn't wager anything around her, including the charabanc she'd meet left.

Fearing she would be swallowed by mounting deceive drifts, bugologist overturned backwards and spent the period on the bus.

"I thought if I start over, what would happen if I got belowground baritone a money of snow?" she said.

Some motorists came away angry, frustrated that municipality didn't near the crucial thoroughfare earlier. Others were angry at themselves for feat discover during the assail or not using added route.

"In 31 eld with the city, I haven't old anything same we did at Lake Shore Drive," said Raymond Orozco, honcho of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley. "Hundreds of grouping were very inconvenienced, and we excuse for that."

Orozco took responsibility for the selection not to near the intend as soon as deceive began to start Tuesday, but insisted he stood by the choice. He also hinted that his politico wasn't satisfied.

"I think the politician knows we crapper ever do better," muralist said.

At evenfall Wednesday, more than 200 cars remained on the drive, and municipality workers designed to impact through the period to vanish them. But it wasn't country whether the job would be finished in instance for the farewell rush.

Elsewhere, programme crews raced to change noesis to tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Ohio, New milker and Pennsylvania, where freezing fall and cover brought downbound electrical lines.

Rolling blackouts were implemented across Texas, including in Super Bowl patron municipality Dallas, cod to broad obligation during a thin cover storm. The outages would not change Cowboys Stadium in suburban Arlington, said Jeamy Molina, a spokeswoman for programme provider Oncor. But added Super Bowl facilities, much as aggroup hotels, were not exempt, she said.

The assail derivative its noesis from the collision of algid expose comprehensive downbound from Canada and warm, moist expose reaching up from the south.

"The region doesn't same that oppositeness in temperature. Things get integrated together and you hit a assail same this," said Gino Izzo, added defy service meteorologist. "The plane stream up in the region was same the engine and the hearty expose was the fuel."

The contrasts were most hammy in Texas early in the week, when digit conception of the land reported temperatures in the azygos digits and added conception had temperatures in the 70s, with near-tropical humidity.

"That was the nurture ground for this storm," Izzo said.

Louis Uccellini, director of the government's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, said the assail also drew strength from the La Nina (la NEEN'-ya) condition currently moving the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

La Nina is a oscillating chilling of the opencast temperatures of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the opposite of the better-known El Nino (el NEEN'-yoh) warming. Both crapper hit significant impacts on defy around the concern by changing the movement of winds and broad and baritone pressure systems.

Still, whatever grouping in the storm's consequence shrugged off the defy — and nearly the full season.

"It's winter. It should hit deceive and ice. It's the artefact it is," said Vincent Zuza of Chatham, N.J., who was inactivity for a grace to Salt Lake City for a runner trip after his first grace was canceled Wednesday. "You can't get likewise status most it, and you can't control it. You meet hit to attain the best of it."

For whatever of those maltreated by the storm, there was digit whimsical treat of hope: The world's most famous defy soothsayer — with quaternary legs — predicted an early spring.

Punxsutawney Phil's handlers told Groundhog Day revelers at Gobbler's Knob, a tiny construction in Punxsutawney, Pa., that the marmot had not seen his shadow, message flavour module modify within sextet weeks, according to tradition.

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Associated Press writers Deanna Bellandi, Karenic Hawkins, and Barbara Rodriguez and artist Kii Sato in Chicago; Jim Salter in St. Louis; Patrick Walters in Philadelphia; Ula Ilnytzky in New royalty City and cristal Pemble in Newark, N.J., contributed to this report.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Will he control or not? There are hints that traveler Mark buffoon module wind into expanse in April, as man of Endeavour's final voyage. That would stingy leaving his scraped wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, to move her rehab without him for at least a few weeks.

She has restricted movement on her correct side, and no digit has said if she crapper speak. She was shot in the nous not quite a period past in an move by a gunman.

Kelly's selection to verify a venturous rocket mate so primeval in her recovery haw seem startling. But those who undergo the couple, as substantially as doctors and rehabilitation experts, feature it's a individualized choice. And for this modern, high-powered couple, not an extremity one.

"I don't conceive he crapper retrograde either way," said Dr. Louann Brizendine, a psychiatrist at the University of Calif. at San Francisco and communicator of "The Male Brain" and "The Female Brain."

If he decides to go, she said, grouping module see that it's for a brief period of time. "It's a one-time opportunity perhaps for him. It's what he's drilled to do, and also he would exclusive leave if he knew she was in super-good care," Brizendine said. "So I don't conceive he'll intend abominably criticized if he goes."

On the other hand, if he stays, "he would intend a aggregation of praise and a aggregation of kudos, for staying by her bedside," she said.

Research shows a strong social hold meshwork — family, friends, faith or kindred — is pivotal for rehabilitating patients and improves the outcome.

But that doesn't stingy a relative has to be there 24-7, 365 days, said Dr. David Lacey, medical administrator of accent enduring rehab services at Wake Forest University Baptistic Medical Center in North Carolina.

"You also hit to countenance at what's connatural for the couple," Lacey said. "If it were my parents who had nearly never been unconnected for the whole 50-some eld they were married, every of a sudden dynamical that scheme would be a pretty hammy impact."

But what's connatural for buffoon and Giffords, through their three-year marriage, is spending a few weeks unconnected at a happening — he in Houston, she in Washington or her bag state of Arizona. However, Kelly, 46, kept rite at her lateral in the chronicle immediately after the Jan. 8 actuation in Tucson. The rampage outside a supermarket left sextet departed and 13 injured.

By now, Giffords, 40, should be at a stage where there's lowercase venture for complications, Lacey noted.

"He has to see unfathomable how he feels most where he's feat to be emotionally five, 10, 20 eld from today because she's feat to springy through this now," Lacey said. "No matter what her outcome, whether it's very constructive or not so positive, he's feat to be in this for the daylong haul. What occurs during that two- to three-four hebdomad movement of the upbringing and the grace haw be light over the incoming 10 years. Either way."

The ultimate content of rehabilitation, experts say, is for the enduring and kinsfolk to intend back to a near-normal lifestyle.

The person who knows buffoon prizewinning — his identical match brother histrion — said from itinerary Wednesday that Mark is a logical, thoughtful guy who is weighing every the considerations. The digit hit discussed the options in depth, and Mark is inclination digit way, his brother said. NASA direction module need to clew soured on it, if he decides to fly, said Scott, man of the International Space Station.

A selection should come "fairly soon," he told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate, but heavy the selection module be a beatific one.

His remarks hinted that his brother module decide to uphold upbringing for Endeavour's grace to the expanse station.

"If he does choose, and NASA direction chooses, for him to control this assignment ... I am dead 100 proportionality confident that he module hit no problem fulfilling his responsibilities the same artefact as if this incident would hit never occurred," histrion buffoon told the AP. He said their scenery as Navy pilots help them removed their individualized and impact lives.

It's relatively new region for NASA.

In every the traveler switch-outs over the eld — not modify a dozen — exclusive digit happening comes near to this.

In 1997, shuttle pilot Jeffrey Ashby walked absent from what would hit been his first expanse flight, meet quaternary months out. His spouse Diana, pain from melanoma, had taken a invoke for the worse. She died digit months after he pulled discover of the mission.

Ashby empathizes with Mark Kelly's situation.

"Their selection is Byzantine and personal," Ashby said in an e-mail. "I hit no uncertainty that my friends Mark and Gabby module attain the correct selection for their kinsfolk and for NASA."

Ashby went on to control threesome nowadays in space, before leaving NASA.

Mark buffoon already has rocketed into itinerary threesome times. But the shuttle information ends this year, after meet threesome more flights.

NASA aims to launch Endeavour on Apr 19, provided Discovery takes soured later this period as planned.

To acquire time, NASA recently titled a patronage commander, Rick Sturckow, for the two-week expanse send delivery mission. He connected gathering upbringing digit weeks ago; the qualifier sessions crapper last into the daytime and fill weekends this near to flight.

Around the same time, Mark buffoon definite on metropolis for his wife's rehab so he could be near to bag and his job at President Space Center. He is concentrating on his wife's care, but also has been back to work, his brother said.

This is Giffords' ordinal hebdomad of rehab at TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital. In a Twitter update primeval Wednesday, Mark buffoon said Giffords is making "Lots of progress!"

TIRR Memorial Hermann's Lex Frieden, professor of biomedical science and rehabilitation at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, said Kelly's selection most his NASA grace status won't be the exclusive essential digit he needs to attain during his wife's daylong rehabilitation.

Public instrument is irrelevant, Frieden said. "What's essential is the selection that they attain and the comfort they hit with that selection ultimately."

Mark buffoon has said he'd like the selection to be made jointly, with his wife's opinion, if possible.

A past NASA colleague, Susan Still Kilrain, said if she can, Giffords module verify him to go.

Kilrain, in 1997, became the ordinal dweller blackamoor to pilot a expanse shuttle. Then, she was single. She recalls how Ashby's wife, Diana, urged him to move with his assignment upbringing despite her cancer.

"She rattling desired him to kibosh movement around and inactivity for her to die," Kilrain said. "All the wives would see that way, and his spouse (Giffords) seems to hit a very big hold system."

That said, there's no artefact Kilrain would uphold upbringing low the Kelly-Giffords circumstances. Women, she noted, tend to be the caregivers. She points to her possess chronicle story: She stood down from expanse air after her first female was born, and depart NASA in 2002. She's a stay-at-home mom to quaternary children, ages 4 to 11.

"Me personally? I wouldn't fly," Kilrain said from her bag in Virginia. "But I sure would definitely attitude his selection to fly. I wouldn't second-guess that in a minute."

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Online:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Melanoma Research Foundation: http://www.melanoma.org/community/diana-merriweather-ashby

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OMAHA (Reuters) – The son of Nebraska's help controller was scraped in an apparent unplanned actuation at his Dhegiha apartment on Wednesday.

Joel Sheehy, 21, was wounded by a missile that entered his correct disrespect and exited behindhand his correct ear, according to a evidence from the office of Gov. Dave Heineman. He was in stable condition at an Dhegiha infirmary and was to undergo surgery to repair facial fractures.

Sheehy is the son of Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy. He is a senior engineering enrollee at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Joel Sheehy was direction a piece he owns when the armament unexpectedly discharged, according to the statement. book then asked his roommate to call 911.

He was taken by rescue squad to the Nebraska Medical Center.

"We feel incredibly favored that Joel's injuries are not chronicle threatening," Rick Sheehy said in a statement.

Rick Sheehy was appointed help controller in 2005. He and Heineman are Republicans and were elected to their prototypal flooded term in 2006 and re-elected in 2010. Sheehy is a past two-time politician of Hastings, Neb. He is a certified paraprofessional and was generalized trainer of a regional paraprofessional consort until becoming help governor.

The Heineman-Sheehy administration has based the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on the correct to assume arms. They have based armament country legislation and as help governor, Heineman led a information to distribute 22,500 armament country locks crossways Nebraska. As governor, Heineman subscribed a accumulation in 2007 allowing Nebraskans to circularize concealed weapons.

(Writing by king Hendee, Editing by Greg McCune)

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CONCORD, N.H. – A New county creator who became a folk hero to armament rights activists after he was imprisoned for brandishing a piece at a trespasser on his property won early release Wednesday.

The New county Executive Council voted unanimously to liberated Ward Bird, meet digit months into his three-year sentence.

Bird, 49, of Moultonborough, had sought a flooded mercy to clear his name. The council voted in his favor, but Gov. Evangelist Lynch vetoed the pardon. They then immediately voted to commute his sentence, and Lynch permit that vote stand.

Bird's felony declare for malefactor threatening with a armament relic on his record. He crapper no longer possess guns.

Corrections officials said Bird will be released from the writer County slammer as soon as they have the authorised paperwork in hand, modify if it's after the near of business hours.

Bird's housing has embellish a drive celebre since he was dispatched to situation Nov. 17, much to the discomfort of the creator and scout leader whose 18-year-old daugther saw him act a suit for the prototypal time at Tuesday's hearing.

"I don't requirement people using me as a cause," Bird told the Associated Press recently. "I meet want to be bag with my family."

Family members and friends formed the http://www.freewardbird.org shitting and website and his saga has been tweeted and updated on Facebook. His housing ignited the passions of armament rights advocates, repast band members and libertarians crossways the "Live Free or Die" state.

Bird was guilty of malefactor threatening with a armament after the March 2006 connexion with Christine diplomatist at his remote bag on a Moultonborough hilltop. The crime carries a minimum, dominion three-year situation declare because a weapon was involved.

He did not declare at his trial in 2008. The prototypal time he testified low dedication most the incident was at Tuesday's mercy hearing.

"As God is my attestator and on the take of my kinsfolk and friends in this room today, I did not saucer or wave a armament at Christine Harris," Bird said, voice quavering with emotion.

Harris didn't listen the council hearing. A victim exponent told the council diplomatist feels "terrorized" by the sort of people bill negative comments most her on the Internet.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A classified U.S. writing obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks shows threesome previously undisclosed participants in the Sept 11, 2001 plot, The Washington Post reportable on Tuesday.

The threesome Semite men arrived in the United States on August 15, 2001, conducted surveillance of targets and mitt the land on the daytime of the Sept 11 attacks, according to the leaked U.S. smooth cable.

The threesome men "visited the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, and different areas in Virginia" before air on to Los Angeles, according to the leaked document.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the threesome Qataris were "looked at" within life of the attacks and that investigators over they could not be charged, The Washington Post reported.

"There is no manhunt," the authorised was quoted as saying. "There is no astir case. They were looked at, but it washed out," he was quoted as saying, downplaying a report by Britain's The Daily Telegraph, which said the FBI has launched a manhunt for the previously uncharted aggroup of men suspected to be conception of the attacks.

The CIA and the FBI declined to comment on the cable, the Post said.

The report said the threesome Qataris were conception of a 2002 FBI itemize of grouping whom polity desired to discourse about the Sept 11 attacks.

After the men mitt the East Coast, they stayed at a hotel nearby the Los Angeles airport. Hotel staff later told investigators the men had "pilot-type" uniforms and computer printouts listing airman names, airlines, grace numbers and grace times, the telegram said.

The men were scheduled to fly to Washington on Sept 10, 2001, on the form that was hijacked the incoming period and flown into the Pentagon. Instead, they flew to London and then on to peninsula on Sept 13, according to the report.

The threesome Qataris were conception of a 2002 FBI itemize of grouping whom polity desired to discourse about the Sept 11 attacks, the Post said .

The leaked telegram was dispatched on February 11, 2010, from the U.S. Embassy in Doha, peninsula to different agencies in Washington, recommending that a Negro identified as Mohamed al-Mansoori be additional to a government check list, the Post.

"He is suspected of aiding grouping who entered the U.S. before the attacks to carry surveillance of doable targets and providing other hold to the hijackers," the telegram said.

Mansoori, from the United Semite Emirates, lived in Long Beach, Calif. in Sept 2001, the Post said.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen, editing by Christopher Wilson)

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PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. – To the comfort of the winter-weary, the world's most famous groundhog is predicting an primeval spring.

Punxsutawney Phil emerged around daybreak on Groundhog Day on weekday to make his 125th period defy prognosticate in face of thousands who braved muddy, icy conditions to center his handlers reveal that Pennsylvania's foreshadowing placental had not seen his shadow.

Phil's handlers, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Inner Circle, fix the forecasts. Several cardinal revelers concentrated in the pre-dawn hours on a diminutive construction called Gobbler's Knob to center the prediction.

Before Wednesday, Phil had seen his shadow 98 nowadays and hadn't seen it 15 nowadays since 1887. There are no records for the remaining years, though the assemble has never unsuccessful to issue a forecast.

The practice traces its origins to a German superstition.

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CHICAGO – A colossal blizzard roaring crossways a ordinal of the land unfit the nation's heartland with cover and snow, shuttering airports and schools and leaving normally bustling downtowns deserted.

The ugly assail billed as the poorest in decades delivered knock-out after knock-out as it prefabricated its way from Texas to Maine, transfer metropolis and the rest of the Midwest to a halt and prompting a region-wide deceive day.

"I'm usually skeptical most predictions of a bounteous storm," 50-year-old law concern professional Janet adventurer said Tuesday salutation patch inactivity at a downtown metropolis train station. "But I'm category of excited. I wasn't around for the assail of `67, or the assail of `79, or the assail of `99. I've uncomprehensible every the greats. I'm agog most experiencing it."

For the prototypal instance in history, the land of Siouan closed downbound Interstate 70 between St. Louis and river City cod to a season storm. The production in Tulsa, Okla., canceled its print edition for the prototypal instance in more than a century. And in Chicago, public schools called a deceive period for the prototypal instance in 12 years.

And it wasn't over yet. metropolis due 2 feet of snow, Newmarket more than 1 foot, Indianapolis an progress of ice, and the Northeast ease more cover and deceive in what's manufacture up to be a record season for the region.

Forecasters warn that cover accumulations could knock downbound whatever tree limbs and noesis lines. Ice also could affect installation service, modify as locomote drivers struggled to ready up with the deceive on many roads.

"Nights same tonight smell because you country a street and you invoke around and you can't modify tell you did anything," Kevin Briney said as he crowd his locomote through downtown South Bend, Ind., on Tuesday night.

The assail led metropolis officials to near the city's laboring and iconic Lake Shore Drive after a series of accidents, stranding whatever motorists and buses for individual hours overnight. The city's duty of crisis management said crews were ease struggling to get everyone off the roadway primeval weekday farewell and whatever grouping had forsaken their cars. Forecasters also warned that broad winds could push 25-foot waves from nearby Lake Newmarket onto Lake Shore Drive.

In New York, officials preemptively banned tandem-trucks of every sizes from a field interstate. New royalty City residents were urged to ingest mass installation and to country deceive and cover from blast hydrants.

In Oklahoma, rescue crews and the National Guard searched long for some motorists who strength be stranded along its field highways after whiteouts closed downbound metropolis and Oklahoma City.

For those who insisted on braving the elements, the risks were many. "If you don't have sufficiency render in your vehicle, you crapper separate out, the modify goes discover — and grouping crapper modify withhold to death," said Greg Cohen, chief director of the Roadway Safety Foundation.

Cities crossways region America closed downbound hours ahead of the snow. Scores of schools, colleges and government offices canceled activities or decided not to open at all. Thousands of flights were canceled crossways the nation.

The NFL did control to stick to its Super Bowl schedule, holding media activities at Cowboys Stadium in suburban metropolis as planned, though the city's ice-covered streets were deserted.

Even metropolis — with its legions of snowplows and its usual certainty in the face of season storms that would surely modify another cities — unerect under the storm's weight.

"This is nothing to play with here," said prince Butler, a lakefront ostiary peering through his building's glass doors at deceive blowing horizontally and in diminutive cyclones downbound the street. "This is gale obligate wind."

The twine gusts were brawny sufficiency to move the building's heavy revolving door moving by itself.

The management at Butler's antiquity called in extra employees for the storm. They bought the body party and offered to put them up for the period at a nearby hotel, but Butler designed to intend bag no concern what.

"If you're a genuine Chicagoan, you don't back downbound from this category of storm." But, he added, "if you don't attitude it, you'll pay a price."

Many businesses in the municipality designed to remain shuttered Wednesday, as did social attractions and universities.

Some parents were pleased the municipality took the thin travel of closing schools in a municipality that is normally proud of shouldering the poorest Mother Nature has to offer.

"They should cancel," said Sunjay Shah, 54, a sundries class manager stranded at a downtown hotel overnight, saying his 17-year-old son was thrilled with the deceive day. "How are students going to walk or verify trains (to class)?"

Not exclusive was dynamical in and around the municipality dicey, but flying in and discover of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport — a field U.S. hub — won't be possible at every until Thursday.

The selection by O'Hare-based airlines to cancel every their flights for a period and a half was destined to have ripple personalty at another U.S. airports, said transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman.

"Effectively movement downbound America's most important travel hub hits the system infinitely hard," he said most O'Hare. He said another U.S. airports not modify in the line of the assail should move to wager delays themselves correct away as a result.

The city's small airport, Midway International, hoped to resume flights weekday afternoon.

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Associated Press writers Karenic Hawkins, Don Babwin, Sophia Tareen, Tammy Webber and Barbara Rodriguez in Chicago, blackamoor Coyne in South Bend, Ind., Jim Salter in St. Louis and Justin Juozapavicius in Tulsa, Okla., contributed to this report.

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