After Blizzard, Northeast Begins to Dig Out

The Northeast began the arduous process of cleaning up after a fierce storm swept through the region leaving behind up to three feet of snow in some areas.

By early this morning, 650,000 homes and businesses were without power and at least five deaths were being blamed on the storm: three in Canada, one in New York and one in Connecticut, The Associated Press reported.

The storm dumped snow from New Jersey to Maine, affecting more than 25 million people, with more than two feet falling in areas of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. The Postal Service closed post offices and suspended mail delivery today in New England.

As the storm waned, officials in the hardest hit areas cautioned residents to remain indoors and off the roads to ease the clean-up.

Massachusetts was hard hit by the storm, with more than two feet of snow in Boston and even more in coastal areas. State police and national guard troops helped rescue more than 50 stranded motorists and even helped deliver a baby girl, according to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Patrick enacted the first statewide driving ban since the 1978 blizzard, which left 27 inches of snow and killed dozens. The ban was to be lifted at 4 p.m. today, the governor said.

However, Patrick cautioned residents to act with extreme caution even after the ban is over.

"Stay inside and be patient," Patrick said.

In Massachusetts a boy reportedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning as he helped his father shovel snow on Saturday, according to ABCNews.com affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston.

For residents along the coast, the waning snowfall didn't mean the end of the storm. Storm surges along the Massachusetts coastline forced some residents out of their homes Saturday morning.

"We've got 20-foot waves crashing and flooding some homes," Bob Connors on Plum Island told WCVB. "We have power and heat and all that. We just have a very angry ocean. In my 33 years, I've never seen the seas this high."

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

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In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy declared a state of emergency and closed all roads in the state. The state police responded to more than 1,600 calls over the last 24 hours and the governor called up an additional 270 National Guard members.

"If you're not an emergency personnel that's required to be somewhere, stay home," Malloy said.

Overnight, snow fell at a rate of up to five to six inches per hour in parts of Connecticut. In Milford, more than 38 inches of snow had fallen by this morning.

In Fairfield, Conn. firefighters and police officers on the day shift were unable to make it to work, so the overnight shift remained on duty.

PHOTOS: Blizzard Hits Northeast

The wind and snow started affecting the region during the Friday night commute.

In Cumberland, Maine, the conditions led to a 19-car pile-up and in New York, hundreds of commuters were stranded on the snowy Long Island Expressway. Police and firefighters were still working to free motorists early this morning.

"The biggest problem that we're having is that people are not staying on the main portion or the middle section of the roadway and veering to the shoulders, which are not plowed," said Lt. Daniel Meyer from the Suffolk County Police Highway Patrol.

In New York, authorities are digging out hundreds of cars that got stuck overnight on the Long Island Expressway.

Bob Griffith of Syosset, N.Y., said he tried leave early to escape the storm, but instead ended up stuck in the snow by the side of the road.

"I tried to play it smart in that I started early in the day, when it was raining," said Griffith. "But the weather beat us to the punch."

Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone said the snow had wreaked havoc on the roadways.

"I saw state plows stuck on the side of the road. I've never seen anything like this before," Bellone said.

However, some New York residents, who survived the wrath of Hurricane Sandy, were rattled by having to face another large and potentially dangerous storm system with hurricane force winds and flooding.

"How many storms of the century can you have in six months?" said Larry Racioppo, a resident of the hard hit Rockaway neighborhood in Queens, New York.

READ: Weather NYC: Blizzard Threatens Rockaways, Ravaged by Sandy

Snowfall Totals

In New York, a little more than 11 inches fell in the city.

By this morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said nearly all of the primary roads had been plowed and the department of sanitation anticipated that all roads would be plowed by the end of the day.

"It looks like we dodged a bullet, but keep in mind winter is not over," said Bloomberg.

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Obama pays tribute to Leon Panetta at the Pentagon chief’s farewell ceremony

President Obama paid tribute Friday to outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, hailing him for presiding over victories against terrorists and the expansion of opportunity in the U.S. armed forces.

In a speech at Fort Myer, Va., for the “Armed Forces Farewell Tribute” to Panetta, the president called the Pentagon chief “a man who hasn’t simply lived up to the American dream but has helped to protect it for all of us.”

He told Panetta, who served as CIA director before taking the helm at the Pentagon, “Your leadership of the CIA will forever be remembered for the b lows that we struck against al-Qaeda” and for “delivering justice to Osama bin Laden.”

Obama added: “Because we believe in opportunity for all Americans, the tenure of Secretary Panetta” as defense chief “will be remembered for historic progress in welcoming more of our fellow citizens to military service.” He referred to the 2011 repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that barred openly gay people from serving in the military, and to the lifting last month of a ban on women in combat positions.

Obama spoke after a ceremony featuring military bands and honor guards, including the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps clad in red coats and tricornered hats.

“I’ve witnessed a new generation of Americans ask themselves what they could do for their country,” Panetta said after being introduced by Obama.

“We’ve kept pressure on al-Qaeda, and we’re going after extremists wherever they may hide,” he said. “We have shown the world — we have shown the world — that nobody attacks the United States of America and gets away with it.”

Panetta formally announced his retirement early last month, and Obama nominated Chuck Hagel, a Republican former senator from Nebraska, to replace him. Hagel’s nomination has run into stiff opposition from Senate Republicans, who accused him of being insufficiently supportive of Israel and soft on Iran during an eight-hour confirmation hearing last week.

“It’s pretty obvious that the political knives were out for Chuck Hagel,” Panetta said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In one of his final acts as defense secretary, Panetta testified Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee about attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans in September. Responding to questions, he and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they favored supplying weapons to Syrian rebels, a position that put them at odds with the White House.

Panetta also warned that the United States risks becoming a “second-rate power” if automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester” take effect as currently scheduled March 1 in the absence of a deficit-reduction deal to avert them, the Associated Press reported.

If that happens, he said, the U.S. military would face its worst readiness crisis in more than a decade. A forced budget cut of $42.7 billion from March through September, on top of $487 billion in defense reductions already mandated over the next 10 years, would leave the armed forces “hollow,” Panetta said.

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Tennis: Nadal advances to semi-finals in comeback event

VINA DEL MAR, Chile: Rafael Nadal, playing his first event after a seven-month injury layoff, advanced to the semi-finals of the $410,200 Vina del Mar ATP claycourt tournament with a straight-sets triumph on Friday.

The 11-time Grand Slam champion from Spain ousted seventh-seeded countryman Daniel Gimeno-Traver 6-1, 6-4.

Top seed Nadal will face either French third seed Jeremy Chardy or Italian sixth seed Paolo Lorenzi for a spot in the final.

Until this week, Nadal had not played since a shock second-round exit from Wimbledon in June.

A torn tendon and inflammation in his left knee kept the former world number one out of the London Olympics and the 2012 US Open and a virus delayed his return.

Nadal broke Gimeno-Traver's first service game of the match for a 2-0 lead and again in the sixth game before holding to claim the first set after 33 minutes.

In the second set, Nadal broke in the ninth game and then fought off four break points, the only ones he faced in the match, before holding serve in the final game to advance after 84 minutes.

For the match, Nadal connected on 68 percent of his first serves, winning 29-of-44 points on his first serve and 14-of-20 on his second serve.

Nadal, who turns 27 in June, plans to compete in claycourt events at Brazil and Mexico before playing ATP Masters hardcourt events at Indian Wells and Miami and then heading to Europe for clay events in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Rome ahead of the French Open, where Nadal has claimed the crown a record seven times.

- AFP/de

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'Friends' among 100s on ex-President's 'pleasure trips'

MUMBAI: On each of her well-documented tours, former President Pratibha Patil travelled with close to 100 people, which included, besides officials, members of her family as well as friends who joined in as 'Presidential guests'.

Patil found herself in an embarrassing situation when it was discovered that the government had stopped footing a bill of Rs 225 crore for her jaunts as the country's head.

Now, an RTI response throws light on how she ended up burdening the exchequer with such a mind-boggling travel tab. With her she took not just family but also friends for good company.

Picture this: Between September 30 and October 7, 2011, up to 100 Indians travelled with Patil to Switzerland and Austria. Besides officials, her entourage included her husband, daughter and son-in-law, grandchildren, and one Santosh Rathore, who traveled as the President's guest.

Again, just a few months ago, when she visited a few east Asian countries, Presidential guests Rahul Patil, Omsingh Shekhawat and Prithviraj Solanki joined in for a week.

Most such trips lasted 7-10 days and usually comprised 100 people. "This is a gross misuse of tax-payers' hard-earned money by none other than head of the nation," said RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal.

"The President's secretariat, after CIC directions, has now reluctantly provided complete details of the large fleet of accompanying persons with then President of India, Pratibha Patil, on her numerous trips in India and abroad, confirming her taking friends and relations (other than spouse) on these pleasure trips made in the name of official trips."

She made 23 trips to foreign lands during her five-year tenure starting July 2007. Even on her domestic trips, lasting 2-3 days, she rarely travelled alone.

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From Our Vault: Busy Postman on Break, 1951

The United States Post Office announced this week that it intends to stop Saturday letter delivery beginning in August, 32 years after Congress mandated a sixth day of mail service.

First class mail volume has been dropping by about five billion pieces annually since 2007. And the USPS operated almost $16 billion dollars in the red in 2012.

In the 1950s, when this photo was taken, the federal agency was more flush with money. Five hundred thousand employees carried 54 billion items when National Geographic magazine published the article "Everyone's Servant, the Post Office" in July of 1954. Mail volume had doubled since the previous decade, and was growing at a rate of about seven percent a year.

This photo from 1951 didn't make it into that article, landing instead in the National Geographic image archive. Working during the postal boom years, this mailman delivering to houses in Hays, Kansas, likely didn't have time to notice the slight.

National Geographic photographer John E. Fletcher explained the mailman's decision to lunch in a mailbox in a note on the back of the photo.

"He told me that a new regulation from the Washington headquarters of the U.S. Post Office required that postmen while on delivery at noontime must stop and have their lunch at the spot, rather than taking time off to go home and eat," Fletcher wrote.

"This mailman told me that each day his wife would drive to this particular corner and meet him and hand him his lunch box," he continued. "The most convenient spot that he could find to eat his lunch was to open a storage mail box, get himself comfortably seated, and eat his lunch right on the street corner."

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of pieces that looks at the news through the lens of the National Geographic photo archives.

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'Stay Home': Northeast Shuts Down as Blizzard Hits

A blizzard of possibly historic proportions is set to strike the Northeast, starting today and could bring more than two feet of snow and strong winds that could shut down densely populated cities such as Boston and New York City.

A storm from the west will join forces with one from the south to form a nor'easter that will sit and spin just off the East Coast, affecting more than 43 million Americans. Wind gusts will reach 50 to 60 mph from Philadelphia to Boston.

"[It] could definitely be a historic winter storm for the Northeast," Adrienne Leptich of the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y., said. "We're looking at very strong wind and heavy snow and we're also looking for some coastal flooding."

The snow began falling in New York City shortly before 7 a.m. ET. The snow is expected to mix with some sleet and then turn back into snow after 3 p.m.

Airlines have started shutting down operations between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. at major airports in the New York area as well as in Boston, Portland, Maine, Providence, and other Northeastern airports. More than 4,000 flights have been cancelled on Friday and Saturday, according to FlightAware. Airlines hope to resume flights by Saturday afternoon.

New York City is expecting up to 14 inches, which is expected to start this morning with the heaviest amounts falling at night and into Saturday. Wind gusts of 55 mph are expected in New York City and Cape Cod, Mass., could possibly see 75 mph gusts.

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Boston, Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn., and other New England cities canceled school today. Boston and other parts of New England could see more than 2 feet of snow by Saturday.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency Friday afternoon and announced a ban on all traffic from roads after 4 p.m. It is believed that the last time the state enacted such a ban was during the blizzard of 1978.

Beach erosion and coastal flooding is possible from New Jersey to Long Island, N.Y., and into New England coastal areas. Some waves off the coast could reach more than 20 feet.

"Stay off the streets of our city. Basically, stay home," Boston Mayor Tom Menino warned Thursday.

Blizzard warnings were posted for parts of New Jersey and New York's Long Island, as well as portions of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, including Hartford, New Haven, Conn., and Providence. The warnings extended into New Hampshire and Maine.

To the south, Philadelphia was looking at a possible 4 to 6 inches of snow.

Thousands of flights have already been canceled in anticipation of the storm. Amtrak said its Northeast trains will stop running this afternoon.

Bruce Sullivan of the National Weather Service says travel conditions will deteriorate fairly rapidly Friday night.

"The real concern here is there's going to be a lot of strong winds with this system and it's going to cause considerable blowing and drifting of snow," he said.

Parts of New York, still reeling from October's Superstorm Sandy, are still using tents and are worried how they will deal with the nor'easter.

"Hopefully, we can supply them with enough hot food to get them through before the storm starts," Staten Island hub coordinator Donna Graziano said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said plows and 250,000 tons of salt were being put on standby.

"We hope forecasts are exaggerating the amount of snow, but you never can tell," Bloomberg said Thursday.

Residents of the Northeast have already begun to hit stores for groceries and tools to fight the mounting snow totals.

The fire department was called in to a grocery store in Salem, Mass., because there were too many people in the store Thursday afternoon trying to load up their carts with essential items.

"I'm going to try this roof melt stuff for the first time," Ian Watson of Belmont, Mass., said. "Just to prevent the ice dam. ... It's going be ugly on that roof."

ABC News' Max Golembo and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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North Korea nuclear test could "tie hands" of South: Ban Ki-moon

UNITED NATIONS: UN leader Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday that a nuclear test by North Korea could blow up hopes of an eventual reconciliation by "tying the hands" of the South's incoming president.

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, said incoming South Korean president Park Geun-Hye is "very much committed" to improving relations with North Korea.

"If they conduct this nuclear test, it may be the case that they are effectively tying the hands of the new president of Korea," Ban told a small group of reporters, including AFP.

"It may take a long time before any initiative between North and South can take place to normalise this relationship," he said, adding to international warnings to the isolated North.

Park will take over on February 25 from President Lee Myung-Bak, who warned on Thursday of "serious consequences" if Pyongyang stages the test.

The two sides have been divided since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war, and the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship and a subsequent missile attack further escalated the rivalry.

A third test of an atomic weapon would be going in "the wrong direction" said Ban, highlighting UN resolutions that imposed tough sanctions after blasts in 2006 and 2009.

The UN Security Council has already threatened "significant" measures if North Korea stages a new breach of the resolutions. Ban said he has been discussing the North's moves "with key countries."

Ban said the Stalinist government should do more to help its people. "The humanitarian situation is dire in DPRK," Ban said, using the acronym of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

He said nations had not given money to UN humanitarian efforts in North Korea "because of this crisis and the very tense situation on the Korean peninsula."

Ban said he had been forced to use money from the UN's emergency fund to support relief efforts in North Korea, where there is again widespread hunger.

- AFP/de

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Suryanelli sex scandal: 17-year-old Kerala rape haunts Congress

KOTTAYAM: A day after an AICC spokesperson said the Congress high command will look into the allegations against Rajya Sabha deputy chairman P J Kurien in the Suryanelli sex scandal , the victim's mother sent a letter to Sonia Gandhi, seeking her intervention for an impartial probe.

In a letter faxed to the Congress president on Thursday, the victim's mother narrated the trauma her daughter and the family underwent over the years and how their demand for a probe into Kurien's involvement was not heeded . She said the Congress leadership's decision to support Kurien was disheartening and made it clear that during the early stages of the probe, her daughter had told investigators that Kurien was one of the accused. But they paid no heed.

A complaint lodged with then CM A K Antony also went unheeded. "This is heart-breaking . We think, madam, you being the mother of a daughter of similar age as my beloved younger one, will understand the sufferings of a mother. I cannot understand how you will be able to preserve the dignity and self-respect of women of this country by keeping such people in the leadership of the Congress," she said. She wrote she believed Kurien had exerted undue influence over investigating officials to escape punishment.

She said most investigating officers advised the family to spare Kurien. "But my child still stands by her word." She also said that her two daughters - the elder aged 36 and the victim, 33 -- remain unmarried. "We are ostracized and subjected to humiliation." She argues: "I wonder how can Kurien chair the discussion when the Ordinance for emancipation of womanhood promulgated on the prevention of sexual atrocities against women comes up in the Upper House? Such a situation will amount to tarnishing the image of your party, which has a glorious past in protecting the weaker sex. I humbly urge you to intervene."

Protests rock Kerala house

The Suryanelli gang-rape case continued to rock the assembly for the third day on Thursday, even as the government announced a judicial probe into allegations that two women MLAs were assaulted by the police on Wednesday. The announcement came after the opposition raised the matter in the House. The probe would look into whether the police had misbehaved with MLA Geetha Gopi or roughed up E S Bijimol, during their protest over the government's reluctance in acting against P J Kurien. Earlier, opposition MLAs C Divakaran, K K Lathika, Mathew T Thomas and A A Azeez moved an adjournment motion on the alleged police assault.CM Oommen Chandy termed Wednesday's protest unfortunate as it was against the convention that no protest marches would be held in front of the assembly. Expressing willingness to initiate the judicial probe, Chandy invited the opposition to jointly examine with the treasury benches the electronic proof of the incidents. He added that the police officers at the scene had not misbehaved with the MLAs. Rejecting the CM's arguments, the opposition demanded suspension of the police officers concerned before ordering an inquiry. "When the government itself feels that none of the police officers have done wrong, there is no point in having a judicial inquiry," Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, deputy leader of the opposition said.

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Asteroid to Make Closest Flyby in History

Talk about too close for comfort. In a rare cosmic encounter, an asteroid will barnstorm Earth next week, missing our planet by a mere 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers).

Designated 2012 DA14, the space rock is approximately 150 feet (45 meters) across, and astronomers are certain it will zip harmlessly past our planet on February 15—but not before making history. It will pass within the orbits of many communications satellites, making it the closest flyby on record. (Read about one of the largest asteroids to fly by Earth.)

"This is indeed a remarkably close approach for an asteroid this size," said Paul Chodas, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Earth Object (NEO) program office in Pasadena, California.

"We estimate that an asteroid of this size passes this close to the Earth only once every few decades."

The giant rock—half a football field wide—was first spotted by observers at the La Sagra Observatory in southern Spain a year ago, soon after it had just finished making a much more distant pass of the Earth at 2.6 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) away.

This time around however, on February15 at 2:24 pm EST, the asteroid will be passing uncomfortably close—ten times closer than the orbit of the moon—flying over the eastern Indian Ocean near Sumatra (map). (Watch: "Moon 101.")

Future Impact?

Chodas and his team have been keeping a close eye on the cosmic intruder, and orbital calculations of its trajectory show that there is no chance for impact.

But the researchers have not yet ruled out future chances of a collision. This is because asteroids of this size are too faint to be detected until they come quite close to the Earth, said Chodas.

"There is still a tiny chance that it might hit us on some future passage by the Earth; for example there is [a] 1-in-200,000 chance that it could hit us in the year 2080," he said.

"But even that tiny chance will probably go away within the week, as the asteroid's orbit gets tracked with greater and greater accuracy and we can eliminate that possibility."

Earth collision with an object of this size is expected to occur every 1,200 years on average, said Donald Yeomans, NEO program manager, at a NASA news conference this week.

DA14 has been getting closer and closer to Earth for quite a while—but this is the asteroid's closest approach in the past hundred years. And it probably won't get this close again for at least another century, added Yeomans.

While no Earth impact is possible next week, DA14 will pass 5,000 miles inside the ring of orbiting geosynchronous weather and communications satellites; so all eyes are watching the space rock's exact trajectory. (Learn about the history of satellites.)

"It's highly unlikely they will be threatened, but NASA is working with satellite providers, making them aware of the asteroid's pass," said Yeomans.

Packing a Punch

Experts say an impact from an object this size would have the explosive power of a few megatons of TNT, causing localized destruction—similar to what occurred in Siberia in 1908.

In what's known as the "Tunguska event," an asteroid is thought to have created an airburst explosion which flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of a remote forested region in what is now northern Russia (map).

In comparison, an impact from an asteroid with a diameter of about half a mile (one kilometer) could temporarily change global climate and kill millions of people if it hit a populated area.

Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that while small objects like DA14 could hit Earth once a millennia or so, the largest and most destructive impacts have already been catalogued.

"Objects of the size that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs have all been discovered," said Spahr. (Learn about what really happened to the dinosaurs.)

A survey of nearly 9,500 near-Earth objects half a mile (one kilometer) in diameter is nearly complete. Asteroid hunters expect to complete nearly half of a survey of asteroids several hundred feet in diameter in the coming years.

"With the existing assets we have, discovering asteroids rapidly and routinely, I continue to expect the world to be safe from impacts in the future," added Spahr.

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Alleged Cop-Killer Has Calif. Region on Edge

The truck owned and driven by suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner during his alleged rampage through the Los Angeles area was found deserted and in flames on the side of Bear Mountain, Calif., this afternoon.

Heavily armed SWAT team members descended onto Bear Mountain from a helicopter manned with snipers today to investigate the fire. The San Bernadino Sheriff's Department confirmed the car was Dorner's.

Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, is believed to have killed one police officer and injured two others early this morning in Riverside, Calif. He is also accused of killing two civilians on Sunday after releasing a scathing "manifesto" alleging grievances committed by the police department while he worked for it and warning of coming violence toward cops.

Heavily armed officers spent much of Thursday searching for signs of Dorner, investigating multiple false leads into his whereabouts and broadcasting his license plate and vehicle description across the California Highway System.

Around 3:45 p.m. ET, police responded to Bear Mountain, where two fires were reported, and set up a staging area in the parking lot of a ski resort. They did not immediately investigate the fires, but sent a small team of heavily armed officers up in the helicopter to descend down the mountain toward the fire.

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The officers, carrying machine guns and searching the mountain for any sign of Dorner, eventually made it to the vehicle and identified it as belonging to Dorner. They have not yet found Dorner.

Late this afternoon, CNN announced that Dorner had sent a package containing his manifesto and a DVD to its offices.

Police officers across Southern California were on the defensive today, scaling back their public exposure, no longer responding to "barking-dog calls" and donning tactical gear outdoors.

Police departments have stationed officers in tactical gear outside police departments, stopped answering low-level calls and pulled motorcycle patrols off the road in order to protect officers who might be targets of Dorner's alleged rampage.

"We've made certain modifications of our deployments, our deviations today, and I want to leave it at that, and also to our responses," said Chief Sergio Diaz of the police department in Riverside, Calif., where the officers were shot. "We are concentrating on calls for service that are of a high priority, threats to public safety, we're not going to go on barking dog calls today."

Sgt. Rudy Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department said Dorner is "believed to be armed and extremely dangerous."

Early Thursday morning, before they believe he shot at any police officers, Dorner allegedly went to a yacht club near San Diego, where police say he attempted to steal a boat and flee to Mexico.

He aborted the attempted theft when the boat's propeller became entangled in a rope, law enforcement officials said. It was then that he is believed to have headed to Riverside, where he allegedly shot two police officers.

"He pointed a handgun at the victim [at the yacht club] and demanded the boat," said Lt. David Rohowits of the San Diego Police Department.

Police say the rifle marksman shot at four officers in two incidents overnight, hitting three of them: one in Corona, Calif., and the two in Riverside, Calif.

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