US storm's toll up to 6 dead; system heads east

A house in the Midtown section of Mobile, Ala. is damaged after a tornado touched down Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012. A Christmas Day twister outbreak left damage across the Deep South while holiday travelers in the nation's much colder midsection battled sometimes treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions. (AP Photo/AL.com, Mike Kittrell) MAGS OUT

The front wall of the parish hall at Trinity Episcopal Church on Dauphin Street in Mobile, Ala. was torn off by a tornado on Christmas Day, Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012 in Mobile, Ala. The tornado hit midtown Mobile causing extensive damage to the church as well as Murphy High School. (AP Photo/AL.com, Bill Starling) MAGS OUT

CINCINNATI (AP) — A powerful winter storm system pounded the nation's midsection Wednesday and headed toward the Northeast, where people braced for the high winds and heavy snow that disrupted holiday travel, knocked out power to thousands of homes and were blamed in at least six deaths.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid off into drifts, and blizzard warnings were issued across Indiana and Ohio amid snowy gusts of 30 mph that blanketed roads and windshields, at times causing whiteout conditions.

"The way I've been describing it is as a low-end blizzard, but that's sort of like saying a small Tyrannosaurus rex," said John Kwiatkowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service inIndianapolis. He said the storm's winds were just high enough to classify the storm as a blizzard, making it one of the strongest snowstorms in years to strike central and southern Indiana.

"It's ugly out," said Elizabeth Brinker, 26, in downtownIndianapolis as she hurried to her car after the law firm where she works sent employees home Wednesday morning.

Some 40 vehicles got bogged down trying to make it up a slick hill in central Indiana, and four state snowplows slid off slick roads near Vincennes as snow fell at the rate of 3 inches within an hour in some spots.

Two passengers in a car on a sleet-slickened Arkansas highway were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision, and two people, including a 76-year-old Milwaukee woman, were killed Tuesday on Oklahoma highways. Deaths from wind-toppled trees were reported in Texas and Louisiana. The system that spawned nearly three dozen tornadoes across Gulf Coast states on Tuesday was headed to New England and the Eastern Seaboard.

National Guardsmen were called out to help cope with the storm in Indiana and Arkansas.

In Arkansas, Humvees transported medical workers and patients in areas with 10 inches of snow.Gov. Mike Beebe sent out National Guard teams after the storm left 192,000 customers without power Wednesday morning. The largest utility, Entergy Arkansas, said some people could be without power for as long as a week because of snapped poles and wires after ice coated power lines ahead of 10 inches of snowfall.

Other states to the east also had widely scattered outages and treacherous roads.

Traffic crawled at 25 mph on Interstate 81 in Maryland, where authorities reported scores of accidents.

"We're going to go down south and get below it (the storm)," said a determined Richard Power, traveling from home in Levittown, N.Y., to Louisville, Ky., in a minivan with his wife, two children and their beagle, Lucky. He said they were well on their way until they hit snow near Harrisburg, Pa., then 15 mph traffic on Interstate 81 at Hagerstown, Md. "We're going to go as far as we can go. .... If it doesn't get better, we're going to just get a hotel."

About two dozen counties in Indiana and Ohio issued snow emergency travel alerts, urging people to go out on the roads only if necessary.

"People need not to travel," said Rachel Trevino, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service bureau in Paducah, Ky. "They need to just go where they're going to be there and stay there."

Jennifer Miller, 58, was taking a bus Wednesday from Cincinnati to visit family in Columbus.

"I wish this had come yesterday and was gone today," she said, struggling with a rolling suitcase and three smaller bags on a slushy sidewalk near the station. "I'm glad I don't have to drive in this."

More than 900 flights were canceled by midday, according to FlightAware.com.

Snow was blamed for scores of vehicle accidents as far east as Maryland. As the storm moved east, New England state highway departments were treating roads and getting ready to mobilize with snowfall forecasts of a foot or more.

"People are picking up salt and a lot of shovels today," said Andy Greenwood, an assistant manager at Aubuchon Hardware in Keene, N.H.

In Manchester, N.H., public works officials said plow trucks were ready, as were a variety of emergency notification systems including blinking strobe lights at major intersections, and email, text and social media alerts.

Early indications were that day-after-Christmas mall traffic was down, too, with people holding off in the storm-affected areas on returning that ugly sweater or other unwanted gifts.

"I can't feel my feet, and the ice is hurting when it hits my face," said Tracy Flint, a Columbus, Ohio, hairstylist who was trudging to work across a shopping center lot where only a handful of cars were parked. "But it could be worse."

Behind the storm, Mississippi's governor declared states of emergency in eight counties with more than 25 people reported injured and 70 homes left damaged.

Cindy Williams, 56, stood near a home in McNeill, Miss., where the front was collapsed into a pile of wood and brick, with a balcony and porch ripped apart. Large Oak trees were uprooted and winds sheared off nearby treetops in a nearby grove. But she was focused on that all the family members from her husband to their grandchildren had escaped harm.

"We are so thankful," she said. "God took care of us."

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Associated Press writers Rick Callahan and Charles Wilson in Indianapolis, Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark.; Jim Van Anglen in Mobile, Ala.; Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss.; Julie Carr Smyth and Mitch Stacy in Columbus, Ohio; Amanda Lee Myers in Cincinnati, David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., and Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.

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Contact Dan Sewell at http://www.twitter.com/dansewell

Iraq: New protests break out in Sunni heartland

Report: Top Syrian general joins opposition

BEIRUT (AP) — The general who heads Syria's military police has defected and joined the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, one of the highest walkouts by a serving security chief during the country's 21-month uprising, a pan Arab TV station has reported.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal appeared in a video aired on Al Arabiya TV late Tuesday saying he is joining "the people's revolution."

Al-Shallal's defection comes as military pressure builds on the regime, with government bases falling to rebel assault near the capital Damascus and elsewhere across the country. On Wednesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government shelling in the northeastern province of Raqqa killed at least 20 people, including women and children.

Dozens of generals have defected since Syria's crisis began in March 2011. In July, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass was the first member of Assad's inner circle to break ranks and join the opposition.

Al-Shallal is one of the most senior and held a top post at the time that he left. He said in the video that the "army has derailed from its basic mission of protecting the people and it has become a gang for killing and destruction." He accused the military of "destroying cities and villages and committing massacres against our innocent people who came out to demand freedom."

Thousands of Syrian soldiers have defected over the past 21 months and many of them are now fighting against government forces. Many have cited attacks on civilians as the reason they switched sides.

The Observatory said the shelling in an agricultural area of Raqqa province near the village of Qahtaniyeh killed 20, including eight children, three women and nine others.

An amateur video showed the bodies of a dozen people including children lying in a row inside a room. Some of them had blood on their clothes, while weeping could be heard in the background.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Also Wednesday, activists said rebels were attacking the Wadi Deif military base in the northern province of Idlib. The base, which is near the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan, has been under siege for weeks.

The Observatory said at least five rebels were killed in the fighting that started after midnight. It added that Syrian army warplanes attacked rebel positions in the areas.

"It is the heaviest fighting in the area in months," said the Observatory, which relies on activists throughout Syria.

In October, rebels captured Maaret al-Numan, a town on on the highway that links the capital Damascus with Aleppo, Syria's largest city and a major battleground in the civil war since July.

The attack on Wadi Deif comes a day after rebels captured the town of Harem near the Turkish border. The rebels have captured wide areas and military posts in northern Syria over the past weeks.

Syria's crisis began with protests demanding reforms but later turned into a civil war. Anti-regime activists estimate more than 40,000 have died in the past 21 months.

In neighboring Lebanon, airport officials in Beirut said Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and Assistant Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnous flew early Wednesday to Moscow.

Their visit to Moscow comes two days after Assad met in Damascus with international envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi. Brahimi, who is scheduled to go to Moscow before the end of the month, said after the talks Monday that the situation was "worrying" and gave no indication of progress toward a negotiated solution for the civil war.

Brahimi is still in Syria and met Tuesday with representatives of the opposition National Coordination Body, state-run news agency SANA said. Head of the group Hassan Abdul-Azim said Brahimi briefed them on the efforts he is exerting to reach an "international consensus, especially between Russia and the United Stated to reach a solution."

Hi Miguel,

High school is too late, and condom dispensers are not going to solve the problem...what Philadelphia is NOT saying is, that it has one of the highest rates of girls becoming pregnant at middle school age, that's ages 13 or younger. Young people need more parental guidance, more authority, and they need to be taught to listen to authority figures. USA has so many single-parent households, or kids being raised by grandparents, or both parents working, there's not enough supervision, not enough respect for authority taught anymore, not enough confidence taught to young women, not enough talk about finishing education for young men or women, not enough fathers in the households, and those babies will most likely also be raised without fathers, raised by single mothers and very young grandmothers.

Quote:

Philadelphia high schools to welcome students back with free condom dispensers

The Daily Caller – 11 hrs ago

The Philadelphia Health Department will install clear plastic dispensers brimming with free condoms at 22 of Philadelphia’spublic high schools over winter break.

The schools chosen for the pilot program have the highest rates of students infected with sexually transmitted diseases in the city, Philly.com reports. All students — even those as young as 14 — will be eligible to score free condoms unless their parents sign a form prohibiting them from participating.

The primary issue city officials hope to address with the pilot program is not teen pregnancy, but the growing prevalence of sexually transmitted disease among adolescents.

Teens currently account for a quarter of new HIV infections and STDs in the City of Brotherly Love.

“I support the policy strongly,” Mayor Michael A. Nutter told Philly.com. “This is a serious public health matter.”

“Many of our teenagers, regardless of what adults think, are engaged in sexual activities,” Nutter added. “Discussion about whether or not they should be sexually active is an appropriate discussion, but if they are, then we need to make sure they’re engaged in safe sexual practices.”

“If a teenager wants to use a condom, they should have access to a condom,” summarized Donald F. Schwarz, the deputy mayor for health and opportunity, according to Philly.com.

Schwarz also noted that he is aware of the possibility that the schools could “have hundreds ofcondoms taken and used inappropriately, for water balloons or something like that.”

The machines will be “supervised,” he promised Philly.com.

Free condom distribution is not a new phenomenon in Philadelphia high schools. A dozen already have “health resource centers” where the condoms are available gratis. The health department also provides contraceptive during voluntary STD screenings at city high schools.

The new condom dispensaries will be positioned “just inside the doorway near the entrance” to nurses’ offices, according to an email that Assistant Superintendent Dennis W. Creedon sent to nurses.

“Opt-out letters are to be maintained by the school office,” Creedon wrote, according to Philly.com “Students are to honor the wishes of their parents. If a student disrespects their guardian’s directive, that is an issue of the home.”

According to Deputy Mayor Schwarz, the city has no plan to advertise the condom dispensers.

“We’re going to allow word of mouth and the Internet and social media to start this off,” he told Philly.com.

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