Storm promises messy, dangerous commute in Midwest

Snowstorm promising messy Upper Midwest commute after shuttering Mo. airports, blanketing Kan.

Associated Press -

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- A major snowstorm that shuttered airports in Missouri, stranded truckers in Illinois and buried parts of Kansas in knee-deep powder was promising a messy and possibly dangerous commute Friday morning as it crawled northeast.

Wind gusts of 30 mph were expected to churn-up snow that fell overnight in southern Wisconsin, where forecasters were warning Milwaukee-area residents of slick roads and reduced visibility. The same was expected in northeast Iowa, where residents could wake up to as much as 7 inches of new snow, while nearly 200 snowplows were deployed overnight in Chicago.

At a Travel Centers of America truck stop in the central Illinois city of Effingham, all of the 137 parking spaces were filled by truckers unwilling to drive through the storm overnight.

"When it gets really bad, they like to camp out," cashier Tia Schneider said Thursday night, noting that some drivers called ahead. "They can make reservations from 500 miles away to make sure a space is available."

The storm system swirled to the north and east late Thursday, its snow, sleet and freezing rain prompting winter storm across the region — and leaving some impressive snow accumulations.

Northern Oklahoma got more than 13 inches of snow, while up to 10 inches fell in the Kansas City, Mo., area. In Kansas, 17 inches of snow fell in Hays and several other cities got nearly that amount. Farther east in Topeka, 3 inches of snow fell in only 30 minutes, leaving medical center workerJennifer Carlock dreading her drive home from work.

"It came on fast," Carlock said as she shoveled around her car late Thursday. "We're going to test out traction control on the way home."

Numerous accidents and two deaths were being blamed on the icy, slushy roadways.

State legislatures shut down in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska and Iowa. Most schools were closed in Kansas and Missouri, and many in neighboring states.

That included the University of Missouri, where classes were canceled for one of the few times in its 174-year history. At a nearby WalMart, students made a beeline for the aisles containing sleds and alcohol.

"This isn't our usual Thursday noon routine," Lauren Ottenger, a senior economics major from Denver, said as she stockpiled supplies.

All flights at Kansas City International Airport were canceled for Thursday night, and officials said they'd prepare to reopen Friday morning. On the other side of the state in St. Louis, more than 320 flights at Lambert Airport were canceled.

Transportation officials in the affected states urged people to stay home.

"If you don't have to get out, just really, please, don't do it," Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said. Interstate 70 through Kansas was snow-packed, and a 200-mile stretch between Salina and Colby was closed. The Kansas National Guard had 12 teams patrolling three state highways in Humvees to rescue motorists stranded by the storm.

For those who needed to drive, it's wasn't a fun commute.

Richard Monroe, a technology manager and marketing representative for the Missouri State University bookstore, said he arrived with eight of his colleagues in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday for a conference. He said a shuttle bus taking them on what should have been a five-minute trip got stuck in the snow, then ran into a truck. The vehicle was incapacitated for nearly two hours.

"We saw today that Kansas City is just shut down. I've never seen a big city like this where nothing is moving," the 27-year-old said.

Others people came down with cabin fever, including Jennifer McCoy of Wichita, Kan. She loaded her nine children — ages 6 months to 16 years — into a van for lunch at Applebee's.

"I was going crazy, they were so whiny," McCoy said.

Heavy, blowing snow caused scores of businesses in Iowa and Nebraska to close early, including two malls in Omaha, Neb. Mardi Miller, manager of Dillard's department store in Oakview Mall, said most employees were gone by 4 p.m., with "only two customers are in the entire store."

The storm brought some relief to a region that has been dealing with its worst drought in decades.

Vance Ehmke, a wheat farmer near Healy, Kan., said the nearly foot of snow was "what we have been praying for." Climatologists say 12 inches of snow is equivalent to about 1 inch of rain, depending on the density of the snow.

Near Edwardsville in Illinois, farmer Mike Campbell called the precipitation a blessing after a bone-dry growing season in 2012. He hopes it is a good omen for the spring, noting that last year, "the corn was just a disaster."

Areas in the Texas Panhandle also had up to 8 inches of snow, and in south central Nebraska, Grand Island reported 10 inches of snow. Arkansas saw a mix of precipitation — a combination of hail, sleet and freezing rain in some place, 6 inches of snow in others.

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Reshaped papacy raises questions for church future

Pope Benedict XVI has reshaped the papacy simply by giving it up. But how?

As the first pontiff in six centuries to step down, Benedict has carved a new path for his successors who decide they cannot rule for life. But scholars say the repercussions could reach beyond just changing how pontiffs leave to ultimately shape perceptions about the authority and significance of the pontificate.

"A lot of what it will mean has to do with what subsequent popes do. Does this become a precedent for future popes to follow or not?" said Phillip Thompson, executive director of the Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University.

Benedict's pontificate will end at 8 p.m. Thursday. He plans no role in the conclave that will choose the next pontiff, and will retreat to a life of prayer in a monastery behind Vatican walls. His decision shocked the church. But papal resignations are expected to become more likely over time because of extended lifespans and the growing demands of the pontificate, Thompson said.

Travel is now a major responsibility due largely to the globe-trotting example of Pope John Paul II. Shepherding the 1.1 billion faithful requires constant contact through the Internet. These days,Catholics far from the Holy See can watch the weekly general audience, ask the pope questions on Twitter and pray in real time along with pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. As a result, staying on until death can mean a very public decline. John Paul, suffering from Parkinson's disease and other health troubles, could no longer walk or talk when he died in 2005 at age 84.

The pope is regarded as a teacher, an international diplomat and an administrator, but he is also the vicar of Christ — a leader with a divine mission. Benedict's retirement raised fears that the pontificate could be viewed as less holy. Some questions have even focused on the much misunderstood Catholic teaching on papal infallibility: With two popes, one emeritus and one in power, who will have the final say? In fact, infallibility applies to the office, not the person, and only when a pope invokes apostolic authority to define doctrine or morals for the entire church.

Yet, many Catholic scholars say the act has in some ways demystified the papacy, especially given the intense focus in the final days of Benedict's pontificate to the 2012 scandal over leaked Vatican documents and what role the crisis had played in his decision to leave. Joseph Bottum, writing in The Weekly Standard, a conservative U.S. publication, called Benedict "a terrible executive of the Vatican."

"There's the relationship part — he's your father — and your father is always your father. Then there's the functional part — whether he's up to the job," said Chicago Cardinal Francis George in a phone interview. "The functional concerns, those have come to the fore now. We'll see what, if any, impact that has as we go forward."

Even with Benedict's resignation, new popes are unlikely to emerge from a conclave thinking, "I'll go in for 10 years or so then give it up," said Francesco Cesareo, a specialist in church history and president of Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. The significance of the office, its history and spiritual duties, will always make any decision to leave difficult.

At the Feb. 11 Vatican event when Benedict made his dramatic announcement, the 85-year-old leader said he had examined his conscience before God and decided his strength, due to old age, had "deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."

"I'm sure Benedict agonized and prayed over this for a long time asking what would this mean for the church," Cesareo said. "Benedict must have been thinking, 'What will people think that I'm leaving? Will I be seen as abandoning the flock?' He decided, 'I'm willing to sacrifice this position, for the good of the institution.'"

John Paul did not step down in part out of concern that some Catholics would follow him and cause a schism. His decision was seen as a brave witness to human suffering. But his weakened condition also fueled fears that the church was effectively leaderless.

"If a pope is disabled, different people will be vying for power or trying to take over," Thompson said. "Or nobody takes over and therefore it just drifts. People don't feel it's their place to make decisions for the pontiff. You don't want the church just to drift."

Many Catholics have argued that Benedict's decision has only underscored the importance of the pontificate. He put the spotlight where it belongs, on the church, not on the man, and sent a message that the job is so important it cannot be carried out in a weakened state, they argue. Thompson compared the impact to when George Washington gave up the presidency after two terms, setting a precedent for future presidents.

According to Stephen White, a Catholic studies fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think-tank, Benedict has powerfully demonstrated that the pope's primary role is one of service.

"The papacy, in other words, was not given him for his sake, but for the sake of the church's mission," White wrote on The Huffington Post.

A week after Benedict's announcement, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan said he was only just starting to grasp the significance of the pope leaving. Still, Dolan dismissed worries that pontiffs would now be newly vulnerable to pressure to step down, either from a disgruntled public or factions within the church armed with opinion polls or questions about a pope's health.

Dolan argued modern-day popes in many ways have been facing that challenge for years. And moving ahead, he argued they would have two strong models of how to approach the papacy: John Paul's decision to stay until the end and Benedict's choice to leave.

"I think we need to say this is extraordinary. This is exceptional. This is a once in a three- or four-century phenomenon," Dolan said, discussing the abdication on his radio show on SiriusXM's "The Catholic Channel." ''It's not going to become something that every pope feels obliged to do."

There's An Even Worse Scandal Hidden In Obama's Secret Drone Memo

The Obama administration's classified legal memos justifying targeted killings contain potentially shady protocols with foreign governments and “case-specific” details of strikes , two sources aware of their contents told Krisitn Roberts and Michael Hirsch of the National Journal .

The accords with foreign governments — which include Pakistan and Yemen — are a key element excluded from the Department of Justice (DoJ) “white paper.”

A legal expert outside the government "who is intimately familiar with the contents of the memos" told the Journal that targeted-killing memos written by the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) are being withheld to protect this information.

The Senate and House intelligence committees have only been allowed to examine four of the nine OLC memos.

The expert told the Journal that the administration believes Congress would leak the information to the public, which could be extremely embarrassing to the U.S. and its foreign partners given the unpopularity of the drone program and any legal or ethical liberties taken in the agreements .

The DoJ white paper summarized the legal reasoning behind targeting U.S. citizens abroad if they are believed to be senior leaders of al-Qaeda or "an associated force," even if there is no evidence of an imminent plot against the U.S.

A former State Department legal counsel told the Journal that even if the memos contain secret protocols, there’s no reason why that information couldn’t be “redacted” and the rest of the memos released.

The legal expert noted that it's unclear how many secret government-to-government protocols exist, but leaders of Algeria and Mali may have signed agreements.

Mahony Tweets, But Not About Deposition

ABC News - Mahony Tweets, But Not About Deposition (ABC News)

Cardinal Roger Mahony is clearly excited about his trip to Rome.

On the eve of the cardinal's sworn deposition in a lawsuit over a priest accused of molesting 26 boys in his archdiocese in 1987, Mahony sent this, his 13th tweet, to his 979 followers:

"@CardinalMahony Just a few short hours before my departure for Rome. Will be tweeting often from Rome, except during the actual Conclave itself. Prayers!"

The cardinal doesn't mention that before he boards the plane he'll have to give a four hour deposition in the case of Father Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera, who fled to Mexico shortly after a top Mahony aid warned the cardinal the pedophile priest was likely to be arrested.

RELATED: LA Cardinal Calls Himself 'Scapegoat' in Sex Scandal

Mahony's successor Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez publicly rebuked the cardinal for his mishandling of this and dozens of other cases.

One of Mahony's fellow cardinals told an Italian newspaper "it's disturbing" that Mahony should help choose the new pope. Cardinal Velasio de Paolis politely suggested the LA cardinal recuse himself.

RELATED: Brewing Anger Over Los Angeles Cardinal Mahony Voting for New Pope

But Cardinal Mahony doesn't get into all that in his tweet. Maybe 140 characters isn't enough room.

Mali radicals recruited child soldiers at schools

GAO, Mali (AP) — The radical Islamic fighters showed up at Mohamed Salia's Quranic school, armed with weapons and demanding to address his students.

The leader, named Hamadi, entered one of the classrooms, took a piece of chalk and scrawled his message on the blackboard.

"How to wage holy war," he wrote in Arabic. "How to terrorize the enemy in combat," the lesson plan continued.

Then his mobile phone rang, and he stepped away to answer. Salia urged his students to pose some questions of their own when he returned: Where had he come from and what did he want with a bunch of young people?

Hamadi told the students that people didn't ask questions like that where he was from. Islam knows no nationality, he replied and then left — and did not return before the French-led military operation ousted him and his fighters from power last month.

"I told my students to be careful: that these men may be well-versed in the Quran but their Islamic point of view is not the same as ours," the teacher recalled.

Nearly a month after the al-Qaida-linked militants were driven out of Gao and into the surrounding villages, students are now returning to the city's Quranic schools.

Many classrooms, though, are still half full, as tens of thousands of people fled the fighting and strict Islamic rule the extremists.

However, other pupils left Gao not with their families but with the Islamic fighters when they retreated, say human rights activists and local officials.

The experience of the Gao schools illustrates how the extremists used madrassas in northern Mali to indoctrinate young people and to recruit child soldiers.

The Islamic radicals attacked Gao several times this week, their second assault on the strategic city since they retreated in the face of French and Malian military, and their young recruits appear to be part of the strategy of MUJAO, or Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa.

"MUJAO took many of the students from the Quranic schools because they speak Arabic and are easier to convert and manipulate," Gao Mayor Sadou Diallo told The Associated Press. "Between 200 and 300 children have disappeared with the jihadists."

"The schools were all complicit. They didn't have a choice — if you didn't collaborate with MUJAO you died," Diallo said.

An untold number of children are believed to have been killed in the January fighting in central Mali, he said, and when jihadist strongholds were bombed in Gao during the military intervention last month.

Dozens of child soldiers were believed to be living in a government customs building that was later bombed during the military offensive, residents say. The Islamic fighters took away their wounded before it could be determined how many casualties there were at the site.

The rubble of the building is littered with tiny children's shoes, and notebooks and pieces of wood on which the children copied Quranic verses. The children's writing in pen on notebook paper depicts verses seeking protection from evil.

Imams and directors of the Quranic schools in Gao say it was here that the youths were radicalized, while the existing schools continued their regular curriculum.

Students who were plucked from classrooms in Gao and the surrounding communities came to the customs building to study and prepare for war.

At the Adadatou Alislamiatou madrassa in Gao, pupils are now back in class after the disruptions caused by the fighting and a Feb. 10 attack when the militants re-invaded the city in a show of force before being forced back into the bush by French and Malian forces.

As the afternoon sun bakes the ground outside the classroom hut, 10-year-old Abdoulaye Ousmane leads his classmates in reciting Quranic verses while their teacher attends prayers at the nearby mosque.

Sporting a soccer jersey and flip-flops, Abdoulaye sings out the words as he traces the Arabic script in chalk with his pointer, and an exuberant group of nearly 50 other children loudly sing back to him loudly.

They sit cross-legged on mats on the sand floor of the thatched hut — the girls on one side all wearing headscarves with some carrying Hannah Montana backpacks, too.

As these students return to school after the MUAO occupation, their teachers say many have been traumatized by the gunfire and fighting. Religious instructors are also confronted with how best to guide their students who have been exposed to the extremist ideology of al-Qaida-linked militants.

During the reign of the MUJAO, the Islamic fighters amputated hands of suspected thieves in public squares. Billboards displayed around town ordered women to cover themselves in public.

The Islamic militants capitalized on the city's poverty, offering sign-on bonuses and monthly salaries to those who joined their cause, imams said.

Abdourhamane Maiga, assistant director of the Adadatou Alislamiatou madrassa, recalls one student who dropped out of school after being asked to repeat a grade.

The next time Maiga saw the pupil, he was wielding a firearm with the Islamic fighters at their police headquarters downtown.

"They didn't come here to practice Islam," he says of the extremists. "The prophet never would have accepted a child of 10 years old waging jihad and taking up arms."