Christmas travel plans socked by weather
SEATTLE, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Severe winter weather made for Christmas travel nightmares across the United States Monday, with canceled flights and closed highways common, officials said.
Portions of the New York State Thruway were closed for a few hours Monday morning from near Rochester, N.Y., to the Pennsylvania state line as dozens of vehicles slid off the icy highway, CNN reported. The National Weather Service said Buffalo, N.Y., received 7.4 inches of snow Sunday and more was forecast for Monday.
Travel was also difficult in Boston, where schools were closed because icy roads made it impossible for buses to operate. Airlines using Newark-Liberty International Airport in New Jersey reported two-hour delays while New York's LaGuardia Airport was logging delays of more than an hour, CNN said.
On the West Coast, stranded airline travelers awoke Monday after camping overnight at airports in Seattle and Portland, Ore., as Alaska, Horizon Air and Southwest airlines canceled many Sunday flight due to blizzard conditions. Amtrak canceled trains on its Coast Starlight and Empire Builder routes.
Portland residents were blanketed with more than 11 inches of snow, the most seen since 1968, CNN said. Officials urged drivers were advised to stay off the roads completely.
Blizzard conditions in western Michigan led to a 30-car crash on Interstate 94 Sunday, officials said. Law enforcement officials blamed the conditions for the death of one man involved in another accident.
Residents in the Great Lakes Region, New York and New England were bracing for another round of heavy snow and gusty winds, the National Weather Service said.
"Some places are going to end up with 1- to 2 feet of additional snow, forecaster Michael Eckert of the National Weather Service in Camp Spring, Md., told CNN. "Temperatures over the upper Great Lakes have fallen below zero, and those cold temperatures are going to move to New England states on Monday. We'll see wind-chill temperatures below zero over much of the northeastern U.S."
Some U.S. combat troops to be reclassified
BAGHDAD, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- The U.S-Iraq agreement calls for the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq cities by June, but officials say many will remain as reclassified personnel.
Military planners acknowledge many will be renamed "trainers" and "advisers" in what officials told The New York Times are essentially combat roles.
"Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back," said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel and one of the authors of the U.S. Army's new counterinsurgency field manual.
The issue could cause difficulties for President-elect Barack Obama, who must meld three deadlines -- the June deadline, the May 2010 date he spoke of during his campaign and the December 2011 deadline in the status-of-forces agreement under which all U.S. troops must pull out of the country, the Times reported Monday.
To try to meet those deadlines without risking Iraq's tenuous stability, military officials said they would reassign combat troops to train and support Iraqis, adding that the troops would be armed and go on combat patrols with their Iraqi counterparts.
"If you're in combat, it doesn't make any difference whether you're an adviser; you're risking your life," said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the research group Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "The bullets don't have 'adviser' stenciled on some and 'combat unit' on another."
Including service and support personnel, roughly 146,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq.
Blagojevich records may stay undisclosed
CHICAGO, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- President-elect Barack Obama's pledged disclosure of staff contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich may exclude e-mails and notes, a transition aide said.
Stephanie Cutter, an Obama spokeswoman, said the transition team was not covered by a public information law Politico cited when requesting copies of staffers' e-mails and notes about Blagojevich's efforts to fill Obama's vacant Senate seat, the Washington publication reported. Blagojevich was arrested for federal corruption violations, including trying to peddle Obama's Senate seat.
Asked whether the records would voluntarily be released, Cutter said: "Let's wait and see what we put out after our internal review. I don't even know if there's any correspondence to be had, so one step at a time."
An exemption in federal disclosure laws allows presidential transition teams to keep their documents out of the public record, Politico said Sunday.
An aide to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who favors government transparency, said the exemption is leading the senator to consider introducing legislation that could force the Obama transition team to preserve records of contacts with Blagojevich regarding the seat.
Representatives from two government watchdog groups -- the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Citizen -- called on Obama to release any records related to Blagojevich and the Senate seat.
Most faulty levees found not repaired
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Less than half of U.S. river levees identified early last year as being poorly maintained have been repaired since then, documents show.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found 122 levees in a February 2007 survey it identified as having "unacceptable" maintenance deficiencies that would make them unreliable in a major flood. But only 45 have had necessary repairs, according to data provided in response to a request from USA Today, the newspaper said Monday.
State and local governments responsible for maintaining the levees were given a year to fix structures cited by the corps, with failure to do so resulting in ineligibility for federal rehabilitation funding if they are damaged by floodwaters. People living behind the faulty levees also could be required to buy flood insurance, the newspaper said.
"It doesn't surprise me that a lot of these levees have not been fixed," Larry Larson of the national Association of State Floodplain Managers, told USA Today, saying some local governments lack money for repairs. Others, he said, "see this as a federal problem … They're saying, 'Well, what's going to happen if we don't fix them?' The levee fails and the federal taxpayer will pay for the damages."
U.S. aid goes if Mugabe stays, envoy says
HARARE, Zimbabwe, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- The United States won't support a Zimbabwean government that includes President Robert Mugabe, a U.S. envoy told reporters.
Jendayi Frazer, U.S. assistant secretary of State for African affairs, said a power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and the opposition is "not credible with Mugabe as president" because he seems unwilling to share control, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The comments, coming days after U.S. President George Bush and other world leaders called on Mugabe to step aside, indicate a shift in U.S. policy toward the power-sharing agreement reached in September, the Post said. In exchange for Mugabe sharing power with Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and others, the United States and other countries pledged to provide aid and ease sanctions against Zimbabwe, already in political and economic upheaval and now in the throes of a cholera outbreak.
Frazer, citing several reported comments made by Mugabe, during a news conference on Sunday called Mugabe "a man who's lost it, who's losing his mind, who's out of touch with reality."
Implementing the agreement has stalled as parties deadlocked on assignment of key ministries, including controlling security forces Mugabe used to intimidate his opposition, especially during this year's election in which Tsvangirai ran. Tsvangirai's party, Movement for Democratic Change, has accused Mugabe's ruling party of wanting to make the MDC a "junior member" in the government and of abducting more than 40 opposition and civil society activists in an effort to quell criticism.
Tsvangirai has threatened to cut off talks Jan. 1 unless those abducted are either released or charged.
