Politics
Winter storm kills dozens as cold lingers in central and eastern US
- Winter storm kills at least 38 people across 14 states.
- 550,000 homes, businesses left without electricity.
- Almost 200m Americans to remain winter cold till Feb 1.
At least 38 people across 14 states had died as of Tuesday from a powerful winter storm that left much of the central and eastern US gripped by snow, ice, and below-freezing temperatures, according to local officials and news reports.
The storm started to develop on Friday and dumped snow across a large region over the weekend. The snow snarled road traffic and led to widespread flight cancellations and power outages before subsiding Monday, leaving behind bitter cold that is expected to linger.
By Tuesday, cities were mobilising emergency responders and resources to ensure that residents, particularly homeless people, were safe, even as more than 550,000 homes and businesses across the country lacked electricity.
10 of the storm’s fatal victims were in New York City, where temperatures were the coldest they had been in eight years, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a news conference on Tuesday, when the low hit 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
While the 10 victims were found outside, it was not clear whether they were homeless. Mamdani told reporters Monday that some of the dead “had had interactions with our shelter system in the past. It is still too early to share a broader diagnosis or a cause of death.”
New York City postponed from this week until early February an annual count of its homeless population required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Outreach workers should be focused on bringing New Yorkers inside, not on data collection,” Mamdani said. “Here is the bottom line, New York City: Extreme weather is not a personal failure.”
Around 500 of the more than 4,000 homeless people estimated to live in the city’s streets and subway have been placed in shelters since January 19, Mamdani said.
Outreach workers were checking every two hours on 350 homeless people who are at particular risk due to underlying medical conditions.
In Nashville, Tennessee, a city of about 680,000 where more than 135,000 homes and businesses remain without power, the temperature is expected to drop to 6 degrees Fahrenheit by Wednesday morning with below-zero wind chills.
“Let’s be clear about what this is,” Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell said at a Tuesday press conference. “It is a historic ice storm.”
Nashville officials said about 1,400 homeless people had filled all three of the city’s homeless shelters and two overflow shelters, with police and firefighters working overtime and emergency workers checking the streets.
The Nashville Rescue Mission, a homeless charity that feeds, clothes and offers shelter year-round, typically might have about 400 people a night, but in the cold snap that number has swollen to about 7,000.
“We’re always full, but we never turn anyone away,” an attendant who was not authorised to speak to reporters, so did not give a name told Reuters by telephone.
“When the weather is bad, people come in out of the cold.”
Fatalities
Across the country, storm-related causes of death ranged from hypothermia and exposure to cardiac incidents while clearing snow.
In Bonham, Texas, about 55 miles northeast of Dallas, three young boys died after falling in an ice pond over the weekend, though the exact circumstances were unclear, according to the local fire department.
Several hours away in Austin, Texas, a person died of apparent hypothermia while trying to shelter at an abandoned gas station, authorities said. Other hypothermia deaths were reported from Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Michigan, local media reported.
Almost 200 million Americans remain under some form of winter cold warning at least through February 1.
Forecasters are watching for another possible winter storm to impact the eastern US this weekend, said David Roth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Centre.
Former British government minister Peter Mandelson has resigned as a member of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party after new reports of his ties with disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein, the media reported on Sunday.
Mandelson, who was fired by Starmer as Britain’s ambassador to the United States last year after previous revelations about his connections to Epstein, said he did not wish to cause “further embarrassment” to Labour, the reports said.
“I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and I feel regretful and sorry about this,” Mandelson said in a letter to the Labour Party reported by the BBC and other news organisations, which Reuters was not immediately able to obtain.
Mandelson said he believed allegations about financial payments to him by Epstein, which appeared in British media based on files released by the US Justice Department, were false, and he would investigate them.
“While doing this, I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party, and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party,” the letter said.
Mandelson was key to the Labour Party’s electoral success when Tony Blair was prime minister, starting in the 1990s.
He came under scrutiny last year after US lawmakers released documents, including a letter in which he called Epstein “my best pal”, leading to his dismissal as Britain’s envoy in Washington.
Mandelson also had a turbulent earlier career in domestic politics. In 1998, he quit as trade minister over a loan he received from a fellow minister to buy a house amid questions over a conflict of interest.
A second stint in the cabinet also ended in a resignation in 2001 when he was forced out over his alleged involvement in a passport scandal involving an Indian billionaire. He was later cleared of acting improperly.
Mandelson, a former European Union trade commissioner, is on leave of absence as a member of the upper house of Britain’s national parliament.
Separately, Starmer said on Saturday that Britain’s former Prince Andrew should testify before a US congressional committee, following new revelations about his links to Epstein.
- Liam Conejo Ramos, father escorted back to Minnesota by lawmaker.
- Federal judge had ordered their release from ICE detention in Texas.
- Democrats demand reforms after ICE operations and shootings.
Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father have returned to their home in a Minneapolis suburb after being detained by US immigration officers and held at a detention facility in Texas, a lawmaker said on Sunday.
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, whom immigration officers detained during a Minnesota raid.
US Representative Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, wrote in a social media post that he picked them up on Saturday night at the detention facility and escorted them back to Minnesota on Sunday.
“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack,” Castro said. “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”
A photo that went viral last month shows Liam wearing a blue bunny hat outside his house with federal agents standing nearby.
He was one of four students detained by immigration officials in a Minneapolis suburb, according to the Columbia Heights Public School District.
The Ecuadorean boy and his father, who entered the United States legally as asylum applicants, had been held in a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.
US District Judge Fred Biery wrote in a ruling on Saturday that the case had its genesis in “the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children.”
Biery, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, cited the Constitution’s requirement that an arrest warrant must be based on a judge’s finding of probable cause of a crime.
“The use of ‘administrative warrants’ issued by immigration officials is called the fox guarding the henhouse,” he wrote.
Democrats have called for reforms after large-scale enforcement operations in Minnesota and other states, following two deadly shootings of US citizens in Minneapolis involving ICE agents.
Those demands by Democratic lawmakers include mandatory body cameras, the end to roving patrols and halting the use of face masks.
Funding for the Homeland Security Department has been held up as Republicans and Democrats continue negotiating over a DHS bill.
“We’ll be talking about that in the near future,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Some Republican mayors also see a need for reforms. “We’re generally encouraged that the administration seems to be exploring that pivot,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Mayors are “caught in a little bit of an impossible situation” with federal immigration enforcers’ presence in cities, Holt said, adding events in Minneapolis threaten to erode the trust authorities have built over time with residents in cities.
Holt spoke the day after Trump ordered DHS to refrain from dealing with protesters unless federal property is threatened or local officials request help.
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates on Sunday opened the World Laureates Summit, the world’s largest gathering of Nobel Prize winners, bringing leading scientists and thinkers to Abu Dhabi to discuss some of the most pressing global challenges.
The summit brings together more than 150 Nobel laureates, scientists and policymakers from around the world to exchange ideas on issues ranging from climate change and health to technology, education and sustainable development, highlighting the UAE’s growing role as a hub for global scientific dialogue.
The three-day summit runs alongside the World Governments Summit 2026. It was inaugurated by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
Discussions focus on artificial intelligence, quantum science, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and energy.
Experts say fundamental science is key to shaping global policy and sustainable development.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed said scientists were “essential partners in building the future.” Sheikh Mohammed called science “the true wealth of nations.”
The World Laureates Association also announced a new UAE base. Organisers said it will turn the country into a hub for international research collaboration.
The summit aims to link scientific innovation directly to policy decisions. It highlights the UAE’s growing role as a global platform for knowledge and technology.
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