Winter weather: Here's what we expect for the next 36 hours

The Winter Storm Warning covering Houston extends to the entire state of Texas. Here's what's expected over the next several hours.

Latest Stories

  • Lindsey Graham claims GOP will try to impeach Kamala Harris

    Senator falsely claims vice president bailed out ‘rioter’ who later ‘broke somebody’s head open’

  • Powerful Japan quake sets off landslide, minor injuries

    Residents in northeastern Japan on Sunday cleaned up clutter and debris in stores and homes after a strong earthquake set off a landslide on a highway, damaged buildings and parts of bullet train lines and caused power blackouts for thousands of people. The 7.3 magnitude temblor late Saturday shook the quake-prone areas of Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures that 10 years ago had been hit by a powerful earthquake that triggered a tsunami and a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant that was hit by the March 2011 disaster, said the water used to cool spent fuel rods near the reactors had spilled because of the shaking.

  • Bangladesh to move more Rohingya Muslims to remote island, despite outcry

    Bangladesh is moving 3,000-4,000 more Rohingya Muslim refugees to a remote Bay of Bengal island over the next two days, two officials said on Sunday, despite concerns about the risk of storms and floods lashing the site. Dhaka has relocated around 7,000 to Bhasan Char island since early December from border camps in neighbouring Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where more than a million refugees live in ramshackle huts perched on razed hillsides. The Rohingya refugees will be moved to Bhasan Char by ships on Monday and Tuesday, Navy Commodore Rashed Sattar said from the island.

  • Strong exports help Japan growth beat forecasts

    Japan's economy grew more than expected in the fourth quarter. That as a rebound in overseas demand helped boost exports and capital spending. The world's third-largest economy expanded by an annualized 12.7% over the October-December period, well ahead of analyst forecasts. Overseas shipments surged by more than 11%, helped by a rapid recovery in China. The overall performance beat the U.S. and euro zone, and economists say it means Japan's GDP has now probably recouped about 90% of its losses from lockdowns earlier in the year. But the coming months could be tougher. Japan lags western nations in rolling out vaccines. A resurgence in infections has forced the government to scrap a travel discount campaign that helped support service spending. Renewed state of emergency measures were rolled out in January, and are set to stay in force until March. Analysts bet that will mean a fresh hit for retailers, and see GDP shrink again in the current quarter.

  • Biden Calls for Gun Control Legislation on Parkland Shooting Anniversary

    President Biden called on Congress to enact sweeping gun control legislation on Sunday, marking three years since the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. A student murdered 17 people during the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Fla., and police officers who responded to the incident were criticized for failing to enter the school to stop the shooting. The incident also spurred passage of a state law that allows teachers to carry firearms in school. “Today, as we mourn with the Parkland community, we mourn for all who have lost loved ones to gun violence,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday. “We will take action to end our epidemic of gun violence and make our schools and communities safer.” Biden added, “Today, I am calling on Congress to enact commonsense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.” Biden in 1994 argued in favor of legislation banning assault weapons that was passed as part of his “crime bill,” the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act. The legislation banned various firearms it classified as “assault weapons,” including semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines, as well as magazines able to hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. However, the ban expired in 2004 in accordance with the legislation’s sunset clause. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris clashed on the issue of gun control during the Democratic primaries. Harris pushed to enact gun control measures via executive order, while Biden urged gaining the support of Congress for such legislation.

  • Yousaf Ali Khan: British-Pakistani activist held in Pakistan over London speech

    Yousaf Ali Khan is held on charges of sedition over remarks made in London alleged to be "anti-state".

  • Indian rescuers find 11 more bodies after glacier flooding

    Rescuers searching muck-filled ravines and valleys for survivors after the sudden collapse of a Himalayan glacier triggered massive flooding in northern India a week ago found 11 more bodies on Sunday, raising the death toll to 49. Krishan Kumar, a spokesperson for the National Disaster Response Force, said 155 people were still missing after a part of a glacier near Nanda Devi mountain broke off on Feb. 7, unleashing a devastating flood in the region in Uttarakhand state. Kumar said five bodies were found in a tunnel of a power project as rescuers cleared the debris and looked for any survivors.

  • Thousands march in Tokyo to protest Myanmar coup, biggest Japan demonstration so far

    Thousands of mostly silent demonstrators paraded through central Tokyo on Sunday in protest against the coup in Myanmar, many carrying photos of detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi in what organisers said was the largest such march in Japan to date. More than 4,000 took part in the protest, organisers said, streaming through the downtown shopping areas of Shibuya and Omotesando with posters saying "Help us save Myanmar" and "Stop Crimes Against Humanity". Tokyo police said they couldn't comment on how many people attended the event.

  • Democrats Flirt with Destroying Another Senate Guardrail

    Senate Democrats considering the destruction of another set of Senate rules might want to heed the words of English lawyer and chancellor Sir Thomas More to his son-in-law centuries ago: Once you have cut down all the trees, where will you hide when the devil comes for you? Then-Senator Harry Reid started this clearcutting of the rules back in 2013. He used the “nuclear option” to lower the vote threshold for confirmation in order to stack the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Senator Mitch McConnell escalated by using the same standard to confirm Supreme Court nominees. As Majority Leader Chuck Schumer toys with the idea of blowing up the legislative filibuster as well, he is potentially poised to first unravel another important — if lesser-known — Senate rule in pursuit of an all-encompassing COVID-relief bill under the terms of “budget reconciliation.” We’re talking about the Byrd Rule (named after the late Senator Robert Byrd), which limits the ability of the majority to stuff extraneous legislative goodies into budget-related proposals and still pass them with a simple-majority vote under that process. Senator Byrd saw the danger of using reconciliation, which limits amendments and debate, to pursue broader, non-budgetary legislation outside regular order. As a defender of the right of all senators to debate and amend legislation, he fastened these restrictions onto the reconciliation process. This is for the greater good: the Byrd Rule protects Social Security from the reconciliation process, for instance, while limiting committees to proposals in their jurisdiction and requiring that the budget relevance of any proposal considered under this process be more than “merely incidental.” What this means is that major legislative policy changes can be made only when all senators have the right to fully debate and amend legislation — and to filibuster. Reconciliation otherwise “streamlines” this process at the expense of the minority. Today, fueled by rage and revenge, the leaders of the Senate care nothing for the reasons behind the rules; they want only to pass their legislation as quickly as possible. Most of the attention these past weeks has gone to the $15 minimum wage contained inside the COVID-relief package. This hardly meets the reconciliation standard on its own, but there will be other violations of the Byrd Rule in the bill the House will send to the Senate. That’s why Senate Democrats could aim to break the glass on Senate rules. As described by parliamentary expert Martin Gold, there are two ways to achieve this. First, there’s the more targeted attack on the Byrd Rule. Say Vice President Harris is in the chair when a senator raises a point of order against, for example, the minimum-wage hike. The Senate parliamentarian advises her that this particular section of the reconciliation bill is out of order. Despite all evidence and precedent that the section is out of order, the VP rules otherwise. Now the section takes only a simple majority to pass. However, if a senator who supports the Byrd Rule challenges the ruling of the chair, it will require a 60-vote majority to overrule Harris. That’s a high bar. So here, the chair’s judgment, which likely would stand, changes the precedent so that any other item in the bill that violates the Byrd Rule can be ruled acceptable under the new standard just established by the vice president. Republicans would have loved this when they were trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, but they respected Senate rules protecting the rights of the minority. This limited, surgical strike on the Byrd Rule would still disrupt the precedent in perpetuity. Meanwhile, there’s a broader attack that could be implemented. In this scenario, the majority leader addresses the chair and says that waiving the Byrd Rule only takes a simple-majority vote. It is clear under the rules and the precedents that this is false. If the chair rules that it takes 60 votes to waive the Byrd Rule, the majority leader then appeals the ruling of the chair, which takes a simple-majority vote to overturn. Bingo — the protections of the Byrd Rule are dead, and now it takes only a simple-majority vote to put any legislative proposal the majority wants into the budget-reconciliation bill, bypassing legitimate debate and amendment. The result of this action would threaten any rule in the Senate. If at any time the majority wants to get rid of any rule, all they would have to do is appeal the ruling of the chair and muster a simple majority — silencing the opposition and forcing their will on the American people. Once upon a time, the U.S. Senate was called the world’s greatest deliberative body. As envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, there were rules that protected the minority and allowed for thorough debate. Sadly, it appears this current Senate majority cares little for the precedents that earned the U.S. Senate that title. But some caution on their part might be well-advised self-interest; tables have been known to turn.

  • 12-year-old shot and killed armed intruder during botched home invasion, police say

    Charges ‘not anticipated’ to be brought against juvenile

  • Takeaways: AP investigation of China COVID-19 disinformation

    As the coronavirus spread last year, former President Donald Trump and leading U.S. conservatives floated the idea that the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab or was created by China as a bioweapon. China pushed back. A nine-month AP investigation, conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, found China launched what may be its first global digital disinformation campaign, using its growing presence on Western social media to seed and spread stories suggesting the U.S. created COVID-19 as a bioweapon.

  • England's hotel quarantine system working smoothly for now: minister

    England's new COVID-19 hotel quarantine system for arrivals from high-risk countries is running smoothly after it was introduced earlier on Monday, the health minister said. Britain has ramped up its border controls to stop new variants of the coronavirus entering the country. Arrivals into England from 33 "red list" countries, including Brazil and South Africa, must now spend 10 days quarantined in a hotel room at a cost of 1,750 pounds.

  • South Charlotte homeowners learn it’s not a ‘kindly grandma’ stealing their mail

    Police and facial recognition software provide more clues after a neighbor confronts the suspect.

  • Six far-right militia members who guarded Trump ally Roger Stone ‘entered US Capitol during riots’

    The six belong to Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia group who were reportedly providing security to Roger Stone on the day of and prior to the Capitol insurrection

  • 14 killed in highway crash in India; 4 critically injured

    A speeding minibus jumped a road divider and crashed into a truck on a highway in southern India early Sunday, killing 14 members of a family, police said. The only survivors in the bus, four children under the age of 12, were critically injured, said police officer Fakirappa, who uses one name. The family was heading to Ajmer on a Muslim pilgrimage in western India, he said.

  • Gulf expat exodus could continue until 2023, S&P says

    The population in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states declined by about 4% last year due to an exodus of expatriates after the coronavirus crisis and lower oil prices, S&P Global Ratings said in a report on Monday. The oil producing region was hit hard last year as COVID-19 restrictions impacted non-oil economic sectors, and lower oil prices and crude output cuts weighed on its main income source. "We expect the proportion of foreigners in the region will continue to decline through 2023 relative to the national population, because of subdued non-oil sector growth and workforce nationalization policies," S&P said.

  • Myanmar rattled by army movements, apparent internet cutoff

    Sightings of armored personnel carriers in Myanmar’s biggest city and an internet shutdown raised political tensions late Sunday, after vast numbers of people around the country flouted orders against demonstrations to protest the military’s seizure of power. Public concern has already been heightened for the past few nights by what many charge is the military’s manipulation of criminals released from prison to carry out nighttime violence and stir up panic. Ambassadors from the United States and Canada and 12 European nations called on Myanmar's security forces to refrain from violence against those “protesting the overthrow of their legitimate government.”

  • BA chief urges Boris Johnson to end 'mixed messaging' over summer holidays

    The boss of Britain’s biggest airline has issued a direct appeal to Boris Johnson to save this summer’s holidays and capitalise on the success of the vaccine rollout. Sean Doyle, chief executive of British Airways (BA), has written to the Prime Minister warning that the uncertainty and ministers’ “mixed messages” over summer holidays are “troubling” not just for the UK’s 500,000 aviation workers but families denied contact with relatives. “Above all the economic arguments, let’s not forget that travel brings people joy – something they have so sorely missed,” wrote Mr Doyle in the letter leaked from the company’s intranet. “After nearly a year of restrictions, during which the British people have made many personal sacrifices, denying them the chance of a summer holiday for a second year running is going to prolong their anguish. “We know that so many people are longing to travel from the sheer fact that bookings jump every time restrictions have been lifted.” Mr Doyle urged the Prime Minister to set out a timetable for restoring travel in his Feb 22 speech on the roadmap out of lockdown, saying the launch of quarantine hotels on Monday marks the point to “start charting a course for people to return safely to flying”. “Caution right now is correct. But with the success of your vaccination programme, the steady reduction in serious cases and good news around the effectiveness of the vaccines on variants, we should be confident to prepare for summer travel,” he said.

  • Israel plans to reopen restaurants in March, restart tourism with Cyprus

    Israel plans to reopen restaurants around March 9 and restart tourism with Cyprus as part of a gradual return to normality thanks to a COVID-19 vaccination campaign, officials said on Sunday. With more than 41% of Israelis having received at least one shot of Pfizer Inc's vaccine, Israel has said it will partially reopen hotels and gyms on Feb. 23 to those fully inoculated or deemed immune after recovering from COVID-19. To gain entry, these beneficiaries would have to present a "Green Pass", displayed on a Health Ministry app linked to their medical files.

  • Scores protest in India against arrest of climate activist

    Scores of people demonstrated in the Indian cities of Bengaluru and Mumbai on Monday after a climate activist was arrested for circulating a document on social media supporting months of massive protests by farmers. Disha Ravi, 22, was arrested in Bengaluru on Saturday. Police said at a news conference on Monday that the document spread misinformation about the farmer protests on the outskirts of New Delhi and “tarnished the image of India.”