Arctic-Like Temperatures Could Leave Homes Vulnerable

Extra clothing for workers and extra insulation for homes are some of the ways to cut down on cold weather issues, John Lauritsen reports (1:57). WCCO 4 News At 5 - February 12, 2021

Recommended Stories

  • U.S officials have met Yemen's Houthis as Washington seeks end to war - sources

    Senior U.S. officials have held a first direct meeting with officials from the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that controls Yemen's capital, two sources familiar with the matter said, as the new U.S. administration pushes to end a six-year war. The discussions, which have not been officially made public by either side, took place in the Omani capital Muscat on Feb. 26 between U.S. Yemen envoy Timothy Lenderking and the Houthis' chief negotiator Mohammed Abdusalam, the sources said.

  • Republicans ‘increasingly irritated’ by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s repeated efforts to disrupt work of Congress, report says

    Reps Cheney, Issa, and Kinzinger were among GOP who voted against adjournment

  • A lawyer for an accused Oath Keeper Capitol rioter says the group's 'quick reaction force' of weapon suppliers was actually just one guy

    The Oath Keepers were one of the most prominent far-right militia groups the FBI said was involved in the January 6 Capitol riot.

  • Concerns over China vaccine diplomacy "narrow-minded": political advisory body

    Concerns about China using vaccines to sway other countries are "narrow-minded," a top political advisory body said, apparently dismissing a notion among rival powers that Beijing exploits the fight against COVID-19 to boost its global influence. Guo Weimin, spokesman for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said some suspect China is using COVID-19 vaccines to "expand our geopolitical influence." "This idea is extremely narrow-minded", Guo said at a news conference on Wednesday ahead of the opening of the annual meeting of CPPCC on Thursday.

  • Washington replacing cheerleading team with coed dance team

    Washington will not have cheerleaders for the first time since the NFL’s longest-running cheerleading team was founded in 1962, with a coed dance team taking its place. The move is part of the organization's rebranding effort and not related to a confidential settlement reached with members of the 2008 and 2010 cheerleading teams. Lawyers for the team and those cheerleaders told The Associated Press last month that “the matter has been resolved” but would not say when the settlement was reached.

  • Police and the FBI are on high alert over a 'possible plot to breach the Capitol' as a QAnon conspiracy theory about March 4 being the 'true inauguration day' looms

    Capitol Police said they have made "significant security upgrades" ahead of March 4 to prepare for any demonstrations or violence.

  • Critically-endangered orangutan born at US zoo

    According to a release from the Audubon Nature Institute, the primate team expected first-time mother Reese to deliver between April and May. The zoo said the mother and baby appear to be doing well and the staff is observing the pair and allowing them to bond and learn to nurse.Video released by the institute showed 12-year-old Reese nuzzling and carrying the baby, whose umbilical cord and placenta were still visible.There are fewer than 14,000 orangutans in the wild, making the species "critically endangered", according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

  • A complete timeline of Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn's famously private relationship

    The "Evermore" artist and "The Favourite" actor have kept their love lives out of the spotlight for four years.

  • With Kawhi Leonard out, a surprise star steps up, but can't save Clippers in Boston

    The Clippers fell short against the Celtics 117-112 on Tuesday in Boston, despite Reggie Jackson's 25-point night in the absence of Kawhi Leonard.

  • Tesla will be the most profitable player in electric vehicles for years to come, UBS analysts say

    Tesla's operating profit will be $20 billion in 2025, the analysts estimate, but only half will come from sales of its electric vehicles.

  • Covid: Biden says ‘Neanderthal thinking’ behind lifting of mask rules

    President Biden criticises moves to relax Covid restrictions in the southern state and Mississippi.

  • New killings deepen Afghan journalists' assassination fears

    It was Mursal Wahidi’s dream job, landed right after finishing her studies in journalism — working at a local TV station in her home city in eastern Afghanistan. The coordinated killings of the three women were the latest in a bloody campaign against journalists in Afghanistan, a country that was already considered one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. In just the last six months, 15 journalists and media workers have been killed in a series of targeted killings.

  • FBI Director Shoots Back, Insisting Bureau Shared Intel Ahead of Capitol Insurrection

    Mandel Ngan/Getty FBI Director Christopher Wray, pushing back against the Capitol and D.C. police, insisted on Tuesday that his agents shared intelligence with them “in three ways” ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.Making his first substantial public comments on the FBI’s performance since an attack he called “domestic terrorism,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI had provided a now-infamous “situational information report” from its Norfolk bureau to D.C.-area law enforcement through an email the night before; an undated verbal briefing at a multi-agency command post set up by the bureau’s Washington Field Office; and through a post on a shared law-enforcement information network.Norfolk agents “made the judgment to get the information, in three different ways, to their partners, even though they didn’t know if it would be accurate,” Wray testified. The Norfolk memo from Jan. 5 remains undisclosed, but reportedly compiled a social-media thread involving exhortations that “Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent.”Top Capitol Riot Police Throw Each Other Under the Bus Over Botched Jan. 6 ResponseLast week, the former chiefs of Capitol security and the current chief of the Metropolitan Police Department said the briefings were woefully inadequate. Robert Contee, the head of the D.C. police, said he only saw the email and expressed frustration that the FBI did not provide so much as a phone call. Steven Sund, who resigned as Capitol Police chief after the insurrection, testified that he only learned the police received the FBI report slightly before last week’s hearing.The FBI has also provided unclear and contradictory information about what it knew ahead of Jan. 6. The head of the Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, said two days after the attack that “there was no indication” of a threat to the Capitol before shifting his story the following week and claiming the FBI warned local law enforcement about potentially violent individuals.Wray did not resolve concerns about the robustness of the FBI warning. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), thundered at Wray for not “sound[ing] the alarm in some more visible and ringing way.”But Wray sought to get the FBI out from under the bus as recriminations over the Capitol insurrection coalesce. Wray suggested that the representatives of local law enforcement were responsible for not sufficiently alerting their superiors about the nebulous FBI warning. “Everyone’s supposed to go back and pass it up their chain,” Wray said.Simultaneously, Wray neither emphasized the reliability of the Norfolk warning—setting low expectations for when it emerges in public—nor claimed any of the other FBI’s field offices had generated their own warnings. Yet President Donald Trump and elected Republicans for weeks stoked the lie that President Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the election; Trump called for his supporters to gather for a “wild” march on the Capitol; and for days ahead of the rally, pro-Trump online forums exploded with calls for violence.Wray instead called the Norfolk warning “raw” and lamented the difficulty of determining what social-media-borne threats are more than bluster. He shot back that the FBI had issued generic warnings about domestic extremism before, during, and after the election. And like a senior Justice Department official last week, he suggested he was open to new counterterrorism authorities that civil libertarians have warned against.After praising the investigations the FBI has conducted under existing powers, which have now resulted in over 270 people arrested, Wray said, “certainly you would be hard-pressed to find any FBI director who wouldn’t welcome more tools in the toolbox.” He said there were now around 2,000 open investigations into domestic terrorism.But Wray also provided political and euphemistic answers that pointed to the fault lines of the post-Jan. 6 debate over terrorism committed by white Americans with powerful political champions. He dodged a question over whether a rally called by Trump and for the purpose of overturning the election in his favor featured “Trump supporters.” He said instead that the insurrections included “militia violent extremists” and “in some instances ‘racially motivated violent extremists,’ specifically advocates of the superiority of the white race.” The FBI has come under criticism for using a term that obscures the source of the “racially motivated” violence and falsely suggests there is an equivalent threat of violence targeting whites.Republicans on the committee demonstrated similar false equivalence. The ranking Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), worried aloud about “ever-present left-wing threats,” which the Department of Homeland Security under Trump assessed as marginal compared to white supremacist violence. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who reportedly pressured Georgia election officials to throw out valid ballots, wondered if it would have “been easy for international terrorists” to infiltrate the Capitol mob.Wray provided little information about key questions in the Capitol investigation, including about how Capitol Policeman Brian Sicknick died. But he also said that additional charges, particularly “some of the more advanced charges,” were forthcoming against insurrectionists. “A large and growing number of the people we’ve arrested so far in connection with the 6th are what we’d call militia violent extremism,” Wray told senators and said that there were indications of a “planned and coordinated” assault from some right-wing groups in attendance.On Wednesday, a different Senate panel will hear the first Jan. 6 testimony from officials at the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, as well as from Jill Sanborn, Wray’s counterterrorism chief.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Wall Street ends lower as Apple and Tesla retreat

    Wall Street ended lower on Tuesday, pulled down by Apple and Tesla, while materials stocks climbed as investors waited for the U.S. Congress to approve another stimulus package. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 12.3 billion shares, compared with the 14.9 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

  • Op-Ed: It's official. Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Jamal Khashoggi's murder. Hold him accountable

    President Biden's failure to punish the Saudi crown prince defies justice and weakens the rule of law everywhere.

  • Volvo says it will only sell electric cars by 2030 and you'll have to buy them online

    Volvo follows in the footsteps of a handful of car companies - GM and Ford included - that have pledged to eliminate gas-powered cars.

  • 5,000 National Guard troops remain in DC amid QAnon frenzy that Trump will be inaugurated again this week

    QAnon followers believe that on 4 March, which was once the inauguration date of US presidents, Donald Trump will become president again

  • Meghan accuses Buckingham Palace of 'perpetuating falsehoods'

    Prince Harry's wife Meghan has accused Buckingham Palace of "perpetuating falsehoods" about her and her spouse, saying the royal couple would not be silent in telling their story. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, made the comments to American talk show host Oprah Winfrey in an interview about why they quit their royal roles that is due to be broadcast on U.S. television on Sunday. An advance excerpt of the interview was released on Wednesday, hours after Buckingham Palace said it was "very concerned" about reports in the Times newspaper that assistants working for Meghan two years ago had been bullied by her.

  • Polish court acquits activists who put LGBT rainbow on icon

    A Polish court on Tuesday acquitted three activists who had been accused of desecration and offending religious feelings for producing and distributing images of a revered Roman Catholic icon altered to include the LGBT rainbow. The posters, which they distributed in the city of Plock in 2019, used rainbows as halos in an image of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus.

  • Venezuela to weigh oil law reform to allow 'new models,' Maduro says

    Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday that the National Assembly would consider reforms to oil legislation that he said would allow for "new business models" in the crisis-stricken South American country's crucial oil industry. Maduro did not provide details about what changes might be made by the congress, controlled by allies of his ruling socialist party after a December vote widely boycotted by the opposition. Venezuela's crude output has plunged in recent years due to under-investment and mismanagement, and more recently due to U.S. sanctions aimed at ousting Maduro, labeled a dictator by Washington.