sepia world

An East Coast blizzard that has forced nearly 7,000 flight cancelations will leave many travelers stranded through the end of the week.

Runways reopened Monday evening at several major airports in the Northeast. But canceled flights into and out of Philadelphia, New York and Boston left hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for a way home. The storm and its aftermath could end up costing the airlines $100 million, one analyst predicted.

The challenge for the airlines goes beyond weather. Flights are usually full this time of year, making it difficult to rebook travelers affected by a cancellation. Seats are even more scarce than in past years because the airline industry has reduced the number of flights and grounded planes to save money and drive up prices.

“This is a bad time for a blizzard to hit the East Coast,” said airline consultant Darryl Jenkins. He said it will be difficult for the airlines to accommodate all the stranded travelers in the New York area quickly enough, and some may abandon their travel plans.

The paralyzing storm in the Northeast comes a week after several inches of snow shut down London’s Heathrow Airport and left travelers sleeping on terminal floors. It took five days for Europe’s busiest hub airport to resume normal operations.

By afternoon, major U.S. airlines had announced more than 3,100 canceled flights for Monday. Continental, whose hub in Newark, N.J., was shut down by the storm, scrubbed 800 flights and Delta dropped 700. US Airways cancelled about 830 flights.

That came on top of at least 3,800 cancellations Sunday, according to figures the airlines provided to The Associated Press.

Once the snow is removed and the runways are open, the big job for the airlines will be helping crowds of stranded passengers find room on a limited number of flights. Many had decamped in the terminals because they couldn’t find or get to hotel rooms.

In the best of times, it might take airlines two or three days to accommodate all those travelers on later flights. But this week could prove much more challenging. Planes were expected to be about 90 percent full during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, leaving fewer available seats than usual.

Before the storm hit Sunday, airlines moved their jets out of its path so that they wouldn’t be snowbound. Now they have to get their aircraft back into the affected areas.

American Airlines spokesman Ed Martelle said if the weather cleared by Tuesday, his airline could resume a normal schedule by Wednesday. He declined to say how long stuck passengers might wait for an empty seat.

“Any airline scheduler will tell you it’s like playing with a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces keep changing shape,” Martelle said. “In some cases we can’t give them a new seat because we don’t know” when one will be available.

Boston’s Logan Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella said airlines were saying that rebooking could drag into Friday — the start of another holiday weekend.

Nearly two feet of snow fell in New York City and winds blew at nearly 60 mph overnight at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Kennedy Airport and Newark International reopened Monday evening, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The storm dumped 12.4 inches of snow at Philadelphia International Airport — the highest snow total in the Philadelphia metropolitan region. Airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said 1,200 passengers had spent Sunday night at the airport.

Airlines generally assume no obligation to pay for hotels or meals if passengers are delayed by weather. However, most airlines will allow passengers to get a refund for canceled or severely delayed flights.

Tom Parsons, CEO of travel website Bestfares.com, said some travelers could save money by taking the refund and rebooking a later trip themselves instead of paying higher holiday fares. But he said people who have used half their ticket and are trying to get home should keep their ticket and work with the airline.

Airlines usually spell out their policies, called a contract of carriage, on their websites. Frustrated travelers were having a hard time getting information from actual airline employees on Monday. By mid-afternoon, the call centers at Delta, American and Continental were swamped, and recordings told customers to try back later.

The airlines themselves are likely to pay a steep price for the storm too.

Helane Becker, an analyst with Dahlman Rose & Co., estimated the airlines could lose $100 million. Fortunately for the airlines, she said, many of the travelers would rebook on later flights “because it’s a holiday and people have to get home.”

Some travelers were settling in for a long and uncomfortable stay at the airport.

At New York’s Kennedy Airport, 22-year-old Eric Schorr and other Columbia University students boarded an El Al flight to Israel Sunday afternoon, only to get stuck on the tarmac when it became clear the plane wouldn’t take off.

“They had served us dinner, they were giving us drinks, trying to keep passengers calm, cool and collected,” said Schorr, who was told he would be put on another flight Monday night.

“It wasn’t as tense as you might have thought,” he said, but added, “People are exhausted — they want to get home.”

At Kennedy’s Terminal 4, exhausted travelers were propped up along the sloping glass walls. A lucky few had snagged seats, some swathed in red courtesy blankets. Many had been there since Sunday afternoon. “Canceled” blinked out in red lights on every row of the departure board.

French college students Yoann Uzan and Belinda Bergel had saved a year to take their first trip to New York. They said they had slept only an hour in the past two days, but they wouldn’t trade the vacation memories for anything.

“It was still a perfect trip . . . we would do it all again,” Uzan said. “Well, maybe just one night in the airport, we pray, not two.”

Airports have reopened in the north-eastern US after blizzards caused some 7,000 flights to be cancelled over the busy post-Christmas travel period.

Services have now resumed into and out of New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

But officials warn it could take days to clear the flight backlog for tens of thousands of stranded passengers.

Analysts say the storm and its aftermath could cost the airlines up to $100m (£64m). The blizzards also disrupted rail and road traffic.

The conditions were blamed for a car crash in Maine in which a 59-year-old man died, and for stranding two buses carrying some 50 passengers on a New Jersey motorway.

National rail operator Amtrak – who earlier shut its New York-Boston route – now announced a limited resumption of services.

The US National Weather Service says the monster snow storm is the result of a low pressure system which originated off North Carolina.

However, forecasters are now expecting milder weather for the rest of the week, which could help in speeding up the clearing of snow.

‘Jigsaw puzzle’

Three airports serving New York – JFK, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International Airport – and also Boston’s Logan and Philadelphia International reopened on Monday evening.

They had been closed since early morning, forcing thousands of passengers to camp out on floors in terminals.

Overall, nearly 7,000 flights were cancelled on Sunday and Monday.

Although the worst weather is thought to have passed, many flights are still experiencing severe delays because of strong winds and what remains of the snow.

And airline officials warn that it could take days to rebook passengers whose flights were delayed or cancelled.

“Any airline scheduler will tell you it’s like playing with a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces keep changing shape,” American Airlines spokesman Ed Martell was quoted as telling the Associated Press.

“In some cases we can’t give them a new seat because we don’t know.”

Sales hit

Six US states – Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia – earlier all declared emergencies.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick warned that the storm was “expected to produce widespread heavy snowfall, periods of zero visibility, high winds, power outages, coastal flooding, and beach erosion”, AFP reported.

Power had already reportedly been cut to tens of thousands of homes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The New York area received up to 51cm (20in) of snow over the last two days.

The southern states of Georgia and South Carolina had their first white Christmas in more than a century.

But Washington DC escaped the blizzard, with only a dusting of snow.

The storm moved to Canada’s Atlantic coast early on Monday. Around 27,000 homes in Nova Scotia and 11,000 consumers in the New Brunswick area were reportedly left without power.

The timing of the snowstorm meant disruption for many thousands travelling after Christmas reunions and hampered the start of the shopping sales season and the return to work for many commuters.

Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7725 100 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.

Read the terms and conditions

In the drug world, investigators say, the young man with the goatee was “El Michoacáno,” nicknamed for the violent state in Mexico from which his purported product hails.

For his status in the American suburb where he allegedly set up shop, however, authorities have given Charbel Pita Rosales another nickname. They call him “Kingpin of Prussia.”

In a case winding its way through Montgomery County courts, the emerging portrait of this 28-year-old Upper Merion resident is of a man at the vanguard of a disturbing shift in the region’s drug landscape.

The traffickers are nimble, says Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman. In a high-stakes game of Whac-a-Mole with law enforcement, they have learned to play the mole.

“Major drug-trafficking organizations are looking for safer places that they can set up shop,” Ferman said. “They’re trying to stay away from urban areas like Philadelphia and New York because they have many more law enforcement resources.

“A sleepy, suburban community where nothing bad is supposed to happen – what better place for a drug trafficker to be?”

 

Code words and a killing

The portrait of Rosales and his associates emerges from detectives’ sworn accounts, and from pages of text messages intercepted and phone calls wiretapped. It’s a story of coded phrases and a deaf-mute courier, of word of a killing making its way north, and of a notoriously violent Mexican cartel allegedly opening a branch office here – in Unit 612 of a King of Prussia mid-rise, a stone’s throw from the mall.

Rosales, who remains in custody, could not be reached for comment. It was unclear whether he or any of the other men arrested in his case had retained attorneys.

Prosecutors allege Rosales and at least six other men ran one of the most sophisticated wholesale cocaine-distribution networks ever to reach into Montgomery County, shipping the narcotic into Upper Merion at a rate exceeding 22 pounds a month – with an estimated street value of more than $280,000 – for the last year.

In stark contrast to the street-level dealers who typically draw suburban authorities’ attention, the allegations include not only ties to a violent Mexican cartel but also status as a supplier to dealers in bigger markets such as Reading and Philadelphia.

The purported trade route – with supply lines extending from Nevada, North Carolina, and south Texas – reverses the traditional drug pipeline, prosecutors and law enforcement officials say.

 

Whispers, then wiretaps

Montgomery County detectives knew they weren’t dealing with their typical drug investigation when they began to hear whispers in the summer that a supplier was offering high-quality cocaine at $28,000 per kilogram, about $10,000 below the average street value of the drug in Philadelphia.

That clue, according to detectives close to the investigation, suggested an operator with strong connections to the source of the product.

Those suspicions were confirmed after months of wiretaps and the execution of a search warrant at the mid-rise Marquis Apartments near the upscale King of Prussia mall.

Investigators believe it was there, between apartments housing young families and Villanova University students, that Rosales set up shop.

By autumn, authorities had amassed enough evidence to go in. They raided Unit 612 on Oct. 8. Inside, amid cocaine, cutting agents, and drug scales, they found a shrine dedicated to Jesus Malverde, a Mexican folk figure.

Though unrecognized by the Catholic Church, Malverde is worshiped as a saint by drug traffickers in Mexico.

Court records detailing wiretapped conversations between Rosales and his alleged associates suggest strong ties to a specific group – La Familia, a drug cartel based in the southern Mexican state of Michoacán.

In text messages quoted in arrest affidavits, an alleged member of the Upper Merion organization appeared to negotiate prices with a supplier thousands of miles away – a man known only as “Guarache,” in the Mexican coastal city of Colima.

Another series of calls, between purported Rosales associate Jose Maria “Gemma” Cuevas-Sanchez and a relative in Michoacán, updated the group on a gun battle between purported La Familia operatives and Mexican military forces.

“They killed Jaimito. . . . They killed him yesterday,” a woman told Cuevas-Sanchez of the Oct. 4 encounter in Apatzingán, about 200 miles from Mexico City.

That melee, punctuated by bursts of gunfire and grenade explosions, injured more than 15 federal agents and killed at least two.

For Ferman, the district attorney, the reference to the gun battle underscores the importance of trying to root out the tentacles of such organizations before they take hold in the suburbs.

Imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been convicted on embezzlement and money laundering charges in Russia. Khodorkovsky was once the richest man in Russia, and was nearing the end of an eight-year sentence for tax evasion. For more, NPR’s Robert Siegel speaks to David Hoffman, author of the book The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia.

What Is ‘The Two-Way’?

This is NPR’s news blog. It’s a place to come for breaking news, analysis and for stories that are just too interesting ? or too entertaining ? to pass up.

It’s also a place for conversation about the news; we’re counting on you to keep us honest. But please read the discussion rules before diving in.

Courtesy of Michael Judge

John Judge kneels in his football uniform during his freshman year at the University of Iowa in 1979. John committed suicide in 1982. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Michael Judge is a writer and freelance journalist. He lives and works in Iowa City, Iowa.

In the winter of 1978, my brother John walked through the front door with a Christmas tree he said he found in the middle of the road. “It must have fallen off of somebody’s car, or off the back of a truck,” he said with a mischievous grin. He was 18, a 6-foot 4, 235-pound All-State defensive tackle. The tree was big, but he was bigger ? a gentle giant with kind, hazel eyes.

A few years later, John was diagnosed with schizophrenia and took his own life. I think of him this Christmas season, and the tree he gave to the family that year, because his daughter Lindsay just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Tatum June Huntington. This is not John’s first grandchild. He now has three: the oldest, Jack Joseph, is 6; Tanner is 2.

John married young and was blessed with perfect twin daughters ? Kristin and Lindsay. They don’t remember their dad, but I wish to God they did. He was larger than life, and full of love and laughter.

But as I grow older, I better understand why he did what he did.

Schizophrenia and other forms of serious mental illness afflict millions of Americans ? 1 in 17, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. New medications like clozapine and risperidone have given many a second chance at life. But those who go untreated often end up in our jails and prisons. According to a 2006 study by the U.S. Justice Department, 56 percent of state prisoners, 45 percent of federal prisoners, and 64 percent of local jail inmates suffer from mental illnesses.

Wall Street Journal

Michael Judge is working on a memoir about his brothers.

This April, a 24-year-old Iowan named Mark Becker was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his former high-school football coach, Ed Thomas. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Becker heard voices that told him the beloved coach was a “devil tyrant.” Becker saw the murder as “an act of God.”

My brother John, who was recruited by Hayden Fry and received a full scholarship to the University of Iowa in 1979, was also severely delusional before his death in 1982. He believed he was chosen by God to heal others. Once, guided by voices, he tried to run 100 miles to be nearer to our aging grandparents. When the police finally found him, running alongside the interstate, his feet were bruised and bloodied.

John said goodbye to his family before he ended his life with a .22 caliber bullet. He told us to tell others his story. He didn’t want his girls to see him sick, or worse, hurt them or anyone else he loved. He ended his life to protect us, his final act of love.

In some ways, John was right: He was chosen to help heal others. His story has been told by my mother, June Judge, a tireless advocate for the mentally ill, hundreds of times to thousands of people. John’s story has saved lives, and helped many get the treatment they need.

But John’s work, our work, isn’t done. This Christmas, far too many inmates in America’s jails and prisons suffer from mental illness. Our tax dollars are better spent treating them than incarcerating them. Once treated, many can lead productive lives ? hold down a job, raise a family.

With the right care and treatment, we can spare them this sacrifice.

For 24 years and nearly 5,000 shows it has been a gigantic part of America’s TV landscape. Watching The Oprah Winfrey Show has been a ritual for millions of Americans akin to going to church, involving many of the same ideas of paying homage and taking instruction on how to lead their lives.

It has established Winfrey as one of America’s most prominent cultural figures. “She is possibly the most powerful woman in the world,” said Alicia Quarles, AP’s global entertainment editor, who has interviewed Winfrey several times.

But in the new year that era will begin to come to an end. On 1 January, Winfrey launches her own TV channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and prepares to end the show that for almost a quarter of a century has kept her at the top of America’s cutthroat showbusiness hierarchy.

It is a huge gamble. When the Oprah Winfrey Show’s last episode airs next summer, Oprah will be on her own. She has confessed in an interview with her own magazine that the risk is keeping her up at night. No doubt the prospect is giving many among her legions of fans sleepless nights too. Why the fuss? After all, it is just a TV show. Right?

Not quite. There is little about Winfrey that does not invite extreme hyperbole. “Oprah Winfrey is a god. She is a force of nature,” said Richard Laermer, a TV critic at the Huffington Post and author of the book 2011: Trendspotting.

With Winfrey, such statements do not seem a stretch of the imagination. After all this is a woman whose endorsement of Barack Obama in 2007 was considered vital to his run for the presidency. His subsequent appearance on her show as president was also seen as more important to him than her. “When Obama was on her show, I thought: ‘How great that she had an opening’,” Laermer said.

Oprah is far more than a TV star. She has used her daytime talkshow as a hub for a huge media business that has made her a billionaire. Apart from the show, her production company, Harpo, is involved in many other TV programmes and films. Her magazine O ? which has put Oprah on every single cover ? is hugely influential for its readers and sells 2.4m copies a month. She has a satellite radio company, a popular website and 4.6 million Twitter followers. She is involved in charities all around the world for whom the mystical name Oprah brings in dollars.

But the real impact of Oprah stretches far beyond the mundane operations of her business. It lies in the power of her brand and the loyalty of her followers. She has the power to bestow success on virtually anyone or anything. Like a fairy godmother waving a capitalist wand, she can create a bestselling book by a recommendation. Or see a product ? like a dress or kitchen gadget ? immediately fly off the shelves if she names it on her favourite things segment. It goes for other TV personalities. The list of celebrities who owe a debt to Oprah for launching their careers is long and includes household names in the US such as Dr Phil and Rachael Ray.

So reliable and powerful has this ability become that it even has a name: the Oprah Effect. It has spawned a virtual industry of its own, as marketing executives, film producers and book publishers scramble to catch Oprah’s eye or those of her top staff. “If she endorses a product millions of people buy it,” said Matt Eventoff, an expert in communication strategy at Princeton Public Speaking. “Obama found it a game-changer to go on her show when he was just a senator.”

It is all a long way from Winfrey’s humble beginnings. Her journey began in Kosciusko, Mississippi, where she was born into rural poverty. She then moved to inner-city Milwaukee where her struggles continued. She endured rape and the death of her baby when she got pregnant at 14. Yet somehow Winfrey thrived. She moved to Tennessee and landed a radio job. Soon she was co-anchoring the local evening news and from there she eventually transferred to daytime TV in Chicago and began to conquer the world. Her secret was relatively simple: a combination of astonishing hard work, an almost innate ability to seem genuine to her audience and huge amounts of charisma. Finally, there was also luck and perfect timing. Winfrey’s emergence coincided with a trend towards “confessional television” and also the coming of age in the 1980s of a demographic cohort of white suburban women open to having a friendly, charismatic black friend.

“It is being in the right place at the right time. She brought the black girlfriend experience to white Americans and they embraced it,” said Dr Juliet Walker, a black history expert at the University of Texas at Austin, who has taught a college course on Winfrey.

That touches on one of the great debates over Oprah: the effect of her race. Walker has postulated that Winfrey being black and so successful has not helped ease broader race relations. Indeed, her success might even preserve racial problems by serving as a meaningless symbol of a mythical post-racialism. “It is easier to embrace one person than it is 40 million people,” she said. Others disagree. They say the hero worship is a powerful message for racial equality. And they point out that when Winfrey endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton it was a sign that she sees her race as important, even when going against her show’s core demographic.

But in truth, for the vast majority of Winfrey’s fans, her race is irrelevant. They are attracted in their droves by her powers of empathy and her ability to be open about her own foibles and problems. “She constantly shows what appears to be real emotion,” said Laermer. “When she cries, when she feels bad, when she she’s burned out, she reveals these things. People see real emotions.”

Coupled with that is her wide geographic appeal of broadcasting from the heartland but hailing from the South. To many Americans she is easy to relate to. “She grew up in the South and broadcasts from the Midwest, which would speak to a lot of potential viewers,” said Professor Jeff McCall, a communications expert at DePauw University, Indiana. “She wasn’t a burned-out star or a beauty model looking for a platform to draw attention to herself, but a person who had seen the ups and downs of real life.”

But, as with most things Oprah, there is also a degree of savvy and sharp decision-making behind her public persona. Her open approach has allowed her to ride out the sort of scandals that beset public figures. Neither the speculation over her relationship with her best friend Gayle King, nor her fights with writers such as Jonathan Franzen and James Frey, nor the sex scandals at her school in South Africa caused meaningful damage to the one thing Oprah values above all else: her brand.

The same thing is now holding true as Oprah prepares to go it alone. The runup has been meticulous and carefully orchestrated. Her magazine is carefully revealing her concerns and worries but pitching it to reflect the worries about change that her female fans would also feel in their own lives. She has given a heartfelt interview to Barbara Walters in which she wept as she denied the lesbian rumours about her and King.

She has visited Australia to film some of her last series: perhaps just checking on the state of her global fame. Judging by the local press attention it gathered ? they nicknamed the Sydney Opera House the Oprah House ? it is very healthy. She is also adopting a staggered approach.

The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) ? with Oprah taking the top executive decisions ? will launch while her TV show is still running. That is a wise move, allowing her new venture to feed off the publicity of the old. Few think she will lose her audience. “She has spent so long on her loyal base, I don’t see her losing her influence at all,” said Eventoff. “They will follow her wherever she goes.”

That seems likely to be true. Winfrey’s greatest challenge might not be such a big hurdle after all. She will continue to rule the airwaves. Her channel might even bring her more influence, power and wealth. Queen Oprah is dead. Long live Queen Oprah.

1954 Born in Mississippi to Vernon Winfrey, a coal miner and Vernita Lee, a housemaid.

1968 Runs away from home and moves to Nashville, Tennessee, to live with her father.

1971 Begins her broadcast career as a local radio reporter.

1973 Joins local TV station WTVF-TV as a news reporter.

1978 Becomes morning talk show host for WTVF-TV’s People are Talking.

1983 Moves to Chicago to host the talk show AM Chicago, renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show.

1985 Earns Oscar nomination for her role as Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s The Colour Purple.

1986 The Oprah Winfrey Show enters national syndication, becoming the highest-rated talk show in history.

1988 Establishes Harpo Studios production company, becoming the first woman to own and produce her own TV talk show.

1991 Initiates the National Child Protection Act.

1993 An interview with Michael Jackson reaches an audience of one hundred million.

1995 Became the first woman and the only black on Forbes list of 400 richest Americans.

1996 Announces the start of her on-air book club.

1998 Named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century by Time magazine.

2000 First issue of O, the Oprah Magazine.

2003 Forbes names Oprah the first African American woman to become a billionaire.

2005 Tom Cruise famously proclaims his love for Katie Holms on Oprah’s show.

2007 The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opens in South Africa. Oprah joins the campaign for Obama’s presidency.

2008 Announces the creation of OWN the Oprah Winfrey Network. Trial over abuse at the Leadership Academy for Girls.

2009 Announces intention to leave The Oprah Winfrey Show in two years to concentrate on her cable channel.