NEWS

Forecasters are warning of holiday travel disruption as about 270 million people in the Lower 48 states are expected to see temperatures plunge to 32°F or below during the next seven days, and a major winter storm strikes the Midwest.

• That’s according to National Weather Service forecast data analyzed by Weatherbell.com.

• About 55 million people in the Lower 48 states are expected to see temperatures hit 0°F or below during the next seven days, per NWS forecasts.

Threat level: “The tandem of bitterly cold temperatures and an intensifying storm system over the Rockies and Central Plains by midweek, will mean treacherous travel for many locations along and east of the Rockies,” the NWS warned.

• The cold could stress the electrical grid in some states, including Texas, though this event does not look as severe or long-lasting as the cold snap that led to the grid failure there in February 2021.
• The Dallas-Ft. Worth area is expected to see between two to three days of temperatures below freezing, including Christmas Eve, with bitterly cold wind chills during the period.

State of play: The Arctic front was inching its way south through the Northwest and Northern Plains with “bitterly cold temperatures” reported in parts of Montana overnight, per an NWS update.

• “Monday’s daytime highs over central and eastern Montana will struggle to get above zero today, while daytime lows ranging from 0 to -15 degrees will be common from eastern Washington to the Upper Mississippi Valley.”

Between the lines: Some areas will see record cold temperatures, though this does not look like an all-time cold outbreak for much of the country.

• For many people, it will be the coldest Christmas Eve and Christmas in many years, however, with some seeing the coldest Christmas since the 1980s.

Zoom in: The “potent Arctic airmass” could see temperatures drop to single digits in places like New Orleans and Dallas later this week, per the Weather Service.

• “These temperatures can freeze exposed pipes!” the NWS’ Fort Worth office tweeted Sunday.
• The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said in a statement that the grid operator “expects sufficient generation to meet forecasted demand” in the state after working with the Public Utility Commission to “implement reforms.”

What’s next: The forecast for certain cities in the path of the extreme cold helps illustrate what is to come.

• In Des Moines, Wednesday’s high looks to be just 16°F, with a low of minus-2°F. Thursday looks colder, with a high of 4°F, with a low of minus-11°F. And Friday was minus-3°F, and a low of minus-11°F.

• In Denver, Wednesday’s high is forecast to be near 41°F, with a low of minus-12°F. Thursday looks to be partly sunny with a high of minus-2°F, and an overnight low of minus-11°F.
• In Dallas, the cold arrives Thursday, with a high of 45°F but a low tumbling to 9°F. Friday’s high is forecast to be just 24°F with a low of 16°F.

Thought bubble: This weather pattern is linked to a lobe of the polar vortex in the lower atmosphere (separate from the main vortex higher in the atmosphere over the North Pole), that is rotating south out of Siberia.

• A blockbuster storm is likely to form along the leading edge of the cold air, bringing the potential for heavy snow, bitter cold, and damaging winds to the Ohio Valley and Midwest beginning late this week, while a soaking rain moves along the East Coast.
• Blizzard conditions are possible across a wide swath of the Midwest, depending on the storm’s exact track between Thursday and early Saturday.
• The NWS is warning of “extensive” travel delays throughout the Midwest and East due to this storm system, during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with new forecast details throughout.

As bombshell revelations from the “Twitter files” continue to come to light, concerns grow over the FBI utilizing private companies as a “political arm,” as well as its role in censoring the “truth” from Americans.

During his appearance on “Mornings with Maria” Monday, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told FOX Business that House Republicans plan to hold individuals accountable as they dig deeper into the FBI’s “collusion” with social media.

“We’re going to do more than just subpoena them. We’re going to change the course of where the FBI is today,” the California lawmaker said.

“Every day we learn something more,” he continued. 

Much has been revealed about the government’s relationship with Big Tech since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in October.

 ‘TWITTER FILES’ REVEAL ‘TERRIFYING’ TRUTHS ABOUT THE NEED FOR ‘RADICAL TRANSPARENCY’: PALANTIR CO-FOUNDER

During the sixth and latest installment of the “Twitter files,” Substack writer Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter employees had near–constant communication with FBI agents from 2020 to 2022. 

“Why are they [the FBI] able to do this? Working together, using private businesses to go after individuals right before an election, denying the American public the truth?” McCarthy questioned.

FBI WARNED TWITTER OF HUNTER BIDEN ‘HACK-AND-LEAK OPERATION’ BEFORE 2020 EXPOSE WAS CENSORED

In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, a story regarding the findings of Hunter Biden’s laptop would make its rounds on Twitter before being blocked and written off as Russian disinformation by intelligence agents.

Prior to the story’s circulation on social media platforms, the FBI warned Twitter during weekly meetings that the social media giant could expect “hack-and-leak operations” by “state actors” involving Hunter Biden.

“What about the 51 intel individuals like Clapper, Brennan and Hayden, former CIA directors, that put their name on a letter saying that Hunter Biden’s laptop was false, that it was Russia? Who asked them to sign this letter?” McCarthy asked.

“We’re going to subpoena them as well,” he added.

McCarthy’s criticism of the FBI echoes fellow Republican lawmakers who aim to get answers when they take control of the House in 2023.

“You’re almost going to have to have a church-style investigation to reform the FBI,” he mentioned.

McCarthy also referenced the “number of whistleblowers” who have come forward with information regarding the FBI’s alleged wrongdoings.

“This is going to be a much bigger situation than people realize,” he said.

TWITTER FILES ‘SUPPLEMENTAL’ SHOWS EVEN TRUST AND SAFETY CHIEF NOT ‘COMFORTABLE’ WITH FBI ‘DEMANDING’ ANSWERS

As the investigation into the FBI’s communication with Twitter gains traction, House GOP members look to one individual that could put an end to the federal agency’s interference.

“John Ratcliffe. He is ideal, and we’ve worked very closely,” McCarthy said as he praised the former director of national intelligence.

“He is the key individual that will work with us in many avenues to help solve this problem and correct it once and for all,” he explained.

However, as Twitter continues to receive scathing criticism from the public, calls for other social media behemoths to come forward with internal communication documents between government agencies have amplified.

“It raises more questions than just Twitter now that Elon Musk has brought that forward. What about Facebook? What about Google?” McCarthy questioned.

During an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, META CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story after the FBI warned the company about “Russian propaganda.”

READ MORE FROM FOX BUSINESS

Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick, Landon Mion and FOX Business’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report

Detroit King five-star quarterback Dante Moore has flipped to UCLA from Oregon in a seismic recruiting win with two days to go until Signing Day. 

An Oregon commit since July, Chip Kelly & Co. have been steadily working on Moore and had him in Westwood last weekend for an official visit. That hard work was well worth it as Moore is UCLA’s third highest-ranked recruit ever per 247Sports, its highest-ranked quarterback since Josh Rosen in the 2015 class and first five-star recruit in the Kelly era. His commitment shoots UCLA’s class up from No. 52 to No. 27 in the 247Sports Composite Team Recruiting Rankings. 

Moore is 247Sports’ No. 3 overall prospect in the 2023 class. Moore will be an early enrollee at UCLA and will sign Wednesday (Dec. 21) at the start of the Early Signing Period. Moore will then will participate in the All-American Bowl in January before heading to campus. 

An immediate freshman starter at King, Moore led the Crusaders to three state title game appearances and won two of them, both as a junior and senior. During that time, he passed for 9,880 yards and 135 touchdowns to just 20 interceptions. Through his sophomore and senior years, he only threw nine total interceptions.

He also added five rushing touchdowns as a senior.

“The great thing about coaching is you get to coach special kids and if he’s not at the top, he’s definitely one of them,” King offensive coordinator Terel Patrick said. “He is a special, special kid. The biggest complement I can give him is that he’s a better person than football player and I think he’s the best football player in the country.”

The impact on the Bruins’ recruiting class and future of the program is monumental.

“This ranks as one of the biggest recruiting wins for the Bruins in recent history,” says 247Sports’ Greg Biggins. “We’re talking about a player who’s ranked the No. 3 prospect in the country in the 247Sports Top247, making him the Bruin’s highest ranked quarterback they have ever signed. We had a chance to see Moore at several events over the off-season including the loaded OT7 in Las Vegas and the Elite 11 Finals and he was arguably the most talented quarterback at both. He’s a pure passer and the ball just looks different coming out of his hand. He’s very pure mechanically with a live arm, accuracy to all three levels and the ability to change speeds and throw from multiple arm angles. He’s not a finished product and there are still areas he can improve on, but he might be the most ‘ready to play now’ among all the elite signal callers in this years class and we definitely think he has a shot to compete for the UCLA starting quarterback position this fall.”

“Obviously when you talk about UCLA, he’s an instant impact starter, which I think is a big reason Dante is riding with UCLA in the end,” 247Sports Director of Recruiting Steve Wiltfong said. “He is going to a proven offensive coordinator with a proven track record at the position. Moore is one of the most ready players to take that on from a physical standpoint to a pressure standpoint. You look at his traits, he has a big arm, sees the field well, is a poised player and has played in a lot of big games over the course of his career and can handle the microscope and challenges of walking in and playing right away and you see that at King where he earned the starting job as a 9th grader, walking into a veteran team and taking them to a state title game. No stage is too big for him. He was outstanding at the Elite 11 Finals. He has a calm demeanor and this is a big pick-up for UCLA as they move into the Big Ten and have a chance to have one of the best quarterbacks in college football.”

Argentina’s national team will celebrate their World Cup triumph Tuesday in Buenos Aires at the Obelisk, the monument that is the traditional epicentre of sporting celebrations, the federation said Monday.

In addition, the Argentine government declared Tuesday would be a bank holiday so that the entire country “can express their deepest joy for the national team.”

No, no es ninguna ficción. Así estaba el Obelisco en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

📹 IG/nando_fskpic.twitter.com/yGXiXEvR5i

— VarskySports (@VarskySports) December 19, 2022

“The world champion squad will leave on Tuesday at noon for the Obelisk to celebrate the world title with the fans,” the Argentine Football Association (AFA) said on its official Twitter account.

The national team, who beat France on Sunday, will arrive in the country in the early hours of Tuesday on a state airline flight and spend the night at the federation’s training centre located near the airport, according to local media reports.

“Argentina, here we come,” AFA president Claudio Tapia said on his Twitter account.

Argentina beat France 4-2 on penalties after a 3-3 draw in a pulsating game that was labelled by many as one of the best finals in World Cup history.

Argentines, who took to the streets in every corner of the country after winning their third World Cup, are eagerly awaiting the team’s arrival to continue the celebrations.

“I want to be in Argentina to see how crazy it is,” the team’s talismanic captain Lionel Messi said. “I want them to wait for me, I can’t wait to go there and enjoy it with them.”

A lawyer representing the family of slain University of Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves is publicly questioning whether the local cops are ‘capable’ of solving the quadruple homicide.

Speaking to the Today Show in an interview that aired Monday, Shannon Gray told how the Goncalves family is extremely frustrated with law enforcement’s lack of answers more than one month after their daughter’s death.

Kaylee Goncalves, 21, was found stabbed to death inside her off-campus house on November 13, along with her roommates Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20.

No suspects have been arrested yet, as Moscow police continue to comb through evidence. The Goncalveses, though, have hired their own private investigator to get some answers, and are urging local businesses to turn over any surveillance footage that may help.

‘We want to let them know that we were holding them accountable for their decisions,’ Gray said.  ‘And if they are in over their heads, then acknowledge that and turn the investigation over to someone who is more versed in handling these types of matters.’

‘I’m not sure they’re capable of handling a quadruple murder,’ he added.

Goncalves’ family has been very vocal about their frustrations with the Moscow Police Department over the past few weeks.

They had met with Moscow Police just last week, they previously told the Today Show, but still felt like they were being ‘left in the dark.’

The parents said at the time they had entered the police station with five pages of questions about the investigation but left with ‘not much.’

Kristi Goncalves, Kaylee’s mother, now says she cannot sleep at night as she continues to wonder what happened to her daughter.

‘It’s sleepless nights. It’s feeling sick to your stomach,’ she said. ‘It’s so many emotions that I’ve never ever endured in my life, ever.’

She added that she fears the case may never be solved.

‘I mean, in all honesty, that is a possibility,’ she admitted. ‘There’s a lot of unsolved murders.’

But ahead of the holiday season, Moscow Police Chief James Fry said investigators ‘won’t stop looking for clues.’

They are now sifting through a database of 22,000 registered white Hyundai Elantras that fit the description of one found at the scene the night of the murders.

Police have said in the past that they driver ‘may have seen something’ that could be relevant to the fatal stabbings.

There are now ‘multiple groups’ scanning through clips as they try to track down those responsible, Fry said as he vowed his force would continue working over Christmas.

In the meantime, though, Gray is urging the public to continue to submit tips and share information with the authorities.

‘Keep at it,’ he said. ‘You know, the community, I believe, will be the ones that solve this case.’

The interview comes just hours after Kaylee’s father denied that a man his daughter was seen talking about just hours before her death is a suspect.

Newly-released security footage showed Kaylee walking along the street with Mogen, her best friend, and a man who was also seen in a separate video with the pair at a food truck. 

In the video Kaylee could be heard asking, ‘Maddie, what did you say to Adam?’  Maddie responded: ‘Like, I told Adam everything.’ 

But Kaylee’s father, Steven, said it was ‘pretty clear’ that the man his daughter was speaking about in the video was not a suspect. 

‘We asked and did the obvious due diligence, and we looked into that, and it was pretty clear that this individual was not a part of the investigation as far as a suspect,’ he told Fox News.

He said the film was passed on to him by a business owner whose camera had caught it, and that while it provided no clues about his daughter’s killer it was a comfort nonetheless. 

‘It was kind of comforting to us, because it’s just two girls having a good time, talking about, you know, asking about their bartender, and just being girls on their way to the grub truck,’ he said.

The video was first uploaded on the Facebook group: ‘University of Idaho Murders – Case Discussion.’ 

The pair were at the Corner Club bar until 1:30 am, went to the food truck, then got a ride home. Police have already said that the driver of the car is not a suspect. 

One of the administrators of the Facebook group, Kristine Cameron, told Fox News: ‘We can all scrutinize those couple of minutes at the food truck, but we just have to remember there was an entire evening before this. 

‘There’s more than just that one timestamp that we have into that evening.’ 

Speaking of a man who was previously seen with the pair at the food truck, who is also in the new video, Cameron said: ‘People are drawing the conclusion that he’s creepy from that [few] minutes, and I want to give a bigger picture. He wasn’t just staring at them…He was with them prior.’

It was also reported over the weekend that Goncalves was afraid of a stalker in the weeks leading up to the murders– something Moscow Police have denied knowledge of.

A vape shop manager claims he discussed Goncalves’ stalker with her and Mogen three weeks before they were slain in their beds. 

He told NewsNation: ‘Kaylee and Maddie would both come in here, they always had a smile on their face, they were the light of the world.

‘They always came in with a group of four or five girls at most, all the time they would come in together.

‘I made a joke about them coming in together, that it was nice to see that they were trying to stay safe.

‘Maddie then said oh we had a friend of ours be stalked, which is why we travel in a group. She was motioning to Kaylee as she said it.

‘It seemed as though they were all trying to keep Kaylee safe and be there for her as friends. This was three weeks before the murder.’ 

Goncalves reportedly told him that the stalker would follow her ‘at night’ when she was going to or from bars, either by the ‘campus or down on Main Street’.

Her family has said they were not aware of any stalker, despite the manager claiming it was something she had ‘tons of issues with’.

She ‘always had to have someone who was constantly walking behind her’ in order to keep her feeling safe.

Police are now trawling footage from an officer’s bodycam that may have captured a scream on the night of the murders.

The high-pitched sound, recorded at 3:12am, was captured by a Moscow police officer who was responding to an unrelated incident near the University of Idaho.

Some web sleuths believe that the sound is a scream, while others think it could be the sound of car tires peeling away.

The noise appears to have been made around the time the students were killed, and authorities hope it may help them in determining what happened.

Police have found no evidence of a sex crime, and the victims had wounds on their bodies which indicated that they tried to fight off the attacker.

Initially, cops said they thought all four were assaulted as they slept, with Goncalves father saying she had the worst injuries from the incident – suffering ‘gouging wounds’ and ‘rips.’

But Chief Fry has admitted that investigators did not understand how the two surviving roommates – Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen – appeared to sleep through the attack.

Police are also said to be examining ‘massive amounts’ of digital content from local homes and businesses.

Captain Roger Lanier said on Thursday that they had been sifting through a database of 22,000 registered white Hyundai Elantras that fir the description of the one found at the scene the night of the murders.

Police have said that the license plate of the vehicle is still unknown and could have been removed.

Still, they are asking the public to call in tips at 208-883-7180, email [email protected] or submit digital media online. 

 

The mother and stepfather of a missing 11-year-old North Carolina girl have been arrested, accused of failing to report her disappearance to authorities, officials announced. 

Madalina Cojocari was last seen at her home in Cornelius, North Carolina, the evening of Nov. 23, and hasn’t been seen since, according to the Cornelius Police Department. 

But police weren’t aware the 6th grader was missing until nearly three weeks later on Dec. 15 when her parents reported her missing to her school, Bailey Middle School. An investigation into Madalina’s disappearance was launched that day.

The Cornelius Police Department announced Saturday that Madalina’s mother Diana Cojocari, 37, and stepfather Christopher Palmiter, 60, were arrested and charged with failure to report the disappearance of a child to law enforcement.

Both were booked into Mecklenburg County Detention Center where they remain as of Monday.

Attorney information for the pair was not immediately available.

Police said they are actively looking for Madalina and are looking to speak with anyone with information on her and her potential whereabouts.

“We need to make certain we have spoken to every person who may have information about Madalina to help us create an exact timeline of when she was last seen,” police said.

The FBI and North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation are aiding in the search.

Madalina, described as a fan of horses, was last seen wearing jeans, pink, purple and white Adidas shoes and a white T-shirt and jacket, police said.

She is described as four feet, 10 inches tall, with brown hair, brown eyes and weighing 90 pounds. 

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Madalina Cojocari is asked to contact the Cornelius Police Department at 704-892-7773.