Snowstorm Wreaks Havoc, Barrels East; Metrodome Roof Collapses

(CNN) -- A powerful snowstorm barreled east through the Midwest on Sunday, bringing with it more precipitation and gusty winds and leaving behind a trail of significant damage, large snow drifts and subarctic temperatures, according to the National Weather Service.

Winter storm warnings and advisories Sunday extended as far west as Illinois, as far east as Pennsylvania, and as far south as northern Alabama and Georgia.

Meanwhile, residents of the upper Midwest who braved at-times blizzard conditions on Saturday faced the prospect Sunday night of wind chills dipping, in spots, as low as 30 degrees below zero. This comes after up to 23 inches of snow fell in parts of Minnesota and as many as 18.5 inches in Wisconsin since Friday.

"We could see wind chills (that are) obviously extremely dangerous for people, to have that kind of exposure for any length of time," said Tod Pritchard, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Emergency Management agency.

After prompting the closure of highways in Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota and elsewhere a day earlier, the storm wreaked havoc with air travel Sunday.

About 1,375 flights in and out of Chicago's O'Hare airport had been canceled as of 4:45 p.m. (5:45 p.m. ET), the city's aviation department reported, with delays for travelers heading to and from the Windy City averaging around just over 6 hours. Another 300 flights had been canceled at nearby Midway airport.

"The main problem ... right now is the winds," said Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Karen Pride. "The winds are very high and gusting very strongly, and we do have lake-effect snow as well."

The headaches, though, went far beyond Chicago. On Sunday evening, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson and Newark, New Jersey's Liberty airports reported delays of roughly two-and-a-half hours, slightly longer than that experienced at Boston's Logan airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Those were just a few of the many airports, and many more flights, affected as high winds, low visibility and heavy snow crippled traffic for a second straight day.

Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Leslie Parker said as of 5 p.m., the airline had canceled 748 flights nationwide. American Airlines had called off 272 departures from O'Hare, out of more than 400 nationwide, said spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagas.

United had canceled about 350 departures, mostly from Chicago, an airline spokeswoman said, while partner Continental nixed 125 such flights from Chicago, Cleveland, Ohio, and Newark, New Jersey. JetBlue canceled 125 flights due to the storm, said spokesman Mateo Lleras.

The pounding snow caused the roof of the 64,000-seat Metrodome in Minneapolis to "deflate" Sunday morning, Minnesota State Patrol spokesman Lt. Eric Roeske said. Workers wielding shovels could be seen clearing the roof of the heavy white stuff, while photos from inside the darkened stadium showed much of the field covered with snow that fell from a gaping hole in the dome.

"Obviously the weight of the snow would affect how much air pressure is necessary to keep that roof up," Roeske said. "Something caused that air pressure not to be strong enough or high enough to keep that roof at its normal position."

Roy Terwilliger, chairman of the Minneapolis Metro Sports Commission -- the group that oversees the Metrodome -- said the heavy snow and cold, high winds "was too much pressure on the dome and several panels on the Teflon roof were caused to rip."

Sunday's game between the hometown Minneapolis Vikings and New York Giants has been pushed to Monday at 7:20 p.m. ET and moved 540 miles southeast to Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan, the NFL said in a statement Sunday. All those with tickets to the originally scheduled game would get preferred seating near the 50-yard line and free tickets would be distributed, the league said.

Even with the snow and winds subsiding, road travel remained perilous in much of Minnesota. St. Paul, for one, declared a second snow emergency through early Monday to expedite plowing of city streets.

"The big problem is ice under the snow, making it really slick and really hazardous," said St. Clair resident Alan Scott.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency for 72 counties to facilitate the movement of emergency resources and personnel who were activated Saturday, he said in a statement. We Energies reported 10,000 power outages across the state Sunday, said Barry McNulty, a spokesman for the company.

In Iowa, snow had subsided in some areas but emergency workers were coping with more than 1,000 power outages, a state emergency spokesman said.

Greyhound bus service along the Omaha-Des Moines route was expected to resume later Sunday. Some bus travelers at the Des Moines bus station had been stuck there since Saturday night. Greyhound spokeswoman Maureen Richmond said pizza was brought in for those passengers due to the inconvenience.

Patti Thompson, a spokeswoman for the emergency services in Illinois, said Sunday that northern counties were getting the worst of the weather Sunday afternoon and that Department of Transportation teams were working to clear roads. No power outages have been reported, she said.

While many states saw snow Sunday, the expected accumulation of a few inches in most locales paled compared to what hit Wisconsin and Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to National Weather Service forecasters.

The reach of the storm system continues to expand. Hard freeze warnings, for instance, extended as far south as Florida, with the weather service forecasting 13-degree wind chills on Monday night in Tallahassee.

Still, not everyone in the United States was shivering. Parts of southern California were experiencing record-warm temperatures with high temperatures Sunday above 80 degrees.

Bloomington man Charged in Hit-and-Run Turns Himself In

Another hit-and-run, and this one killed an 85 year old on my birthday...
How horrible- not to mention maximum penalty is THREE YEARS? Are they kidding!

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- A suspect in the hit-and-run accident that killed an 85-year-old woman in Bloomington on Oct. 21 turned himself in, according to Bloomington Police.

According to a criminal complaint, Mark Lindgren, 54 of Bloomington, was charged with Felony Hit and Run last Friday. Lindgren turned himself into police around 2:15 a.m. Tuesday and is currently being held at the Hennepin County Jail.

The complaint says on the night of Oct. 21, Lindgren struck and killed Dorothy Hanson with his truck at the intersection of 10th Ave. S. and E. Old Shakopee Rd. without stopping. A witness of the crash said the truck accelerated its speed drastically after it hit the victim.

Hanson was walking home after having dinner with her husband, who lives in a nearby care facility.

The complaint says an attorney representing the owner of the truck contacted police on Oct. 26 and made arrangements to turn the vehicle over to investigators the next day. The truck was registered to Lindgren and a search warrant was conducted of his apartment.

There, police collected a one-page document that listed Lindgren's timeline for the date of the accident, the complaint states.

It said he had one drink the night of the crash, then stopped by a friend's bonfire before heading home. The document said Lindgren didn't notice the headlight and damage to his vehicle following the accident until he got home.

The document said he assumed it was "a deer or bird."

If Lindgren is convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison and $5,000 in fines.

----------------

I think I'd know if I hit a "deer or a bird" with my car.... You should stop your vehicle after hitting a "deer", you'd FEEL yourself hitting the deer, and wouldn't ACCELERATE IN SPEED- especially if you only had "one" drink-
WHAT A F*CKING LIAR!!

Minnesota Boy Who Fled State to Avoid Chemo Turns 14

This is from March, but I'm happy to hear that he is well... If they were successful in escaping then he may not be alive today.

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota boy who once fled the state with his mother to avoid chemotherapy for cancer has reason to celebrate.

Daniel Hauser of Sleepy Eye had his 14th birthday Friday, and family spokesman Dan Zwakman says he remains in remission.

Daniel was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma last year and stopped chemotherapy because it made him sick. He and his mother fled the state before returning and complying with a court order to resume treatment.

Zwakman says Daniel is living a quieter life on the family farm now and has grown nearly a foot in the past few months. But he says Daniel’s hair has lost its bright red color, and the family thinks the chemo is why he needs glasses.

Zwakman says Daniel is on a high-nutrition diet to make sure his cancer doesn’t return.

Family Learned Over Internet That Son Was Killed

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- Abayte Ahmed and her husband learned of their son's death in the most heinous fashion.

A family acquaintance called and told them to click on an Internet site. There on the screen were photographs of their 20-year-old son -- the boy with the movie-star looks -- shot through the head thousands of miles away in Somalia.

"He must have been somewhat disillusioned and indoctrinated, because he didn't have any clue about Somalia at all," his mother said, fighting back tears and barely able to speak about her eldest son.

Jamal Bana had been missing for months from his Minneapolis home. His family is still grappling with the circumstances surrounding his death in a land they had fled -- an African nation wracked by chaos and violence.

The FBI said Bana's death is part of a sweeping federal investigation into a recruiting effort in the United States by a Somali terrorist group called Al-Shabaab, which has ties to al Qaeda. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent have disappeared from the Minneapolis area in recent months. At least three, including Bana, have ended up dead in Somalia, community leaders say.

Bana was the kind of son a modest immigrant family pins its hopes on. He was the eldest of seven and studying engineering at local colleges. But last fall, his family said, he disappeared without any warning. A few days later, the phone rang. All that could be heard was a quick sentence. "I'm in Somalia," his mother quoted him as saying. He then hung up.

Communication from then on was scarce. In calls or text messages, the family said, Bana was guarded, as though someone was watching or listening to him.

On July 11, the family received the call telling them to look on the Internet. Bana's father broke down in tears when he saw the photos. One image was a close-up of his son's face, a bullet wound on one side of his head. Another showed the body being carried through the streets of Mogadishu on a stretcher.

His parents said they believe their son was brainwashed and recruited to fight in the civil war between Somalia's unstable transitional government and Al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab remains entrenched in northeast Somalia and in sections south of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, after fighting that has uprooted more than 200,000 people since early May, according to the United Nations.

The question immigrants in the United States want answered is: How have their youth ended up so far away?

One of the missing youth, Shirwa Ahmed, 27, blew up himself and 29 others last fall in Somalia in what is believed to be the first suicide bombing carried out by a naturalized U.S. citizen. Ahmed had traveled from Minneapolis. The attack raised red flags throughout the U.S. intelligence community and sparked an investigation by the FBI.

Just weeks ago, community activist Abdirizak Bihi lost his 17-year-old nephew, Burhan Hassan, in Somalia. Asked if his nephew had been kidnapped from Minneapolis, Bihi said, "They kidnap them in the sense of mental kidnapping, not physically. But they play a male role of mentor."

Bihi and community leader Omar Jamal said they hold one place at least loosely responsible: the Abubakar as-Saddique Islamic Center, the largest mosque in Minneapolis.

"All these kids missing, they all have one thing in common: They all participated in youth programs in that mosque," said Jamal.

Jamal and Bihi said leaders of the mosque, at the very least, allowed people to come around their facility and recruit young men to fight in Somalia -- a charge the head imam denies. CNN was not allowed inside the mosque, but was granted an interview with the imam at a different location.

"This is the baseless accusation really," said Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmed. "The mosque -- the mission of the mosque -- is to worship. And people come to worship and go. We don't have any control over what comes through everybody's mind or ideology."


Sheikh Ahmed said at least two of the young men who died in Somalia did worship at his mosque. But he said no recruiters came around the mosque to pull them away, and said his mosque does not support Al-Shabaab. He added that he has encouraged local families to keep their young sons from going to Somalia.

Federal authorities recently made their first arrests in the case, charging two Minnesota men, Salah Osman Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, with one count each of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people overseas, according to the indictment.

CNN could not reach Salah Osman Ahmed's attorney for comment. Published reports indicate he planned to plead not guilty. Isse has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal authorities, officials said. In court papers obtained by CNN, Isse's attorney said, "Mr. Isse will not be the last defendant indicted."

A local attorney involved in the case said at least seven Somali-Americans have been questioned by a grand jury. An FBI official said the bureau cannot rule out the possibility that some of the young men involved could be trained to carry out terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Meanwhile, CNN has learned more about how Shirwa Ahmed and Burhan Hassan made their way overseas. A travel agent in Minneapolis, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two men paid about $1,800 in cash for tickets to Nairobi, Kenya, or to Dubai, U.A.E. The travel agent said he thinks the two men then made their way to Mogadishu from those cities on a Somali carrier.

For Bana's family, it's all too much to bear. Omar Boley is a close friend who grew up in the same tribe as Bana's family. He said Bana's mother is having difficulty coping with everything that has happened in recent months.

"She doesn't want to hear the story again," he said. "She told me, 'Whenever I see someone talking about my son, I feel bad. I can't sleep. I feel sick. So this happened, nothing I can do. We pray for him.' That's what she said, and that's what I believe."

This Day In History

Jun 7 1954
Despondent over court-ordered estrogen treatments to cure his homosexuality, Alan Turing commits suicide by consuming an apple laced with cyanide. Turing is considered the founder of modern computing, a pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and a crucial member of the team that cracked Germany's Enigma cipher in World War II.

Jun 7 1958

Prince Roger Nelson is born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The boy is destined to one day be known as the artist formerly known as Prince.

Jun 7 1982
In an effort to defray its $500,000 annual upkeep costs, Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public only five years after Elvis died in an upstairs bathroom. The bathroom is kept off-limits to tourists.

Mother Flees With Son to Elude Treatment Order

Police across the United States were on the look-out today for a mother and son who had fled their home in southern Minnesota to elude court-ordered chemotherapy for the boy, who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. (The Independent)

An arrest warrant for Colleen Hauser was issued late Tuesday after she failed to appear for a court hearing on the condition of her 13-year-old son Daniel. Her husband told the judge that she had disappeared from their home with Daniel the previous evening and that he did not know where they were.

On Monday, Mrs Hauser had taken her son to their family doctor who said that a court-ordered X-ray had shown that his tumour was growing and needed urgent treatment. While Hodgkin's lymphoma is a serious condition, it is often effectively tackled with aggressive chemotherapy.

The Hauser family, of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, has been declining the treatment for the young man for religious reasons. They subscribe to the teachings of the Nemenhah Band, a religious group that believes in natural alternatives to modern medicine.

"I know many people around here who have had cancer, they did chemo, it would come back," Anthony Hauser, the boy's father, told the Star Tribune newspaper of Minneapolis. "They did the chemo again and again and they are all in the grave. Chemo isn't foolproof."

He acknowledged that he was disappointed by his wife's actions saying that they had agreed to appear in court together on Tuesday. "She said she was going to leave," he told the court after showing up on his own. "She said, ''that's all you need to know.' And that's all I know."

In testimony unsealed this week, the young boy, who has learning disabilities, said if anyone tried to make him undergo chemotherapy, "I'd fight it. I'd punch them and I'd kick them".

The failure of the mother and son to show up on Tuesday surprised local officials. "It's absolutely crazy. It's very disappointing," commented James Olson, a lawyer for the local family services agency. "We're trying to do what's right for this young man."

In Missouri, the founder of the Nemenhah group, Philip Cloudpiler Landis, was critical of Mrs Hauser's actions. "She should have gone to court," he told the Associated Press yesterday. "It's how we work these things out. You don't solve anything by disregarding the order of the judge."

(AP) A Minnesota judge has ruled that a 13-year-old boy with a highly treatable form of cancer must seek conventional medical treatment despite his parents' objections on religious grounds.

In a 58-page ruling Friday, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been "medically neglected" and is in need of child protection services.

Rodenberg said Daniel will stay in the custody of his parents, but Colleen and Anthony Hauser have until May 19 to get an updated chest X-ray for their son and select an oncologist

The judge wrote that Daniel has only a "rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy. ... he does not believe he is ill currently. The fact is that he is very ill currently."

Daniel's court-appointed attorney, Philip Elbert, called the decision unfortunate.

"I feel it's a blow to families," he said. "It marginalizes the decisions that parents face every day in regard to their children's medical care. It really affirms the role that big government is better at making our decisions for us."

Elbert said he had not spoken to his client yet. The phone line at the Hauser home in Sleepy Eye in southwestern Minnesota had a busy signal Friday. The parents' attorney had no immediate comment but planned to issue a statement.

Daniel was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and stopped chemotherapy in February after a single treatment. He and his parents opted instead for "alternative medicines" based on their religious beliefs.

Child protection workers accused Daniel's parents of medical neglect; but in court, his mother insisted the boy wouldn't submit to chemotherapy for religious reasons and she said she wouldn't comply if the court orders it.

Doctors have said Daniel's cancer had up to a 90 percent chance of being cured with chemotherapy and radiation. Without those treatments, doctors said his chances of survival are 5 percent.

Daniel's parents have been supporting what they say is their son's decision to treat the disease with nutritional supplements and other alternative treatments favored by the Nemenhah Band.

The Missouri-based religious group believes in natural healing methods advocated by some American Indians.

After the first chemotherapy treatment, the family said they wanted a second opinion, said Dr. Bruce Bostrom, a pediatric oncologist who recommended Daniel undergo chemotherapy and radiation.

They later informed him that Daniel would not undergo any more chemotherapy. Bostrom said Daniel's tumor shrunk after the first chemotherapy session, but X-rays show it has grown since he stopped the chemotherapy.

"My son is not in any medical danger at this point," Colleen Hauser testified at a court hearing last week. She also testified that Daniel is a medicine man and elder in the Nemenhah Band.

The family's attorney, Calvin Johnson, said Daniel made the decision himself to refuse chemotherapy, but Brown County Attorney James Olson said the teenager did not have an understanding of what it meant to be a medicine man or an elder.

Court filings also indicated Daniel has a learning disability and can't read.

The Hausers have eight children. Colleen Hauser told the New Ulm Journal newspaper that the family's Catholicism and adherence to the Nemenhah Band are not in conflict, and that she has used natural remedies to treat illness.

Nemenhah was founded in the 1990s by Philip Cloudpiler Landis, who said Thursday he once served four months in prison in Idaho for fraud related to advocating natural remedies.

Landis said he founded the faith after facing his diagnosis of a cancer similar to Daniel Hauser's illness. He said he treated it with diet choices, visits to a sweat lodge and other natural remedies.

"My son is not in any medical danger at this point. "- Colleen Hauser