4.9 magnitude earthquake rattles Northern California

(NEW YORK) — Before temperatures get warmer in the East next week, brutal cold is expected this weekend — the coldest of the season, so far, for parts of the Northeast. 

Some of the coldest areas will also see accumulating snow to usher in the arctic blast.

On Friday morning, a quick snow shower will move through Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, blanketing the states in a dusting to 2 inches of snow.

Friday afternoon, snow will fall from eastern Kentucky through western Pennsylvania. 

On Friday evening, scattered snow will be across Appalachia, from the Smoky Mountains to upstate New York. Up to 2 inches of snow is possible for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

On Saturday, snow will fall over New England — mainly for all areas north of New York City — though some flurries or light snow may reach the city, leading to a dusting to an inch of snow there. Boston could see an inch or two of snow.

Higher snow totals are expected in New England, where 2 to 4 inches are possible for the eastern I-90 corridor, including Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie to near Cleveland.

This low to moderate impact winter storm will usher in another cold blast along with very windy conditions leading to brutal wind chills across the region.

These same areas seeing the most snow will also be under strong wind gusts, with wind chills plummeting to 30 below zero. An extreme cold watch is in place from Friday night through Sunday morning.

In parts of northeastern New York, such as Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, wind chills could drop to -35 degrees, which would cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes.

High temperatures in New York City will only reach the 20s on Saturday and the teens on Sunday. The lows will drop into the single digits for Sunday morning. Wind chills during the daytime this weekend will be mainly at or below zero due to gusts up to 50 mph on Saturday and gusts up to 30 mph on Sunday. Sunday morning wind chills could reach -15 in the city.

Boston and Buffalo, New York, could feel like the negative teens on Sunday morning and the negative single digits on Monday morning.

Next week, a slow pattern change is expected, with average to even above average temperatures possible for the East by the middle and end of next week. It will still be chilly, but given the brutal cold we have all been enduring, it might feel downright balmy.

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(NEW YORK) — For the second time in a little more than a week, attorneys have announced that an immigration court has terminated deportation proceedings against a pro-Palestinian student after Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed they posed a threat to foreign policy.

According to a letter filed in court, attorneys for Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia University student who was detained at his naturalization interview in April, a judge has found that the Department of Homeland Security “did not meet its burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence” that he is removable.

It comes after an immigration court terminated removal proceedings against Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk. Her attorneys announced the order in a letter to the federal judge overseeing the case challenging her detention on Feb. 9.  

For Mahdawi’s case, immigration judge Nina Froes appears to have based her decision on the finding that DHS failed to authenticate a memo allegedly signed by Rubio claiming Mahdawi was a threat to U.S. foreign policy.

Mahdawi’s attorneys have argued that, like other pro-Palestinian demonstrators, organizers and students, he was being targeted for his constitutionally protected speech.

Öztürk, like Mahdawi, was also labeled a foreign policy risk by Rubio in a memo.

Both cases can be appealed by the Trump administration, so their habeas petitions will likely continue to play out in federal court.

“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi said in a statement. “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice.”

“In a climate where dissent is increasingly met with intimidation and detention, today’s ruling renews hope that due process still applies and that no agency stands above the Constitution,” he added.

In response to a request for comment about both cases, the Department of Homeland Security sent a previous statement about Mahdawi and said: “It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country. No activist judge, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”

Mahdawi was detained in Vermont last spring during his citizenship interview. Arguing that he should continue to be detained, lawyers for the Trump administration pointed to a 2015 FBI investigation, in which a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machine guns in the West Bank to kill Jews.

However, the FBI closed that investigation and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, a point a federal judge highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release.

In response to the government’s allegations against him, Mahdawi and his lawyers have firmly refuted allegations that he ever threatened Israelis or those of the Jewish faith. He told ABC News he has been advocating for peace and protesting against the war in Gaza.

“So for them to accuse me of this is not going to work, because I am a person who actually has condemned antisemitism,” Mahdawi said. “And I believe that the fight against antisemitism and the fight to free Palestine go hand in hand, because, as Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Öztürk was detained in March by masked federal agents, and the arrest was captured on camera. Attorneys representing her said she was targeted, like other high-profile arrests of students, for her Pro-Palestinian views, specifically, for co-authoring an Op-Ed in the student paper in March 2024 calling on the school’s administration to take steps to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”

A federal judge ordered her release in May.

“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Öztürk said in a statement on Feb. 9. “Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all.”

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(NEW YORK) — While surveying ice during a training exercise on the Hudson River on Tuesday, a New York City police officer with the department’s Harbor Unit spotted something unusual.

“Last week, when it was cold, a lot of stuff was getting stuck in the ice, whether it was a float, a buoy, but it looked different,” Officer Michael Russo told reporters on Wednesday. “I could see this white head from a distance. So I said, let’s get a little closer. I said, it looks like an eagle. And turns out it was an American bald eagle.”

Russo, a 16-year veteran of the NYPD’s Harbor Unit, said officers have rescued distressed boaters, sick cruise ship passengers and animals such as dogs while patrolling the city’s waterways. Though a bald eagle was a first.

The injured bird was screeching, wet and bloody, and as the boat approached, it didn’t leave the ice it was floating on, officers said.

Officers said they consulted with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to see if they should retrieve the bird, and once given the go-ahead, looked up how to safely do that.

“As we got closer, we put a plan together,” Russo said. “We used a catch noose to kind of subdue its wings from flapping and its claws.” 

Another officer, Sgt. Michael Amello, then put a cloth over the bird’s head, to help keep it calm, and got it on board the boat.

“Once we did that, it really didn’t give us a hard time,” Russo said. “I think it kind of knew that we were trying to help it.”

The officers were worried about the bird’s large talons throughout the rescue.

“They don’t really train you for, you know, handling a bald eagle, but we made it work,” Amello told reporters. “It was impressive and kind of scary at the same time, being that close to a bald eagle. The talons were pretty long. But it came on, didn’t put up much of a fight. It was compliant.”

The officers kept the bird on board until they were able to meet with personnel from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. 

“It’s an impressive creature. Even in its state, we were kind of taken back by how big it is and just the way it is, and the beauty of it,” Det. Nicholas Martin with the NYPD Harbor Unit told reporters. “It was impressive, to say the least.”

The bald eagle has since been brought to a sanctuary in New Jersey and was reported to be in stable condition, officers said.

The Raptor Trust, a wild bird rehabilitation center in Millington, New Jersey, said Wednesday that the bird is in their care and is “currently in very serious condition.”

“We are doing our best to keep the bird stable, and should it improve, we will do further diagnostics, x-rays and blood work to help determine a course of action going forward,” the center said in a statement.

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