Airlines canceled over 1,400 flights in the United States on Wednesday, after an ice storm hit states from Texas to West Virginia.

A total of 1,467 flights within, into or out of the United States were canceled, while 527 flights were delayed as of 6.48 a.m. ET, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday warned in a tweet that travelers could expect to see some snowy conditions in certain areas including Dallas, Fort Worth and Memphis, which could delay certain flights.

“The ongoing winter storm will continue to bring hazardous impacts to North and Central Texas through at least early Thursday morning,” The U.S. National Weather Service said in its Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area forecast discussion.

Low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) led cancellations with 487 flights, while Fort Worth, Texas-based peer American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O) closely followed, canceling nearly 480 flights.

Southwest and American did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The latest cancellations come nearly a month after Southwest faced U.S. government backlash for canceling 16,700 flights over the holidays, as it grappled with bad weather and outdated technology.

PARIS (Reuters) – Paris 2024 organisers insisted they would abide by the International Olympic Committee’s decision on Russian and Belarusian athletes’ participation in the Games after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the governing body into banning them from the sport’s extravaganza.

Last week, the IOC said the Olympic Council of Asia had offered Russian and Belarusian athletes the chance to compete in Asia, drawing an outcry from Kyiv which has called for Russian sportspeople to be banned over Russia’s invasion.

Zelenskiy said that allowing Russia to compete at the 2024 Games would be tantamount to showing that “terror is somehow acceptable”.

Belarus has allowed Moscow to use its territory as a staging post of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Monday that the IOC was “promoting violence, mass murders, destruction” and that a Russian presence at the Games would constitute giving the country “a platform to promote genocide”.

“As the conflict continues, Paris 2024 would like to express its full solidarity with Ukraine, its people and the Ukrainian Olympic and Paralympic movements, who are faced with an unimaginable crisis,” Paris 2024 told Reuters in a written statement on Wednesday, stressing that the IOC had taken several measures against Russia and Belarus.

“In response to this, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has taken a number of sanctions since February 2022 including: No international sports event is organised or supported by an International Federation or National Olympic Committee in Russia or Belarus;

“No flags, anthems, colours or any other identification of these countries are displayed at any sporting event or meeting, including at all venues;

“No representative of the Russian government or state shall be invited or accredited to any international sporting event or meeting.”

According to Paris 2024, those sanctions “directly or indirectly affect the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in certain qualifying events for Paris 2024”.

Paris 2024 explained that their hands were tied on who could qualify for the next Summer Games.

“With regard to the presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes at the Paris 2024 Games, it should be recalled that the qualification system is determined by the international federations, the IOC and the IPC (International Paralympic Committee).

“Our wish is that the Olympic movement, the Paralympic movement and the athletes experience the Paris 2024 Games in a spirit of peace, respecting the values of fraternity and solidarity.”

The Paris 2024 Olympics will be held from July 26-Aug. 11 and the Paralympics from Aug. 28-Sept. 8.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said U.S. President Joe Biden will probably visit Central Europe in February but added he did not know which countries of the region he would be visiting.

“The president will most likely be coming to our part of Europe in February,” Duda said during a press conference in Riga, Estonia, on Wednesday.

“Our part of Europe means Central Europe … this is an area stretching from Romania to Estonia. It is very difficult for us to answer where the president will be coming in detail, we do not have such information.”

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (NewsNation) — Tyre Nichols will be laid to rest Wednesday, three weeks after he died following a deadly beating by Memphis police officers during a traffic stop.

Nichols, a Black 29-year-old skateboarder and amateur photographer, worked making boxes at FedEx, made friends during morning visits to Starbucks and always greeted his mother and stepfather when he returned home with a sunny, “Hello, parents!”

Nichols’ funeral will be held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, beginning at 10:30 a.m. CST. The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, will deliver the eulogy. Ben Crump, a national civil rights attorney who represents the Nichols family, will deliver a call to action.

Sharpton gathered Nichols’ family and local activists on Tuesday evening at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis. The historic landmark is where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated nearly 55 years ago.

Sharpton said the family intended to have a “dignified funeral service, not a marathon.”

“This is not about politics, it’s about justice,” the reverend said. “People are coming from all over the world, and we are coming because we’re all Tyre, now.”

Those expected to be in attendance include Vice President Kamala Harris; Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor; and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd. Also, the families of Eric Garner and Stephon Clark will attend.

The deaths of Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, Floyd in Minneapolis, Garner in New York City and Clark in Sacramento, California, at the hands of police, sparked protests across the nation about racial injustice.

Nichols was the baby of their family, born 12 years after his closest siblings. He had a 4-year-old son and worked hard to better himself as a father, his family said.

Nichols grew up in Sacramento and loved the San Francisco 49ers. He came to Memphis just before the coronavirus pandemic and got stuck. But he was fine with it because he was with his mother, RowVaughn Wells, and they were incredibly close, she said. He even had her name tattooed on his arm.

Last week, friends at a memorial service last week described him as joyful and kind, quick with a smile, and often silly.

“This man walked into a room, and everyone loved him,” said Angelina Paxton, a friend who traveled to Memphis from California for the memorial service.

On Tuesday night, Nichols’ family shared their thoughts on the latest discipline to be handed down to the 10 first responders who in some way participated in the arrest and medical treatment of Nichols.

At Mason Temple in Memphis, the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his final “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech before his assassination 55 years ago, supporters stood in solidarity with the family.

 “We wanted to start this right on the sacred ground. This is holy ground. And this family now is ours and they’re in the hands of history and they are in the hands of those who will fight,” Sharpton said.

In the three weeks since Nichols’ death, five police officers were fired and charged with murder, and the specialized unit they were a part of was disbanded. Two more officers have been suspended. Also fired: two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant. And more discipline could be coming.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ukraine’s military said its forces repelled an attack in the area of Blahodatne in the eastern part of the Donetsk region, while Russia’s Wagner private military group said it took control of the village.

* Russia accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately striking a hospital in a Russian-held area of eastern Ukraine on Saturday in what it said was a war crime that killed 14 people and wounded 24 patients and medical staff. There was no immediate response to the allegations from Ukraine. Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the situation at the front as “extremely acute“, especially in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia is stepping up an offensive.

* Tearful mourners in Kyiv commemorated a British volunteer aid worker, Andrew Bagshaw, killed while attempting a rescue mission from the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to contacts with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz though has no phone call scheduled with him, a Kremlin spokesman said. Scholz, who last week approved providing Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukrainian forces, was quoted in a published interview as saying he would speak to Putin again but the onus was on the Russian leader to withdraw troops from Ukraine “to end this horrendous, senseless war…”

* Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov will hold a meeting with Lynne Tracy, the new U.S. ambassador, early next week, RIA news agency reported.

* Zelenskiy condemned the idea of neutrality in sports at a time when his country’s athletes fight and die in war, while their Russian counterparts might be allowed to compete.

* Russia said it will not hold annual talks with Japan on renewing a pact that allows Japanese fishermen to operate near disputed islands, saying Japan had taken anti-Russian measures.

* Expedited talks are under way among Ukraine and its allies about its requests for long-range missiles that it says are needed to prevent Russia from destroying its cities, a top aide to President Zelenskiy said.

* German arms-maker Rheinmetall is ready to greatly boost output of tank and artillery munitions to satisfy strong demand in Ukraine and the West, and may start producing HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in Germany, CEO Armin Papperger told Reuters.

* Ukraine has been promised 321 heavy tanks by several countries, its ambassador to France said.

* Poland will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has pledged, the Polish prime minister said in an interview with Canadian television.

* Ukraine imposed sanctions on 182 Russian and Belarusian companies, and three individuals, in the latest of a series of steps by Zelenskiy to block their links to his country.

* On a trip to Turkey and the Middle East this week, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top sanctions official will warn countries and businesses that they could lose U.S. market access if they do business with entities subject to U.S. curbs as Washington cracks down on Russian attempts to evade sanctions.

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LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s human rights commission has appointed a special panel whose role will include investigating a Reuters report that the military ran a secret abortion programme in its fight against Islamist insurgents in the northeast.

The Nigerian military said it would not carry out an investigation because the report was not true.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which is appointed by the government, said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday that it would launch the special panel next week in Abuja.

“The National Human Rights Commission will on Tuesday (7th February 2023) inaugurate a Special Independent Investigative Panel on human rights violations in the implementation of counterinsurgency operations in the northeast,” NHRC said

“The panel will, among other things focus on investigating Reuters report which alleged that Nigerian Military was involved in abortion of many pregnancies in the North East in the last 10 years,” NHRC said.

The seven-member panel will be chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Abdu Aboki and includes a retired major general, a representative from the Nigerian Bar Association and an expert in obstetrics and gynaecology, NHRC said.

It was not immediately clear how long the investigation would last and what the panel would do with its findings. NHCR has no powers to prosecute human rights violators but can recommend prosecution for offenders.

An NHRC spokesperson did not respond to calls and messages sent to their mobile phone seeking further details.

Reuters reported in December, based on dozens of witness accounts and documentation, that the military abortion programme involved terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, many of whom had been kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants.

Their journey starts with a humanitarian visa for Brazil: one of the few remaining exit routes for Afghans fleeing Taliban rule.

It ends, after a perilous trek overland through Latin America across at least 11 countries, with scaling the border wall and jumping onto U.S. soil.

More than a year after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, the number of Afghans crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum in the United States has soared.

Hundreds of people each month are risking their lives to get there on a human smuggling route notorious for kidnapping, robbery and assault.

U.S. border agents apprehended 2,132 Afghans last year – a close to 30-fold increase over the prior year – with nearly half arriving in November and December, U.S. government data show.

Reuters spoke to a dozen Afghans who braved the journey. Eleven said they made it to the United States; Reuters has not been able to confirm the whereabouts of one person a reporter interviewed in Mexico. All said they were unable to start new lives in Brazil and instead headed north by land to the United States.

Several refugee advocates and former U.S. officials said the increasing number of Afghans attempting the route reflected a failure both to address the humanitarian crisis inside Afghanistan and to provide adequate support for those who leave.

The United States has been slow to process visas, they say, and together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)should be doing more to help other countries to assist Afghan refugees.

“Just getting out of the country is hard. And then if you do, it doesn’t mean that you’ve reached safety,” said Anne Richard, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration from 2012 to 2017.

The State Department said in response to Reuters questions that it has tried to speed up visa processing for “the brave  Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the past two decades” and that it has offered support to governments to avoid “irregular migration.” It declined to comment on individual cases.

UNHCR said the humanitarian Brazilian visa program, which offers two-years residency and the right to work, study and apply for refugee status, is “an extremely important contribution” but said shelters in the country are “overwhelmed.”

The Brazilian government did not respond to requests for comment.

About 4,000 Afghans have entered Brazil on humanitarian visas since the program began in Sept. 2021, the U.S. State Department said, with a significant uptick in the final months of 2022.

Last year, 2,200 Afghans crossed through the lawless jungle region between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap – the only land route from South America toward the U.S. border – with nearly half crossing in November and December. In all of 2021, just 24 Afghans crossed, according to Panamanian government data.

The Taliban administration’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about the escalating exodus. In recent weeks, Taliban spokesmen have said that Afghanistan is the “home of all Afghans” and that those who have left can come back.

Reuters focused on four journeys by Afghan migrants who reached the United States, corroborating key details of their accounts with emails, official documents, interviews with relatives and co-workers as well as videos, photos and voice memos sent during their travels.

Here are their stories.

When 25-year-old Ilyas Osmani landed in Sao Paulo on Oct. 2 after more than 30 hours in transit from Tehran, he said he told an official at passport control that he was a refugee and asked for assistance.

The official simply shrugged, Osmani said, and told him he was free to go.

An activist who had spoken about women’s rights several times on Afghan television, Osmani said he feared he was at risk under the Taliban because of his advocacy and his work as a general manager for a logistics company that was a subcontractor for U.S. armed forces.

At baggage claim, he called an Afghan acquaintance who told him to head to Terminal 2, where he could find other Afghans.

Once there, he said, he put his name on a waiting list for shelter spots.

That first night on the cold tile floor of the airport, Osmani said he barely slept.

From a Tajik family in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Osmani said he had felt lucky when he won a U.S. immigration lottery in 2020 allowing him to apply for a “diversity” visa, designed for nationals of countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

But precautions during the COVID pandemic delayed visa processing, and the U.S. embassy in Kabul closed when the city fell to the Taliban in August 2021.

Next, Osmani contacted three additional U.S. embassies to request a visa interview.

The Islamabad embassy said it had reached processing capacity, acknowledging in a Nov. 2021 email to him “that it is currently very difficult for Afghans to obtain a visa to a third country” and that “many at risk are facing significant challenges fleeing to safety.”

The embassy in Doha said it was only conducting interviews for Qatari citizens and residents while the embassy in Tashkent said it was unable to process Osmani’s case but provided no reason, according to emails reviewed by Reuters.

Around the same time, Osmani also applied for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), a category for foreign nationals who worked with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, based on his work with the U.S. contractor, according to documents he shared. The application is still pending.

About 90,000 Afghans are awaiting decisions on their SIVs, according to Congressional reports from fall 2022.

The State Department told Reuters it has “surged resources” to the SIV program and reviewed “every stage of the cumbersome multiple step application process to streamline wherever possible.”

Osmani fled. In Afghanistan, “no one is safe who was fighting for gender equality,” he said.

The Taliban says its administration respects women’s rights in line with its interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture.

With no immediate path to the United States, Osmani applied for a humanitarian visa to Brazil at the end of 2021, he said, hoping to live in a big city where he’d find a job that would allow him to support his parents back home.

After about a week at the airport, still without a shelter spot, Osmani and two other Afghan men went out to see Sao Paulo. On the way back, they were robbed at knifepoint, he said. Reuters was unable to independently confirm details of the attack.

Osmani called his father. “I can’t stay here,” he said he told him.

Osmani’s father put him in touch with his former boss at the Afghan Ministry of Transport, Murtaza Ziwari. Murtaza and his wife, Humaira, were preparing to head to the U.S. with their children.

The Ziwari family had arrived in Brazil on June 29 on humanitarian visas, passport stamps viewed by Reuters showed. On Oct 12, they set out for Rio Branco, a remote city on the border with Peru, where Osmani joined them.

By the time she found herself trying to comfort three vomiting and exhausted young sons on a four-day bus journey across Peru, Humaira Ziwari had spent months struggling with the trauma of leaving home.

“My mental state was not good,” she said.

In Iran, where the family said they spent eight months waiting for their Brazilian visas, Humaira had been distraught, weeping over photos of weddings and family gatherings on her phone.

A 31-year-old homemaker, Humaira said she had never imagined a life outside Afghanistan. Murtaza, working in Herat province according to identification documents shared with Reuters, said he feared his job – which included overseeing civilian fuel distribution to gas stations and to U.S.-aligned military forces – would make him a target.

Armed men had shown up at Murtaza’s family home in Mazar-i-Sharif asking for him the day after the Taliban took the city in August 2021, according to home security camera footage shared with Reuters.

The Taliban did not respond to requests for comment on allegations of retaliation against former Afghan government officials. They announced a general amnesty shortly after taking over and have pledged to investigate individual cases.

The Ziwaris fled to Iran overland, carrying one change of clothes and some money from selling Humaira’s jewelry.

In Sao Paulo, they bounced from the airport floor to a church stockroom to a drafty NGO event space for months. Murtaza couldn’t find work. The kids suffered constant colds.

So in mid-October, Murtaza said, they took a bus to Rio Branco, before making their way by foot, bus and taxi through Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

At the Ecuador-Colombia border they said they paid $80 to a smuggler to be shepherded across, only to have him drop them off at the Colombian check point where officials wanted to send them back to Ecuador.

“The police were pulling us in one direction. The kids were screaming,” Humaira said. Somehow the family managed to break away from the border guards and run.

Colombia’s migration authority did not respond to questions about the incident or about the treatment of Afghan migrants crossing through Colombia.

Soon the Ziwaris would be on the brink of a more terrifying leg of the journey: the no-man’s-land between Colombia and Panama.

Nahida Nabizada had heard about the Darien Gap, a dense, lawless jungle that can only be traversed by foot. She didn’t want to go.

The 29-year-old was nearly two months pregnant, her second pregnancy after miscarrying at five months.

“I didn’t want to lose this child too,” she said.

She thought: ‘What will happen if I start bleeding? There are no doctors; my parents aren’t there; there’s not enough food. If I am too slow, no one will wait for me.’

A university graduate with a computer science degree, Nahida felt unsafe when the Taliban took over.

An economic crisis has spiraled in the country. More than half the population relies on humanitarian assistance.

Nahida and her husband Jamshid decided in late 2021 to leave.

While about 88,500 Afghans have been resettled in the United States since the U.S. troop withdrawal, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), thousands more have applied to leave the country.

From 51,000 applications to enter the United States on an emergency basis following the Taliban takeover, only around 600 Afghans have been approved, DHS said.

After reaching Brazil in mid-2022, Nahida realized she was pregnant again. Staying behind while her husband tried to reach the U.S. by himself could have meant years of separation.

So, in late 2022 they headed into the Darien where, Nahida said, “every step was filled with danger.” She fell multiple times as they walked from daybreak to dusk, slipping on steep muddy paths and once falling in a river.

The local guide they hired for $150 left them on the first day, midway through a 12-hour trek, Jamshid said.

On the third night, a river overflowed and washed away their food, flashlight, sleeping mats and other belongings. Nahida said they survived on biscuits and dates, drinking river water.

A few days later, thieves armed with knives stole $200 in cash from Jamshid, he said.

When they emerged from the jungle, they were met by Panamanian soldiers who took them to a migrant camp. Soldiers routinely escort migrants to encampments to give them food, water and clothes and collect identifying information.

In response to Reuters questions, the government said: “Panama is the only country that provides care to all migrants who enter the country through Darien, so that they continue on their way to North America.”

After a short stay in the camp, the Nabizadas took a bus to Costa Rica on their way north through Central America towards Mexico.

When Fazal Khalili, 25, climbed out of a smuggler’s boat on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico in October 2022, he had been at sea for more than 12 hours.

“There was a lot of water inside our boat,” said Khalili, who said he boarded the vessel near the border with Guatemala along with eight family members – including his 87-year-old grandmother and 9-year-old-cousin – and more than a dozen migrants from other countries.

From the boat, the migrants headed to a sprawling migrant camp in the southern state of Oaxaca, where they slept in tents amid heavy rains, waiting for Mexican government documents that would allow them to travel within the country, Khalili said.

Born in Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan, Khalili said he did electrical work on a U.S. military base. In Oct. 2021, he applied for a SIV, but wasn’t assigned a case number until August 2022, visa application documents show. By that time, he’d flown to Brazil.

It was early December by the time Khalili’s family bought tickets on a commercial bus from Mexico City to Tijuana, snaking through some of the regions of Mexico considered most dangerous by the U.S. State Department because of violent crime and kidnapping.

In Sinaloa state, he recounted, a man in a balaclava with a gun hooked to his belt boarded the bus and demanded money while another man in what appeared to be a police uniform looked on. Khalili said the men got off the bus after his family paid the masked man 34,000 pesos ($1,700).

Khalili recorded a video of the incident which he shared with Reuters soon after it occurred. Reuters couldn’t confirm the payment.

In the border state of Sonora, immigration authorities stopped the bus, Khalili said, ordering the driver to take the migrants to an immigration office.

Fearing they would be deported, the migrants scattered, wandering for hours through dense desert brush.

Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) did not respond to questions about Khalili’s experience in Mexico.

Around midnight about a week later, Khalili and his family huddled below the 18-foot slatted steel wall separating Tijuana from San Diego, preparing to scale a flimsy ladder and jump into the United States, he said.

He helped his grandmother descend by sliding down the steel slats with her feet on his shoulders, he said.

Border agents took the migrants to a detention center, Khalili said, and about 36 hours later, he was released into the United States with a notice to appear in immigration court in May.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the border crossings and immigration cases of the Afghans profiled in this story.

Reflecting on the harrowing journey Khalili said he would counsel other Afghans not to risk it. “They must not come this way.”

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Michael Burry.

Jim Spellman/Getty Images

• Michael Burry issued a grim warning to investors by simply tweeting: “Sell.”
• The “Big Short” legend was likely responding to the stock market’s astounding comeback in January.
• Burry recently compared the S&P 500’s rebound to its short-lived rally during the dot-com crash.

Michael Burry appears to have serious doubts about the stock market’s stunning start to the year. He tweeted a single word on Tuesday: “Sell.”

The fund manager of “The Big Short” fame was likely urging investors not to be fooled by the recent rebound in stocks. The benchmark S&P 500 index gained 6.2% in January, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite surged 11%, marking its best January performance since 2001.

Some of the hardest-hit stocks last year have led the charge upward. Elon Musk’s Tesla notched a 41% gain in January, making it the second-best performer in the S&P 500, while Cathie Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation fund recorded its best month ever. Burry’s Scion Asset Management fund placed bets against both the automaker and the tech-focused fund in 2021, and the investor took aim at both Musk and Wood in tweets.

Investors dumped tech stocks years after a historic spike in inflation spurred the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates from nearly zero to north of 4%, in a bid to curb the pace of price increases. They have piled back into them this year, as they believe inflation is waning and the Fed will soon pivot to cutting rates, which could revitalize demand and allow the US economy to escape a recession.

Burry has been pouring cold water on the stock rally this year. On January 23, he tweeted a chart showing the S&P 500’s plunge during the dot-com crash, and circled in red its rally between September 2001 and March 2002 before it bottomed six months later. The implication was that the S&P 500’s 17% rally since last October’s low could also prove short-lived.

The Scion Capital chief has been sounding the alarm on asset prices for more than two years, and warning about an economic disaster since the first half of 2022.

He diagnosed the “greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things” and predicted the “mother of all crashes in the summer of 2021. He also took his own advice in the second quarter of last year, selling all but one of the positions in his US stock portfolio.

Burry is one of several top commentators bracing for a catastrophe. GMO’s Jeremy Grantham recently declared the S&P 500 could plummet 50% in a worst-case scenario, while Universa Investments’s Mark Spitznagel diagnosed the “greatest tinderbox-timebomb in financial history.”

Read more: Why US home prices could fall 20% this year — and which cities and regions will see the largest declines, according to KPMG