5 things to know for December 29: Ukraine, Southwest, Snowstorm, George Santos, Migrants

CNN
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Thousands of Twitter users in multiple countries struggled to access the platform on Wednesday – even as an error message urged, « don’t worry… Let’s try again. » But as the intermittent outages spread, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said it was « working for me ».

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Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine this morning as Russia fired more than 120 missiles, a Ukrainian presidential official said. Kyiv’s mayor has warned residents of possible power and water outages following the attacks. “Charge your phones and other devices. Make a water supply,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a message on Telegram. A CNN crew in the Ukrainian capital heard explosions from the new round of missile attacks. Officials reported the activation of air defense systems, including in Kharkiv in the northeast, Mykolaiv in the south, as well as Zhytomyr and Poltava in central Ukraine. « After the night attack of self-explosive drones, the enemy is attacking Ukraine from different directions with air and sea cruise missiles, » the Ukrainian Air Force said. The attacks come after Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow would not negotiate with Kyiv based on the peace formula proposed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

As Southwest Airlines scrambles to unravel its tangle of stranded passengers, unrecovered luggage and grounded planes, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pulls no punches, calling the situation a complete « meltdown » of the system. A union official representing Southwest pilots said they expect their flight schedules to be back to nearly normal by the end of the work week. As of early this morning, Southwest had only canceled 39 flights for Friday – down from nearly 3,000 on Wednesday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. In total, Southwest has canceled about 15,700 flights since winter conditions disrupted air travel Dec. 22. Other US airlines have recovered from the effects of the storm.

As first responders monitor people trapped in freezing homes without power, heartbreaking stories of loss are emerging days after a blizzard tore through western New York. On Christmas Eve, Monique Alexander left her home in Buffalo just before the snowstorm hit and told her daughter she would be right back. Her body was found a few hundred meters from her home. Another victim, Anndel Taylor, 22, was trapped in her car for hours and sent her family a video of the whiteout conditions. She was found dead just six minutes from her home. The death toll from the winter storm rose to 37 in Western New York and 25 more people died in 11 states. In Buffalo, New York, homes were shrouded in nearly 52 inches of snow, much of it without heat as conditions made roads impassable and knocked out power for thousands of people in the area. « It’s a horrific storm with too many deaths, » Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said.

She heard cries for help during a deadly winter storm. His actions saved a life

Republican Representative-elect George Santos’ list of false claims continues to grow even as he faces questions about his wealth and the loans he made to his 2022 campaign totaling more than $700,000 $. His biography appeared to be partly fictional, including his educational and professional background, CNN confirmed. CNN also uncovered other fabrications, including claims he represented Goldman Sachs at a top financial conference. Santos faces increasing scrutiny from House Democrats — and even some corners of the GOP, with at least one of his fellow incoming Republicans calling for him to face an ethics investigation. The House GOP leadership, however, remains silent.

Watch: Representative-elect Santos grilled on Fox after admitting to ’embellishing’ his resume

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– Source: CNN

A tent processing center is being built in El Paso, Texas, to increase capacity to process migrants by about 1,000, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson. The facility is expected to be operational in January. In order to prepare for the possible lifting of Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would add 10 soft-sided facilities to increase its processing capacity. The installation going up in El Paso is one of them. « The addition of temporary processing facilities such as this increases CBP’s ability to safely detain non-citizens and place them through immigration processing, » the CBP spokesperson said. the agency, Landon Hutchens. Title 42 was due to end this month, but remains in limbo after the Supreme Court issued an order allowing the policy to remain in effect while legal challenges unfold – a process that could stretch over months.

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“I’m tired as hell. I need a recovery beer.

– Luka Doncic, after netting a triple-double in the Dallas Mavericks’ 126-121 overtime win over the New York Knicks on Tuesday. The 23-year-old recorded a career-high 60 points and a career-high 21 rebounds to go with 10 assists, helping the Mavericks go nine points with just 33 seconds left in regulation time. This is the first time in NBA history that a player has reached this stat line.

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