Travelers at airports such as Reagan National in Washington might be in for a long weekend.

Craig Johnson
Special to CNN

A major wintry storm heading for the Northeast may cause chaos for weekend travelers and Christmas shoppers.

A winter storm warning was in effect for East Coast metropolitan areas including Washington; Baltimore, Maryland; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service.

Gregg Laskoski, managing director of public relations for AAA Auto Club South, said road safety is key during inclement weather.

"At this time of year, we're finding that there's the potential for early morning fog. It's important to use their low beams, not the high beams, because the fog's moisture can reflect the light back into their eyes," Laskoski said.

FAA: Check air travel delays here...

DOT: Check Road delays here...

Keep Reading for the latest details on the storm...

Luis Ramirez was in a coma on life support before he died two days after he was beaten.

Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

Don't look now, but Pennsylvania might be the new Mississippi.

Some Americans resist any attempt to compare the modern plight of Latino immigrants to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Likewise, when it comes to race issues, many whites in the Northeast like to think of themselves as morally superior to their counterparts in the South. Both these groups need to brush up on their history - and pay closer attention to current events.

In 1967, the Justice Department brought to trial 18 men - including at least one law enforcement officer - in Meridian, Mississippi, charging them with conspiracy to deny three slain civil rights workers their civil rights "under the color of state law."

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney became martyrs for the civil rights movement when they were beaten and shot to death in June 1964 for what some of the locals considered the unpardonable sin of helping register blacks to vote during Mississippi's "freedom summer."

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Editor's Note: Roy Hallums was kidnapped in 2004. He was rescued in 2005. He endured 311 days as a hostage in Iraq. He was actually buried alive when he was rescued and now we have the exclusive videotape of his rescue. We’ll show you how the special forces team did it. Hallum says what might appear hyperbolic with a calm earnestness. "I hoped they wouldn't decide to just cut off my head and videotape the occasion for mass distribution to the international media." Instead, we have the videotape of his rescue. Michael Ware reports tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

The entrance to Hallums' cell.

Inside Roy Hallums' cell.

Roy Hallums, when he was rescued.

Roy Hallums today.

Foreign Policy

"I'm very pleased to announce that we've had a breakthrough in negotiations in Honduras. I want to congratulate the people of Honduras as well as President Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti for reaching an historic agreement.... I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue."

—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Oct.

Clinton was right that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim leader Roberto Micheletti had reached an agreement, but it wasn't a breakthrough and Honduras didn't overcome anything. The agreement was intended to return Zelaya to office for the remainder of his term, pending the approval of the Honduran Congress. Trouble is, the Congress didn't approve him. The agreement appears to have been little more than a stalling tactic aimed at international critics, particularly the United States, which was bought hook, line, and sinker by diplomats anxious to resolve the crisis. One month later, the United States reluctantly recognized Honduras's elections.

It’s always tough to make an accurate prediction, especially in the world of politics.

Now that 2009 is coming to an end, take a look at 10 pundits and politicians whose prognostications for this year completely missed the mark!

Emily Kile
Special to CNN

I'm proud to say I live in a state that has taken tobacco control seriously, and gotten some serious results. Through hard work and constant effort, Indiana has cut our high school student smoking rates dramatically. Unfortunately, we still have the second-highest rate of adult smoking in the country.

Big Tobacco never takes a break, so neither should we.

I work in VOICE, Indiana's youth-led movement to curb smoking by teenagers and combat the tobacco industry's marketing messages that bombard us every day. I joined after I watched the city council in my hometown of Greenfield vote to require smoke-free workplaces. That really opened my eyes about tobacco.

Most people who start smoking do so while in middle or high school. The tobacco industry knows this and exploits us. So our work reaches young people and gives them the tools to resist. We teach a program called "Tar Wars" to fourth and fifth graders, visiting every classroom in the school district. We tell them, for example, that for what they spend on cigarettes in a year, they could take a trip to Disney World.

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Neda Agha-Soltan was killed on June 29, 2009

Time

We'll never know the man who stood in front of those tanks in Tiananmen Square, but we do know Neda Agha-Soltan: we've looked into her eyes. For one gut-wrenching moment, as she lay dying from the bullet in her heart on that Tehran side street last June, Neda stared directly into the cell phone that was about to immortalize her. Within hours, millions of people around the world had been beseeched by those fading eyes, making an intimate connection with the 27-year-old music student and the cause for which she was killed by the thugs of an embattled regime. Before Neda's murder, the street protests against Iran's stolen election had been a revolution without a face, doomed to be crushed by brute authority and eventually forgotten. But Neda's dying gaze drew the eyes of the world. We can neither look away nor forget.

Go here to discover all 25 people who mattered in 2009

Tiger Woods announced on his Web site Friday that he is taking an 'indefinite break' from professional golf.

Anita Elberse
Special to CNN

The announcement that Accenture has decided to end its marketing relationship with Tiger Woods - now that the superstar is making headlines for his infidelity and sudden break from the sport of golf - is raising larger doubts about the strategy of relying on celebrity endorsers.

Why would any firm center its marketing efforts on an athlete, particularly in today's media landscape in which a celebrity's missteps are so easily captured and disseminated via gossip and social-networking Web sites? Would it not be better for firms to shy away from aligning themselves with celebrity endorsers?

While the strategy is inherently risky - endorsers are people, after all, and people make mistakes - and while Accenture's decision to cut ties with Woods is probably justified given the circumstances, in general, the rewards of relying on endorsers very likely far outweigh the risks.

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David Ellis
CNNMoney.com staff writer

Loudmouth CEOs, islands in the desert and bringing dead celebrities back to life. Our annual list of the business world's bonehead plays marches on.

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For all the complex financial products they can dream up, simple common sense still seems to elude the bright minds of Wall Street. Or at least, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Hoping to shore up his firm's battered image, he spearheaded an all-out public relations campaign this fall, touting his company's important role in building economies and helping everyday workers prosper.

Last month, however, he got a bit carried away, telling a Times of London reporter that he was just a banker "doing God's work." For $43 million a year.

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Centers for Disease Control

Youth violence is widespread in the United States and is the second leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 24. According to a report released by the CDC, youth violence includes various behaviors such as bullying, slapping or hitting and can cause more emotional than physical harm. Robbery, assault or rape can lead to serious injury and even death. In 2006, an average of 16 people were murdered in the U.S. each day.

Take a look at some of the CDC’s statistics:

• 5,958 young people age 10 to 24 were murdered—an average of 16 each day—in 2006.

• Over 631,000 violence-related injuries in young people age 10 to 24 were treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 2007

• In a 2007 nationwide survey, 36% of high school students reported being in a physical fight during the past 12 months.

• Nearly 6% of high school students in 2007 reported taking a gun, knife, or club to school in the 30 days before the survey.

• An estimated 30% of kids between 6th and 10th grade report being involved in bullying.

Find more information here

David Frum
Special to CNN

It's sometimes said that the '00s opened with a Pearl Harbor and ended with a Great Crash. Yet this dramatic decade still lacks even a name. The Forties had big bands and a bigger war, the Sixties protests and hippies, the Seventies "malaise." But what do we call the decade just ending?

The Double-Zeros? The late Bill Safire suggested the Naughties, "nought" being an old-fashioned term for "zero" (as in dough-nought).

Whatever you call them, the years from 2000 on have been united by one great theme: This is the decade when the bills came due for neglected problems.

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South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Belinda Luscombe
Time

1. The Love Guv

After telling his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail for four days in June, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford turned up instead at the international airport terminal in Atlanta. Thus sprung, he held a very raw and rambling press conference, admitting he'd actually been in Argentina with his mistress and "soul mate." Seven weeks and several more excruciating media appearances later ("I'm trying to fall back in love with my wife"), his wife and four sons moved out of the Governor's mansion and back to their hometown of Charleston. In early December a House impeachment panel was convened to weigh recommending removing him from office.

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Jenny Sanford did not stand beside her husband when he publicly admitted to having an affair.

Belinda Luscombe
Time

The cheated-upon spouses of the world have a new hero and her name is Jenny Sanford. The wife of the governor of South Carolina, who announced on Dec. 11 that she is filing for divorce, has handled the denouement of her marriage in a way that makes losing a husband to an affair almost look like a shrewd career move.

Perhaps Elin Nordegren Woods, the newest member of the Spurned Sisterhood, could take a few pages from the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Sanford's playbook. Nordic silence has its place, but there's a lot to admire in how Sanford deftly and subtly grasped her part of the narrative and spun it. Hers is not the story of a dull wife who was passed over for an exotic soul mate in Argentina, but rather the tale of the true captain of a family ship, unbowed by the squalls.

For starters, this summer when her husband held the customary I-have-disappointed-my-family press conference, she did not appear alongside him. This was a doubly wise move, since the governor apparently chose to make the most emotional and difficult announcement of his life without a script. Not only did Mrs. Sanford avoid looking like a fool for literally standing by her man, she didn't have to be associated with what quickly devolved into a p.r. trainwreck. (His rambling 18-minute press conference included weeping, mention of his life-long love of camping and a "surreal" conversation he'd had recently with his father-in-law.)

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CNN

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will remain in the hospital at least "another 36 hours," his doctor Alberto Zangrillo said Monday, following an attack that left Berlusconi with broken teeth and a fractured nose.

Berlusconi, 73, is receiving anti-biotics, anti-inflammatory medication, and painkillers, the doctor said.

The man accused of hitting controversial Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in the face with a replica of Milan's cathedral was charged with grievous bodily harm and held overnight, Milan police said.

Massimo Tartaglia was kept in Milan's San Vittore prison, authorities said. Under Italian law, police can hold him for up to 48 hours without a judge's order.

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