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Flakes sprinkle Northeast winter wonderland
The storm that whipped the Northeast over the weekend with six to 16 inches of snow has blown off to Canada, but more snow is on its way - maybe just enough to bring out some of that holiday spirit.
The flakes sweeping across the Midwest and Northeast on Monday and Tuesday aren't expected have the heft of the fast-moving storm that preceded them but are predicted to add a couple of inches to the wintry landscape.
Researchers: Cannibalism at Jamestown
The winter of 1609 to 1610 was treacherous for early American settlers. Some 240 of the 300 colonists at Jamestown, in Virginia, died during this period, called the "Starving Time," when they were under siege and had no way to get food.
Desperate times led to desperate measures. New evidence suggests that includes eating the flesh of fellow colonists who had already died.
Archaeologists revealed Wednesday their analysis of 17th century skeletal remains suggesting that settlers practiced cannibalism to survive.
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Police: Student shot 2 inside Virginia college
An 18-year-old student drove to a community college campus located inside a western Virginia mall on Friday, walked in, then opened fire - wounding two women - before being subdued by an off-duty security guard and two police officers, authorities said.
Christiansburg, Virginia, police Chief Mark Sisson identified the suspect Friday night as Neil Allen MacInnis, who he said was a student at New River Community College.
An item on the online forum 4chan - posted at 1:52 p.m. Friday, three minutes before police estimated the shooting began - said it was from Neil MacInnis, who wrote that he goes to the same community college's satellite campus in Christiansburg.
The post urged people to check out an online stream of the New River Valley Public Safety scanner and promised, "I'm gonna give y'all the details because the news never gets it right."
FULL STORYTwo arrested in Virginia fires
Two people were arrested overnight and charged with one count of arson in connection with a string of suspicious fires in Accomack County, Virginia state police said Tuesday.
Tonya Bundick, 40, and Charles Smith III, 38, are being held without bail, authorities said.
There have been 77 suspicious fires in the county in the past five months, according to the sheriff's department.
FULL STORY3 dead after shooting at Marine base
[Updated at 8:16 a.m. ET] A Marine shot and killed two of his fellow service members at a Virginia base on Thursday night and then apparently killed himself, base officials said.
The incident took place at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The shooter gunned down a man and a woman, the spokesmen said. All are Marines - permanent personnel assigned to the officer candidate school.
Authorities did not disclose a motive and were investigating the incident. The identities of the victims were not immediately disclosed as authorities work to notify next of kin.
FULL STORYDozens of suspicious fires in Virginia
With each new blaze that erupts in Virginia, the urgency to arrest a "group" of arsonists grows.
At least 71 fires have occurred in Accomack County since November, the latest reported Monday.
And in each case, whoever is responsible slips away into the night, unnoticed.
FULL STORYStorm keeps at least 900K students from class
A snowstorm that set snowfall records in Chicago yesterday is now giving an unscheduled day off for nearly 1 million students in states to the east.
More than 905,000 public school students are not going to classes Wednesday because of the winter storm slamming the United States, according to school districts in Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio.
The numbers are a reflection of major districts only, and do not include many smaller districts in the storm-affected area.
The storm could dump as many as 20 inches of snow west of the nation's capital. At least 93,406 customers were without power Wednesday morning in Virginia, Ohio and West Virginia, according to numbers provided by local power companies.
Big snow disappoints with minor moisture
Six inches of snow in Chicago. A foot or so plastering the Upper Midwest. And up 20 inches expected just west of Washington D.C.
Surely, there's a silver lining to these snow clouds though, right? Don't they bring much-neeed moisture to parched states?
Not quite.
Snow is very fluffy, and it takes up to a foot of it to squeeze out an inch of rain, meteorologists say.
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Bus driver who fell asleep at the wheel convicted of involuntary manslaughter
A bus driver who fell asleep at the wheel on a Virginia interstate, causing a deadly early morning crash, was found guilty today of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, a county court clerk said.
In addition to four killed, 49 other passengers were injured around 5 a.m. on May 31, 2011, when a Sky Express Inc. motorcoach drifted off Interstate 95 near Richmond, Virginia, struck a cable barrier, spun around and then overturned.
The driver, Kim Yiu Cheung, was slightly injured in that crash and refused medical treatment, officials said.
Ray Campbell, a clerk for Caroline (County) Circuit Court in Virginia, said Cheung is scheduled to be sentenced January 23, 2013.
This summer, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the deadly accident could be traced to the driver's "acute sleep loss." It also blamed the bus company for not monitoring drivers' rest and sleep activities and a federal agency that oversees motor carrier companies for allowing the company to continue running despite known safety issues.
Metal band Metallica joins hunt for killer
Metallica is doing its part to help the FBI solve the murder of a 20-year-old college student after a 2009 concert by the rock band in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In a one-minute announcement on YouTube, Metallica frontman James Hetfield urges anyone who knows anything about what happened to Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington to contact authorities.
"Remember, any information, no matter how small you think it is, could be that crucial piece investigators need to help solve the case," Hetfield says in the video, with guitars and amplifiers in the background.
The band offered $10,000 in 2010 for information leading to an arrest in the case; the reward fund since has grown to $150,000, Hetfield says.
"This crime we feel was horrific in nature and what we want to do is bring closure to Morgan's family," Virginia State Police Capt. Timothy Lyon says in a video on the FBI's website. "We want an arrest, and that's what we're committed to doing."
Morgan Harrington
The FBI says Harrington was last seen hitchhiking on a Charlottesville bridge after leaving the concert before it was over on October 17, 2009. Her body was found in a field four months later. She had been wearing a distinctive silver necklace with Swarovski crystals, which has not been recovered.
The FBI says DNA evidence links Harrington's case to a 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax, Virginia. The bureau issued an enhanced composite sketch of an unnamed man they think may be responsible.
The suspect is described as an African-American male with black hair and facial hair at the time of the 2005 attack. He is about 6 feet tall and was believed to be between 25 and 35 years old at the time of the attack, making him 32 to 42 now.
Information can be conveyed by calling Virginia State Police at 434-352-3467; Fairfax police at 703-385-7959; or the FBI at 800-225-5324.
Friday's live events
The race to the presidency now turns toward the general election in November. CNN.com Live is your home for all the latest news and views from the campaign trail.
Today's programming highlights...
12:00 pm ET - First lady's commencement address - First lady Michelle Obama is the commencement speaker for graduation ceremonies at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Overheard on CNN.com: 'This was my space shuttle moment,' reader says of Discovery
Editor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community.
Star-struck space lovers gazed skyward Tuesday to watch space shuttle Discovery's journey to Washington after a series of nostalgic fly-bys on the back of a NASA Boeing 747. The flight departed from Florida's Kennedy Space Center en route to Dulles International Airport in Virginia. It will spend its retirement at a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum facility in Chantilly, Virginia.
Space shuttle Discovery arrives in Washington
The photo at the top was shot by rocket technician Danny Mills of Cape Canaveral, Florida, who joined several other iReporters in documenting the shuttle's journey from point A to point B. Mills went over to Cocoa Beach to see the shuttle. He used an often-mentioned word to describe his feelings.
"There's a lot of life left in the shuttles, and everyone I talked to this morning feels the same," he said. "We're really sad to see them stop flying. It was really bittersweet." FULL POST
This Week's Top Videos
Editor's Note: This post is a recap of the top five videos on CNN.com from the past week. So in case you didn't catch our best videos during the week, here is your chance to see what you missed.
This week's top video gained the attention of more than a million CNN.com viewers and featured chilling footage of the Texas tornadoes tossing tractor-trailers into the air. The second most watched video on CNN.com this week was the tragic firsthand account of the Oakland university shooting, followed by video examining Nadya Suleman's welfare application, the crash of an F-18 jet into a Virginia apartment complex and finally the timeline of the Trayvon Martin shooting.
Big rigs sucked into storm
Truck trailers are thrown around violently as a tornado rips through North Texas.
Shooting chaos captured on cell phone
Art Richards shot cell phone video at Oikos University where a gunman killed seven people.
Nadya Suleman admits being on welfare
Anger and outrage as "Octomom" Nadya Suleman, admits she's receiving food stamps. HLN's Nischelle Turner reports.
Witness: Jet crash a 'horrific sight'
Zack Zapatero describes what he saw when a Navy jet crashed into an apartment building in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Trayvon Martin's last minutes
Law enforcement expert Alex Manning analyzes a complete time line of the Trayvon Martin shooting, based on 911 calls.
Navy jet crashes into apartments in Virginia
[Updated at 6:05 p.m. ET] A Navy fighter jet experienced a "catastrophic mechanical malfunction" during takeoff Friday over the military community of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and rained a stench of jet fuel shortly before crashing into apartment buildings, according to residents and Navy officials.
The jet carried a student pilot in the front seat and an experienced instructor behind him, and the dumping of jet fuel was "one of the indications that there was a mechanical malfunction," Navy Capt. Mark Weisgerber told reporters.
The malfunction is being investigated, he said.
The two pilots, a police officer and three other people were taken to Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital, Dr. Thomas Thames, the hospital's vice president of medical affairs, told CNN affiliate WAVY.
None of the injuries was considered life-threatening, Thames said.
Virginia Beach Mayor William Sessoms told CNN that nine people suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The crash and explosion ruptured the easy mood of spring break and the unfolding Easter and Passover holiday weekend, and the two-seater F/A-18 jet landed eerily upright in flames in a courtyard surrounded by five apartment buildings suddenly set afire, according to residents and authorities.
The two crew members ejected safely, the Navy said. Resident Pat Kavanaugh told CNN affiliate WTKR that he and others found one of them still strapped to his seat with a lacerated face. Kavanaugh said he was on his couch when he heard a loud boom and was startled to see a parachute hanging from the building.
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Jury finds for two Virginia Tech victims' families in lawsuit
A jury in Christiansburg, Virginia, decided Wednesday in favor of two families of victims in the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting who had accused the school of negligence.
The seven-member jury awarded $4 million to each of the families, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office said. In suing the state, the families' lawyers had argued that the school should have notified the student body sooner after learning that two other students had been found dead in a West Ambler Johnston dormitory room on the morning of April 16, 2007.
Seung-Hui Cho then went on to kill 30 other people, including the two victims whose families had sued - Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde - before killing himself. Peterson died while in her French class; Pryde was pursuing a master's degree in biological systems engineering.
"Vindication has finally come," said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was among the wounded at Virginia Tech. "This is about them being accountable," she told CNN in a telephone interview from Florida. "This will ensure the safety of students in the future."
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G: Girl, 6, becomes youngest eligible for Scripps Spelling Bee
Can you say extraordinary?
I suspect that 6-year-old Lori Anne Madison can spell it - and it's one of the best words to describe her.
The young girl from Prince William County, Virginia, has just become the youngest speller eligible to participate in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, according to the event's record books, which date to 1993. Mike Hickerson, the bee's communications manager, said there have been four spellers since 1993 who were 8 years old.
Lori Anne, who is home-schooled, beat out 21 other kids in the county to win the bee, which enters her into the national bee.
The word that thrust her into the spotlight? "Vaquero," the Spanish translation of "cowboy," which is often used in Spanish-speaking parts of the South such as Texas, according to InsideNova.
The paper reported that after one of the last spellers missed her word, Lori Anne stepped up to the microphone, was given her word and without hesitation rattled off the spelling correctly.
Her parents said it was a word that had tripped her up before.
“We practiced that word several times because she kept getting it wrong,” mom Sorina Vlaicu Madison told InsideNova. “We really insisted on that word, so I knew for sure she would nail it.”
College lacrosse player's murder trial begins in Virginia
The trial of a University of Virginia lacrosse player who is accused of fatally beating his ex-girlfriend is expected to begin Monday.
George Huguely faces charges including first-degree murder in the May 2010 death of Yeardley Love, a 22-year-old senior who was also a lacrosse player.
Police were initially called to Love's off-campus Charlottesville apartment by a roommate who reported "a possible alcohol overdose," said Police Chief Tim Longo at the time.
"It was quickly apparent to them this young lady was the victim of something far worse," Longo said.
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4 GOP candidates fail to make Virginia ballot, judge rules
A federal judge has ruled against four GOP presidential candidates seeking a spot on Virginia's March 6 primary ballot: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.
Those four had sued the state's board of elections because they were left off Virginia's ballot.
Virginia requires candidates to obtain 10,000 signatures from registered voters in the state, with at least 400 signatures coming from each of the commonwealth's 11 congressional districts.
Huntsman and Santorum did not file such a petition with the Virginia State Board of Elections. Gingrich and Perry filed petitions that were later rejected by the Republican Party of Virginia for not meeting requirements.
FULL STORYMissing 2-year-old found after double homicide in Virginia
A 2-year-old boy who authorities say was abducted following a home invasion robbery and double homicide in Richmond, Virginia, was found late Saturday, police said.
Authorities said a suspect fled the scene of the robbery and homicides in a vehicle that was idling near the home. The toddler, identified as Kaiden Gage Burnside, was inside the vehicle, they said.
"The car and the child have been recovered," said Lt. Ronnie Armstead, a spokesman for the Richmond Police Department. The boy was unharmed, Armstead said.
Investigators believe the assailant did not know the child was in a white GMC vehicle when he stole it, Armstead said.
Police have issued an arrest warrant for Jamal Clemons, 27, on suspicion of abduction, robbery, robbery with a firearm, using a firearm in the commission of a felony and a felon being in possession of a firearm, Armstead said.
Clemons, according to authorities, lives on the same street - about a block away - from the home invasion scene.
FULL STORY2-year-old missing after double homicide in Virginia
Police in Richmond, Virginia, issued an Amber Alert on Saturday for a 2-year-old girl who was in a car a shooting suspect allegedly used to flee the scene of a double homicide.
The shooting occurred during a home invasion, Richmond police spokesman Linwood Harris said. The suspect then left the scene in a car idling nearby, according to CNN's Richmond affiliate WWBT. The toddler was inside the car, Harris said.
The identities of the shooting victims were not released and it was not immediately known what relation, if any, they had to the missing girl.
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