Frank Gehry, boundary-pushing architect whose sculptural buildings reshaped skylines worldwide, died at 96 earlier this month at his home in Santa Monica, California, after a brief respiratory illness.
The Canadian-born American architect was known for his unconventional building designs. His signature works include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. He won architecture’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, in 1989.
The National Weather Service placed at least 15 states under winter storm warnings or advisories as a deep low-pressure system swept east, bringing heavy snow, damaging winds and dangerous wind chills from Montana through the Great Lakes into the Northeast. Forecasters warned of treacherous travel, with gusts topping 50 miles an hour in parts of Minnesota and whiteout conditions forcing closures along key interstate corridors during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Farther south, the same sprawling system fueled severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes across portions of the Midwest and the South, with authorities reporting pockets of structural damage, downed power lines and scattered outages. In Texas, where some areas saw freezing temperatures and sleet, forecasters cautioned that even minor accumulations could slick roads ill-prepared for wintry precipitation.
The West Coast was also not spared from destructive weather this past month. An intense atmospheric river lashed California both just before and during the holiday week, delivering some of the wettest conditions in years to parts of the state and triggering floods, debris flows and mudslides, particularly near recent wildfire burn scars. Emergency crews conducted evacuations in vulnerable canyons as saturated hillsides gave way, while officials warned that additional rounds of rain, on already soaked ground, could prolong the risk well into the new year.
President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post declaring Venezuela’s airspace “closed in its entirety” has escalated the standoff with Nicolás Maduro’s government, which denounced it as a “colonialist threat” to its sovereignty. The statement follows U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warnings of heightened risks from military activity and GPS interference, prompting airlines to cancel flights.
In retaliation, Venezuela revoked operating permits for six foreign carriers, accusing them of aiding U.S. “state terrorism.” This comes amid a major U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, including the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group and additional warships, aircraft, and troops to interdict drug shipments and pressure Maduro over alleged “narco-terrorist” ties.
Officials describe an upcoming “phase” blending covert and overt actions against drug networks, while avoiding explicit regime-change rhetoric. The operations have involved lethal strikes on suspected drug vessels, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirming three attacks in the Eastern Pacific that killed 14 people, leaving one survivor. Reports of earlier Caribbean strikes, including a second hit on survivors, have drawn human rights scrutiny and congressional probes over legality and targeting.
Maduro frames the pressure as a prelude to invasion but has signaled willingness for direct talks with Trump to de-escalate. Regional neighbors, strained by Venezuelan migration, now grapple with potential U.S.-Venezuelan conflict.
