BREAKING NEWS

One killed, two hurt as winter storm blasts U.S. Midwest

A motorist was killed in Kansas on Thursday in a crash blamed on a fierce blizzard slamming the US Midwest and Southeast that also canceled or delayed thousands of airline flights and injured two people on a commercial jet over the Dallas area.
The traffic fatal crash along Interstate 70 near the city of Oakely prompted the Kansas Highway Patrol to shut down a portion of the major east-west artery.
"Please stay off the roads and stay safe, give (the Kansas Department of Transportation) time to clear ... them, it's not worth your life," Trooper Tod Hileman, the highway patrol's public information officer, said on Twitter.
No other details were immediately available on the collision; the name of the victim was not released. Hileman said roads were expected to remain snow-packed and icy into Friday.
The fatality came as parts of the US Midwest and Southeast were inundated with the first wave of heavy snow and rain expected in the central United States through the weekend, said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.