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1. Freezing temperatures possible across parts of South Florida this weekend
The cold front is moving in Saturday, with possible record low temperatures down to the 30s and 40s and highs in the 60s.
"The cold outbreak rivals the cold of early January 2010," said WPTV Chief Meteorologist Steve Weagle.
Weagle said anyone living in South Florida at the time remembers it well. Many unofficial reports and photos of snowflakes. Although very different from January 1977, when measurable snow was reported all the way to Miami.
According to NOAA, the source region of the air mass following the front is from northern Canada and is expected to move directly southward from the Northern Plains into Florida.
2. Breyer to retire so who will President Biden pick?
Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the court's three liberal justices, will resign from the court at the end of the current term.
Early discussions for Breyer's successor are focusing on U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Biden's nominee would “receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed.”
3. Florida Democrats walk out of Surgeon General's confirmation hearing
Minority Leader Lauren Book, D-Plantation, said Dr. Joseph Ladapo wasn't giving straight answers to yes or no questions, prompting her and three colleagues to walk out.
Five times state Book asked Ladapo if vaccines worked against the coronavirus.
"Yes or no questions are not that easy to find in science," Ladapo responded, but he later conceded that the vaccines have "relatively high effectiveness for the prevention of hospitalization."
Republicans carried on the hearing, unanimously approving Ladapo. His nomination faces one more committee before heading to the full Senate.
4. How South Florida is preserving history on Holocaust Remembrance Day
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, South Florida's Holocaust Documentation & Education Center & Museum is partnering with Steven Spielberg's USC Shoah Foundation to integrate their extensive collection of over 2,300 Holocaust eyewitness testimonies into the Foundation’s Visual History Archive.
The testimonies document life before, during, and after the Holocaust, and most were conducted in English, although there are often instances where the interviewees would revert to Yiddish, Polish, Spanish, or German.
Dr. Kori Street explained that the integration of HDEC’s interviews into the VHA would help ensure that the lessons and legacy of the Holocaust are never forgotten. South Florida is one of the world’s largest communities of living Holocaust Survivors and their families.
5. Executive order criminalizes sexual harassment in the military
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday that makes sexual harassment an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The executive order also changes the military’s response to domestic violence and the distribution of intimate visual images.
The new law excludes commanders from being involved in sexual harassment and sexual assault investigations.
A study by RAND estimated that one in every 16 women experience sexual assault in the military. The number is smaller among men – one in every 143.
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On This Day In History
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps—and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there.
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