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medical problems, and they can't charge higher premiums to women because of their sex. The law also lowered costs for seniors with high prescription drug bills. But Medicare's monthly premium for outpatient care has gone up in recent years.
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Southern-style snowstorm that barely qualifies up North brings gridlock, also Good Samaritans
• ATLANTA (AP) -- Students camped out with teachers in school gyms and commuters abandoned cars along the highway to seek shelter in churches, fire stations -- even grocery stores -- after a rare snowstorm left thousands of unaccustomed Southerners frozen in their tracks.
• Tuesday's storm deposited mere inches of snow, barely enough to qualify as a storm up North. And yet it was more than enough to paralyze Deep South cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham, and strand thousands of workers who tried to rush home early only to never make it home at all.
• There were hundreds of fender-benders, and some fatal crashes too. Jackknifed 18-wheelers littered Interstate 65 in central Alabama. Ice shut down bridges on Florida's panhandle and the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, one of the world's longest spans, in Louisiana.
• Some stranded commuters pleaded for help via cellphones while still holed up in their cars, while others trudged miles home, abandoning their vehicles outright.
• Atlanta, hub to major corporations and the world's busiest airport, once again found itself unprepared to deal with the chaos -- despite assurances that city officials had learned their lessons from a 2011 ice storm that brought the city to its knees.
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Ukraine's parliament considering protester amnesty, but with conditions
• KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's parliament is considering measures to grant amnesty to those arrested during weeks of protests in the crisis-torn country, but possibly with conditions attached that would be unacceptable to the opposition.
• Two amnesty proposals are up for a parliamentary vote Wednesday, one of which says amnesty would be granted only if demonstrators leave the streets and vacate buildings that they occupy.
• Over the course of two months, anti-government protesters have established a (Continued on page 29)
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