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SAN FRANCISCO --(AP) Declaring climate change to be an indisputable threat, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a plan to combat global warming by setting goals for reducing California's emissions of greenhouse gases. "Today, California will be a leader in the fight against global warming," Schwarzenegger told a United Nations conference on the environment on Wednesday. Under the governor's executive order, the secretary of California's Environmental Protection Agency will be charged with overseeing efforts to meet those goals, and will report on the state's progress in January and every six months after that. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an emergency proclamation on Friday citing "conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property ... as a result of extreme low temperatures and freezing conditions."Jan. 13, 2007, 11:26AM Freeze grips much of nation's midsection Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Residents from Texas to Illinois today braced for yet another wave of a deadly storm that had already coated the region with a layer of freezing rain and sleet, as frigid arctic blasts reached as far as Southern California. More than 125,000 homes and businesses had no electricity today in the St. Louis area, where the storm dumped a mix of snow and ice the day before. "We are still in the middle of a storm," said Ern DeCamp, spokesman for Springfield's City Utilities, where 50,000 customers were without power. "We're still losing people." The storm had been blamed for at least six deaths across the region and led to some school closures and flight cancellations at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The latest death reported was a 26-year-old woman killed today in Oklahoma when the car she was riding in swerved off Interstate 40 and slammed into a sand truck that was clearing ice from the shoulder. In Oklahoma, where the storm had dropped more than a half-an-inch of sleet, some 24,000 homes and businesses were without power today. Most of the outages were in the southwestern and south central parts of the state. "We're still keeping our fingers crossed. We haven't had the outages that we expected so far," said Albert Ashwood director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. At least two more waves of freezing rain, ice and snow are expected during the weekend, he said. "We're very concerned about those," Ashwood said. The storm was moving into Illinois, where the National Weather Service issued an ice storm warning today for the central part of the state through Monday morning. Freezing rain could layer the region with up to half an inch of ice, forecasters said. Sun-loving Southern Californians also got a rare dose of freezing weather, prompting worry about the homeless and crops. From Palmdale to Fresno, temperatures ranged from the single digits to the low 30s, although much of Los Angeles County stayed in the low 40s. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an emergency proclamation Friday citing "conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property ... as a result of extreme low temperatures and freezing conditions."
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