Washington, D.C.

All-passenger screenings to start this year

Homeland Security officials say a government plan to check all airline passengers’ backgrounds before they board a plane could begin by this summer.

It’s such an urgent priority that the government will order airlines to provide background information on their customers to test the program, Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson said Monday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hutchinson said he wanted to begin testing this spring.

“The information that is given by a passenger to the airlines is important for us to have — in terms of name, address, date of birth — so we can properly assure the safety of a particular flight,” Hutchinson said.

The Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would screen all passengers by checking that information against commercial and government databases. Each passenger would be given one of three color-coded ratings.

New Jersey

Ice coats East Coast; 50 deaths reported

A storm carrying the threat of heavy snow for the Northeast coated a wide swath of the East Coast in ice Tuesday, stopping trains, closing schools and courts, and knocking out electricity to a quarter-million people.

At least 50 deaths have been blamed on snow, ice and cold from Kansas to the Carolinas since the weekend. Most were traffic accidents.

While one low-pressure system pushed a wave of icy weather that stretched from Georgia into Maryland, another propelled snow across the Midwest and Great Lakes. Up to 27 inches of snow was possible in northern Michigan by this morning.

The two systems were converging over the Northeast, threatening Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

More than 250,000 customers lost power Tuesday in South Carolina and 58,000 in Georgia, utilities reported.

New York City

‘Tonight Show’ pioneer dies

Jack Paar, who held the nation’s rapt attention as he pioneered late-night talk on “The Tonight Show,” then told his viewers farewell when still in his prime, died Tuesday. He was 85.

Paar died at his Greenwich, Conn., home as a result of a long illness, said Stephen Wells, Paar’s son-in-law.

“Jack invented the talk show format as we know it: the ability to sit down and make small talk big. I will miss him terribly,” Merv Griffin said.

Johnny Carson took over “The Tonight Show” in 1962. Paar had a prime-time talk show for three more seasons, then retired from television in 1965.

Paar had taken over the flagging NBC late-night slot in July 1957; Steve Allen had departed some months earlier. Allen’s show was a variety show; Paar’s a talk show.

“Like being chosen as a kamikaze pilot,” Paar wrote in “I Kid You Not,” a memoir. “But I felt sure that people would enjoy good, frank and amusing talk.”