SeaWorld to look at orca incident

Officials at the SeaWorld theme park ordered a “complete” investigation Thursday into the incident in which a 5,000-pound killer whale injured a veteran trainer and dragged him to the bottom of a 36-foot-deep pool at Shamu Stadium on Wednesday.

Held underwater, the trainer, Ken Peters, convinced Kasatka to free his foot from her mouth by stroking her back.

As several hundred horrified patrons watched, Peters, 39, swam to the top of the pool. He was taken to the UC San Diego Medical Center, where he is being treated for a broken left foot.

Kansas City, Mo.

Major snowstorm hits Plains, Midwest

The first major snowstorm of the season blew across the Plains and Midwest on Thursday, grounding hundreds of flights, closing schools, glazing highways and threatening to dump up to a foot of snow on communities that had basked in balmy weather only days earlier.

The wintry weather spread across an area stretching from Texas and Oklahoma to Michigan, and a blizzard warning was posted in parts of Oklahoma.

The system roared through the Northwest and Rockies earlier in the week. Coming on the heels of near-record high temperatures, it rolled through Kansas on Wednesday, coating tree limbs and power lines with half an inch of ice. By Thursday, the storm was moving northeast from Oklahoma on the way to Illinois.