Thursday’s top story: at least eight dead across midwest as Chicago nears record low temperatures. Plus, Amazon’s military ambitions

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

Arctic winds lead to school closures and cancelled flights

At least eight deaths have been linked to the polar vortex sweeping across the US midwest this week, including a Milwaukee man who froze to death in a garage, and a University of Iowa student whose body was found behind an academic hall early on Wednesday morning. Schools have closed in several cities including Chicago – AKA “Chiberia” – where Wednesday’s low of about -23F (-30C) was close to the record set in January 1985, raising concerns for the welfare of the city’s homeless population.

Flights cancelled. At least 4,500 flights have been cancelled due to cold weather, while the US Postal Service halted deliveries in some areas.

America’s Icebox. Adam Gabbatt travelled to the nation’s coldest town in northern Minnesota to experience life at -58F.

Facebook posts record profits despite string of scandals

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mark Zuckerberg preparing to testify before Congress last year. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Facebook has posted a record profit for the fourth quarter of 2018, after a year in which the social media giant was buffeted by multiple scandals – including its role in foreign influence operations. The company’s user numbers have also continued to increase, with year-on-year growth of 9% in daily active users and monthly active users, despite widespread fears over the misuse of private data. Markets surged in response to the news, with Microsoft also reporting positive earnings.

Apple v Facebook? Apple has revoked Facebook’s ability to publish certain apps after it was revealed the social network paid users as young as 13 to install an iPhone app that gave it access to information on their internet usage.

How the religious right took hold in Trump’s White House

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, described his department as ‘the department of life’ at an anti-abortion event. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Karen Pence plans to teach at a Virginia school that bans homosexuality. Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, recently told an anti-abortion event that his was “the department of life, from conception until natural death”. The evangelical leader Ralph Reed has hailed the access granted to the religious right by the Trump White House as “remarkable”. In return, the president has earned the unwavering support of evangelicals, even for his most morally questionable policies, as Jessica Glenza reports.

Suffer the children. Evangelicals defended Trump over his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. Later, Ivanka Trump gave $50,000 to a Texas megachurch to help reunite migrant families.

Contract workers left without back-pay after shutdown

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Furloughed contract workers hold unpaid bills outside the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s office during the shutdown. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Hundreds of thousands of US government contractors have returned to work after the longest-ever US government shutdown, but unlike federal employees, they do not expect to receive back wages for the 35 days of work they missed. The financial fallout for those workers, and for small businesses who rely on federal government contracts, is likely to be painful and long-lasting, reports Jamiles Lartey.

Most vulnerable. Black-owned businesses hold a disproportionate number of contracts with the federal government, making them especially vulnerable to a shutdown.

Crib sheet

More than 1,000 files of evidence gathered by the Mueller investigation , and shared confidentially with lawyers for indicted Russian hackers, was obtained by Russians and leaked online last year, prosecutors said in a Wednesday court filing.

John Kapoor, the founder of Insys Therapeutics Inc, will appear in court in Boston this week, in the first trial of a painkiller manufacturer over conduct that allegedly contributed to the opioids crisis . Kapoor and four of his colleagues deny the criminal charges against them.

New York City’s MTA is facing renewed calls for more elevators in subway stations , though the death of a young mother who fell down stairs at a Manhattan station last week is now thought to have been related to a pre-existing medical condition.

The anti-vaccine movement is once again under the spotlight after the governor of Washington declared a public health emergency over a measles outbreak in the state.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The US military may soon be reliant on technology provided by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon. Illustration: Sonny Ross/Sonny Ross for Guardian US

Inside Amazon’s push to ‘defend’ America

Amazon is the lead contender for a $10bn contract to accelerate the Pentagon’s move into cloud computing. That means the online bookseller may soon be responsible for systems used by the US military to trade intelligence or relay orders. Levi Pulkkinen reports.

How Facebook robbed us of our sense of self

Fifteen years since Mark Zuckerberg launched “thefacebook” from his Harvard dorm room, Facebook has ostensibly connected billions of people around the world. But, asks John Harris, has it also left us unable to differentiate between our public and private selves?

Why has TV become obsessed with the afterlife?

Spoiler alert: the protagonist of the new Netflix sitcom Russian Doll dies after just nine minutes. And then again, 10 minutes after that. Her predicament is part of a trend for TV shows set on the boundary between life and whatever lies beyond it, says Rachael Sigee.

The game that taught us to fear ourselves

Silent Hill helped change the games industry when it was first released 20 years ago, popularising the survival horror genre with its mix of tension, problem-solving, cinematic camera angles and chilling sound design. Keith Stuart salutes an enduring classic.

Opinion

The “three-fifths clause” in the US constitution, proposed by James Madison, demanded just three out of every five slaves be counted to determine a state’s population. As the stark evidence of voter suppression in Georgia’s recent gubernatorial race shows, that clause remains key to understanding race in America, argues Imani Perry.

Black people remain partial members or partial citizens … And, unsurprisingly, the very subject of Madison’s letter, political representation, is one of the sharpest ways to see this.

Sport

The Premier League title race remains competitive after Liverpool missed the chance to pull clear of Manchester City with a 1-1 draw at home to Leicester. Tottenham closed in on second place with a late winner against Watford, while Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri was at a loss to explain his side’s 4-0 drubbing at Bournemouth.

The organisers of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo have cut crowd sizes at the Games’ sailing competition by a third, to allow for a faster evacuation to higher ground in the event of a tsunami.

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