Wet White Christmas: A winter storm stretching from Arkansas to the northern tip of Maine is bringing everything from flood warnings to snow and ice. Tornadoes ripped through Mississippi yesterday, killing one man when his mobile home overturned and another whose car hit a downed tree. Power was knocked out for tens of thousands of people.

Nation: Claire Davis, 17, the Colorado high School student shot in the head by a schoolmate Dec. 13, has died of her injuries. She had been in critical condition since she was shot at Arapahoe High School by 18-year-old Karl Pierson, who had gone to school looking to shoot a librarian. Pierson lightly wounded one other student before killing himself. Davis’s family issued a statement saying, “The grace, laughter and light she brought to this world will not be extinguished by her death.”

World: Four American service members were wounded yesterday, one of them seriously, when the aircraft they were flying in South Sudan came under fire during a mission to evacuate American citizens. Three Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft entering rebel-held territory were damaged by ground fire and forced to turn back. South Sudan broke into violence between army factions last week after an attempted coup by the former vice president.  The Obama administration declines to say how many Americans are trapped in the area.

Side Effects: The NY Times reports that 20 percent of drug-related liver injuries are caused by unregulated dietary supplements. Americans spend $32 billion a year on pills and powders that promise weight loss, muscle power, and the ability to fight colds and illness. A 1994 law prohibits the FDA from screening the supplements before they are sold.

The Obit Page: Edgar Bronfman, who ran the Seagram liquor empire and was president of the World Jewish Congress for 26 years, died in Manhattan at age 84. Bronfman inherited the business from his Canadian father, Samuel, who got rich shipping booze to the states during Prohibition. Edgar Bronfman expanded the business into oil and orange juice, and bought a portion of DuPont Chemical. In 1975 Bronfman’s son Samuel II was kidnapped and Edgar personally delivered the $2.5 million ransom. The kidnappers were quickly caught and claimed during their trial that Samuel was in on the scheme. They were convicted only of extortion.

• John S.D. Eisenhower, son of late President and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower, has died at age 91. The younger Eisenhower had his own military career and later became a military historian.

Middlebrow: Scientists say that the presence of a hyoid bone in the neck of Neanderthals suggests that the species may have been able to speak like humans as long as 500,000 years ago. It was believed that language did not develop until 100,000 years ago, until the first discovery of a Neanderthal Hyoid bone in 1989. The hyoid is a floating bone in the upper throat that serves as a moving base for the tongue, aiding speech. It’s unknown whether Neanderthals told jokes.

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