Nation: Eighty retired NY City cops and firefighters were charged yesterday with fraudulently claiming Social Security disability payments. Many of them claimed psychiatric disorders as a result of the 9/11 attacks, including post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression. The amount of money involved could be hundreds of millions of dollars.

  A total of 106 people were indicted, including the scheme’s organizers. Prosecutors say the claimants were coached to look disheveled, disoriented, and unwell in their hearings. But Facebook pages show them riding a jet ski, marlin fishing, piloting a helicopter, and teaching martial arts.

> JP Morgan Chase agreed to pay $1.7 billion for its role in the Bernie Madoff pyramid scandal. The bank admitted that it did not report Madoff’s suspicious bank activity. It’s hard to keep track, but JP Morgan’s fines and settlements have reached nearly $32 billion in the last year or so. The bank’s CEO remains in office and company stock is at an all time high.

Getting Warmer: Twelve degrees in New York this morning, 14 in Boston. It’s forecast to be in the 50s by Saturday. But the Buffalo Sabres had to cancel last night’s game with the Carolinia Hurricanes because of a blizzard. Part of the New York State Thruway was closed.

 It’s still well below zero in parts of Michigan and Wisconsin as this blast of polar air passes through. The transportation jam is still clearing.

World: Former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear, 29, and her Irish husband were killed in what appears to have been a roadside robbery. Their 5-year-old daughter was injured in the incident. Spear held the beauty title in 2004. Police say the pair stopped when their car broke down. Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

> Moderate and Islamist rebel groups in Syria have turned to fight foreign extremists who had been allied with the rebel cause. The extremists want to establish an Islamist Caliphate in an area bridging eastern Syria and western Iraq.

>A Russian research ship and a Chinese icebreaker have escaped the Antarctic ice after a wind shift created a navigable channel. The Russian ship had been stuck since Christmas.

> Four US service members died last night in a helicopter crash in England.

Downhill: Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn announced she will sit out the Sochi games with a sprained ligament in her knee. Vonn Tweeted,  

“I am devastated to announce that I will not be competing in Sochi.” She ripped two ligaments and broke a bone in her right leg last February, and has re-injured the knee twice this season. With a gold in the 2010 downhill, and a string of world championships, she is the most decorated American skier of all time.

Incoming: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates trashes President Obama and Veep Joe Biden in his new memoir, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.” It’s unusual for a former cabinet secretary to be so blunt. Gates served as defense secretary for five years, three of them under Obama. He wrote that Obama was not committed to the Afghan surge. He says Obama, “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.” Gates castigates Biden for “aggressive, suspicious, and sometimes condescending and insulting questioning of our military leaders.” The administration in turn skewered Gates with praise, saying President Obama “deeply appreciates” his service.

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