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DES MOINES, Iowa – A gigantic storm dumped more than a foot of snow across much of the Midwest and New England as it marched eastward Wednesday, making blizzard conditions, burying cars under huge drifts and providing ammunition for a massive campus snowball fight in Wisconsin.

Even more snow fell in some areas, with 16 inches reported in Des Moines and nearly 19 inches just south of Madison, Wis. Gusts of up to 50 mph made snow drifts between 8 and 15 feet tall and even knocked down a two-tale Christmas tree in downtown Champaign, Ill.

The storm was blamed for at least 17 deaths, most in traffic accidents. Hundreds of schools canceled classes, power was knocked out to thousands of people from Missouri to New York and hundreds of flights were canceled.

In the Twin Cities, where about 6 inches of snow fell and the wind chill dipped to minus 9 degrees, Kent Barnard eased a massive orange snowplow into traffic in the suburb of Arden Hills on Wednesday morning. He dropped the right wing of the plow down onto the shoulder, making a grinding sound as the wing sent out a spray of snow.

“You gotta watch it because some people try to sneak up around you,” Barnard said. “They’ll see that huge orange flashing truck coming and go, ‘I don’t want to get caught behind that thing.’”

The storm felt like a rude surprise after an unseasonably warm and dry November in parts of the region. The massive system is the first major blast of wintry weather for many parts of the Midwest.

“I’ve been dreading this day,” said Kim Brust, shoveling the sidewalk in front of his Minneapolis home before sunrise Wednesday. “I was starting to delight in the global warming.”

While an inconvenience for many, others took an opportunity to play.

At least 3,000 University of Wisconsin-Madison students took advantage of an unplanned day off and hurled snowballs at each other in a massive melee. Classes had been canceled for the first time in 19 years due to more than a foot of snow and blizzard-like conditions.

Some came holding trays as shields. Others were bundled up to protect themselves from the below-freezing temperatures and winds that gusted to more than 20 mph. Several went shirtless, though, while at least one had on pajamas.

“I figured with the day off, there was no better way to spend it than with a snowball fight,” said Matt Moerel, 19, of Vadnais Heights, Minn.

Many New England residents braced for bone-chilling winds after digging out from a foot or more of snow. But Gavin Graham, 8, of Concord, N.H., spent two hours sledding.

“It was really excellent sledding. The snow was puffy, and that was really excellent because we had small jumps already made,” he said. “It was awesome having the day off from school.”

Up to 7 inches of snow fell in northeast Pennsylvania and 50 mph winds were recorded near Pittsburgh. High winds knocked down part of an abandoned four-tale brick building in New Castle.

By the time the storm moves off the Maine coast Thursday night, it may have affected as much as two-thirds of the country, said Jim Lee, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines. The storm also brought heavy rain and flooding to parts of the South.

In the West, pounded by the storm’s rain and snow earlier this week, wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees swept across parts of southern Montana. The biting wind also went across Wyoming and South Dakota, according to the National Weather Service.

Winds were expected to diminish Wednesday evening across the Midwest and blizzard warnings were nearly over. But dangerously cold conditions were to follow with temperatures falling to near or below zero overnight.

In northern New York, up to a foot fell on Wednesday and more than 3 feet was expected by the week’s end. Areas in Maine and New Hampshire received up to a foot of snow, and warnings about winds of 40 mph to 50 mph were issued for coastal areas of Maine for Wednesday night, said Dan St. Jean, a National Weather Service Forecaster in Maine.

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Associated Press writers Jeff Baenen in St. Paul, Minn., Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., Pat Condon in Minneapolis, Michael J. Crumb in Des Moines, Nigel Duara in Iowa City, Iowa, and Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – The House voted Wednesday to extend $31 billion in well loved tax breaks, including an income tax deduction for sales and property taxes, to be financed with a tax increase on investment fund managers and a crackdown on international tax cheats.

The 45 tax deductions and credits for businesses and individuals are scheduled to expire at year’s end. The House voted 241-181 to extend them for a year, with only two Republicans voting in favor. The bill now goes to the Senate, which has rejected the tax increase on investment managers in the past.

The tax breaks include a sales tax deduction that mainly helps people in the nine states without local income taxes, a property tax deduction for people who don’t itemize and lucrative credits that help businesses finance research and development. The nine states without a state income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming.

The tax breaks are supported by Democrats and Republicans alike and are routinely extended each year, but there are huge disagreements over the tax increases that would pay for them. The dispute, combined with the Senate’s prolonged debate on health care, makes it unclear whether the tax package will be enacted this year.

Lawmakers could retroactively pass the package early next year, but that would make tax plotting hard.

The House bill would raise $24.6 billion over the next decade from the tax increase on investment fund managers. It would affect hedge fund and private equity managers, as well as the more than 1.2 million real estate investment partnerships, according to the Real Estate Roundtable.

The House bill would raise an additional $7.7 billion from a crackdown on international tax cheats, an issue the Internal Revenue Service and the Obama administration have embraced.

Investment managers typically get a fee to manage funds or assets. They also get a share of the profits earned for investors above a certain level. Under current law, the profit-sharing fees, called carried interest, are taxed as capital gains, with a top rate of 15 percent. The House bill would tax the fees as regular income, with a top tax rate of 35 percent, scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent in 2011.

President Barack Obama supports the tax package, including the tax increase on investment managers and the crackdown on international tax havens.

Democrats argued in favor of the tax increase, saying Wall Street financiers shouldn’t be taxed at a lower rate than workers making less money.

“Those who invest their own money will continue to receive capital gains tax treatment,” said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich. “Those who manage other people’s money will have to pay ordinary income tax, like everybody else who performs services.”

The two Republicans who voted in favor of the bill were Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana and Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina.

Most Republicans argued that the tax increase would reach far beyond Wall Street, hitting real estate investment funds across the country. Instead, Republicans said, the tax breaks should be financed by federal borrowing, increasing the budget deficit.

“It is nothing small of a new tax on the very investments needed to start a new business and make economic growth in this country,” said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Investment groups argued that the tax on fund managers would discourage investment.

“Raising taxes on growth investments by private equity, real estate and many other partnerships just doesn’t make sense, particularly in this time of fragile economic recovery and continuing joblessness,” said Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Private Equity Council.

A coalition of real estate organizations argued that the tax increase would hurt real estate partnerships, further eroding property values just as they are starting to rebound.

“Why would you want to place a $24.6 billion tax increase on this industry now, especially when it is having all these problems?” said David Pearce, vice president and counsel of the Real Estate Roundtable.

The crackdown on tax havens would impose new reporting requirements on foreign financial institutions doing business in the United States and on American advisers who help U.S. residents make investments overseas. Foreign firms that don’t comply would be hit with a 30 percent withholding tax on income from their U.S. assets.

Lawmakers have been working for years on proposals to stop tax cheats from hiding assets overseas, and the Obama administration has pushed the issue as well.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said tax cheats have a patriotic duty to come clean.

“I reckon that asking tax evaders to pay their honest share for the national defense is not an unreasonable request,” said Neal, a top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.

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The bill is H.R. 4213.

WASHINGTON – Five young Americans captured in Pakistan are under investigation for possible links to terrorism after their families found a disturbing farewell video the missing men left behind showing scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended.

Frantic relatives and worried FBI agents have been searching for the five men for more than a week, since their disappearance in late November. The missing men, ranging in age from 19 to 25, have family roots in the northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., area. One, Ramy Zamzan, is a dental student at Howard University.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said the five are believed to be under arrest in Pakistan.

On the heels of charges against a Chicago man accused of plotting international terrorism, the case is another worrisome sign that Americans can be recruited within the United States to enlist in terrorist networks.

Leaders of an Islamic American group said the families of the five men questioned the FBI for help and were particularly disturbed to see the video message.

“One person appeared in that video and they made references to the ongoing conflict in the world, and that young Muslims have to do something,” said Nihad Awad, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

“The video’s about 11 minutes and it’s like a farewell. And they did not specify what they would be doing. But just hearing and seeing videos similar on the Internet, it just made me uncomfortable,” Awad said. The video has not been made public.

Before they left, they did not seem to have become militant, a local imam said.

“From all of our interviews, there was no sign they were outwardly radicalized,” said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik.

In Pakistan, police officer Tahir Gujjar said five Americans were picked up in a raid on a house in Sarghoda in the eastern province of Punjab. He did not identify them, but said three are of Pakistani descent, one is of Egyptian descent and the other has Yemeni heritage.

S.M. Imran Gardezi, press minister at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, said the men “are under arrest in Pakistan. The investigation is to see whether they had any links to any extremist groups.” No charges have been filed.

Pakistani regional police chief Mian Javed Islam told The Associated Press that the men spent the past few days in the city of Sarghoda, which is near an air base about 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of the capital, Islamabad.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Rick Snelsire said officials there were aware of the reported arrests, but could not confirm them.

Pakistan has many militant groups based in its territory and the U.S. has been pressing the government to crack down on extremism. Al-Qaida and Taliban militants are believed to be hiding in lawless tribal areas near the Afghan border.

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the FBI‘s local office said agents have been trying to help find the men.

“The FBI is working with the families and local law enforcement to investigate the missing students and is aware of the individuals arrested in Pakistan,” said the spokeswoman, Katherine Schweit. “We are working with Pakistan authorities to determine their identities and the nature of their business there if indeed these are the students who had gone missing.”

She said the investigation continues, declining to comment further.

According to officials at CAIR, the five left the country at the end of November without telling their families.

After the young men left, at least one phoned his family still claiming to be in the United States, but the caller ID information suggested they were overseas.

The families, members of the local Muslim community, took their concerns to CAIR, which place them in touch with the FBI and got them a lawyer, the group said.

A Howard University spokesman confirmed Zamzam was a student there but declined further comment.

Samirah Ali, president of Howard University’s Muslim Student Association, said the FBI contacted her last week about Zamzam, and told her he had been missing for a week.

Ali said she’s known Zamzam for three years and never suspected he would be involved in radical activities.

“He’s a very nice guy, very cordial, very friendly,” Ali said, adding that he has a bubbly personality. “It really caught me off guard.”

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Associated Press Writers Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo in Washington and Zaran Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.