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A rare snowstorm left thousands of motorists trapped on Atlanta interstates overnight. "Thank God I walk to work everyday," said Doug Simonton, who snapped this photo Tuesday afternoon.

Monica Cantwell spent Tuesday night in her office at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her 13-year-old daughter stayed overnight at her middle school in nearby Hoover, Alabama. " Everyone I spoke with is very angry about the lack of foresight, including myself as a parent," she said.

The severe weather forced 4,500 students to spend the night in various school buildings in Hoover, Alabama. High school student Christopher Brady shot this photo Tuesday evening. "At first we were excited, but then we panicked a bit," he said.

Officials said that 1,254 accidents were reported in Georgia's snowstorm. Jay Hayes shot this photo of I-285 around 5 p.m. Tuesday. "I've lived in Atlanta since 2001, and I have never come across a situation where the city was so unprepared," he said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of cars were still stranded on Atlanta's interstates, as seen in this photo taken on a GA 400 exit by iReporter Dylan Wintersteen. "It's bizarre to see all the cars people abandoned and just left last night," he said.

CNN Video Producer Jo Parker slept alongside other female staffers in the basement of the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, where all rooms were booked. Male CNN staffers had less luxurious accommodations in the employee gym.

While walking to the grocery store in Roswell, Georgia, Smith Culberson came across an entire highway of abandoned vehicles. "Most cars couldn't drive up the exit ramp because of the ice," he said.

Marcy Heinz left work in Johns Creek, Georgia, at 1:15 p.m. and spent 8 hours on streets and back roads trying to get home. "The gridlock was absolutely unbelievable," she said. "I have 14 and a half years experience driving in Atlanta and this is the worst I've ever seen it." She eventually gave up and wound up spending the night at Milton High School, where students were safely sheltered in one part of the school, separated from stranded motorists also seeking shelter.

Ian Walters says it took about an hour to make the five-mile drive to his Roswell, Georgia, home on Tuesday afternoon. He says the car he was riding in hit a patch of ice on the way up this hill and got stuck for about 10 minutes. Walters was one of the lucky ones, though -- many Atlanta residents reported commutes that took several hours longer than usual.

Keshia Owen camped out at HYATT house Atlanta/Cobb Galleria after she could not make it home Tuesday. "I left work at 12:45 yesterday and haven't seen home yet," said Owen.

(CNN) -- In the South, hospitality is the norm. Of course people were going to help each other when thousands of Atlanta-area residents got trapped in Tuesday's monster snow jam.

But volunteering to stay up all night connecting people who need help with those providing it via Facebook? Spending six hours transporting school children home two or three at a time -- on your birthday? Walking six miles to comfort a daughter stuck at school?

These stories, most of which first appeared on the Snowed Out Atlanta Facebook page, shouldn't surprise anyone, but they reinforce the reality that there are people in this world who will literally do anything for a stranger just because it feels right.

Do unto others

Derrick Cody is 25, a student and the youngest of 10 children. He knows a little bit about hard work. He and his co-worker were running the desk at the Fairfield Inn near Permiter Mall in suburban Atlanta when people began seeking shelter in the hotel lobby, having nowhere else to go.

Several people claimed other hotels had turned them away.

"In the hospitality industry work ethics is important," Cody said. "But so is moral ethics."

His hotel was at capacity, but he knew people needed help.

After providing bedding, food and phone chargers to the 20 stranded people, Cody walked about three miles roundtrip at 4 a.m. to Saint Joseph's Hospital to get heart medication for a man who had recently undergone heart surgery. The man's wife had been unable to fill his prescription before the storm, nearby pharmacies were closed, the hospital was not able to deliver the medication and taxis were unable to reach the hotel.

Another woman wrote about Cody's act of generosity on the Success Stories of Snowed Out Atlanta Facebook page. Cody told CNN he just wants to follow in his dad's footsteps of giving back to the community. His father is a pastor.

When he spoke with CNN by phone Thursday afternoon, Cody still hadn't been home. He is currently studying to become a medical assistant with the goal of becoming a nurse.

"I was raised by two parents that worked hard," he said. "They gave us proper training. We're well disciplined."

Keeping promises

In northwest Georgia, plumber Joe Keller has no idea how many trips he made from Dugan Elementary to various parts of Paulding County west of downtown Atlanta. What he does know is that he was going to keep his promise to do what he said he would do -- to get everyone home -- even if it was his birthday.

In his Chevrolet pickup truck, Keller and his two sons, ages 13 and 3, spent at least six hours transporting more than 100 students and staff.

Once Keller reached the homes, his 13-year-old son would walk the children to the front door to make sure someone was there waiting.

In addition to the students and staff, Keller also picked up stragglers on the roadside, especially those walking with children.

After finishing at midnight Keller finally got a birthday present of sorts when he and his son went to "play in the snow."

"We did what country boys do when it snows," he said with a laugh.

The Kellers finally made it home around 2 a.m.

On Wednesday he made the rounds again, checking to be sure everyone was okay.

In a Facebook post teacher Lindsay Elkins said Coach Joe Keller is #notyouraverageJoe, He brushed off the praise.

"The principal and teachers are the ones that need all the attention," Keller said when reached by phone at work on Thursday. "They kept the kids organized and calm. Made sure they were fed and had water."

Importance of connection

Marietta mom Michelle Sollicito created the the now-infamous "Snowed Out Atlanta" Facebook pages that connected people in need with those who could help in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

The working mother of two is the administrator of a Facebook page for more than 200 Marietta moms. They had been chatting with each other trying to organize transportation for their children and locating family members. She says she realized the situation had gone from bad to a crisis when school buses full of children couldn't be located.

"The children weren't where they were supposed to be," she said. "That scared me. That's terrifying."

The main Snowed Out Atlanta page was born in the early afternoon hoursTuesday, before Atlanta's emergency operations center opened, she said. By 5 p.m. the page had exceeded 5,000 members and had been providing assistance for hours, she said.

She especially remembers an awkward, but desperate post from a husband looking for his 8-month pregnant wife and their 3-year old. A volunteer named Craig eventually located the pair and was able to get them home -- at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

"I just walked in the door after 16 hours," the woman later posted. "Me and my boy and the baby are safe and sound. I can't even begin to express my gratitude for this large group of people, most of whom I've never met. Not once during our journey did I feel alone."

Sollicito says the success is partly due to people having chargers in their cars and the organic way news of the pages spread through social media.

"People needed to feel connected," she said. "It helped psychologically more than anything else."

At first her husband Vincent did not understand why Michelle had such passion for her project. The next morning he found me "looking like a panda," she said. She'd stayed up all night crying.

"Every minute someone was reaching out," she said, at one point handling 300 posts and requests in a 15-minute time frame. By Wednesday morning the group had grown to roughly 40,000.

A representative from Facebook contacted her, telling her they'd never seen a group grow so fast. They advised her to branch out into smaller groups because they couldn't guarantee her site wouldn't go down.

The pages are now closed. The emergency is over. When asked what she plans to do next she says in addition to preparing for the next storm she has been approached by the Red Cross and Facebook's Disaster Relief group.

A lesson learned

Zach Haedt and Sam Traquina, both in their 20s, were enjoying a quiet afternoon in the clubhouse of their apartment complex. A hilltop view provided the perfect vantage point of the traffic mess forming at the intersection of interstates 285 and 75 outside downtown Atlanta.

They had the idea to walk among the stopped cars and give away free hot chocolate, Haedt said. And then, Haedt said, "We became kind of addicted to helping people."

He says everywhere the pair looked they saw groups pushing vehicles to safety, numerous acts of people helping each other.

They talked and comforted drivers, listened to stories and gave directions. Eventually they wound up providing seven people with shelter overnight, Haedt said. He and Traquina feel as if the experience changed them.

Haedt's wife, Mary Beth, was unable to get home that night but could hear the excitement in his voice when they spoke by phone.

They realize their actions were not much different than ones that played out across the region that night.

Lots of people just wanted to talk, Zach said. "And we just wanted everyone to get home safe."

Thanks, Dad

Kindergartener Elizabeth Nilson was among thousands of students who had to spend the night at school on Tuesday. Only her dad, Mark Nilson, decided to walk six miles with a blanket from home, to spend the night with her.

The pair was interviewed by CNN affiliate CBS Atlanta.

Although we don't know how many other parents performed similar feats we do know if a person is going to be hero, it's probably best to start at home.

Bonus: A Birmingham doctor walked roughly six miles in the snow when he was called for emergency brain surgery at another hospital but had no other way of getting there. The doctor was interviewed Thursday on AC360.

(CNN) -- The cafeteria manager and her supervisor at a Utah elementary school have been placed on paid leave while officials investigate how dozens of children had their lunch trays pulled from their hands this week, outraging parents.

"Once our investigation is complete, we will post an update for all concerned," school district spokesman Jason R. Olsen said Friday.

The trays were grabbed from pupils at Uintah Elementary School on Tuesday -- before they could even take a bite -- because they had negative balances in the accounts used to pay for lunches, school officials acknowledged.

They admit the situation should have been handled differently.

Utah school sorry for taking away lunches

Instead of regular lunches, the students were given fruit and milk.

"We don't ever let kids go without any food entirely," Olsen told CNN affiliate KSL.

Mother Erica Lukes told KSL she was "blindsided" when her daughter, a fifth-grader, described what a school district official told her: "You don't have any money in your account, so you can't get lunch."

"There were a lot of tears," Lukes said, "and it was pretty upsetting for them."

Her daughter, Sophia Isom, recounted how she was met by a district nutrition manager who confiscated her school lunch and threw it away, the station reported.

"So she took my lunch away and said, 'Go get a milk,' " the daughter told the affiliate. "I came back and asked, 'What's going on?' Then she handed me an orange. She said, 'You don't have any money in your account, so you can't get lunch.' "

Between 50 and 70 of the school's 550 students had accounts in arrears, Olsen told KSL.

The district said it started notifying parents about negative account balances Monday. But Lukes said she and other parents were never told about the problem.

"Even if they did try to send the word out, you still don't do that to a child," she told KSL. "You don't take a lunch out of their hands."

On Thursday, two state senators visited the school and ate lunch with pupils to demonstrate that no child should go hungry in school, KSL reported.

State Sen. Todd Weiler, a Republican, posted a tweet about his visit: "Best nugget of the Uintah school lunch story: 5th grader were particularly horrified that food was being discarded in 'pizza day'!"

Weiler picked up the $3 lunch tab of state Sen. Jim Dabakis, a Democrat, who joined him. Dabakis said he and Weiler will meet with Senate leaders about legislation to ensure that students are fed in schools, the affiliate reported.

Weiler added that the school employees responsible for the controversy should be fired because they "used (their) power to humiliate and embarrass children," KSL reported.

School officials say they made a mistake.

"This situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner. We apologize," the Salt Lake City School District said on its Facebook page.

Officials are investigating whether guidelines about notifying parents were followed, the district said.

"We understand the feelings of upset parents and students who say this was an embarrassing and humiliating situation," the district said. "We again apologize and commit to working with parents in rectifying this situation and to ensuring students are never treated in this manner again."

Another post on the school district's Facebook page talks about the importance of ending child hunger.

CNN's Mayra Cuevas contributed to this report.

Washington (CNN) -- A long-awaited State Department environmental report on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline indicates what the oil industry and its backers have been saying -- it won't have a big impact on carbon emissions that cause climate change.

The report released Friday appears to give the Obama administration the cover it needs to approve the politically charged project, but not until May at the earliest, after a 90-day review and comment period.

Environmentalists reacted with predictable fury, accusing the government of bad intent by releasing the report before an inspector general's findings on whether it was flawed because some participants had oil industry ties.

"This document will be seen by the entire environmental community ... as a sham," complained Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, adding that "it encourages the already widely held impression that the fix was in from the beginning."

GOP: no more stalling

Supporters, including Republican leaders who have been pushing for two years for President Barack Obama to approve the project, said now it was time to get it started.

"Mr. President, no more stalling, no more excuses," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, adding a jab at Obama's recent pledge to act on his own this year if he can't get congressional backing. "Please pick up that pen you've been talking so much about and make this happen. Americans need these jobs."

The pipeline that would transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast has been a political football, pitting the oil industry and its Republican backers against environmentalists and liberal Democrats who complain it bolsters the especially dirty fossil fuel production from the tar sands of northern Alberta. The project also has sparked protests from the political left and the environmental movement.

However, the politics get messy for Democrats, because organized labor supports the project that will create several thousand jobs.

Release of the report launched a 90-day period for public comment and consultation. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is known for his effort to combat climate change, will then determine if the pipeline project is in the national interest.

The environmental analysis makes no final conclusion on the merits of the project, but says it wouldn't impact how much oil gets produced from Canada's tar sands in northern Alberta.

Dirtier oil

Approval or denial of any single project was unlikely to affect how much oil gets extracted from the tar sands, Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones said in a conference call with reporters.

Jones noted that the oil from the tar sands was more carbon intensive than normal oil, producing 17% more carbon emissions.

Environmentalists say that is why the project should be rejected, arguing that it would continue U.S. reliance on a dirtier foreign oil at a time when Obama has pledged action against climate change.

"I will not be satisfied with any analysis that does not accurately document what is really happening on the ground when it comes to the extraction, transport, refining, and waste disposal of dirty, filthy tar sands oil," said Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California.

In a speech last year on climate change, Obama said the pipeline should be approved only if it is basically carbon-neutral, meaning that approving it would have no more impact on climate change that not approving it.

The president and CEO of TransCanada, the company proposing the pipeline, said Friday that the environmental report makes clear the benefits of the project to the U.S. economy, including $3.4 billion in added economic activity from its construction.

Asked about increased carbon emissions, Russ Girling said the report determined that "oil sands are gonna get produced anyway."

"When you read the report carefully, it makes clear that blocking Keystone is an important component of climate sanity and we will find out if John Kerry and particularly Barack Obama are ever willing to stand up to the oil industry or not," said environmental activist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.

Messy politics for Democrats

Democrats from energy states, such as Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, face tough re-election battles this fall and therefore want to see the pipeline approved to help a major industry for their constituents.

They have criticized the administration for taking several years to review it. This year, Obama has made holding onto the Senate in November a political priority.

In 2011, the Obama administration postponed a decision on the pipeline until last year, citing concerns raised by Nebraska officials and environmental groups about the original route near the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water for much of Nebraska and is important for the state's agricultural economy.

Republicans accused Obama of putting off the issue until after the November 2012 election, but their efforts to force an earlier decision failed to work. Meanwhile, TransCanada rerouted it in Nebraska.

The State Department is handling the review because the project crosses an international border with Canada.

CNN's Jamie Crawford, Matthew Hoye, Brianna Keilar, and Jim Acosta contributed to this report.

Appeals Court Judge Alessandro Nencini, center, reads out the verdict for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Florence, Italy, on Thursday, January 30, 2014. The appeals court upheld the convictions of U.S. student Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the 2007 murder of her British roommate. Knox was sentenced to 28 1/2 years in prison, raising the specter of a long legal battle over her extradition. Sollecito's sentence was 25 years.

Sollecito, left, and his father Francesco leave after attending the final hearing before the verdict on January 30. After nearly 12 hours of deliberation, the court reinstated the guilty verdict first handed down against Knox and Sollecito in 2009.

Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese bartender Knox originally accused of Kercher's murder, talks to the press outside the courthouse during a break form the appeal trial of Knox and Sollecito on September 30.

Knox appears on NBC's "Today" show. Knox spent four years in jail because of murder charges in the death of her roommate Meredith Kercher while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy.

Knox and her former boyfriend Sollecito were convicted in 2009 to 25 years in prison (Sollecito got 26 years). The conviction was overturned in 2011 for "lack of evidence." But Italy's Supreme Court decided last year to retry the case, saying the jury that acquitted them didn't consider all the evidence and that discrepancies in testimony needed to be answered.

Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found dead with her throat slit in an apartment she shared with Knox on November 2, 2007.

When Knox was detained for questioning in 2007, she implicated Lumumba, the owner of a bar where Knox worked. Lumumba was taken into custody and released after two weeks in prison when his alibi was corroborated. He later won a libel suit against Knox.

Sollecito, Knox's boyfriend at the time of the murder, was convicted in December 2009 with Knox and released when their cases were overturned. Prosecutors testified that police scientists found Sollecito's genetic material on a bra clasp of Kercher's found in her room, while his defense claimed there wasn't enough DNA for a positive ID.

Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native raised in Perugia, was convicted separately from Knox and Sollecito and is now serving 16 years. Guede admitted to being with Kercher on the night she died, but said he didn't kill her. Both Knox and Sollecito argued that he was the killer, and Guede suggested the couple took Kercher's life.

Meredith Kercher's family lawyer Francesco Maresca, left, argued in court in 2011 that the multiple stab wounds implied more than one aggressor killed Kercher. Pictured from left are Maresca, Kercher's father John, sister Stephanie, brother Lyle and brother John at a press conference in 2008.

Carlo Dalla Vedova, one lawyer on Knox's defense team, argued in court that "the only possible decision to take is that of absolving Amanda Knox" in his closing argument for her appeal hearing.

Carlo Pacelli represented Patrick Lumumba in his civil suit case. He called Knox two-faced and a "she-devil."

Giulia Bongiorno, the lead lawyer on Raffaele Sollecito's defense team, compared Knox to Jessica Rabbit on the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Knox is not bad, just "drawn that way," Bongiorno said in her closing statements in the 2011 trial.

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Editor's note: Nina Burleigh is an investigative journalist and author. Her last book is "The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italian Trials of Amanda Knox."

(CNN) -- When Amanda Knox was convicted again on Thursday, Americans reacted with bafflement. The appeal was the third round through Italy's grinding, multi-level legal system, with its numerous checks and balances. But the saga is also confusing because, while the crime is simple, the case built around it is a grand spectacle combining aspects of national pride, sexist archetypes and race.

Knox and her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, were first convicted by a jury in 2009 for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007. An appellate judge overturned the conviction in 2011 and Knox returned to the United States after four years in jail. The prosecutor then appealed the acquittal to the Italian Supreme Court, which sent the case to the new appellate panel that reinstated the conviction.

It isn't over yet. The defendants will now appeal and the case eventually could be returned to another appellate panel for yet another review.

I spent two years researching and writing a book about the Knox case, living in Perugia, attending the trial, interviewing every lawyer involved in the case, reviewing thousands of pages of police documents and court transcripts, interviewing forensic police, coroners, the principles of the case, their family members and associates.

Americans like me who believe the case against Knox and her then-boyfriend is fatally flawed have been accused of disliking Italy or disrespecting its judicial system. But what has happened in the Amanda Knox case is not an Italian problem. When prosecutors make mistakes anywhere in the world, they don't like to admit it. It takes an exceptionally brave and wise "Solomon" to reframe a case after arresting the wrong people.

The latest Italian proceeding did not involve any new evidence and, sadly, didn't shed any new light on the crime. There is still no proof that Amanda Knox was in the bedroom where someone stabbed Meredith Kercher. The DNA and fingerprint evidence is still entirely linked to a man named Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year jail sentence for the murder -- shortened thanks to testimony that put Amanda Knox on the crime scene.

After he arrested them, the trial prosecutor proposed that the motive was a post-Halloween ritualistic sex game. But when authorities soon realized the DNA and fingerprints in the murder room belonged to neither Knox nor Sollecito, rather than reframing their case, the small town prosecutors and police in the glare of international media dug in their heels. In the latest proceeding, a new prosecutor abandoned the sex game motive but suggested Knox murdered Kercher after an altercation over Knox's poor hygiene and sloppy housekeeping.

In other words, out with Satan and in with the dirty laundry.

Amanda Knox convicted of murder again

DNA expert: Science was ignored for Knox

Dershowitz: Lots of evidence against Knox

With no hard evidence and no credible motive, spectators around the world are right to wonder what's going on in these Italian courtrooms.

Rudy Guede has never denied watching Meredith Kercher bleed to death, and he left a bloody handprint in the victim's blood on her wall. According to testimony from Italian forensic police, his DNA was inside the victim—although it was not clear whether there was a sexual assault. In his prison writings and in his testimony at his appeal, he talked of how difficult it was for him to get the image of the blood that flowed from Meredith out of his head.

Did this garish confession shock the Perugian authorities and courthouse press corps into trying to ascertain just who and what this young man was? On the contrary, he apparently elicited mercy, and had his sentence cut in half. He may well be walking free before the Knox case is settled.

In his first comments on the case, before he was captured, Guede was surreptitiously recorded by Perugia police in a Skype conversation with a friend, according to police wiretap transcripts in the trial record, saying that Knox had nothing to do with it. But as soon as he was connected with a defense lawyer, he started to change his story.

It's a trope of the case that Knox (and Sollecito) had a P.R. machine, vast amounts of money and great legal defense, while Guede was legally under-served. In fact, his attorney was one of the busiest criminal defense lawyers in Perugia, well-connected with the prosecution, with a career behind him handling hundreds if not thousands of local crimes, often involving drugs and violence.

Prosecutors' reluctance to deeply investigate Guede is understandable; they don't want to know. But Guede may be the most interesting character in the story. Born in Ivory Coast, brought to Italy at age 5, he is more Italian than most immigrants, but, like other immigrants, he is legally just a guest in the homogenous country, not a citizen, required to report to the authorities annually (which was why his fingerprints were on file in Perugia).

In the months before the Kercher murder, Guede was broke and showing signs of mental illness, and was involved in three and possibly more home invasions, according to police reports, trial testimony and interviews with victims.

His apparent modus operandi was to break into what he thought were empty houses and make himself at home. A few weeks before the Kercher murder, someone broke into a Perugia law office through a second floor window, according to trial testimony from the lawyer who practiced there, turned up the heat, rearranged small trinkets, drank an orange soda from the refrigerator and appeared to have slept on the couch before making off with a laptop.

At a nursery school in Milan a week later, director Maria Antonietta Salvadori Del Prato, walked in on a Saturday and found Guede sitting at her desk, she told me in an interview. She called police. They found the stolen laptop and a knife in his pack. Del Prato suspected he might have gotten a key to the nursery school from one of her employees who frequented the Milan club scene. Del Prato told me she believed he spent a night on the children's cots and cooked a pot of pasta in the kitchen, then placed it in little bowls around the room.

From that interview and many more, I pieced together a picture of a young man who seemed to be acting out some sort of fantasy of a home, a fantasy that perhaps abruptly cracked when Meredith Kercher came home unexpectedly while he was burgling her house, and unwittingly locked herself into the house with him. (Guede has maintained "whoever committed this terrible crime is still free.")

I believe one reason for the lack of interest in this young man is that a man killing a woman is mundane and boring, compared with the more titillating image of women fighting and killing each other. The other reason, sadly, is a kind of reverse racism. He's black, and innocent black men are far too often railroaded in white systems, Italian and American. To suggest that this young man might have been the lone killer has a taint of political incorrectness.

Male violence against women is a major public health problem worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

In the end, in this case, it appears that the commonness of the crime is what the Italian prosecutors—and many others--refuse to accept, searching for something more interesting and unique, in an elaborate, headline-grabbing crackpot theory that, they unfortunately still cannot relinquish.

Remove the racial aspect, forget national pride and whether you "like" Amanda Knox, and we can see that this simple tragedy is all too routine.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nina Burleigh.