all day today and continuing into tonight at this very moment a huge manhunt is underway by land and air for the two remaining terrorism suspects in yesterday's brazen attack on journalists working at a magazine in paris. the death toll remains at 12. the search has been centered in a wooded area of the french countryside. police are in fact hoping these suspects are ill-prepared for the cold nights of the french winter. in addition to the day of mourning in france, the human reaction to this terrorist attack has been almost universal and remarkable. we begin our coverage with our team in paris tonight. first to lester holt to start us off. hey, lester. good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening to you. a day of mourning has been a day of anxiety. people here have been glued to a drama playing out about an hour's drive from here. a hunt for two of the suspects who were reportedly seen earlier in the day. a third suspect, an 18-year-old, turned himself in last night. this country is on high alert. parisians paused in solemn silence today remembering the victims of yesterday's attack. [ gunfire ] >> reporter: while just 40 miles away, police swarmed an area northeast of paris in france's champagne region. a manhunt on a massive scale. roads blocked, s.w.a.t. teams going door-to-door after what is believed to be the last sighting of the suspects, brothers said and cherif kouachi. nbc's bill neely in the thick of the hunt. >> reporter: police initially came here because at a gas station up the road an employee reported seeing two armed men. a short time ago two men were seen abandoning the car and then heading into the woods. there are huge numbers of antiterrorist police, s.w.a.t. teams, even military. >> reporter: today, a photo emerged from inside the offices of charlie hebdo where the staff of the satirical magazine was massacred. apparently revenged for the apparently revenged for the themagazine's caicatures of the muslim prophet muhammad. survivor saw fellow cartoonists gunned down telling london's daily mail, it lasted only a few minutes. i had taken refuge. the editor, bodyguard policeman. me and my family have to be strong his brother said today. also killed gunned down in the street was policeman ahmed miaribet, who happened to be a muslim. france's prime minister warned another attack is a concern. and parisians were rattled by news a policewoman was killed and another wounded in a shooting in a southern suburb. turns out it was unrelated to the paris terror attack. but nerves here are frayed nonetheless. are you fearful it will happen again? >> sure. we have some fear. >> reporter: meanwhile, i am charlie, has become a mantra of solidarity in this city. here in republique square, pens form the peace sign. lights of the eiffel tower twinkled out, thousands gathered in the open determine today keep free expression alive. lester holt, nbc news, paris. >> reporter: this is richard engel. their faces are now known all over france. the kouachi brothers, said, 34, and cherif, 32, sons of algerian immigrants but born in paris. their story of radicalization goes back a decade. in 2005 cherif was a want-to-be rapper who delivered pizza and worked the fish counter at a supermarket. he was also watching images of the iraq war. the abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib which he said enraged him. this is the low income housing project where the kouachi brothers lived in their early 20s. they were reportedly heady criminals and occasional drug users working odd jobs. cherif was also increasingly angry. he decided to travel to iraq to fight u.s. troops there and started training. he jogged every day at this local park and learned to use an assault rifle from a man he met in this local mosque. but before cherif could travel to iraq, he and several of his associates were arrested. one of france's leading terrorism experts, cherif was we leased after 18 months and initially appears he was under surveillance. but that became expensive, so eventually they stopped watching cherif closely. >> the time came when the intelligence services assessed that he posed no more threats and he went underground. >> reporter: in 2010 cherif and his brother were questioned, but subsequently managed to evade surveillance reportedly traveling to yemen and syria, and then return to execute france's worst terrorist attack in decades. and tonight, brian, we're learning new details. u.s. counterterrorism officials tell us that one of the brothers, the older brother, said, received months of training in yemen by al qaeda's branch there. and both brothers were on the u.s. no-fly list for years. brian. >> richard engel and lester holt both starting us off from paris tonight. thanks. and starting overnight and into today we've been correcting something we first reported here. we were told by not one but two senior u.s. intelligence officials that this manhunt had ended last night with all three suspects either dead or captured. and while these sources have been reliable in our previous reporting, the intel they passed along to us last night turned out not to be correct. and now as to the repercussions from this attack around the world and in this country, we get that angle of the story from our justice correspondent pete williams. >> reporter: new york city is posting extra police around diplomatic facilities at the united nations and the french mission and consulate. more security too in chicago for the consulate there. and more police presence at the consulate in atlanta. the french government has asked for additional security at its embassy here in washington. and in response the secret service has stepped up patrols. police nationwide have been urged to be extra vigilant in response to the paris shooting, but there's been no security directive from federal authorities, and no change in the terror threat level. that's largely because u.s. officials see the attack in paris as an act of retribution. like a mob hit some officials say, with no connection between the terrorists in paris and anyone here. u.s. officials say they sympathize with the french government, which has revealed that the two suspects were known to police and had been under surveillance. american officials say the u.s. faces the same challenge, trying to keep tabs on a growing number of terror suspects here. ron hoskel, former fbi assistant director, says conducting secret surveillance is very manpower intensive. >> to surveil one person could take potentially dozens of people over the course of 24 hours. >> reporter: why? >> well, in a perfect world you don't want the target of your surveillance to know you're there. and that means for physical surveillance potentially rotating vehicles, rotating people, so that when they look in their rear view or side view mirrors they're not seeing the same person twice. >> reporter: late today president obama made an unannounced stop at the french embassy here where he signed a condolence book. he talked earlier by phone from air force one with the fbi, homeland security and intelligence agency. officials were told there are no credible terror threats against the u.s., brian. >> pete williams wrapping up our coverage from the d.c. newsroom. pete, thanks. in this country another big story continues to be this brutal cold from north to south, it's even snowing in jacksonville. two-thirds of the nation now caught in the grip of it, in fact 26 states recorded temperatures below zero today forcing school closures and a lot of them. nbc's ron mott covering all of it tonight from boston. >> reporter: frigid air continues to rain across much of the country today, slowing or shutting down the flow of more than water. with temperatures in 40 states expected to plunge below freezing. icy streets near cleveland after a water main break. blizzard conditions in north dakota. even snow and ice in jacksonville, florida. it's a bone-chilling quiver nearly coast-to-coast. >> we've got that snow, you can see it on the sky cam barely making out downtown. >> we have one more day of the bitter temps to get through, possibly some snow. >> reporter: in new york city police and postal workers had no choice but bundle up. in virginia two injured firefighters in sub zero temperatures. in nashville patrols in search of the homeless to help them escape bitter cold. >> all right. it's going to be the coldest night of the year, we'll get you inside if you want. >> reporter: in chicago schools are closed meaning the ymca was open for working parents. >> days like this the ymca is a savior. >> reporter: and in minnesota another blast of wind-driven snow making its way to new england. >> this quick-moving snowstorm will race through the great lakes overnight producing a few inches of snow, even across new england friday morning. and then the lake effect snow kicks back in where some areas could pick up one to two feet. >> reporter: record low temperatures from a chilly 10 in greenwood, mississippi, to 17 in mobile, alabama, breaking a record that has stood since 1886. just 19 degrees in pensacola, 8 in charlotte, 2 below in wheeling, west virginia. here in boston the big chill was clear even if downtown crowds were not.he upper midwest are dealing with blizzard conditions. here in boston overnight we got the kind of cold we don't get all that often around here. temperature fell below zero for just the third time in the past ten years, brian. >> ron mott in boston tonight. ron, thanks. as we've been reporting the ground won't stop shaking in parts of texas where another earthquake just today now brings the total to 20 over just the past two days or so. thankfully they haven't been big shakers, but they've shaken up a lot of texans. we get our report tonight from nbc's jacob rascon in irving, texas. >> reporter: every student in california may know the drill, but in irving, texas, this has never happened. earthquake drills like fire and tornado drills will now be mandatory. you guys felt it? oh, wow. >> i felt all of them. >> i felt all of them. >> reporter: you felt all of them? not a single earthquake ever recorded in north texas before 2008. now there have been 127 the last >> reporter: in case the sudden and so far unexplained shaking gets any worse. jacob rascon, nbc news, dallas. the feds are forcing honda to pay out a record $70 million in fines for failing to report over 1,700 claims for injuries and at least one death. honda publicly admitted in november it had seriously underreported claims linked to possible vehicle defects from '03 to 2014. this fine is the largest ever handed out by the national highway traffic safety administration. a lot of meetings and phone calls today among prominent california democrats as we learned today one of the most prominent is stepping aside. senator barbara boxer first elected in '92 after a decade in the house has announced she will not seek a fifth term in the senate. an open seat in the state with 40 million people is a big political event, and there are already predictions this could be the first-ever $1 billion senate race. an independent investigation now backs up what the nfl has contended all along, that no one in the league saw that violent elevator video of ray rice striking the woman who's now his wife before the images were made public back in september. former fbi director robert muller led this investigation. his report does not completely absolve the nfl. it also concludes that even without the video the league had more than enough to go on and to launch more in-depth investigation than it had originally commissioned. still ahead for us this evening, the airline employees fired after refusing to fly because of what they saw written on the plane. also, the public appeal for help for some beautiful desperate need. desperate need. the volkswagen golf was just named motor trend's 2015 car of the year. so was the 100% electric e-golf, and the 45 highway mpg tdi clean diesel. and last but not least the high performance gti. looks like we're gonna need a bigger 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happy. within minutes the entire crew had seen the photo including flight attendant grace lam. >> when i saw that, i was frightened. i was so scared. i have 24 years flying, i've never seen anything or heard anything like this before. >> reporter: malaysia airlines had just gone missing four months earlier, the war in syria was raging and homeland security had warned terrorists might target commercial airliners. but after security and maintenance sweep, the captain and airline determined the graffiti was likely a prank drawn by ground personnel probably in korea, the plane's previous location. still, 13 flight attendants, all of them veterans, refused to fly. the flight canceled. in october united fired the 13. in a statement the airline tells nbc news, our flight operations, safety and maintenance teams appropriately investigated and determined there was no credible security threat. >> these 13 flight attendants never should have been fired. they raised a legitimate concern about the security of the aircraft. and they were retaliated against for that reason. >> reporter: now the flight attendants are asking the labor department to intervene and order their reinstatement. united airlines says it will defend itself vigorously. tom costello, nbc news, washington. and we are back in a moment with a surprising possible downside to those beautiful long lashes we hear advertised so often. shes we hear advertised so often. 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