The Boy Scouts of America approved a proposal on Thursday to end a ban on openly gay scouts that has been in place throughout the organization’s 103-year history, the group said in a statement.

The vote by more than 1,400 members of the group’s National Council came amid intense lobbying by gay-rights activists and members of conservative organizations. The change does not remove the organization’s ban on gay adult leaders.

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Long-time activist Medea Benjamin was at the center of attention Thursday after she repeatedly interrupted President Obama as he spoke about the U.S. drone policy and Guantanamo Bay. Obama paused several times to address her and let her speak for a good minute before moving on with his comments. Benjamin, co-founder of the social justice movement CODEPINK, refused to budge from her seat and was eventually escorted away. Metro spoke with her after she was released to ask more about her spur-of-the-moment decision literally heard ’round the world.

Benjamin: It’s really scary! I was listening intently and was more and more disappointed as I heard him talk about drones and not using his power to say they will take them out of the CIA. There were rumors he was going to put an end to signature strikes and yet he didn’t do that. And then Guantanamo Bay — he is Commander in Chief! He could close it today.

Did you go in there planning to address him like that?

I thought that perhaps I would be happy with what he would say. I really went in with an open mind.

Did they try to silence you? Did you have to resist?

It’s a very formal setting and I think they would have been embarrassed to have pulled me out in a brutal way. They tried to and I insisted on staying in my seat. I appreciate that we have the ability to speak out, but more important to me is to have policies that coincide with the Geneva Convention and international law.

What did you think when the President said, ‘That woman’s voice is worth listening to’?

I thought that was really great but I think rather than just more nice words, we need action. There are 102 men in Guantanamo Bay who are starving themselves,  30 being brutally force fed. They need justice.

What did you think of his responses to you?

I’m not content with words. What we want to see is actions.

Have you been to one of Obama’s press conferences before and addressed him like this?

This was my second one. Yes, I have spoken to him privately but nothing like this.

What was it like when they came over and tried to silence you?

It was really scary. They were saying they were army  and FBI and Secret Service. It was intimidating. I insisted on remaining in my seat and getting a chance to speak out more on the drone program because I had only talked about Gitmo. I don’t think anyone would do anything like this lightly… I’m still shaking…

How did the people around you react?

[Laughs] They were kind of shocked. They didn’t know what to do. The police asked them to get away from me so I was by myself surrounded by other press and law enforcement.

Were you arrested?

No. I was taken to a room and asked a lot of questions and I was very forthcoming and then I was allowed to leave. They just asked basic questions about everything from where I lived, my phone number, social security number to why did I do it.

Do you plan to show up to another Obama press conference?

I have no idea. One day at a time.

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After the second interruption, Obama said, “Part of free speech is you being able to speak, but also me being able to speak. And you listening,” to which the crowd applauded.

Moments later, the woman ranted for a good couple of minutes before the President responded saying, “That woman’s voice is worth listening to.”

The woman has been identified as Medea Benjamin, a long-time protester and founder of the social justice movement CODEPINK. She was eventually removed by security. (Read our interview with Medea Benjamin on what it’s like to yell at the President)

“Since President Obama was elected in 2008, he has been talking the talk and making promises, but at CODEPINK, we are ready to hold him accountable,” CODEPINK spokesperson Alli McCracken told Metro after the press conference. “Similar to our drone policy, the existence of the Guantanamo Bay Prison is making us hated around the world.”

A 2006 photo of Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the womens activism group Code Pink, protesting the speech of Prime Minister Nuri al-Malikiwith a call to the end of the Iraq war.
Credit: Getty Images

“Thanks to our very own @medeabenjamin for standing up and speaking the truth to @BarackObama!” CODEPINK tweeted moments after the conference. “@medeabenjamin just asked @BarackObama to release #shakeraamer #closegitmo.”

Shaker Aamer is a Saudi Arabian citizen and former U.K. resident who has been held at GitMo since 2002. He was taken into custody in Afghanistan, though he has never been charged. He was cleared for release six years ago, according to The Guardian, but he remains in prison.

President Obama did outline a plan today on closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison. He has thus far been unable to carry out a 2008 campaign pledge to close the prison. 103 of the 166 detainees recently staged a hunger strike.

“There is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened,” Obama said.

Obama lifted a moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen out of respect for that country’s reforming government, he said. He asked Congress to lift restrictions on the transfer of terrorism suspects from Guantanamo and directed the Defense Department to identify a site to hold military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees.

“Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system,” he said.

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The father of a Chechen immigrant killed during questioning over his links with one of the Boston Marathon bombings suspects said on Thursday he plans to travel to the United States where he suspects his son was tortured and killed.

Ibragim Todashev, 27, was killed by a federal agent in his apartment complex when he became violent during questioning over his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of two brothers suspected of planting two bombs at the marathon on April 15.

“I suspect that they tortured my son and that he suffered a painful death,” said Abdulbaki Todashev, wiping away tears at the home he shares with one of his wives in the mostly Muslim region of Chechnya in Russia’s North Caucasus.

“I will try to go to (the United States) and get to the truth,” he said as he received neighbors and acquaintances paying their respects to the dead man, the oldest of 12 children between his father’s two wives.

Todashev had met the Tsarnaevs when he travelled to the United States to improve his English, said his father, who works in the mayor’s office in Chechnya’s main city of Grozny and is said to be on close terms with regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

He said he gave his permission when his son asked to stay in the United States because he said it was safer than Chechnya, where separatists waged two wars with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and militants still fight for an Islamic state.

Todashev travelled to the United States in 2008 on a Russian passport, a federal law enforcement source said, and lived in Boston before moving to Florida, where he was killed. His father said he had a plane ticket to return to Russia on Friday.

“He shouldn’t have left. He lived comfortably and his mother was very worried about him because he was the oldest in the family and she was used to him being a model for the others,” said a neighbor, Malika, who refused to give her last name.

The FBI agent who shot Todashev, who also practiced mixed martial arts, has not been publicly identified but is from the agency’s Boston division, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

U.S. media reported that Todashev implicated himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb that investigators believe was drug related. Authorities were investigating possible connections between Tsarnaev and the crime.

“Chechens have a power in their unity and interest in what happens in their homeland. It unites them. That’s the reason my son became an acquaintance of the Tsarnaevs,” said Todashev, speaking in the courtyard of his older wife’s house.

Todashev is one of at least two friends of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who Federal investigators have been looking at very thoroughly since the Tsarnaevs were first identified as Boston bombing suspects, a law enforcement source said.

A friend of Todashev in the United States, Khusen Taramov said Todashev was trailed constantly for the past several weeks by agents and questioned repeatedly by phone and in face-to-face interviews which lasted as long as five hours. Taramov said he was questioned as well.

Todashev was arrested on May 4 and charged with aggravated battery after getting into a fight with another man over a parking space at an Orlando shopping mall, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Orlando.

The man, who suffered a split upper lip and had several teeth knocked out of place, did not to press charges against Todashev, who was released from jail on a $3,500 bond, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said.

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A group of U.S. retailers, including Macy’s Inc. and Target Corp. , sued Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. on Thursday, breaking off from a proposed $7.2 billion settlement reached last year over fees to process credit card transactions.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, came ahead of a May 28 deadline for the millions of merchants affected by the settlement to decide whether to forego receiving damages under the pact and pursue their own legal action.

That settlement, pending in federal court in Brooklyn, would end litigation on behalf of merchants that accused Visa and MasterCard of inflating so-called interchange, or swipe, fees.

Many retailers criticized the proposed settlement after it was announced in July 2012. They say the pact offers inadequate compensation and forces them to sign broad litigation releases that could shield Visa and Mastercard from future lawsuits over antitrust violations.

By “opting out” of the settlement, the retailers can pursue separate litigation seeking damages over allegations of past antitrust violations. But even so, merchants would still be bound by other injunctive relief if the settlement goes forward, including changes to Visa and MasterCard’s swipe-fee rules.

The pact received preliminary court approval from a federal judge in Brooklyn in November 2012, and Visa and Mastercard have said they are confident the settlement will win final approval.

Representatives of Visa and MasterCard had no immediate comment on the new lawsuit.

Also named as plaintiffs in Thursday’s lawsuit are JC Penney Co Inc. , Kohl’s Corp. and TJX Cos . The lawsuit seeks compensatory and triple damages, as well as other remedies.

On Tuesday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and 18 others said they would both opt out and consider pursuing separate legal actions over damages. Wal-Mart is not named as a plaintiff in the case filed Thursday.

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In a scene right out of Star Trek, a Texas company is developing a 3-D food printer for astronauts to create custom meals on the fly.

With support from NASA, the firm, Systems and Materials Research Corp of Austin, intends to design, build and test a food printer that can work in space.

“This project is to demonstrate we can create and change the nutrition of the food and be able to print it in a low-gravity environment,” the company’s research director and lead chemist, David Irvin, told Reuters.

Three-dimensional printers create solid objects by depositing droplets of material one layer at a time.

Systems and Materials intends to create nutritionally rich, aesthetically appealing and tasty synthetic food by combining powdered proteins, starches, fats and flavors with water or oil to produce a wide array of digital recipes.

All the ingredients are designed for extremely long shelf-lives, making them suitable for long stays in space.

“The 3-D printing system will provide hot and quick food in addition to personalized nutrition, flavor and taste,” the company wrote in its proposal to NASA.

“The biggest advantage of 3-D printed food technology will be zero waste, which is essential in long-distance space missions,” it added.

Ultimately, the company sees food printers as a way to help feed a world population that is estimated to reach 12 billion by the end of the century. The technology may also have implications for the military.

“A 3D-printed food system can reduce military logistics, disposal waste, increase operational efficiency and mission effectiveness especially during wartime,” the company said.

“In addition, 3-D printed food can provide optimal nutrient to the soldiers depending on their personal needs and level of physical activities.”

Eventually Irvin sees a day when food printers will play a role in everyday diet and nutrition.

“The initial plan is to work with NASA and the astronauts and then as things become commercially viable, we will definitely consider weight loss and weight gain” applications, Irvin said.

The company’s six-month, Small Business Innovation Research study contract, worth up to $125,000, is pending, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel.

“These are very early stage concepts that may or may not mature into actual systems. This technology may result in a Phase 2 study, which will still be several years from flight hardware,” Beutel added.

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New research from the American Public Transportation Association finds that 70 million people visiting cities this summer plan to use public transportation during their trip.

As the temperatures rise and schools close for the season, more than 126 million Americans are planning to vacation in a city this year – a 7 percent increase over 2012, according to the association, which said the improved economy is the reason for the increase in travel to cities.

The five most popular cities for travel this summer are New York, Miami, Chicago, Orlando and San Francisco.

The survey found that a majority in all age groups will take public transportation while on their city trip, but millenials are most likely to use public transportation while on vacation, with 73 percent indicating they would.

Major motivators for using public transportation included not having to worry about finding a parking space (73 percent), saving money on parking fees (69 percent), and not having to navigate a car within a new city (64 percent), according to the survey.

“With the economy on the rebound, cities are becoming a more attractive destination for the summer because they are close by and have a wide array of amenities,” said APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy.  “A growing number of travelers are discovering that one of a city’s greatest assets is its local public transportation system.  These travelers are saving money while taking advantage of the local systems’ high-frequency routes which are designed to stop at the most popular spots and attractions a city has to offer.”

Forty-nine million city vacationers will use public transportation to sightsee and for restaurant dining and nightlife, 47 million to travel to and from their place of lodging, while 42 million will take public transportation to travel to and from the airport during their visit.

According to the survey, a growing number of people with incomes over $75,000 will rely on public transportation during their trip to a city and those traveling from all regions, including the South and Midwest will use public transportation during their city stay.  A majority of travelers with children (62 percent) will use public transportation during their city visit.

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Sister Zakia and Tasha Clarke recently lost their mother, Jackie Underwood, to breast cancer at age 51.

Ever since the two sisters have been donning hats that say “Fu** Cancer.”

“That’s how we feel. It took our mom away. It’s a demon. It’s the devil,” Zakia told the Philadelphia Daily News. “There are no other words you can use to explain how you feel. You want cancer to get cancer and die.”

Zakia and Tasha wore the hats when they went shopping for funeral dresses at the King of Prussia Mall on Sunday.

While at the food court they were approached by a security guard who told them to take the hats off immediately.

Tasha refused asking the security guard to show her “something in writing.”

Then the girls were ordered to leave the mall and the guard called for backup. That is when seven additional security guards showed up and the two girls were escorted to the mall office where they met by a police officer.

Zakia said the police officer said, “I find it offensive that you even have that hat that says ‘Fu** CANCER.”

“He said, ‘It’s their mall, they want you out, you have to get out,’” Zakia said.

The Associated Press reached the King of Prussia Mall manager, Robert Hall, who said he stands by the decision to kick the girls out of the mall. He clams the sister violated the code of conduct by displaying profanity.

The girls’ other sister, Makia, who was not wearing a hat, told ABC 6 that there are multiple stores in the mall that sell t-shirts with profanity.

The sisters plan on putting their caps back on and protesting outside the mall Thursday night.

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Twitter Inc. began introducing new technology on Wednesday to shore up security for users, responding to a spate of recent attacks on prominent accounts including those owned by the Associated Press and Financial Times.

Twitter said in a blog post it has begun to introduce “login verification,” a form of two-factor authentication in security industry parlance. The feature asks users to confirm their identity after a typical log-in, by sending a six-digit code to smartphones that must then be typed in to complete a sign-on.

The microblogging service, considered one of the most important communications platforms today, has not done enough to help protect users’ accounts, critics say. That criticism intensified after a fake tweet sent from the AP’s account in April about a non-existent White House explosion briefly roiled U.S. financial markets.

“There’s a second check to make sure it’s really you,” the company said on its official blog.

Repeated hacking incidents have raised questions about Twitter’s credibility and reliability just as it is beginning to assume a central role in a fast-changing media landscape, with the volume of tweets rising to more than 400 million a day.

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An Army sergeant at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has been accused of videotaping female cadets in the shower, a defense official said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of sex-related incidents that has rocked the military.

Sergeant Michael McClendon was charged this month with four violations of U.S. military law: indecent acts, dereliction in the performance of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, and actions prejudicial to good order and discipline, Army spokesman George Wright said.

Wright said McClendon was being investigated for possession of inappropriate images taken without consent. He did not elaborate.

The New York Times, which initially reported the incident, said the pictures included female cadets in the shower, which a defense official confirmed on condition of anonymity.

“The Army has notified those involved and offered support services at their individual locations,” Wright said. “It appears to be at least a dozen or more alleged victims who may have been photographed without their consent.”

McClendon, who had served at the prestigious military academy in New York, since 2009, was transferred to Fort Drum in New York after the charges were filed on May 14, Wright said.

McClendon served as a tactical noncommissioned officer at the academy, a job that put him in charge of mentoring and training a company of about 121 cadets, focusing on leadership development and other responsibilities.

General John Campbell, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said the service moved to address the situation at West Point as soon as the problem was reported.

“Our cadets must be confident that issues such as these are handled quickly and decisively, and that our system will hold those responsible accountable,” he said.

The report of charges against McClendon follows a spate of sex-related incidents that have embarrassed the U.S. military and prompted members of Congress to introduce legislation designed to toughen up the Pentagon’s handling of sex crimes.

A study released by the Defense Department two weeks ago estimated that incidents of unwanted sexual contact in the military, from groping to rape, rose 37 percent in 2012, to about 26,000 cases from 19,000 the previous year.

The report was released just days after Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Krusinski, 41, who led the Air Force sexual assault prevention effort, was charged with sexual battery involving a civilian woman in a parking lot not far from the Pentagon.

Several days later a U.S. Army sergeant who worked as a sexual assault prevention coordinator at Fort Hood, Texas, was accused of pandering, abusive sexual contact and assault.

Lawmakers in the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are moving ahead with steps to toughen the military’s response to sex-related crimes and provide better treatment for victims.

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Convicted killer Jodi Arias feels betrayed by an Arizona jury that found her guilty of murder in the brutal slaying of an ex-boyfriend, according to an interview aired on Wednesday as that same jury weighed whether to sentence her to death.

Arias, 32, was found guilty earlier this month in the murder of Travis Alexander, whose body was found slumped in the shower of his Phoenix-area home in June 2008. He was stabbed 27 times, had his throat slashed and was shot in the face.

The murder trial, which featured graphic testimony and photographs, became a sensation on U.S. cable television with its story of an attractive, intelligent and soft-spoken young woman charged with an unthinkable crime.

In an interview with ABC that aired on its “Good Morning America” program on Wednesday, Arias said she felt betrayed by the jury, which quickly found her eligible for capital punishment and will now decide her sentence.

“I feel a little betrayed by them. I don’t dislike them; I was just really hoping they would see things for what they are, and I don’t feel that they did,” she said.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens asked the jury on Tuesday afternoon to begin deliberations on a sentence for Arias following closing arguments in the penalty phase of her trial.

The jury reconvened on Wednesday after failing to reach a verdict on Tuesday afternoon. If the jury is unable to reach a unanimous decision, a new jury would be impaneled to determine whether the death penalty should be imposed.

In an at-times tearful appeal on Tuesday, Arias pleaded with jurors to spare her the death penalty for the sake of her family and sentence her instead to life in prison.

TAKING IT DAY-BY-DAY

As a penalty phase verdict loomed, Arias told the Arizona Republic newspaper late on Tuesday that she was not going to “think too much” about it, but would just “take what’s coming to me.”

Should the jury impose a death sentence, she said she would wait for the mandatory appeals process “just taking it day by day.”

As deliberations got under way on Wednesday, the panel was given clarification on whether a life sentence meant natural life in prison for Arias or included the possibility of parole.

Defense attorney Jennifer Willmott told the panel if they sentenced Arias to life in prison, they are “sentencing her to die in prison,” saying that there was no procedure in place to grant parole after 25 years.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez countered that just because there was no mechanism now didn’t mean there never would be.

“It doesn’t say that automatically if you say life it’s going to be a natural life sentence,” he said.

During her trial, Arias admitted killing Alexander but said she had acted in self-defense after he attacked her. She also characterized her relationship with Alexander as physically and emotionally abusive.

“To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence, but I know that I was, and for that I’m going to be sorry for the rest of my life … I was horrified by what I had done, and I am horrified still,” Arias told jurors on Tuesday.

She also told them she could lead a productive life in prison, and mentioned that while behind bars she had already donated her long hair to a charity that provides wigs to children, including cancer patients, suffering from hair loss.

In closing arguments, defense attorney Jennifer Willmott walked jurors through eight mitigating factors – among them that Arias had suffered abuse, had no criminal history and was 27 at the time of the murder – and urged them to show mercy.

Martinez countered that there were no documented reports to corroborate Arias’ claims of abuse and urged the jury to return a death sentence.

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Danny Bent, Kate Treleaven and Jamie Hay were hunkered in their rural home in Devon, England last month, listening to a radio broadcast of the Boston Marathon when news broke of the brutal bombings.

“Everything went silent,” said Bent. “We looked at each other and said, ‘We have to do something.’”

And do something they did. In three weeks, more than 1,000 runners from across the nation will join together for One Run for Boston, a 3,000-mile run across 14 states, to raise money for the One Fund.

It will be the first ever nonstop running relay across America, and will culminate with the final passing of a baton in Boston.

The three-week relay kicks off June 7 in Los Angeles, and is slated to end June 30. The group run will be broken up into 300 stages.

Each runner makes a contribution to The One Fund Boston via their $50 entry fee. So far, the event has raked in $3,000, but the trio is hoping to raise as much as $300,000 by the end of the relay.

According to Bent, small businesses and media outlets have started to take notice, and are surprised to hear the British accent on the other side of the phone.

“They quite appreciate the British angle, and that people on other side of the world are really interested in helping out,” said Bent, 34. “It’s always quite charming when they hear our accents. Kate’s got a very lovely accent. People ask, ‘Are you in LA?’ or ‘Are you in Boston?’ but really we live in a tiny little quirky village in Devon.”

It will be the first trip to the U.S. for Hay, 22, who chuckled when asked about the run’s resemblance to fictional film character Forrest Gump.

“We Tweeted (Tom Hanks). We haven’t heard back; still waiting for a response,” said Hay, adding the trio would “love to get Tom Hanks on the run.”

The route of One Run for Boston.

The lengthy relay starts in Venice Beach, then heads through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and finally, Massachusetts.

New Mexico’s dry terrain is one of the most concerning, Bent said.

“We’re focusing on New Mexico. We haven’t managed to engage people there yet. There is a lot of desert,” he said.

The race will be split up into 300 hundred stages – the shortest stint is three miles and the longest is 26. Massachusetts’ stages are each five miles long. There is a limit of 25 runners per stage. Organizers will follow behind the runners by car.

“We were initially expecting 1,000 runners, but the response that we’ve gotten in Boston and the surrounding area has been so positive, we’re thinking that number could increase,” Bent said.

More information is available on the group’s Facebook page, One Run for Boston.

This Saturday, a running event with a similar name will bring together thousands of Boston-area runners, who plan to finish the final mile of the Boston Marathon.

Follow Morgan Rousseau on Twitter: @MetroMorgan
Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBOS

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Rescue workers with sniffer dogs and searchlights picked through the wreckage of a massive tornado to ensure no survivors remained buried in the rubble of primary schools, houses and buildings in an Oklahoma City suburb.

The massive tornado on Monday afternoon flattened entire blocks of the town, killed at least 24 people and injured about 240 in Moore, Oklahoma.

But as dawn approached on Wednesday, officials were increasingly confident that everyone caught in the disaster had been accounted for, despite initial fears that the twister had claimed the lives of more than 90 people.

Jerry Lojka, spokesman for Oklahoma Emergency Management, said search-and-rescue dog teams would search for anybody trapped under the rubble, but that attention would also be focused on a huge cleanup job.

“They will continue the searches of areas to be sure nothing is overlooked,” he said. “There’s going to be more of a transition to recovery.”

More than 1,000 people had already registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which sent hundreds of workers to Oklahoma to help with the recovery.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said many more likely needed help but did not have working phones or Internet connections.

“Right now it’s about getting people a place to stay that have lost their homes,” he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “So we’re going to start going neighborhood to neighborhood and talking to people and seeing what they’re going to need.”

After a long day of searching through shattered homes that was slowed by rainy weather on Tuesday, Oklahoma County Commissioner Brian Maughan said it seemed no one was missing.

“As far as I know, of the list of people that we have had that they are all accounted for in one way or another,” he said.

Dog teams and members of the National Guard were changing shifts to work through the night.

Nine children were among the 24 killed, including seven who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit by the deadliest tornado to strike the United States in two years.

Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the debris of homes, schools and a hospital after the tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City region with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour, leaving a trail of destruction 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

Plaza Towers Elementary was one of five schools in its path. “They literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out,” Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. “They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them.”

The National Weather Service upgraded its calculation of the storm’s strength on Tuesday, saying it was a rare EF5, the most powerful ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale

‘I LOOKED UP AND SAW THE TORNADO’

The last time a giant twister tore through the area, on May 3, 1999, it killed more than 40 people and destroyed thousands of homes. That tornado also ranked as an EF5.

Oklahoma Emergency Management’s Lojka said 2,400 homes were damaged or obliterated and an estimated 10,000 people affected.

Fugate, the FEMA administrator, told CNN the agency had enough money to pay for Oklahoma’s recovery while still rebuilding in the Northeast from Superstorm Sandy. FEMA had $11.6 billion in its disaster relief fund, a spokesman said.

U.S. Representative Tom Cole, who lives in Moore, told CBS “This Morning” that the Oklahoma Legislature was drafting a law that would allow the governor to tap into state rainy day funds.

The death toll was lower than might have been expected given the extent of the devastation in Moore, home to 55,000 people. Some ascribe the relatively low number to the fact many locals have small “storm safe” shelters, basically a concrete hole in the garage floor with a sliding roof that locks.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said many people built cellars and safe areas after the 1999 tornado in Moore. “There would have been a lot more people killed, we believe, if they had not had that warning 14 years ago,” he said Tuesday on CNN.

Billy McElrath, 50, of Oklahoma City, said his wife hid in a storm safe in their garage when the tornado hit.

She emerged unhurt even though the storm destroyed the 1968 Corvette convertible she had bought him as a birthday present, and crushed a motorcycle. “Everything else is just trashed,” he said as he loaded a pickup with salvaged goods.

Kraig Boozier, 47, took to his own small shelter in the Westmoor subdivision of Oklahoma City and watched in shock as a fan in the wall was ripped out.

“I looked up and saw the tornado above me,” he said.

When he came out after the storm, he helped a neighbor who had emerged from her own shelter move a car that was blocking the entrance to another neighbor’s shelter.

EARLY WARNING

Officials said another factor behind the surprisingly low death toll was the early warning, with meteorologists saying days in advance that a storm system was forming.

Once a tornado was forming, people had 15 to 20 minutes of warning, which meant they could take shelter or flee the projected path. The weather service also has new, sterner warnings about deadly tornadoes to get people’s attention.

Many of those who do not have a basic storm shelter at home, which can cost $2,500 to $5,000, have learned from warnings over the year to seek hiding places at home during a tornado.

Jackie Raper, 73, and her daughter, for instance, sought shelter in the bathtub in her house in Oklahoma City.

“The house fell on top of her,” said Caylin Burgett, 16, who says Raper is like a grandmother to her. Raper broke her arm and femur, and bruised her lungs, Burgett said.

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An 18-foot, 8-inch Burmese python set a record for the longest snake ever captured in South Florida, where the exotic species has taken up residence.

College student Jason Leon snared the female python in a rural area southeast of Miami earlier this month, when he saw part of it sticking out from brush along the roadside, said Carli Segelson, a spokeswoman for the state’s Fish and Wildlife Commission.

The huge python broke the previous record set in 2012 by a 17-foot, 7-inch snake caught by researchers studying the impact of the growing population of pythons on Everglades National Park.

With the help of his friends, Leon wrestled and killed the snake with a knife, Segelson said. He then reported the find through Florida’s IveGot1 program, which connects callers to wildlife researchers.

The Burmese python is an invasive species in Florida. Native to the region from India to lower China, the species has been documented to grow as long as 26 feet and weigh 200 pounds.

Florida sponsored a python hunting competition in January to see whether annual hunts might put a dent in the local population, and to provide specimens for further research.

Theories on how the snakes got into the Everglades include dumping by pet owners and the destruction of a nearby exotic pet dealership during 1992′s Hurricane Andrew.

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Theodore Simon, the Philadelphia attorney who was instrumental in securing Amanda Knox’s freedom, says his client is doing “remarkably well.”

“I spent several hours … with Amanda in D.C.,” he said. “Amanda is thoughtful and articulate. She is studying creative writing at the University of Washington and plans on pursuing a career in publishing.”

Knox was convicted in 2009 of murdering Meredith Kercher in Italy and served four years in prison. She was later acquitted in October 2011; however, that decision was also overturned in March, and the case has been sent back to an Italian court for reconsideration.

The favorable report produced by Simon’s DNA expert had contributed to the reopening of Knox’s conviction, Simon said.

“Fortunately, I secured the world’s greatest DNA expert, the scientist who formed the DNA lab for the FBI, as our expert,” said Simon, who worked in conjunction with Knox’s Italian lawyers. “He found that the knife, which was a key piece of trial evidence, did not contain blood. Therefore, it could not have been the murder weapon.”

One cannot preferentially remove blood and leave DNA, Simon explained.

While the Italian courts have reopened the case again, Simon stressed that under Italian law, Knox is not required to attend the next hearing, and that the issues being discussed do not implicate her.

Simon is not worried that his client will be found guilty in the upcoming proceedings.

“There is no evidence, was no evidence, nor will there ever be any evidence linking her to the murder,” said Simon.

Other famous clients

Amanda Knox is not Simon’s first famous, or infamous, client. He has previously represented French “Spider-Man” Alain Robert, murderer Ira Einhorn while he was fighting his extradition from France to Philadelphia, boxing promoter Don King, former Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones and Minnesota Timberwolves forward Dante Cunningham.

Quoted

Simon, who has successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, describes his practice as “white collar, blue collar and no collar.”

“It is a gift to be a lawyer, providing care and assistance to people at the worst time in their lives when they are facing the loss of liberty or seeking compensation as a redress for a wrong,” he said.

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Poppo was homeless and after the attack lost his eyesight and most of his face.

According to a press release from doctors at Jackson Memorial Perdue Medical Center, a long-term care facility where Poppo has been recovering, Poppo is “living happily and adjusting to his new life.”

During his recovery he has learned to play the guitar and follows the Miami Heat basketball team.

“He’s had a long year, but has managed to cope quite well,” Jackson Memorial Hospital plastic surgeon Dr. Woody Kassira said at a press conference.

Since his rehabilitation, Poppo has put on 50 pounds and learned to feed and dress himself as well as shower and shave.

Poppo has undergone four surgeries and he has further reconstructive work that will be performed including prosthetics.

Karissa said Poppo is “content” with “how his life is now.”

“He was a simple guy before this, and a simple guy now,” said surgeon Urmen Desai. “He’s older, he is blind, he can’t see what he looks like, and it’s not important to him how the world sees him.”

“He wants the world to know he’s not traumatized by this … and that he’s happy and grateful for being alive after such an incident,” Desai said. “Things are very positive for Mr. Poppo.”

In a message posted to YouTube, Poppo thanks the community for their support.

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Thousands of people will run the final mile of the Boston Marathon on Saturday, determined not to let terrorism tear down their finish line ambitions.

One Run, which is being promoted online as #OneRun, is set to shut down Kenmore Square around 10 a.m. Saturday, so runners of all levels can make their way to the Copley Square finish line.

The noncompetitive run, which is free and does not require registration, has already gained nearly 2,200 RSVPs on its Facebook event page.

According to organizer and runner J. Alain Ferry, who was stopped near Massachusetts Ave after the April 15 bombs went off near the marathon’s finish line, the race is the result of the running community’s determination to offer some kind of closure to those affected by the terror attack.

“We hope it will (give) runners and spectators the opportunity to go through the final mile and get back what was taken from them, and bring thousands of people to the Back Bay to spend money at the shops and restaurants that were closed that week.”

Jon Ritter-Roderick, another organizer, said he decided to help put together a run almost immediately after the event was cut short.

“We are not concerned about who finishes first, or who finishes last,” he said. “Just the show of completing something that was interrupted will be a huge step in the right direction for Boston.”

Those who wish to help offset the cost of the race can make a tax-deductible donation online. Updates are available at bostonrunners.com.

Follow Morgan Rousseau on Twitter: @MetroMorgan
Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBOS

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A new one-hour NOVA documentary will shed light on how investigators were able to quickly crack the case of the Boston terror attack, and track down bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

In “Manhunt: Boston Bombers,” NOVA follows the hunt for the bombing suspects and examines the subsequent investigation conducted by city, state, and national law enforcement.

“From robotics to explosives to chemistry to digital and social media, NOVA demonstrates how scientific innovations were involved in this high-stakes, fast-moving criminal investigation,” said NOVA Producer Paula Apsell. “Viewers will gain a better understanding of how new technologies might help investigators in the future.”

The documentary will also explore the phenomenon of social media, which in unprecedented and chilling ways, affected the course of the investigation. Authorities were reluctant to release the pictures of the suspects as they could prompt them to panic, flee and commit more violence. But the social-media-fueled “24-second” news cycle forced investigators to release the photos sooner than they wished.

Producer Miles O’Brien hosts the two-part show. With the help of high-speed camera’s, O’Brien will demonstrate the power of a pressure cooker bomb and learn how the New Mexico Tech’s Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center uses their research to train first responders – including 1,500 from Boston.

The documentary is set to air next Wednesday night, 9 p.m., on PBS.

Follow Morgan Rousseau on Twitter: @MetroMorgan
Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBOS

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The United States is poised to introduce stricter rules on the labeling of meat imports this week, a move that is likely to heat up a simmering trade dispute with Canada and Mexico.

Under new regulations that Washington says are aimed at complying with a World Trade Organization order, all meat sold in the United States must have labels that state where an animal was born, fed and slaughtered.

Meat exporters in Canada and Mexico say the new rules would cut even deeper into cattle and hog shipments that have already slumped by as much as half in the last four years. The Canadian government has threatened a possible retaliatory strike against U.S. imports, and is hoping Mexico will join it.

“What the Americans have proposed as a response to the WTO ruling does not get the job done — it actually makes things worse,” Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said.

Penalizing U.S. beef and pork is the default option, he said, adding that Canada may ask the WTO to approve moves against other products as well. Such a process could last up to 18 months.

Two-way meat and livestock trade between Canada and the United States is worth more than $5 billion a year. The dispute stems from a 2009 U.S. requirement that retail outlets put the country of origin on labels on meat and other products, an effort to give consumers more information about the safety and origin of their food.

Canada and Mexico complained to the WTO that the so-called COOL (country-of-origin labeling) rules discriminated against imported livestock. The trade body ordered the United States to comply with WTO rules by May 23.

Instead of relaxing the rules, U.S. regulators proposed tougher requirements, arguing the changes would place the country in compliance with the WTO by applying the same rules to meat produced in the United States and other countries.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is confident that its final changes — to be published by Thursday — will satisfy the WTO, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Reuters.

“I don’t think it’s our responsibility necessarily to respond to what Mexico or Canada say we need to do,” he said. “I think our response is to be consistent with the WTO directive, and as well understand what the WTO said — that while every country has the right to label, the labeling that we had developed was not adequate.”

Vilsack declined to say if the United States might still adjust its proposal before Thursday’s deadline, saying the USDA is still evaluating comments.

‘These trade things burn at me’

Canadian livestock producers say the initial set of COOL rules has already forced them to cull herds or cut prices due to lower demand. In Canada, ranchers have lost $1 billion ($1 billion) in sales because of the rules, according to Ritz.

U.S. imports of Canadian hogs fell 40 percent from 2008 levels to 5.652 million in 2012, while cattle imports from Canada plunged by half, to 786,373 head, according to USDA data.

Canadian rancher Tony Saretsky, who has raised and exported cattle for 39 years, said he cut his herd in half to 1,000 heads since COOL took effect. Many of his fellow ranchers in Alberta have gone out of business, hammered by a combination of fewer buyers for their cattle and soaring feedgrain prices, he said.

“These trade things just burn at me,” said Saretsky, 64.

Saretsky now counts on only two big northwestern U.S. plants to buy his cattle and says the situation will get worse if the United States follows through on making labeling rules stricter.

Meanwhile in Mexico, cattle exports to the United States have jumped recently as a devastating southern drought thinned the U.S. herd. But ranchers there have absorbed a 20 percent drop in meat prices since COOL took effect, said Alejandro Gomez, a lawyer for Mexico’s confederation of cattle growers, or CNG.

“These rules have been extremely prejudicial toward Mexican ranchers and without any kind of health or quality or genetic justification,” he said.

Under COOL rules, meat packagers are allowed to mix muscle cuts from different countries in the same package as long as they are labeled appropriately. The new rules would ban mingling cuts from different sources, other than for ground meats.

U.S. producers like Cargill Inc have said the new rules would make it more impractical to buy foreign livestock.

“It creates even more difficult segregation requirements that will even further injure production in Canada, Mexico and importantly the United States,” Cargill’s vice president of cattle procurement, Bill Thoni, wrote in a March letter to the USDA. He said Cargill’s February shutdown of its Plainview, Texas, plant was due to unreliable cattle supply.

‘Stop whining’

If Canada were to retaliate by reducing U.S. meat imports, it would ripple through farms and abattoirs on all sides of the borders.

In 2012, Canada imported from the United States 400,000 pounds of beef and veal worth $1.15 billion and 500,000 pounds of pork, worth $912 million, Statistics Canada said.

“Nowhere are we more vulnerable than with our highest value agricultural exports: beef, pork and poultry,” Cargill Inc’s Thoni said. “Mexico and Canada happen to be among our most critical markets for all of these commodities.”

Mexico’s CNG also wants its government to retaliate, but Agriculture Minister Enrique Martinez declined last month to give details.

The United States says its new labels will give consumers more information about meat from each stage of production. Without COOL, packers could produce meat from cattle that originate in other countries and pass it off to consumers as U.S. product, said Bill Bullard, chief executive of R-CALF USA, a small, but vocal lobby group for U.S. cattle producers.

“Canada and Mexico need to stop whining,” he said. “They have the same opportunity in our domestic market as U.S. farmers and ranchers do and that is to promote and market and advertise their respective country’s beef.”

U.S. consumers might actually see a drop in meat prices if Canada and Mexico retaliate by blocking U.S. exports of beef and pork, forcing the domestic market to absorb dramatically more product, said Jim Robb, director of the Livestock Marketing Information Center. But those gains would come at the expense of U.S. farmers and ranchers, he said.

Canadian packers, who currently export around 70 percent of pork and about 30 percent of beef and veal, would likely turn more attention to their domestic market. That would be the case at Maple Leaf Foods , one of Canada’s two big pork processors, Chief Executive Michael McCain said.

But Canadians would pay more for meat if their government blocks U.S. meat, leaving Ottawa in a pinch to please everybody.

“We hold our breath,” said Garth Whyte, chief executive of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, of the possibility Canada will retaliate. “We do whatever it takes to hold down our prices, but it’s getting tougher and tougher.”

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Leaders of Boy Scout groups across the country will vote this week on a controversial proposal that would remove the organization’s ban on gay scouts, but not gay adult leaders.

Hundreds of champions and opponents of the proposed change are expected to rally in Grapevine, a suburb of Dallas, during the National Annual Meeting, which begins on Wednesday. About 1,400 delegates are expected to vote Thursday on whether to lift the ban on gay youth.

The proposed policy change has become a divisive issue that has triggered strong reaction from supporters of gay rights who want to see the ban lifted for adults as well as youths, and conservative organizations that oppose change.

The Boy Scouts ban is at the center of a national debate over gay rights in the United States, where polls show public opinion is shifting toward greater acceptance. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The military has lifted a ban on openly gay soldiers.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2000 that the Boy Scouts, as a private organization, has the right to exclude gay people. After a two-year study of the ban, the Boy Scouts reaffirmed its commitment to the ban a year ago.

Momentum toward a turnaround within the 103-year-old organization began earlier this year when the Boy Scouts announced it might consider allowing local units to decide whether to admit gay members. A vote in February by the Boy Scouts leadership delayed the decision to give officials more time to survey membership.

The proposal is based on the results of an unprecedented survey of scouts, parents, leaders and the general public on the issue of gay membership, according to Deron Smith, spokesman of the Texas-based organization.

“Our review confirmed that this remains among the most complex and challenging issues facing the BSA and society today, and regardless of the results of the vote the membership policy will not match everyone’s personal preference,” Smith said in an email.

“However, Scouting is bigger than this single issue, and good people can disagree and still work together to accomplish great things for youth,” Smith said.

Top Boy Scouts leaders endorsed the policy change in a recent webcast and asked voting delegates for their support.

“Our membership standards have always been about leadership,” Wayne Perry, president of the national board, said in the webcast. “It was never our intent to prevent young people from being a part of this organization. Kids belong in scouting and are better off in the scouting program.”

But an online survey of more than 200,000 Boy Scouts members and leaders indicates that 61 percent support the current policy of excluding gays while 34 percent oppose it.

More than 2.6 million youth and 1 million adults participate in scouting.

Gay rights groups support the change but want to see the ban lifted for adults as well so that gay scouts can continue in the organization after becoming adults.

“We see this as a step forward, but our campaign will continue until the ban is lifted for everyone,” said Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for GLAAD, an organization that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

Conservative groups such as Texas Values will lobby to maintain the ban, said Jonathan Saenz, president of that Austin-based organization.

“We need to keep sexuality and politics out of the Boy Scouts,” Saenz said. “The Boy Scouts have the right as a private organization to run it however they wish without the selfish interests of corporate America or the homosexual lobby.”

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Microsoft Corp. gave the world the first look at its new game console Tuesday, hoping the Xbox One will attract existing video game fans while also becoming a hub for living room entertainment.

The third-generation Microsoft console, coming eight years after the Xbox 360, was unveiled by games unit chief Don Mattrick at an event at the software company’s campus near Seattle.

The Xbox One is an “ultimate all-in-one entertainment system,” Mattrick said.

The console will launch worldwide “later this year,” the company said without providing an exact timeframe.

The new device can interact with televisions, responds to voice and gesture commands, and includes Skype video calling, 15 exclusive game titles and original programming content.

Acclaimed moviemaker Steven Spielberg will be creating a premium television series based on Microsoft’s blockbuster sci-fi game “Halo” for the Xbox One, the company said.

The new console will offer exclusive National Football League content and eight new game franchises, executives said.

It will have 8 Gb of memory, with an updated controller and new-generation Kinect sensor that communicates a user’s voice and gesture commands to the console. The technology is built on the Xbox operating system and the kernel of Windows software to handle Internet-based content.

The Xbox One will chiefly compete with Nintendo Co.’s new Wii U and Sony Corp’s forthcoming PlayStation 4 for a bigger slice of the $65 billion-a-year computer game market.

But the world’s largest software company also sees it as a broader strategic piece in the battle with Apple Inc, Google Inc and others to control consumer entertainment in the age of tablets and smartphones.

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Convicted killer Jodi Arias testified Tuesday that she can effect positive change in prison if jurors sentence her to a life term and spare her the death penalty for brutally killing her ex-boyfriend in Arizona five years ago.

Arias, 32, was found guilty earlier this month in the murder of Travis Alexander, whose body was found slumped in the shower of his Phoenix-area home in June 2008. He had been stabbed multiple times, had his throat slashed and been shot in the face. Arias told jurors she had previously considered suicide but now realized she could lead a productive life in prison.

“I didn’t know that if I got life there are many things I can do to effect positive change and contribute in a meaningful way. In prison there are programs I can start and people I can help, and programs that I can continue participating in,” she told jurors.

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Javier Gutierrez lives in his uncle’s garage; his mother kicked him out when he didn’t want to enlist in the Army. He nearly dropped out of school, too, so bad were his grades. But Gutierrez, a strikingly handsome 18-year-old in Los Angeles, has turned his life around – as a Shakespearean actor.

I meet Gutierrez after a rehearsal with the Inner City Shakespeare project at the George Washington Preparatory High School in South Central Los Angeles. This is one of Los Angeles’ most notorious neighborhoods: poor, violent, gang-infested. Few middle-class people ever set foot here. But as I enter the gymnasium, Gutierrez and some 20 other Latino and African-American teenagers are busy perfecting their lines from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in one-on-one sessions with British actors.

“My drama teacher dragged me here two years ago,” Gutierrez tells me. “She said she’d flunk me if I didn’t audition. I didn’t want to go at all. I hate reading; I hate books. But I did read a bit of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’” Even though Gutierrez could barely understand the words he was reading, he soon felt he could relate a little to the characters. When he auditioned, he got the role as Romeo. The next year he played Puck, the lead role in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Gutierrez and his fellow actors are performing the 16th century plays against huge odds. “South Central LA is a world unto itself,” explains Kathy Haber, the energetic founder of Inner City Shakespeare. “Often the kids are attacked as they walk home from our rehearsals, and they’re often asked which gang they belong to.” Adds Phillip Rhys, a British Hollywood actor who mentors Gutierrez here. “These kids all know people who’ve been shot and killed. Javier’s mother has disowned him. But just by being here, they realize that centuries ago there was this guy who was just an actor, too – nothing fancy. We spent a whole day cursing like Shakespeare.”

But their afternoon identity as actors can offer them a way out of a near-certain life of crime. “Just because you’ve got colored skin it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be exposed to the classics,” says Melanie Andrews, the teacher who forced Gutierrez to start acting. “If we don’t get them hooked on this, they’ll get hooked on drugs.”

Jamielee Rodriguez, a vivacious 17-year-old, played Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet,” Hermia, the female lead in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and now she’s back again. “When I started, I didn’t understand what I was reading, but when the mentors explained it, it made sense,” she tells me after her rehearsal. “Now it helps me with school.”

At the rehearsal I also meet Neil Dickson, another veteran British actor who serves as a mentor. “This program changes lives!” he exclaims. “These kids are on the verge of crime. On their first day here they look at Shakespeare and have no idea what it all means. Three months later, they’re in a production, proudly wearing their Elizabethan costumes, even though the other kids make fun of them. It’s so inspiring!” Indeed, almost every teenager in the “Romeo and Juliet” production has gone on to college.

Gutierrez still doesn’t much like books, but now he does read Shakespeare. “He was a crazy dude who wanted to kill his uncle,” he summarizes. “I’m a dark kid. I can relate to that.”

‘Shakespeare for poor teenagers’

Theater and teenagers form a fruitful and combustible combination. “Dead Poets Society,” the 1989 surprise hit movie, portrayed the lives of a group of private school boys who wanted to perform Shakespeare (inspired by their teacher, portrayed by Robin Williams). Neil, the boy at the center of the film, was chosen for the role as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” But, just like Gutierrez, he faced huge obstacles: in this case, his father’s opposition. After the performance, he killed himself.

This are bound to end better for Gutierrez, who – assisted by his theater mentors as friends – has improved his grades to the point where he can now go on vocational college. “I want to encourage teachers everywhere to use Shakespeare to do something for poor kids,” Andrews says. “It helps them to be better people.”

And, adds Katy Haber, this is a model that could work anywhere in the world. “It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare,” she reflects. “In France it could be Dumas. This is about giving disenfranchised youth a chance to tap into another world.”

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Top Internal Revenue Service officials told Congress on Tuesday they were unaware of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny until recently and were not deliberately misleading lawmakers last year when they did not reveal the practice.

Exasperated senators questioned the truthfulness of former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who led the agency from 2008 to 2012, and outgoing acting IRS chief Steven Miller. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah accused IRS leaders of a “lie by omission.”

At a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Shulman said he was “dismayed” when he read an inspector general’s report last week laying out evidence that IRS workers in Cincinnati, Ohio, had inappropriately focused on groups with the words “Tea Party” and “patriot” in their names.

Senators asked why Shulman did not reveal the practice, which started in March or April of 2010, during congressional testimony in late March 2012. At the time, he rejected conservatives’ complaints that the IRS was targeting groups for extra scrutiny.

“The full set of facts around these circumstances came out last week … until that point I did not have a full set of facts,” Shulman said on Tuesday.

“What I knew sometime in the spring of 2012 was that there was a list that was being used. I knew that the word “Tea Party” was on the list. I didn’t know what other words were on the list,” he said.

A Treasury Department watchdog has said he informed Shulman about an investigation into the matter in May 2012, but assumed IRS officials would have told Shulman about potential targeting problems before that.

Lawmakers said they were disappointed in the answers, but Miller and Shulman denied they had hidden the truth from Congress. “I did not lie, sir,” Miller told Hatch.

Miller was forced to resign last week and more senior agency officials could be on the firing line in the broadening scandal, as members of both parties have rushed to condemn the IRS for overstepping its authority.

The rising political storm has undercut President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda and put the White House on the defensive as he tries to negotiate a budget deal with Republicans and push a comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress.

Scandal questions

The hearing in the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee featured a push for more details about who ordered the extra tax scrutiny for conservative groups.

It also focused on what top officials knew about the practice, and when.

Those questions gained more urgency on Monday when the White House revealed that two senior aides to Obama knew weeks ago about a draft Treasury Department watchdog report detailing the IRS targeting that occurred for an 18-month period starting in early 2010.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was notified on April 24 of the report’s preliminary findings, and that she told Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other senior staffers soon afterward.

Ruemmler chose not to inform Obama about the findings to avoid any appearance that he had any role in shaping the report, Carney said.

Obama has said did not learn of the targeting until May 10, when IRS official Lois Lerner apologized for the agency’s actions while responding to a planted question at an American Bar Association conference. Obama fired Miller after the inspector general’s report was released on May 14.

Miller on Tuesday took responsibility for the planted question at the event, calling it “an incredibly bad idea.” He said there were ongoing discussions about discipline for Lerner, chief of the IRS tax-exempt unit.

The White House’s handling of the scandal has been a story line within the scandal and raised questions about the ability of Obama’s team to handle the crisis. The IRS scandal comes as the White House faces scrutiny over the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last September and the Justice Department’s tracking of reporters while investigating national security leaks.

Late Monday, Treasury also acknowledged that it knew that the IRS planned to apologize for agents’ behavior before the inspector general’s report, but that Treasury officials left the decision for how to do that with the IRS.

The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee – Democratic Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Hatch of Utah – sent the IRS a letter on Monday seeking a broad range of documents and asking more than 40 questions covering three years of IRS activity.

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Kate Carney Huston has taken her husband and baby and gone to stay with her mother in Oklahoma City. Due to the tornado, the Huston household, in the suburb of Moore, no longer has water or electricity.

But things could have been much worse. The tornado that ripped through Moore on Monday destroyed the home the Hustons recently moved out of. “We’ve been looking at aerial footage of our old house,” Huston tells Metro. “I pray that the people who moved in there are safe. They have two little girls and another baby on the way.”

When the tornado sirens went off, the Hustons took their baby and their dogs and retreated to their storm cellar. “After a while someone texted me to say that the tornado had passed, so I went outside,” she reports. “The tornado was so big it pretty much filled my view. It felt like a freight train, just a bit steadier.”

The situation right now, she reports, is “so overwhelming that you can’t process it. But you put one foot in front of the other and do what you can. Last night [Monday] it was about recovery of people. Now it’s about recovery of belongings and trying to help your neighbors.” On Tuesday night Moore was still cordoned off, with residents spending hours trying to reach other parts of the city.

Huston is no stranger to tornadoes: They’re a fact of life in Oklahoma, though they usually rip through rural areas. But Huston lived through the 1999 tornado that also hit Moore, and calls this week’s disaster much worse. Even so, she plans to remain in the city: “Oklahoma is a wonderful place to live,” she says. “It’s a great part of the country that’s often overlooked. People here are also very aware of tornado safety. And we’ve got great meteorologists.”

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Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the rubble of homes, schools and a hospital in an Oklahoma town hit by a powerful tornado, and officials on Tuesday sharply lowered the number of deaths caused by the storm.

The 2-mile (3-km) wide tornado tore through Moore outside Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, trapping victims beneath the rubble.

Seven children died at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit, but many more survived unhurt.

“They literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out,” Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. “They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them.”

The Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office said 24 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage, down from the 51 they had reported earlier. The earlier number likely reflected some double-counted deaths, said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer for the medical examiner.

“There was a lot of chaos,” she said.

Thunderstorms and lightning slowed the rescue effort on Tuesday, but 101 people had been pulled from the debris alive, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokeswoman Betsy Randolph said.

Firefighters from more than a dozen fire departments and rescuers from other states worked all night under bright spotlights trying to find survivors.

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster area in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts in Moore after the deadliest U.S. tornado since 161 people were killed in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.

“The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground, there for them, beside them, as long as it takes,” Obama said at the White House.

Glenn Lewis, the mayor of Moore, said the whole town looked like a debris field and there was a danger of electrocution and fire from downed power lines and broken natural gas lines.

“It looks like we have lost our hospital. I drove by there a while ago and it’s pretty much destroyed,” Lewis told NBC.

The National Weather Service assigned the twister a preliminary ranking of EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, meaning the second most powerful category of tornado with winds up to 200 mph.

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center warned the town 16 minutes before the tornado touched down at 3:01 p.m. (2001 GMT), which is more than the average eight to 10 minutes of warning, said Keli Pirtle, a spokeswoman for the center in Norman, Oklahoma.

SCHOOL TRAGEDY

U.S. Representative Tom Cole, who lives in Moore, said the Plaza Towers school was the most secure and structurally strong building in the area.

“And so people did the right thing, but if you’re in front of an F4 or an F5 there is no good thing to do if you’re above ground. It’s just tragic,” he said on MSNBC TV.

At least 60 of the 240 people injured were children, hospital officials said.

Witnesses said Monday’s tornado appeared more fierce than the giant twister that was among the dozens that tore up the area on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. That tornado ranked as an EF5 tornado with wind speeds of more than 200 mph.

The 1999 tornado ranks as the third-costliest tornado in U.S. history, having caused more than $1 billion in damage at the time, or more than $1.3 billion in today’s dollars. Only the devastating Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes in 2011 were more costly.

Monday’s tornado in Moore ranks among the most severe in the United States http://link.reuters.com/gec38t

Jeff Alger, 34, who works in the Kansas oil fields on a fracking crew, said his wife Sophia took their children out of school when she heard a tornado was coming and then fled Moore and watched it flatten the town from a few miles away.

“They didn’t even have time to grab their shoes,” said Alger, who has five children aged 4 to 11. The storm tore part of the roof off of his home. He was with his wife at Norman Regional Hospital to have glass and other debris removed from his wife’s bare feet.

Moore was devastated with debris everywhere, street signs gone, lights out, houses destroyed and vehicles tossed about as if they were toys.

The dangerous storm system threatened several southern Plains states with more twisters.

SAVED BY CELLPHONE

Speaking outside Norman Regional Hospital Ninia Lay, 48, said she huddled in a closet through two storm alerts and the tornado hit on the third.

“I was hiding in the closet and I heard something like a train coming,” she said under skies still flashing with lightning. The house was flattened and Lay was buried in the rubble for two hours until her husband Kevin, 50, and rescuers dug her out.

“I thank God for my cell phone, I called me husband for help.”

Her 7-year-old daughter Catherine, a first-grader at Plaza Towers Elementary School, took shelter with classmates and teachers in a bathroom when the tornado hit and destroyed the school. She escaped with scrapes and cuts.

Briarwood Elementary School, which also stood in the storm’s path, was all but destroyed. On the first floor, sections of walls had been peeled away, giving clear views into the building; while in other areas, cars hurled by the storm winds were lodged in the walls.

At Southmoore High School in Moore, about 15 students were in a field house when the tornado hit. Coaches sent them to an interior locker room and made them put on football helmets, and all survived, the Oklahoman newspaper said.

(Additional reporting by Alice Mannette, Lindsay Morris, Nick Carey, Brendan O’Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Nick Carey and Jane Sutton; Editing by W Simon and Grant McCool)

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Barbara Garcia was being interviewed by CBS as she described the moment the tornado hit her home, destroying it.

“I was sitting on the stool holding my dog,” she said. “This was the game plan all through the years, to go in that little bathroom. I rolled around a little bit and when it stopped I was right there (and) that stove cooker is what I saw.”

“I never lost consciousness and I hollered for my little dog and he didn’t answer, he didn’t come, so I know he’s in here somewhere,” she added as she looked around the flattened rubble.

Suddenly, the reporter exclaims, “The dog!”

The camera zooms in to show a small dog’s face poking out from underneath sheets of metal and wreckage, perhaps stirred by the sound of its owner’s voice. Garcia is overwhelmed with emotion as she desperately tries to remove the debris and free her beloved pet.

“Well, I thought God just answered one prayer to let me be OK, but he answered both of them,” she said.

Rescuers are still searching for survivors the Oklahoma City suburb that was flattened by Monday’s tornado.

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Connecticut rail commuters endured crowded and rerouted rides in to work on Monday, as Metro-North worked to repair the busiest U.S. rail line after a two-train collision and derailment injured more than 70 people late last week.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said commuters should expect “serious disruptions,” and encouraged riders to stay home if possible as repair crews worked to fix or replace more than 2,000 feet of track as well as overhead wires and other equipment.

But by late afternoon, the railroad said that repair work was being completed well ahead of schedule and that regular train service will resume in time for the Wednesday morning commute.

“We are confident that the reconstruction work, inspection and testing will be completed in time for a normal rush hour on Wednesday,” said Metro-North President Howard Permut.

On Friday evening, a Metro-North passenger train derailed between Fairfield and Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was struck by another commuter train, halting full service. The site of the crash is about 55 miles northeast of New York City.

Many morning commuters stayed home on Monday, drove to trains further up the line which had not been disrupted or took shuttle buses.

Service between New York and Boston along the busy Northeast Corridor by Amtrak, the U.S. passenger rail network, was also suspended indefinitely due to the accident.

At the train station in Westport, Connecticut, travelers stood in long lines returning from New York as they waited for shuttle buses.

“I won’t be doing this again, no way,” said financial consultant Joseph Calabrese, who resides in a suburb of New Haven. “I can get more done at home without all this hassle.”

Lindsey Shaughnessy, 26, of New Haven, said she had returned from a safari in Kenya on Monday to learn she could not catch a train to New Haven from Grand Central Terminal in New York.

“I’ve been in transit now for 40 hours and I just want to get home,” said Shaughnessy, dragging her luggage as she prepared to board a shuttle bus. “You expect something like this in Africa, but it’s kind of a shock to come back to the States and have to go through these kinds of delays.”

The New York-New Haven line is the busiest rail line in the country, serving 125,000 commuters a day, said Judd Everhart, a spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

Kate Miller, a daily commuter from Bridgeport, said she got a ride into New York on Sunday night to avoid delays and took the train back early Monday afternoon to catch a shuttle bus in Westport.

“I haven’t slept in more than 24 hours. I’m exhausted and will take the governor’s advice the rest of the week and work from home,” Miller said. “It just isn’t worth it spending all these hours commuting.”

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A 2-mile-wide tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma on Monday destroying homes, and leaving cars piled atop each other, There are at least 20 people confirmed dead and the search continues to rescue and recover those who may be trapped beneath rubble and mountains of debris.

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Apple has kept billions of dollars in profits in Irish subsidiaries to legally pay little or no taxes to any government, a Senate report on the company’s offshore tax structure said.

In a 40-page memorandum released a day before Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to testify before Congress, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations identified three subsidiaries that have no “tax residency” in Ireland, where they are incorporated, or in the United States, where company executives manage those companies.

The main subsidiary, a holding company that includes Apple’s retail stores throughout Europe, has not paid any corporate income tax in the last five years.

The subsidiary, which has a Cork, Ireland, mailing address, received $29.9 billion in dividends from lower-tiered offshore Apple affiliates from 2009 to 2012, comprising 30 percent of Apple’s total worldwide net profits, the report said.

“Apple has exploited a difference between Irish and U.S. tax residency rules,” the report said.

Apple said in a comment it does not use “tax gimmicks.” It said the existence of its subsidiary “Apple Operations International” in Ireland does not reduce Apple’s U.S. tax liability and the company will pay more than $7 billion in U.S. taxes in fiscal 2013.

Subcommittee staffers said on Monday that Apple was not breaking any laws and had cooperated fully with the investigation.

Code overhaul sought

Tuesday’s hearing is the second to be held by Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the subcommittee, to shed light on the weaknesses of the U.S. corporate tax code. Levin has sought to overhaul the code in Congress.

Lawmakers globally are closely scrutinizing the taxes paid by multinational companies. In Britain, Google faces regulatory inquiries over its own tax policies, while Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp have been called to Capitol Hill to answer questions about their own practices.

Corporations must pay the top U.S. 35-percent corporate tax on foreign profits, but not until those profits are brought into the United States from abroad. This exception is known as corporate offshore income deferral.

In submitted testimony ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Apple said any tax reform should favor lower corporate income tax rates regardless of revenue, eliminate tax expenditures and implement a “reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows free movement of capital back to the US.”

“Apple recognizes these and other improvements in the U.S. corporate tax system may increase the company’s taxes,” it said.

Large U.S. companies boosted their offshore earnings by 15 percent last year to a record $1.9 trillion, avoiding hefty tax bills by keeping the profits abroad, according to research firm Audit Analytics.

Tax scrutiny

Apple also uses two conventional offshore tax practices typical of multinational companies’ tax-avoidance strategies, the report said.

Multinational corporations value goods and services moving across international borders from one corporate unit to another. Known as “transfer pricing,” these moves are frequently managed to reduce corporations’ global tax costs.

Apple’s tax structure highlights flaws in the U.S. corporate tax code so that Congress “can effectively close the loopholes used by many U.S. multinational companies,” Arizona Senator John McCain, the subcommittee’s top Republican, said in a statement on Monday.

Levin, who announced he will retire at the end of 2014, introduced legislation in February to close tax loopholes. At a news conference on Monday, Levin said his bill should pass independent of any broader tax reform push in Congress.

McCain, the top Republican on the subcommittee, told the joint news conference he would co-sponsor Levin’s bill, the first Republican to support the bill. He called Apple’s tax practices “egregious, and (a) really outrageous scheme.”

Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives.

Government tax officials from the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department also are scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on Tuesday.

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