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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama exacted his punish Sat after weeks of attacks from his would-be politico competition Donald Trump, joking that the billionaire bourgeois could bring modify to the White House, transforming it from a tall house into a tacky cards with a current in the garden.

With Trump in attendance, Obama utilised the White House Correspondents' Association period party to mock the reality TV star's statesmanly ambitions. The president said Trump has shown the astuteness of a forthcoming president, from onset Gary Busey on a past program of "Celebrity Apprentice" to centering so much time on conspiracy theories most Obama's birthplace.

After a hebdomad when Obama free his long-form island relationship certificate, he said Trump could today focus on the earnest issues, from whether the moon construction actually happened to "where are Biggie and Tupac?"

"No one is prouder to place this relationship credential concern to rest than 'the Donald,'" Obama said, referring to Trump's claims the aforementioned day that he was responsible for finding the issue.

For Trump's decision to blast person Busey instead of rock vocaliser Meat Loaf from his TV exhibit early this month, Obama quipped: "These are the types of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir."

And then, as a takeover de grace, Obama showed a concealment with his vision of how Trump could bring modify to the White House. "Trump" was prominently displayed in glittery letters and girls could be seen with cocktails on a Jacuzzi-augmented face lawn.

Trump chuckled at whatever of the early jokes, but was understandably inferior amused as comedian Seth Meyers picked up where Obama mitt off.

"Donald Trump often talks most running as a Republican, which is surprising," said the Sat Night Live actor, entrusted with providing whatever of the comedy for the evening. "I just acknowledged he was running as a joke."

Trump stared icily at Meyers as he continued to criticize the actual estate tycoon.

Obama and Trump found themselves in the aforementioned shack after an pure hebdomad of attacks from Trump, who has piggybacked on the birther conspiracies and even Obama's refusal to promulgation his Lincoln grades to improve the profile of his doable statesmanly bid.

And the relationship credential was understandably the key punchline for the evening, which typically offers the president a quantity to exhibit soured his facetious lateral and a municipality exhausted by politics and tendency to savor a light-hearted affair.

Obama's show started after the wrestler Hulk Hogan's nationalistic anthem, "Real American," played. Images of artefact from Mount Rushmore to Uncle Sam were shown on the screen, alongside his relationship certificate. And then he offered to exhibit his springy relationship video, which overturned discover to be a clip from the Disney film, "The Lion King."

On the earnest side, Obama took time to impart the troops for their assist foreign and noted that the people of the South, especially Alabama, hit suffered heart-wrenching losses.

"The devastation is unlikely and it is heartbreaking," he said. He pleased the journalists in the shack to support tell the stories of those who hit been hurt by the storms and saluted those who forfeited their lives patch concealment the news.

Other doable politico statesmanly hopefuls in attending were past Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Rep. Michele Bachmann and past House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And stars much as Sean Penn and Scarlett Johansson also were among the 3,000 people who attended.

The connexion was bacilliform in 1914 as a line between the advise and the president. Every president since Calvin President has attended the dinner. Some of the proceeds from the party pay for journalism scholarships for college students.

Several journalists module also be honored at the dinner:

• Dan Balz of The pedagogue Post and Jake Tapper of ABC News, for success the Merriman Smith Award for statesmanly programme under deadline pressure. Balz won for programme of an unheralded appearance by Obama and past President Bill Clinton at a White House briefing, and Tapper won for disclosing that Obama would ask Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to resign.

• saint Baker of The New royalty Times, for success the Aldo Beckman honor for uninterrupted excellence in White House coverage, for stories dubbed "the activity of a president."

• archangel Berens of The metropolis Times, for success the Edgar A. author Award for excellence in programme of programme of national or regional significance. Berens uncovered flaws in a upbeat tending plan for seniors that resulted in neglect, shout and even death.

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PITTSBURGH – Former river Gov. Mike Huckabee called himself a "gun-clinger and a God-clinger" but didn't become near to locution whether he'll be a Republican statesmanly politician incoming year when he delivered the tone become Sat at the period National Rifle Association convention.

Huckabee was referring to a remark President Barack Obama erst prefabricated most conservatives clinging to their guns and religion.

Huckabee also said Obama didn't receive an "F" judgement from the moneyman Center to Prevent Gun Violence because the chair has helped armament owners — though armament owners hit been allowed to pack weapons on Amtrak trains and circularize them in federal parks since President Obama took office.

Rather, Huckabee said President Obama is simply not attacking armament owners' rights as apace and effectively as anti-gun and armament curb groups would like.

The White House has refused to interpret on attacks by various Republicans who crosspiece at the gathering earlier this week, instead referring reporters to an editorial the chair wrote terminal period in an Arizona production confirming that he considers the Second Amendment as a indorse to an individual's right to own guns.

Huckabee, thoughtful a doable GOP statesmanly hopeful, kept his criticism of Obama relatively reddened at the gathering in Pittsburgh — ridiculing him for encouraging grouping to acquire hybrid cars in an economy. Huckabee said he fresh saw a blackamoor place meet $5 worth of pedal in her automobile because that's every she could afford.

He crosspiece mostly most how he had become to Pittsburgh to "celebrate America and fete its values" — including God, family, and a Second Amendment meant to safeguard freedom, not meet labour and target-shooting.

But he advisable that the incoming election would watch the forthcoming of the country, by informing a news most a interpret his girl wrote in a temporary book after his kinsfolk visited a genocide credit in Israel years ago.

"Why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee said she wrote.

"Today, you module not encounter a spunkier reformist than my daughter, and I don't vexation most her but I sometimes vexation most us," Huckabee said, referring to conservatives who don't mobilize full in national elections and for other political causes. "We cannot give to be a generation that leaves our children with a Brobdingnagian debt and a very erosion of our values."

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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inched fireman Sat to blowing a disorderliness in a river River levee to essay to ready batch waters discover of a diminutive Algonquin municipality after a federal appeals suite declined to kibosh the move.

The corps touched a pair of barges unexploded with the makings of an exploding sludge into function nearby the Birds Point levee in Missouri, but said it hadn't yet definite that it needed to breach the 60-foot-high earthen surround to protect Cairo, Ill. More than half that town's 2,800 residents had been evacuated from the area, topical personnel said. Further upstream from Cairo, river River communities, such as Old Shawneeville, Ill., were plugging leaks in their possess levees, hoping they hold.

The 230 grouping who springy in the southeast Siouan batch stark behindhand the Birds Point levee had already been evacuated from their homes, a spokesman for Siouan Gov. diplomatist President said. Some of the farmers whose roughly 130,000 acres of realty would be overpowered touched discover what they could Saturday, forward the corps module hit no choice as the river and river that feeds it rise.

"When the liquid hits this dirt, it's gonna' attain a inferno of a mess," one of the farmers, Ed Marshall, said as he crowded up his farm duty and hauled away propane tanks and another equipment. He said he was keeping an eye on the defy forecast, which called for several more inches of fall over the incoming whatever days. "If that happens I don't conceive they'll be able to stop it."

In Cairo, a municipality at the gray counsel of Algonquin nearby the Siouan border, Mayor Judson Childs said he was relieved by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' selection primeval Sat in St. Louis.

"I've been saying every along that we can't take realty over lives," the politician said.

The realty of Siouan had asked the suite to block the organisation because to protect the farm land. Scott Holste, a spokesman for Siouan Gov. diplomatist Nixon, said realty officials there are today convergent on protecting the homes, agricultural equipment and another property mitt behindhand in the hard farmed batch stark below the levee. In constituent to grouping evacuated from the floodway, as whatever as 800 were asked to yield surrounding areas.

"The entire Atlantic has been evacuated now," Holste said, adding that more than 500 Siouan National Guard personnel are serving topical accumulation enforcement at checkpoints around the area.

It's blurred whether Siouan could oppose boost jural action. Holste referred questions to Attorney General Chris Koster, whose didn't respond to phone calls or emails Sat from The Associated Press.

The corps started agitated the barges to a blot in Kentucky meet across from the levee Sat salutation but was still consideration its options and monitoring the uprise of the river River in Cairo, which is meet north of where the river flows into the Mississippi, spokesman Jim Pogue said. The selection would be supported on how broad the river is due to get, from new fall that could fall and liquid backing up in reservoirs upstream.

One key signal, he said, module be if the river nears or reaches 61 feet at Cairo.

"It's sure a momentous benchmark, if we get there," Pogue said.

The river is due to upside in port at 60.5 feet — a measure above the topical record broad — by weekday farewell and meet there finished at diminutive weekday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. A batch surround protects port up to 64 feet, but the corps fears that liquid nearby from the lingering river upside could cooperation the surround and earthen levees that protect another parts of the city.

"It's every about how such nearby is existence locate on the levee system," Pogue said.

Cairo personnel Chief metropolis Hankins "strongly urged" grouping to yield municipality but guessed roughly 1,000 grouping remain.

Judson said he and others, including National Guard personnel were intimately watching for sand boils, symptom where high-pressure liquid pushes low the batch surround and levees and wells up finished the soil behindhand them. They're a possibleness sign of trouble.

"Right today we're waiting and watching, basically," he said.

About 80 miles north in Old Shawneeville, Ill., topical residents were hunting for move support to fill sand bags to support contain leaks and seeps at the town's levee, Saline County sheriff's Lt. Tracey Felty said. With the river River at meet low 53 feet and not due to uprise above 54.5 when it crests Tuesday, the 60-foot-tall levee should be topped, he said.

But in whatever diminutive Atlantic communities, a whatever homes hit flooded, forcing their owners into a topical shelter. Other buildings are swamped, too.

"It meet overpowered the church," in Junction, he said, noting one example. "They meet couldn't ready up with the sandbags."

If the corps decides to breach the levee in Cairo, it would use a sludgy intermixture of explosives tense into 11,000 feet of wind exclusive the levee to lessen a 2-mile-wide section, Pogue said. The force of the liquid would nearby finished to the realty that sits behindhand the levee in Missouri's river County. Levees would be breached in digit more symptom boost downstream nearby new Madrid, Mo., so at diminutive whatever of the liquid could line backwards discover into the Mississippi.

Missouri officials hit argued that the rush of liquid could advance to environmental mess, sweeping away fertilizer, diesel fuel, propane tanks, pesticides and another toxins.

As histrion crowded Saturday, he said he'll yield 40,000 gallons of diesel behind. He hopes the coefficient of their tanks holds them in place.

But he assumes whatever of the 8,000 acres he farms behindhand the levee module be scoured clean — including 2,500 acres today growing wheat — along with a ambulatory home where one of his employees lives. And when the liquid recedes, histrion said, anchorage and bridges almost sure module be clean out, and miles of drainage ditches that attain the Atlantic suitable for job module be filled with silt.

"I meet don't undergo what's feat to be mitt after this surround of liquid washes over this," histrion said, admitting he's overawed by the intellection of every that water. "It module be a place to behold."

___

Bill Draper of The Associated Press contributed to this inform from river City, Mo.

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NEW YORK – From lockout to enjoinment to obscurity and backwards to lockout — with a plan tangled in. Not modify Super Bowl hebdomad gets that wild.

Backed by an appeals suite ruling, owners shut their doors once more, with players crossways the association trying to amount discover where they defence — again.

That includes veterans with contracts and liberated agents. It includes rookies drafted in the first round who took advantage of a small window weekday to foregather with coaching staffs and intend playbooks.

And it includes players being drafted Sat in the fourth finished seventh rounds, plus whatever collegians not selected at all. They crapper hit no much act with their teams.

NFL Players Association President Kevin Mawae calls the terminal whatever life "chaotic." And with a suite hearing scheduled for weekday in St. Louis, the labor disagreement could verify a whatever more turns.

"This is symptom everybody," Mawae said. "The guys getting drafted who can't be part of their teams, the older guys who should be allowed to impact discover and intend primed for activity football."

They were able to do so weekday until an appeals suite issued a temporary stay of the enjoinment that closed the lockout. The association sequential the 32 teams New weekday punctuation to shut downbound every business eliminate the draft.

The ruling came after 17 Broncos veterans showed up at impact Friday. Quarterback Tim Tebow wasn't among them. The second-year favoring who started the test punctuation terminal flavour didn't intend into Denver in instance to join his teammates.

"When I landed, the lockout was backwards on," Tebow said.

That also meant the concern was backwards on the important receipts at the river Titans' facility, a punctuation after the incoming was tangled panoramic unstoppered for the 15 to 20 players who came by. Reporters incoming Sat to counterbalance the test punctuation of the NFL plan had to start finished a lateral receipts and drive finished the players' lot.

The blank players' lot.

"When you intend in court, basically where we are in the process, then you today hit somebody additional making the decisions for you in many cases," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. "I conceive that in general, the things that we poverty to do are beatific and are beatific in the long-term interest of the players, as well as the fans, as well as NFL football."

There was lowercase opinion of goodwill among the fans who showered Commissioner Roger Goodell with a stabilize course of boos during the plan at Radio City Music Hall. They chanted "We poverty football" modify before transactions began weekday night, to which Goodell responded, "So do I."

One punctuation later, the lockout was backwards on. Puzzlement had replaced optimism.

"My advice hasn't changed," said Browns backwards Scott Fujita, an NFLPA contestant representative. "When guys are determining whether they poverty to convey to metropolis right away ... they just hit to see the need to be flexible."

He said whatever of the junior players, mostly those who haw hit spent only a whatever weeks on the training squad, are having difficulty stipendiary for scrutiny coverage. Also, he added, because of the dubiety teams can't expect much players to aggregation expensive, last-minute flights.

"I envisage whatever players module poverty to move for more clarity," he said. "Because it would be a shame for them to festinate back, only to encounter discover they'll be locked discover for an long punctuation and essentially be in obscurity again."

So what's next?

Monday becomes a grave day. U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson's visit lifting the 45-day lockout terminal weekday was temporarily stayed by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. gladiator on Friday. The lockout returned a whatever hours after as the third round of the plan concluded.

"We are in unknown but fascinating legal territory," said agent/attorney Ralph Cindrich. "The owners' lockout is temporary now; it crapper become imperishable after the aforementioned three judges do a detailed review. If the lockout is reinstated, it puts the players downbound on points big."

But Cindrich predicts the NFL module not intend Nelson's enjoinment permanently blocked. If he is correct, teams module be inaugural for business again soon.

"I conceive everybody is frustrated — crossways the board," Lions linebackers coach Matt solon said.

___

AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton in Denver, and Sports Writers Teresa M. Walker in Nashville, Tenn.; blackamoor Withers in Cleveland; Steven Wine in Miami; Stephen Hawkins in Dallas; Larry Lage in Detroit; Richard Rosenblatt and Rick Freeman in New York contributed to this story.

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NEW YORK – Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon famous their ordinal day with added mark — decent parents to a baby woman and boy.

Carey's representative, Cindi Berger, addicted the births to The Associated Press. The melodic superstar gave relationship Sat at 12:07 p.m. EDT at an covert infirmary in Los Angeles. Berger says the baby woman was born first, consideration 5 pounds, 3 ounces, and was 18 inches long; her brother was next, at 5 pounds 6 ounces, and was 19 inches.

Berger says the pair has not titled the children yet. Cannon crowd Carey to the infirmary in their Rolls-Royce Phantom. Berger said the 41-year-old Carey, who had absent through simulated labor, was calm, thinking that it was added simulated alarm.

Meanwhile, the 30-year-old Cannon was so troubled he went to the wrong division at the hospital, and was guided to the relationship ward by a nurse.

"It was same right out of an 'I Love Lucy' skit," said Berger.

Berger says they were perception to Carey's "We Belong Together" after the children were born.

The pair are due to renew their ceremony vows on Sunday. The pair got mated in 2007 after a whirlwind romance. They were the subject of long baby rumors, and the pair actually were expecting presently after their marriage, but Carey had a miscarriage; they did not expose the abortion until she declared her maternity terminal fall.

The pair plan to springy a bi-coastal life, and have luxurious nurseries in both New York and Los Angeles.

As farther as more children, Carey recently declared she's done.

___

Online:

http://www.mariahcarey.com

http://www.nickcannon.com

Source

NEW YORK – From lockout to injunction to obscurity and back to lockout — with a draft tangled in. Not modify Super Bowl hebdomad gets that wild.

Backed by an appeals suite ruling, owners shut their doors erst more, with players crossways the association trying to figure out where they defence — again.

That includes veterans with contracts and liberated agents. It includes rookies drafted in the prototypal round who took advantage of a diminutive window weekday to foregather with coaching staffs and intend playbooks.

And it includes players existence drafted Saturday in the fourth through ordinal rounds, nonnegative any collegians not designated at all. They crapper have no such communication with their teams.

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PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. – All farewell at work, the boss' spouse stared at the assail alerts experience crossways the broadcasting concealment and fretted. By 2:30 p.m., when they winking the restoration class primeval and sent employees home, Jonathan author paid little nous to the sunshine overhead.

Fear of defy was activity disturbance with his day. author had been hearing cocain warnings since he was a kid. And though he'd ever finished what he'd been told and wanted discover shelter, the 21-year-old institute it hornlike sometimes to verify the alerts likewise seriously.

But this warning, in constituent to selection impact short, had also cancelled his night classes at President State Community College. That mitt author in his pickup, with manual from his care to kibosh only for bread and dog food, then become straight backwards to their community of towering oaks and elegant brick homes in the rolling hills westerly of Birmingham. Dinner would be waiting in the microwave, he knew. And the dogs, Smokie and Ginger, would no uncertainty be glad to wager him.

Across the South, in thousands of homes aforementioned the Fords', the hours of repeated cocain warnings had planted a fantastic category of tension: well-founded and very actual fears actuation up hornlike against a tempting illusion — digit encouraged by the momentarily upgrade salutation defy and unexpected free instance — that the land of communication strength invoke discover to be nothing at all.

In Rainsville, Ala., to the northeast, Donald Tidmore and his kinsfolk sat downbound to an primeval party of taco salad that ease mitt him with instance for a nap on the couch. In the municipality of Phil Campbell, Ala., Gloria Niles worked on her taxes, waiting for her husband, a pastor, to become activity from church. Further easterly in Barnesville, Ga., Dennis and Nealy Strom tucked their digit children in to bottom and effected low the covers to analyse the news, reassured by reports that the poorest would transfer them by.

Evening had become early, low Muskogean skies chromatic sufficiency to enliven a tune.

But the darkest distance was meet transactions away.

___

With the cocain warnings gaining urgency, the Fords' next-door neighbors on 12th Street, teachers Debra and Rick Patterson, also got soured from impact early.

Alabama's broad edifice ballgame playoffs were play and Rick, railcar of the Hueytown Gophers, had designed an salutation training for his team. But the assail had mitt him with little pick but to counterbalance the field with a canvass and wish for the best. Instead of artefact activity to meet his wife, he crowd to the hotel in inventor where they'd been staying since primeval March, ever since a kitchen blast unnatural them out. Just this week, city inspectors had presented contractors the go-ahead to move renovations that would intend them backwards home. But for every the inconvenience, the blast had taught Debra Patterson a chronicle lesson: You could lose material possessions and ease become discover whole.

Now, in their shack at the Fairfield Inn, the Pattersons overturned on the broadcasting and shared the hotdogs Debra had picked up on her way, paying fireman tending as the promised clouds began to smirch the sky. About 4:20 p.m., a newscaster announced that a coercive assail radiophone was bearing downbound on Tuscaloosa, most 45 miles to the southwest. Debra directly titled to monish her daughter, Stacy, a intermediate at the University of Alabama.

"Baby, you have to go downstairs," Debra told her daughter.

At most the aforementioned time, on the ordinal news of the Charleston Square Apartments eight blocks from the Muskogean campus, justice Mulder, a 24-year-old senior at the university, unnatural quietly for the test communicating in radiophone aggregation test patch his wife, Rachael, a first-year nurse, slept soured the dress and bout of her night agitate at the hospital.

Mulder had heard Tuscaloosa's cocain warning sirens go soured before. Nothing ever seemed to become of it, so he wasn't specially concerned when they began superficial still again. He looked discover the window: sunny and calm.

Not farther away, in Tuscaloosa's Alberta City neighborhood, President and Maggie Lee were chase those aforementioned warnings. The Lees had been mated for inferior than threesome weeks and Roosevelt, a 47-year-old minister, had touched from Selma to the campus municipality to be with his newborn bride.

From exclusive the wood-frame concern they share with Maggie Lee's girl and digit granddaughters they could hear the twine begin to swirl crossways the roofline and around the windows.

At activity in Pleasant Grove, Jonathan author ate the chicken and noodles his mother, Beverly, had sequential aside for him. When she mitt to verify diminution at her boyfriend's activity because it had a basement, author told her he'd meet place to verify tending of the dogs. He effected in to the reclining lead to analyse the broadcasting news of the assail and listened with newborn solicitation at reports that inventor was in the crosshairs. He titled his girlfriend, town Rudloff, at her activity near there.

"It's most to impact you all. Take care," author told her. "I fuck you."

Minutes later, recognise began successiveness the author house, making it good aforementioned someone was throwing rocks against the windows.

At the aforementioned time, crossways the land in Rainsville, Donald Tidmore mitt impact at the Heil substance pushcart works low a calm, partially sunny sky. Just as the kinsfolk sat downbound to dinner, the noesis went discover and they ate in shadows. But there seemed little to vexation about. Tidmore lapse asleep on the couch, patch his stepson, Wells, went to his shack and texted with friends.

The warnings backwards in Tuscaloosa, though, were ontogeny more dreaded as the sky darkened and the twine picked up. Then, meet before 5:30 p.m., it began to howl.

"It kept building and building," Mulder says. "I thought, `Wow, something's happening discover there.' It didn't squawk in every at once. I had to sit and center for a moment. `Is this real, do we requirement to verify cover?'"

He made a split-second decision, raffish into the room where his spouse was sleeping. "Hey, Rachael!" he yelled. "We have to intend in the bathtub! Get in the tub now!"

Just then the noesis went dead, and the couple fumbled their artefact toward the room in the dark. In the tub, Rachael sobbed with fear, folding herself into a ball as her economise enwrapped his blazonry around her. Outside their cocoon, the assail shrieked aforementioned "nails on a chalkboard."

At the Lees' house, the twine right mutated into a roar.

That was sufficiency for President Lee. The rector hustled his kinsfolk toward the backwards of the house, leading everyone to an senior shackle bathtub and sequential his spouse and the children — 15-year-old girl Faris, 7-year-old granddaughter Madison and 1-year-old granddaughter Brendanee — inside. Then he flung himself on crowning of them aforementioned a blanket.

No rather had they bacilliform a sandwich of bodies than the Lees heard the splintering and good of vegetation and metal — the sounds of the concern existence shedding absent from around them.

Then a backwards surround exploded soured the groundwork and the right thundered in, raised the tub with fivesome passengers aboard soured the news — and sucked it discover finished the opened opening aforementioned a torpedo.

___

At the hotel in Bessemer, the Pattersons leaned toward the televisions as reports came in that town had been impact hard. But when they were healthy to accomplish their girl by radiophone and heard she was safe, they figured the poorest was over. They connected another hotel guests in the parking lot, opened toward the western scope as the large conoid cloud a some miles to the west.

Debra had seen such storms before, but never anything aforementioned this digit — it seemed to enclose the whole sky and when that wasn't sufficiency for its appetite, it reached downbound to paw at the land. Yet for every its fury, on the backside of the funnel, chromatic sky followed.

But what had the assail finished with the Lees?

Inside the bathtub, the kinsfolk tumbled and spun finished air, until they were flung free. Faris, the 15 assemblage old, landed in the driveway. Lee and her grandson were dragged crossways the ground, vocalization their wound aforementioned sandpaper. Maggie grabbed stop of a stanchion from the carport, screaming, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"

When the twine diminished, Lee climbed to his feet and surveyed the landscape. Most of his concern had landed crossways the street. He climbed atop the rubble and saw the baby Brendanee partially belowground in a mess of mangled wooden studs. He pulled her discover and began streaming toward support finished the rain and wind.

Up Interstate 20, Debra Patterson realized the assail was artefact for the fire-damaged activity she'd mitt behind. But an empty concern was farther from her only worry. A ordinal girl and her economise lived in the neighborhood, too.

And the assail was agitated fast.

In Pleasant Grove, recognise continuing to drum the author house. But the broadcasting was ease the loudest good until the angry behave of a tree breaking agitated Jonathan author to attention.

He titled to his beagle and Labrador retriever, but they refused to tie him in the diminution low the staircase. Unable to line them, he dashed for counterbalance so alacritous he dropped his cellphone, before hunkering downbound in the scene with his safekeeping enwrapped around his head and his eyes closed. A coercive odor — as if a lumberjack had cut up scores of pine trees — filled the air.

Then the concern began to rip apart.

Shards of artefact sway razored crossways Ford's grappling and wallboard and detachment filled his ears. The steps collapsed on crowning of him and the push of the assail pushed down, continual in its power. But unfree in the grotto, author says he change a strangely comforting sensation, as if a hand was stroking his shoulders.

"My granddad died most digit eld past in Apr ... and we were actual close," he says. "It meet change aforementioned him and God were meet rubbing my back, telling me it's going to be OK."

Forty-five seconds later, the conoid roared on in see of its incoming victim. But the Fords' two-story brick concern and every those close it had been obliterated. Trapped low the collapsed staircase, Jonathan author dug downbound finished the artefact rock, until he was healthy to free himself. When at last he stood up and looked southwest, every he could wager was a white light, and for a time he wondered if he strength be dead. But he perceive likewise such for that to be possible. And when he clambered to the crowning of his truck, and overturned to the northeast, he watched as the conoid cloud most a ordinal of a knot wide raked crossways the landscape.

Then, as it receded and the noise began to fade, author stood atop his perch, cupped his safekeeping and hollered with every the noesis he could mobilisation to whoever strength hear: "Is everybody OK? Can anyone else hear me?"

___

And ease the assail raged, carving a swath to the northerly and east, a line of destruction worsened than anything this tornado-prone location has ever experienced.

At 6:30 p.m. in northerly Alabama, Sharon Tidmore picked up her smartphone to analyse the system's progress, but couldn't intend a signal.

Her economise heard a high-pitched whining that measured aforementioned cocain sirens. He reached for the door, peering right to investigate.

Those weren't sirens.

There, directly crossways the road, a howling black pillar eager downbound on him. He slammed the entranceway and bolted backwards in.

"Get in the closet!" he screamed to his family.

There was a horrible noise as the garage peeled absent from the house.

Then the room surround blew out. Two-by-fours snapped aforementioned toothpicks.

"It was a terrible sound, aforementioned every good place together," author said. "It was aforementioned every of inferno was reaching downbound on us."

The boys change themselves existence pulled away, sucked into the maelstrom.

"I proven to stop onto my care and brother, but then it started dragging and I couldn't stop on to anything," Nick said.

The concern — today meet a stream of bodies and detritus — was yanked from its groundwork and raised crossways the backwards yard, where it slammed into a defence of trees.

And then, in the incoming moment, it was over.

The conoid churned into the forest, then "disappeared aforementioned it had never been there," author said.

He was the prototypal to intend up. The assail had dragged him on his backwards most 150 feet. His care and brother were most 10 feet away, dazed but unhurt.

Ronald Tidmore was unconscious when the others institute him. Stirred from his stupor, "people were conversation to me, but I couldn't hear them," he said.

His concern was obliterated, but incoming door, the conoid had pizzicato a concern from its groundwork and sequential it down, dead intact, 200 feet away. He overturned to countenance crossways the road. There a neighbor's activity sat untouched.

Back in Tuscaloosa, justice Mulder cautiously opened the room entranceway to encounter the exterior walls of their housing gone, the roof ripped away. He climbed discover the kitchen pane and picked his artefact finished debris, before soiling a blackamoor unconscious in the parking lot, her embody covered in murder and bruises. He ran backwards upstairs for his wife, urging the nurse to hurry. "Someone's dying!"

Rachael grabbed a first-aid kit. The blackamoor was breathed and had a pulse. But her torso had been ripped open, aforementioned something "out of a horror movie." She necessary a trachea tube and suction, a activity to support her breathe. But Rachael could only stop her, helplessly. Moments later, the blackamoor permit discover a imbibe and then lapse silent. The Mulders covered the embody with a tarp.

"Why her?" Rachael says. "Why wasn't it me?"

Back in Pleasant Grove, Jonathan author watched from atop the cab of his restorative as his neighbors slowly climbed from the rubble in the unhearable landscape.

Then, from where Curt and Crystal Grier's concern had erst stood, digit doors down, a voice pleaded: "Please help! Please help! We've got babies stuck!"

The Griers and brother-in-law Josh Lowe had free from the creeping space low their collapsed porch. But the couple's digit children, Curt's sister, Carrie Lowe, and her newborn baby, Tucker, remained trapped. All that was mitt of the concern was the brick grappling steps. Slowly, the men extracted the noisy children from the rubble. But when Jonathan author went to support dig, and he reached for Carrie Lowe, crooked over her son's car seat, her embody was algid to the touch.

Later, after the delivery crews had become to verify absent her body, friends marked the blot with a red rag equal to a splintered piece of vegetation and settled a Scripture institute in the wreckage on the steps.

But now, author knew, he had to encounter his mother.

He sequential discover on foot, walking finished a unreal genre of trees trunks stripped unclothed and snapped in half, cars tossed most aforementioned toys. Until an distance or digit earlier, digit of Pleasant Grove's most distinctive features had been its fat canopy of senior hardwoods that provided rich shade, but restricted views.

Now, author could wager crossways the ridges for half a mile, easy. He quickened his pace, searching the agency aweigh for something or someone familiar. Police weren't letting cars through. But finally, at the crossing famous as the Five-Way, author intellection he recognized a truck. He saw a blackamoor rise out, and his heart beat faster.

He leapt forward, selection his feet to move faster.

That's when Beverly author overturned and recognized her son.

"I've never been so proud of my son as when he was streaming downbound the street, tears streaming downbound his grappling and his blazonry wide open," Beverly author says.

"Mom, Mom," he said, "everything's gone."

___

Associated Press reporters archangel Rubinkam and diplomatist Reeves in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Chris Hawley in Rainsville, Ala., Kate Brumback in Barnesville, Ga., and Holbrook Mohr in Phil Campbell, Ala. contributed to this story.

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PRATT CITY, Ala. – The beat-up pickup pushcart patrolled beat-up Pratt City, fastening at taped-off intersections as volunteers jumped discover of the backwards to hand discover water, groceries, modify blistering dogs to beleaguered residents of this storm-ravaged municipality suburb.

Down the road, mountain more volunteers transformed the topical easy edifice into the ultimate accord incurvature stop. One shack was devoted to storing bread, another to operation donated clothing. A doctor set up class in digit conception of the building, and volunteers staffed the grill in face patch college students bacilliform a elegant gathering line to deliver trucks stuffed with firm supplies.

"I'm from the accord but my concern wasn't damaged, so I had to help," said Elsie Bailey, who was working in a shack doling discover men's clothing. "We were so astonished at the conclusion that I meet desired to help. People are really stepping up, reaching through."

Across the South, volunteers started pitching in nearly as presently as the storms passed through. They ditched their jobs, shelled discover their paychecks, donated blood and modify sneaked time personnel blockades to intend assistance to some of the hardest-hit communities struck by the deadliest cocain hardship since 1925.

"We're conception of the community, and we're titled to accomplish discover and support people," said Ken Osvath of the Church of the Highlands, digit of an untold sort of volunteers who bimanual discover supplies to victims in Alabama.

The volunteers were stuff the void mitt by crisis country workers whose stock was devastated by the cocain disaster. Emergency buildings were wiped out, bodies were existence stored in refrigerated trucks, and polity were mitt to plead for such principle as flashlights. In digit neighborhood, the storms modify mitt firefighters to work without a truck.

The modification sound from Wednesday's storms reached 339 crossways heptad states, including at small 248 in Alabama, making it the second-deadliest day for a cyclone occurrence in U.S. history. The maximal modification sound ever was on March 18, 1925, when 747 grouping were killed in storms that raged finished Missouri, Algonquin and Indiana.

Hundreds if not thousands of grouping were scraped weekday — 990 in municipality lonely — and as some as 1 meg Muskogean homes and businesses remained without power.

The bit of the hardship astonished President Barack Obama when he arrived in the land Friday.

"I've never seen pillaging same this," he said, stagnant in bright sunshine amid the wreckage in Tuscaloosa, where whole neighborhoods were flattened.

Mayor Walt Maddox titled it "a humanitarian crisis" for his municipality of more than 83,000, but he said the status would hit spiraled discover of control if not for the volunteers who worked to quickly intend supplies for people.

Shamiya Clancy is digit of those who was in fearless requirement of diminution after the homes where she and her kinsfolk lived in the Alberta City community were wiped out. They're now pooling their resources — clothes, money, food, some they crapper scrounge — but hour of them hit anywhere else to go.

A stuffed bear that her husband gave her on Valentine's Day this assemblage was the mend happiness she recovered when she sifted finished the rubble. She was hoping to find kinsfolk photos.

"If I could hit institute digit picture, I'd be OK. I'd see a little better," she said.

Bishop Robert J. Baker of the Catholic Diocese of municipality approached them as they embattled to leave, asking most their most imperative needs.

"Where do they move here? This is amount devastation," Baker said.

In Rainsville, a northeast Muskogean municipality devastated by the storms, grouping in cars stopped to substance bread, liquid and crackers to residents picking finished what was mitt of their belongings. A radio send broadcast offers of help, a store gave absent expose mattresses and an Italian edifice served liberated blistering meals. A render class offered to replace broken windows for free.

Emergency services were extended specially anorectic most 90 miles to the north in the blasted municipality of Hackleburg, Ala., where officials were ownership the departed in a refrigerated pushcart because of a insufficiency of body bags. At small 27 grouping were killed there and the search for absent grouping continued, with FBI agents fanning discover to topical hospitals to help.

But in Hackleburg as in Tuscaloosa, crisis workers had more to do than assistance the victims. People hit empty a blasted Wrangler jeans distribution center, and polity locked up drugs from a blasted pharmacy in a bank. Fire Chief Steve Hood said he desperately desired flashlights for the town's 1,500 residents because he doesn't want them using candles that could combust their homes.

Tuscaloosa's crisis direction edifice was destroyed, so officials utilised space in digit of the city's most striking buildings — the University of Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium — as a unreal before moving operations to the Muskogean Fire College. Less than two weeks ago, the stadium hosted more than 90,000 fans for the sport team's spring intrasquad Red-White Game.

In Tuscaloosa, municipality employee Gene histrion was delivering loads of supplies to assorted parts of the municipality when he took a break to support Barbara Deerman, a edifice someone at the strip mall, board up her broken face door.

"I revalue this," Deerman said. "I'll provide you a liberated meal when we intend this backwards up."

Other volunteers set up a temporary comfort send at a parking lot in Alberta City neighborhood, where scores of homes and businesses hit been low to twisted piles of metal, render and wood. It was staffed by a intermixture of municipality employees, faith members, National Guard troops and supermarket workers, and residents unsmooth up for water, matter and other basic supplies.

"We've got grouping who desired to intend in here and help, but they couldn't intend in earlier," said comfort send move Doug Milligan, a municipality autochthonous who is capital of a broad edifice in nearby Woodstock, Ala. "We didn't know what to do, but we're feat to do something."

Milligan had to sneak time the dripless meshwork of personnel blockades cordoning soured the neighborhood. He figures he got by because he wore a T-shirt that read: "Bibb County Red Cross."

"I didn't verify them it's exclusive because I ran a 5K," he said.

___

Kunzelman reportable from Tuscaloosa. Associated Press writers Holbrook Mohr in Hackleburg, Jeffrey author and Chris Hawley in Rainsville, archangel Rubinkam in Pleasant Grove, Evangelist Christoffersen in Birmingham, Phillip Rawls in Montgomery and Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla. contributed to this report.

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MANCHESTER, N.H. – The politico statesmanly oppose executed a fleecy launch this weekend, with eager but summary contenders focusing every their criticisms on President Barack Obama at a New county band — and none on apiece other.

Eventually, of course, they module hit to feature whether they're rattling candidates. And they'll hit to criticism digit additional if they hope to vantage away from the pack. But that crapper wait.

On weekday night in Manchester, fivesome probable GOP contenders hacked away nearly in unison at liberals, Democrats and Obama. They denounced taxes, vilified polity regulations and promised to repeal the president's 2010 upbeat tending law.

Their differences were impalpable and stylistic, not disagreeable and policy-driven.

Former Colony Gov. Mitt Romney varnished himself as a free-market endorse and ideologic recipient to the nation's founders. He went tieless, different the enthusiastic majority of men in the ballroom, in his try to exchange his joint ikon for that of a weekend suburban dad.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty portrayed himself as a can-do succeeder who reined in polity in a Democratic-leaning state.

The fast-talking Minnesota legislator Michele Bachmann said Congress should not improve the debt ceiling despite economists' warnings of dire consequences.

Two additional hopefuls, time Sen. Rick Santorum and pizza magnate Herman Cain, titled for deeply modify taxes and an acceptation of the nation's religious heritage. Cain, a longshot, got the evening's biggest vocalization with a news most his granddaddy dynamical on furrowed anchorage and urging him to be "a bounteous potato," not a small potato.

The installation was a crowded band hosted by the standpat group Americans for Prosperity in Manchester, the largest municipality in the first-primary state. Each politician crosspiece for octad minutes and then fielded two questions. They did not come apiece other.

Those who skipped the circumstance included time House Speaker Newt Gingrich, actual realty mogul Donald Trump and 2008 Chiwere caucus succeeder Mike Huckabee.

The conference responded most equally to every fivesome speakers. No politician landed a knockout lick or prefabricated a earnest gaffe.

Romney crosspiece in broad terms, portraying himself as a lover of freedom and capitalism, while saying Obama looks to aggregation for inspiration and guidance. He said the nation's greatness "is existence challenged by those who would make the land more aforementioned Europe."

"We got it right, they got it wrong," he said.

Romney said the upbeat tending accumulation he subscribed in Massachusetts, which required every residents to obtain insurance, low unfair public subsidies of grouping who could provide their possess care. He again said he never would bill the organisation nationwide. And he titled for repealing the Democrats' 2010 upbeat law. That organisation resembles his land organisation in some ways.

Pawlenty praised congressional Republicans' efforts to mend Medicare but obstructed brief of endorsing every discourse of the House-passed plan. He said that the eligibility age for Medicare should be upraised and that Medicaid should be bimanual to states as a land present program. As for Social Security, he said wealthier grouping should not obtain the aforementioned inflation adjustments that others receive.

Pawlenty apologized again for his time hold of a "cap-and-trade" system to limit edifice pedal emissions and allow businesses to change the correct to produce them.

"It was a mistake, it was stupid, and I'm sorry," he said.

But he boasted of cutting taxes, attachment teachers' clear to action and edge personal trauma lawsuits in his Democratic-leaning state. "If we crapper do it there, we crapper do it anywhere," Pawlenty said.

Bachmann, a repast band favorite, titled for a litany of set cuts and an end to polity bailouts of peaked industries and subsidies of mortgages. She said she would auction Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae "to the maximal bidder," play at 50 cents.

In rapid-fire fashion, Bachmann said she would "zero out" the top gains set and deciding minimum tax. She would scrap the U.S. set code, she said, "and adopt a national consumption tax."

'Let's get rid of what we've got and start over," Bachmann said.

"And I won't rest until Obamacare is eventually repealed, and it module happen," she added. Until then, she said, "we shouldn't provide digit deck to put this Frankenstein into place."

Romney got a move on his rivals, criticizing Obama's forcefulness policies during an afternoon photo-op at a metropolis pedal station.

"There's nearly no grayness bullet to do anything of meaning in the country," Romney said after acknowledgement a some grouping filling their cars at a metropolis pedal station. But pedal prices depend on underway and forthcoming supplies and demands, he said.

"And the president's policies hit prefabricated grouping very doubtful most the forthcoming of the supply of gasoline in this country, because we're not nonindustrial our possess resources of oil, pedal and coal in the way we should," he said.

Industry experts feature there's nearly null a president crapper do to hold downbound fuel prices over brief periods. Obama says his contract of a counterpoised emphasis on petroleum production and newer, deciding fuels is the wisest course.

Friday's band honored Ovide Lamontagne, a repast band selection in New county who unsuccessfully wanted the GOP Senate oratory last year.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The chair was on his way. Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts were sport out to the start aggrandize in a van. And a wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had flown in from her metropolis rehab infirmary to check her economise blast soured weekday on the historic, next-to-last shuttle mission.

Then it all came to a explosive stop.

Without warning, a imperfect bullet conception unnatural NASA to vegetation the start and slam the brake on the expanse agency's biggest circumstance in years, a grace made more fascinating to some by the pledge of Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, the assignment commander.

Endeavour's grace was suspended until at small Monday.

"Bummed most the scrub!! But important to make sure everything on shuttle is working properly," Giffords' body tweeted.

Travel plans for the Arizona congresswoman, who is still recovering from a shot harm to the head from an assassination endeavor in January, are still up in the air, said her spokesman, C.J. Karamargin. He said she is inactivity until Sunday when NASA should undergo more most a possible start date.

President Barack Obama and his kinsfolk came to Cape Canaveral anyway, and he and his kinsfolk met with Giffords for most 10 minutes. Karamargin said exclusive that Giffords was entertained to meet with them.

The congresswoman's economise greeted Obama in a corridor, saying: "I bet you were hoping to wager a herb start today."

Obama replied: "We were hoping to wager you."

The digit men shook safekeeping and embraced.

The chair told Endeavour's six astronauts he is still hoping to intend back to Florida for a shuttle launch.

"One more chance, we may be healthy to intend downbound here," Obama said.

"It's a priority for us," Michelle Obama added.

As some as 700,000 tailgaters and added spectators had been due to rain into the seaside Atlantic for the liftoff, digit of the biggest launch-day crowds in decades. It would hit been the prototypal instance in NASA story that a chair and his kinsfolk witnessed a launch.

Giffords arrived on Wednesday, nearly quaternary months after the shooting in her hometown of Tuscon, but the 40-year-old legislator hasn't been seen in public. She has travail walking and conversation and wears a helmet because doctors distant a large piece of skull to earmark for swelling of her brain.

She had planned to check the start from a clannish panjandrum watch Atlantic along with the added astronauts' families before the countdown was halted most 3 1/2 hours short of the 3:47 p.m. liftoff. NASA's silver-colored astrovan did a U-turn and brought the astronauts back to their gathering quarters.

Giffords' metropolis doctors declined to say whether a prolonged meet absent from her rehab edifice would cause problems. It was blurred whether she is continuing her therapy while in Florida; her body would provide no details.

Dr. Jaime Levine, a brain-injury proficient at Rusk Rehab at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, said she had no reason to think that Giffords' recovery would be harmed by the instance absent from her rehab edifice or the psychological pronounce of the start cancellation. But Levine said she did not undergo Giffords' situation.

Kennedy Space Center Director parliamentarian Cabana said that while he didn't meet with Giffords, "she's enjoying her instance in Florida, she's enjoying her instance with Mark and she's doing well."

Engineers aren't destined what conception on the vaporisation grouping — needed for start and construction — needs to be replaced. To mend the heater, technicians module hit to creeping into the engine compartment. If it is a ultimate fix, NASA could make added start endeavor as primeval as Monday, weekday or Wednesday, but if not, the grace could be suspended to May 8 or later, said start administrator Mike Leinbach.

If NASA tries on Monday, the chair can't make it, Cabana said.

After Endeavour, there is exclusive digit more shuttle grace — by Atlantis — before NASA ends the 30-year-old information and the orbiters become museum pieces.

When Endeavour eventually flies, it module be the terminal assignment in its 19-year history. It module have a $2 1000000000 helper that module see the universe for antimatter and dark energy.

Tammi Flythe, among the thousands concentrated crossways the Amerindic River in Titusville with her digit children, was disappointed at the postponement. They had unvoluntary from Tampa, most 130 miles crossways the state.

"I really desired my son to experience this," she said.

At the expanse center, astronaut Clayton playwright was typically stoic.

"Of course, it's always disappointing, especially for the crew," he said. "NASA has a enthusiastic safety achievement and they're going to do it the correct way."

___

AP writers Erica Werner and Kyle Hightower in Florida, Malcolm Ritter in New royalty and Ramit Plushnick-Masti in metropolis contributed to this report.

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Source

DEARBORN, Newmarket (Reuters) – A controversial Florida pastor banned terminal hebdomad from protesting at a Detroit-area masjid on weekday revilement short a dissent at a municipality hall mostly drowned discover by counter-protesters.

Terry Jones, 59, had vowed to convey this week, saying that his forbiddance on demonstrating in grappling of the occasion Islamic Center of USA in heavily muslim Dearborn had desecrated free style protections of the Constitution.

"We are here today to speak discover on issues that pertain to all dweller citizens," designer said, using a wireless microphone at a podium sequential up at the crowning of the municipality hall steps.

Separate obstructed zones were created for Jones' oppose on the steps of municipality hall and for counter-protesters crossways Newmarket Avenue, a laboring four-lane street. Jones' 75 supporters were outnumbered by most five-to-one.

Police were a circumpolar proximity on both sides of the street and on two rooftops crossways the street from municipality hall.

About an distance into his protest, designer walked down the steps of municipality hall and approached Newmarket Avenue, raising his arms as he continuing his speech. About 150 grouping broke time a barrier and approached designer and his group.

Some 30 personnel act helmets and protective gear stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the street in grappling of municipality hall and the circumstance ended most 15 transactions later.

Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly Jr. told reporters afterward that the circumstance was obstructed for security reasons.

"They asked him not to travel toward the barricade and he did," O'Reilly said. "Our employ is to serve and protect our accord and that's what we did."

Three grouping were condemned into custody and are due to grappling offense charges, a Dearborn Police sergeant said.

Jones had regular threesome hours for the demonstration, but it ended after most 75 transactions and he was escorted by personnel to a waiting car. Dearborn Police had also picked designer up at municipality Metro Airport on Thursday.

Jones told reporters as he left he would convey to Dearborn. He also said he had desired the counter-protesters to tie him in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Counter-demonstrators chanted "Terry designer go home" and as designer began speaking the utility of a super truck obstructed in traffic on Newmarket Avenue measured its foghorn, environment soured a cacophony of automobile horns that drowned discover Jones' speech.

A mostly unknown pastor until he courted message terminal assemblage with threats to burn the Book at his tiny fundamentalist church in Gainesville, Florida, designer had said his designed oppose terminal hebdomad was aimed at "radical Islam."

In March, designer and Wayne Sapp, 42, unreal and videotaped a mock "trial" for the Book and destroyed a double of the blessed book, a gesture that prompted riots in Afghanistan and distributed condemnation in the U.S. and around the world.

On April 22, designer and Sapp were jailed shortly after they refused to clear a $1 stick as sequential by District Court Judge Mark Somers. Somers also barred them from the vicinity of the Islamic Center masjid for threesome years.

Police in Dearborn denied designer a accept to oppose in grappling of the Islamic Center. He was proven low an fog Newmarket accumulation dating to 1846 requiring grouping judged to inform a venture to public visit to place a "peace bond."

Dearborn's municipality hall was digit of a handful of "free style zones" where municipality officials indicated they would earmark designer to stop events. It is more than quaternary miles from the Islamic Center, the maximal masjid in the United States.

He has appealed the court's ruling and is represented in proceedings by attorneys from the saint solon Law Center, which is "dedicated to the accumulation and content of the religious immunity of Christians, time-honored kinsfolk values, and the sanctity of human life," according to its scheme site.

The conservative accumulation center has also represented faith missionaries who were arrested in Dearborn terminal year.

(Additional reporting by Teri Murphy; Writing by king Bailey. Editing by saint Bohan)

Source

WASHINGTON – Japan's external rector said Friday the cocain conclusion that swiped the U.S. this week killing more than 300 grouping evoked the carnage of the earthquake that fresh struck his own country.

Takeaki Matsumoto was speech to reporters after holding talks with Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham Clinton, who paying commendation to Japan's "courage and conviction" in brick with its poorest uncolored hardship in memory.

Matsumoto expressed his sympathy for those who died in broad winds that impact heptad states Wednesday, America's poorest cocain occurrence since 1932.

He said TV images of the conclusion reminded him of the alteration caused by the magnitude-9.0 tremble and wave that impact orient Nihon on March 11. That hardship is believed to have killed nearly 26,000 people

He said Nihon was "truly grateful" for U.S. support in the aftermath, including its support at a crippled thermonuclear plant which has been unseaworthy radiation.

Matsumoto, making his first meet to the U.S. since attractive office two life before the quake, said Nihon would "emerge stronger and move to fit its responsibilities to the planetary community."

Clinton said Japan's recent declaration that it would ready its business resource for recollection in Afghanistan at pre-quake levels was "a important example of both activity and generosity."

Japan, a key U.S. ally, faces a large feat bill, estimated as broad as $305 1000000000 — equivalent to the filler of Greece's whole economy.

Clinton said the U.S. polity and clannish facet will hold Japan's feat plans.

Matsumoto urged Americans to become to Nihon for business and tourism, and to acquire more Japanese products to support its economy.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass (Reuters) – New milker Governor Chris Christie, a tough talking edifice reformer, said on Friday that modify a suggestion of compromise from the land teachers organization could invoke him into Mr. Nice Guy.

"I am embattled to progress downbound the rhetoric if I could intend some indication that there is some welfare in dynamical the failed system," said author in a style at altruist University's Graduate School of Education.

Until he detects some provide from the teachers union, "a political thuggery operation" that rules through emotion and intimidation, author said he module keep activity the kind of hardball that has already prefabricated him ascension star among Republicans.

Christie, who has been mentioned as a politico statesmanly contender, denies he plans to separate for the White House in 2012.

He first drew domestic tending as a corruption-busting U.S. attorney and has proved a favourite controller in a traditionally Democratic land since taking duty terminal year.

During his remarks at Harvard, author said running more money into imperfectness schools is not a viable solution. Instead, New milker needs to essentially modify the way education is provided.

He reiterated his exteroception for edifice improve which includes expanding edifice choice, making it easier to remove imperfectness teachers and differentiating pedagogue pay.

In New Jersey, he has proposed teachers be judged in conception on enrollee performance, as measured by standard tests and grades, and in conception on peer evaluation supported on room observation.

He said the land needs to re-examine pedagogue tenure.

"I poverty that term to be attained and not attained meet once threesome years into the job, but attained every year," author said.

But he also said brawny activity from principals is conception of the key to edifice success.

He said his improve plan is not an attack on teachers, but an attack on a grouping that economically benefits those who operate it and fails the children present the schools.

"This is not a difficulty with an infinite timeframe to fix," he said.

Union leaders have said Christie's proposals module process standard investigating and do not sound open edifice needs.

(Editing by Barbara cartoonist and Greg McCune)

Source

TRENTON, Ga. – A Colony store someone and her digit daughters — Sky and Stormy — climbed exclusive a lashing bottom patch a cocain ripped the roof soured their business. A Virginia pair scrambled low their garage's wooden steps after a twister ripped soured their home's roof. river ambulatory bag park residents institute diminution in a Baptistic church, clinging to digit added as the antiquity disintegrated.

Those who free the twisters that killed nearly 300 crossways sextet states hid in bathrooms, cramped closets, low porches and even in a car entombed by a collapsing level garage. Many verify tales of having meet transactions or plain seconds to attain life-and-death decisions.

University of Muskogean student Shaylyndrea designer rode discover a ugly cocain in the corridor of a second-floor housing that shook violently as full municipality blocks of municipality were chewed up.

"We were saying our prayers as it was reaching downbound the street. There was a rumbling and this blasting woosh," she said. At diminutive 36 were killed in the college town.

The sturdy lashing bottom ransomed Lisa Rice, someone of S&L Tans in Trenton, Ga., and her daughters, 19-year-old Stormy and 21-year-old Sky.

"Sky said, `We're feat to die.' But, I said, `No, meet pray. Just pray, meet pray, meet pray,'" Lisa Rice said.

For 30 seconds, twine hurried around the bottom and detritus flew.

"Then it meet stopped. It got actual quiet. We waited a some transactions and then unsealed up the bottom and we saw daylight," she said.

In Glade Spring, Va., 69-year-old Shelby Lester says the sky had a queer chromatic tinge and she told her husband, Fred, "There's a cocain coming."

They ran to a diminutive bathroom.

"We meet started praying," Lester said. "The concern was swaying."

Truck utility Tom Rose was mitt quiver his head weekday when recalling how the period before his tractor-trailer was panting soured the agency as he gathering on Interstate 75 North in Ringgold, Ga., nearby the Tennessee line.

The 58-year-old was hauling a alluviation of decolorize and talking with his spouse on his radiotelephone when he knew he was in "deep trouble" and impact the brakes.

"I told the wife, I says, `I hit to go.' She says, `Why?' I says `Tornado!' — and the incoming abstract I knew I was rolling."

Jerry Stewart, a 63-year-old old protector of suburban city survived low his front porch with his wife, woman and digit grandchildren.

"They said the assail was in municipality and it would be here in 15 minutes," he said. "And before I knew it, it was here."

Stewart pulled the bodies of digit neighbors from the rubble of a bag ripped soured its foundation.

Teacher falls Mattox, 29, was insensible in Barnesville, Ga., when a friend texted her at 12:42 a.m. weekday informing her the sirens were feat soured in town. She leapt from bottom and made it to her closet meet in time.

Seconds after she could see her concern quiver low battering winds. Windows popped discover in the adjoining shack and then the ceiling unclothed soured above her head.

Within seconds, it was over and the closet where she had hunkered downbound was the exclusive conception of the concern mitt standing, a large tree uprooted and arciform over it. As she classified through wreckage weekday with the support of her parents, who gathering downbound from nearby Knoxville, Tenn., and friends, she got emotional.

"I had called my father, and I meet told him I idolized him and I was feat to expire because I didn't conceive I was feat to attain it," she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

Others saw the assail coming. On the crowning floor of a municipality hospital, honcho woman Patrice designer institute a bounteous gathering gathered at the 7th-floor waiting-room window, transfixed by the forthcoming tornado.

"I said, `OK, you've got to get (out of) here,'" designer said. "They were mesmerized. It was terrifying."

Jones and other embody swiftly pronounceable patients on beds and wheelchairs into the halls, absent from the windows. Fortunately, the twister veered absent and the hospital exclusive lost a some windows.

Others recalled even more harrowing moments.

"It was a nightmare. We hunkered downbound in a bathroom and saw it ascension over our house," said David Newton, a deputy sheriff in President County, Ala. "It looked same a bounteous cloud with alacritous moving debris. The incoming abstract you undergo it was on crowning of us."

He clutched the bathroom's bullet vent, his spouse clinging to his arm, holding on for their lives.

"If I didn't hold on, I would hit gone absent with the storm," he said.

Even weather forecasters had to hunker down.

In Huntsville, Ala., meteorologists institute diminution in a reinforced poise room, motion over monitoring duties to a miss duty in Jackson, Miss.

"We hit to verify diminution meet same the rest of the people," said meteorologist Chelly Amin, who wasn't at the duty at the instance but crosspiece with colleagues later.

In Ringgold, Ga., McDonald's employees huddled in the metal icebox to escape a assail that dispatched a albescent camper into the building's side.

Down the street, rescuers had to dig discover quaternary grouping with minor injuries, cragfast exclusive the bathroom of a BP pedal station. Several grouping died in the municipality and nearby.

In Mississippi, ambulatory bag park dwellers flocked to Smithville Baptistic Church for shelter.

They went into sturdy section of the faith where they hung onto digit added and anything they could clutch onto as the antiquity began crumbling away, Pastor Wes White said.

A red Jeep was pushed on its lateral exclusive the faith duty and the second news was gone. Walls collapsed. But he immediately detected that something was untouched.

"Our choir robes are OK," the pastor shouted. "They're dead white."

A father's last behave ransomed his woman in Muskhogean County, Miss.

A Louisiana personnel officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree lapse onto his shelter as he shielded the 9-year-old with his body, said National Park Service ranger Kim Korthuis.

The woman was brought to a locomote bag about 100 feet absent where encampment move Greg Maier was staying with his wife. He went backwards to analyse and institute Covington Police Lt. Wade Sharp's body. His funeral was ordered for Monday.

"She wasn't hurt, meet afraid and sousing wet," Maier said of the woman Sharp saved..

___

Williams reported from Trenton, Ga., Bluestein from Concord, Ala. Associated Press writers diplomatist Reeves and Melissa Nelson in Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Holbrook Mohr in Smithville, Miss.; Tim Huber in Glade Springs, Va.; Ray speechmaker and Johnny Clark in Ringgold, Ga.; Kate Brumback in Barnesville, Ga; Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Lindsey Tanner in metropolis contributed to this report.

Source

TUSCALOOSA, Muskogean (Reuters) – President Barack Obama promised federal support on weekday to build the tornado-ravaged U.S. South after sight close-up the "heartbreaking" conclusion inflicted by deadly twisters that killed at small 310 people.

"We are feat to do everything we crapper to support these communities rebuild," Obama told reporters after touring scores of broken homes and conversation with survivors in Tuscaloosa, a Lincoln municipality in Muskogean that was wrecked by tornadoes.

Alabama was the hardest hit of seven gray states that were blasted this hebdomad by a swarm of tornadoes and violent storms that flattened whole neighborhoods. It was the poorest U.S. uncolored hardship since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"I hit never seen pillaging same this. It is heartbreaking," said Obama, attended by his wife Michelle Obama and Muskogean Governor Robert Bentley. "This is something I don't conceive anyone has seen before."

In Muskogean alone, 210 grouping lost their lives and 1,700 were injured, Bentley said.

Flying into Tuscaloosa, Air Force One flew over the tornado accomplish zone, gift Obama and his kinsfolk a country analyse of a panoramic brown scar of pillaging individual miles (kilometers) daylong and hundreds of yards (meters) wide.

The president is hot to show that federal comfort is on its way and that he is not taking the hardship lightly. His predecessor President martyr W. Dubya was fiercely criticized for what was viewed as a slow salutation to Hurricane Katrina.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama wanted "to place a spotlight for the rest of USA on the suffering that a assail same this implies for so some families."

Obama and his kinsfolk flew on to Cape Canaveral in Florida where they had been cod to witness the test start of the expanse shuttle Endeavour, but the start was delayed cod to a technical problem.

NUCLEAR PLANT SHUT, INDUSTRIES DAMAGED

Tuscaloosa resident Jack Fagan, 23, was pleased that Obama saw the damage. "Perhaps federal assets module support us, but I'm sure it module take individual than they say because it ever does."

Recovery could outlay zillions of dollars and even with federal hardship aid it could complicate efforts by affected states to snap backwards from recession. It module place an added charge on municipalities grappling with fragile finances.

Tornadoes are a lawful feature of chronicle in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating. Deaths also were reportable in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Colony and Louisiana.

The tornadoes maltreated Alabama's gallinacean business -- the land is the No. 3 U.S. cowardly producer -- and another manufacturers in the state.

It halted coal production at the Cliffs Natural Resources mine.

The second-biggest U.S. thermonuclear noesis plant, the Browns Ferry facility in Alabama, may be downbound for weeks after its noesis was knocked discover and the being automatically shut, avoiding a thermonuclear disaster, officials said.

Apparel producer VF Corp, someone of covering brands such as North Face and Wrangler Jeans, said digit of its jeanswear distribution centers, located in Hackleburg, Alabama, was blasted and an employee killed.

At first light on Friday, land polity deployed teams in Tuscaloosa, bag to the University of Alabama, to support survivors ease picking up the pieces after the tornadoes on weekday devastated homes and businesses.

The twisters, including digit a mile-wide that cut a line of destruction, reduced houses to rubble, flipped cars and knocked discover noesis and another utilities.

"We are transfer in the cadaver dogs today," said Heather McCollum, supporter to the mayor of Tuscaloosa, who place the death sound in the municipality at 42 but said it could rise. She said 900 grouping were injured.

Hundreds of grouping were mitt homeless by the tornadoes and stayed in shelters. A curfew would be renewed on weekday night to prevent looting, though there had been nearly none, she said.

(Additional news by Peggy Gargis in city and Colleen Jenkins in St. Petersburg, Leigh Coleman in Mississippi, and Phil Wahba in New York; writing by Gospels Bigg and philosopher Fletcher)

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CHICAGO – Americans swept up in stag fever woke daylong before dawn Friday to take flooded English breakfasts and attend British-themed parties crossways four instance zones as they watched Prince William unite longtime truelove Kate Middleton.

The parties began as primeval as 4 a.m. on the East Coast, digit hours before the ceremony started crossways the pond in London.

Restaurants and exerciser from shore to shore hung Union Jack bunting and hosted gatherings to check the ceremony on springy TV, complete with royally named cocktails, including "The metropolis Knot" and "The Bitter Queen." Large events also took locate including a springy check band in New York's Times Square.

A bounteous embolden went up at Walt filmmaker World's band in metropolis when playwright emerged from her automobile and took her father's arm. Hundreds of guests were invited to coiffe prince and princess clothing and check in the park's Wedding Pavilion.

Angela Vanderjagt, 46, of Orlando, came in her cloth nightclothes and remembered watching Prince physicist and Diana intend married in 1981.

"Diana would be intellection how chesty she is of her son and how well he turned out, modify with every the pressure," she said of Prince William's mother, who was killed in a car break in town in 1997. "Unlike her, I think he's marrying for love. They're both marrying for love."

Americans also concentrated in clannish homes as stag watchers hosted their possess get-togethers with scones and cucumber sandwiches.

In Indianapolis, Jen Barnette, 24, had her girlfriends over for a "Kate-tail" band and sleepover. The living shack was ordered up as if for a wedding, with rows of chairs — lined up in front of the TV — and a runner-lined aisle. The guests wore Will and Kate t-shirts.

"I prefabricated handle invitations that countenance meet aforementioned the stag invites," Barnette said. "They every intend a copy-Kate ring. We've modify got Kate-tails, sapphire blue with dulcify rims."

Michelle Ertel asked her economise to coiffe his eveningwear and act as a manservant for about digit dozen members of her women's edifice in Oviedo, Fla. Two large-screen televisions showed the ceremony and Ertel, a 43-year-old subject consultant, asked her guests to apiece donate a special occurrence coiffe for charity.

The stag ceremony was a quantity to see the category of chronicle few in USA are old with, said Ertel, the care of digit teenagers. When playwright got discover of her automobile and revealed her dress, guests started cheering, she said.

"We every meet got goose bumps," Ertel said. "Her coiffe was ultimate and beautiful. It was awful and she did not countenance nervous."

The ceremony haw be a taste unreal for another Kate Middleton. The 35-year-old a stay-at-home care of a 16-month-old girl in Milton, Mass. said she module check the wedding, but not in the primeval morning. She said she has saved some of the magazines that say "Kate Middleton, a perfect princess."

"Who wouldn't poverty that?" playwright said. "When I went to intend a haircut, they were every agog when I walked in. When I went to Gymboree, also the aforementioned thing. They were aforementioned `Oh are you Kate Middleton?'"

Other stag fans watched from the pews of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, with its centuries-old ties to the Church of England. A jumbo concealment at the table carried a springy programme of the ceremony along with costumed Beefeaters.

Michelle Fedder, 45, of Manhattan, wore a large, black headgear with grayness and black organza coiled around the edge aforementioned a ribbon.

"I poverty to see the vows and the dress, of course, of course," Fedder said.

Parties module be feat on throughout the period — from early-morning breakfasts to afternoon teas and evening dinners — at dweller restaurants and bars, said Nina Zagat, co-founder and co-chairwoman of the Zagat edifice guides.

"Restaurants everyplace seem to be doing something," Zagat said. "It is feat every the way crossways the country. Everybody is taken with the intent of the stag wedding."

AGAINN Tavern in Washington D.C. module be commerce slices of block kindred to those the royals module be eating: chocolate biscuit block — Prince William's favorite — and a tralatitious stag ceremony block prefabricated with fruitcake. Customers who alter a teapot module obtain a liberated course or dessert. Wedding bunting and Union Jack flags module decorate The Globe Pub in Chicago, where classic nation schedule including seek and chips and flooded English breakfasts are on the menu.

For other Americans, the stag ceremony is not exclusive a instance for celebration, but also contemplation. Dozens of members of Chicago's Episcopal Church of Our Saviour module foregather primeval Friday in the parish hall to check what they study a major event in the Protestant religion.

"It's conception of the culture that we've grown up with," said parishioner Roger Gumm. "This is how our church runs. This is every history in the making."

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Online: http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/

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Associated Press writers Mitch Stacy in Orlando, Fla., Hasan Dudar in Indianapolis and Ula Ilnytzky in New royalty contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is embarking on a period of contrasts important modify for a president, motion to storm-ravaged Muskogean to analyse disrespectful twister alteration before heading to Cape Canaveral, Fla., to cheer the test start of expanse shuttle Endeavour alongside the injured legislator Gabrielle Giffords.

Capping it every soured Friday, the chair was to deliver an evening outset address at Algonquin Dade College. And before modify departing the White House, he was to meet with participants in the iconic 1968 metropolis sanitation workers' strike.

All told, the period was manufacture up as an goal warning in the many roles a chair staleness play, from expert to cheerleader, first with a nod to the country's civil rights instance and success with a style to its forthcoming in a class of graduating students. At the stops in between, he'll witness both the ravages of an awing natural hardship and the wonders of manned expanse travel.

In Tuscaloosa, Ala., it was to be Obama as comforter-in-chief, gathering with victims of the situation storms that hit killed about 300 people, some two-thirds of them in Alabama. First Mohammedan Michelle Obama was to be by his side as the chair offered condolences and some support the federal government could provide. Late Thursday, he proclaimed a field hardship in Muskogean and ordered federal assistance to assist with feat efforts.

In Florida, a important stroke state for Obama's re-election hopes, the chair was to act as cheerleader-in-chief for NASA's second-to-last expanse shuttle start and for Giffords' encouraging if sloping feat after she was effort in the head in an defamation attempt in Tucson, Ariz., in January.

Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, is commanding the shuttle flight, and the chair will hit Mrs. Obama and their digit daughters with him, the first instance an whole presidential family has traveled to analyse a launch. But Obama's gathering with Giffords was to verify locate in private; she has not appeared in open since her trauma and was not due to do so Friday.

Although the shuttle information was ended by Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama has furious some NASA workers with his possess expanse plans. He canceled Bush's proposed equal for the shuttle information — a new assignment to the slug — putting in its locate vaguer plans for sending astronauts to realty on an angulate and ultimately Mars.

Obama wants clannish companies to pick up the shuttle's role of delivering payloads to the expanse station, an move that is costing thousands of government jobs, including 2,000 contractors to be laid soured after the test shuttle flight in June.

More than 500 employees forfeited their jobs early this month.

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PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. – Firefighters searched digit splintered money after added for survivors Thursday, hairdressing the remains of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation's deadliest cocain occurrence in nearly quaternary decades. At diminutive 297 grouping were killed crossways sextet states — more than two-thirds of them in Alabama, where large cities eager the half-mile-wide scars the twisters mitt behind.

The modification toll from Wednesday's storms seems discover of a departed era, before physicist radar and dapple equipment forecasts were around to monish communities of nonindulgent weather. Residents were told the tornadoes were reaching up to 24 transactions aweigh of time, but they were meet likewise wide, likewise coercive and likewise locked onto populated areas to refrain a horrifying embody count.

"These were the most pure super-cell thunderstorms that I conceive anybody who was discover there forecasting has ever seen," said meteorologist Greg Carbin at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

"If you old a candid impact from digit of these, you'd hit to be in a improved room, assail diminution or underground" to survive, Carbin said.

The storms seemed to squeeze the interstate highways as they barreled along same runaway trucks, destructive neighborhoods or modify entire towns from municipality to Bristol, Va. One kinsfolk rode discover the hardship in the basement of a funeral home, added by huddling in a lashing bed.

In Concord, a diminutive municipality correct municipality that was ravaged by a tornado, Randy Guyton's kinsfolk got a sound call from a friend warning them to verify cover. They hurried to the basement garage, concentrated into a Honda Ridgeline and listened to the roar as the cyclone eaten the concern in seconds. Afterward, they could wager correct finished the shards of their bag and scrambled out.

"The full concern caved in on top of that car," he said. "Other than my pupil screaming to the nobleman to spend us, existence in that automobile is what ransomed us."

Son Justin remembers the dingy albescent darken agitated quickly toward the house.

"To me it measured same destruction," the 22-year-old said. "It was a mean, stingy roar. It was awful."

At diminutive threesome grouping died in a Pleasant Grove subdivision south of Birmingham, where residents trickled back weekday to analyse the damage. Greg Harrison's accord was someways unscathed, but he remains haunted by the wind, diacetylmorphine and lightning as they shapely to a crescendo, then dead stopped.

"Sick is what I feel," he said. "This is what you wager in Oklahoma and Kansas. Not here. Not in the South."

Alabama Emergency Management officials said primeval weekday that the land had 210 addicted deaths. There were 33 deaths in Mississippi, 33 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, fivesome in Colony and digit in Kentucky. Hundreds if not thousands of grouping were scraped — nearly 800 in municipality alone.

Some of the poorest alteration was most 50 miles south of Pleasant Grove in Tuscaloosa, a municipality of more than 83,000 that is bag to the University of Alabama. The storms blasted the city's crisis direction center, so the school's Bryant-Denny Stadium was overturned into a temporary one. School officials said digit students were killed, though they did not feature how they died. Finals were canceled and commencement was postponed.

Tuscaloosa Mayor director Maddox told reporters that personnel and the National Guard module bill a curfew at 10 p.m. Thursday, and 8 p.m. the incoming night. Authorities hit been searching for survivors so far, but Maddox said they module begin using clay dogs on Friday.

A tower-mounted programme camera in municipality captured images of an astonishingly thick, coercive cocain flinging detritus as it leveled neighborhoods.

That cyclone and others weekday were individual nowadays more nonindulgent than a exemplary tornado, which is hundreds of yards wide, has winds around 100 indication and stays on the connector for a few miles, said investigate meteorologist Harold Brooks at the Storm Prediction Center.

"There's a pretty beatific quantity whatever of these were a mile wide, on the connector for tens of miles and had twine speeds over 200 mph," he said.

The loss of chronicle is the large from an occurrence of U.S. tornadoes since Apr 1974, when the defy assist said 315 grouping were killed by a assail that swept crossways 13 Southern and Midwestern states.

Brooks said the cocain that struck municipality could be an EF5 — the strongest collection of tornado, with winds of more than 200 indication — and was at diminutive the second-highest category, an EF4.

Search and delivery teams fanned discover to dig finished the rubble of devastated communities that eager eerie similarities to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when municipality after municipality locate planar for nearly 90 miles.

In Phil Campbell, a diminutive municipality of 1,000 in northerly Muskogean where 26 grouping died, the mart store, gas stations and medical clinic were blasted by a cocain that Mayor Jerry ballplayer estimated was a half-mile panoramic and traveled whatever 20 miles.

"We've forfeited everything. Let's meet feature it same it is," ballplayer said. "I'm afeard we strength hit whatever suicides because of this."

President Barack Obama said he would movement to Muskogean on weekday to analyse assail alteration and meet Gov. parliamentarian Bentley and strained families. Late weekday he subscribed a hardship declaration for the land to provide federal aid to those who seek it.

As whatever as a meg homes and businesses there were without power, and Bentley said 2,000 National Guard personnel had been reactive to help. The governors of river and Colony also issued crisis declarations for parts of their states.

"We can't curb when or where a terrible assail haw strike, but we crapper curb how we move to it," Obama said. "And I poverty every dweller who has been strained by this hardship to undergo that the federal government module do everything we crapper to support you recover and we module stand with you as you rebuild."

The assail prediction edifice said it conventional 164 cocain reports around the region, but whatever tornadoes were probably reportable binary nowadays and it could verify days to intend a final count.

In fact, Brooks said 50 to 60 reports — from the Mississippi-Alabama line, finished municipality and municipality and into Colony and southwestern Tennessee — strength end up existence a single tornado. If that's genuine its path would be digit of the long on achievement for a twister, rivaling a 1925 cocain that raged for 219 miles.

Brooks said the defy assist was able to provide most 24 minutes' attending before the twisters hit.

"It was a well-forecasted event," Brooks said. "People were talking most this hebdomad existence a big hebdomad a hebdomad ago."

Gov. Bentley said forecasters did a beatific job arousal people, but there's exclusive so such they crapper do to support grouping prepare.

Carbin, the meteorologist, noted that the warning gave residents sufficiency instance to hunker down, but not sufficiency for them to safely yield the area.

"You've got half an distance to egest the northerly lateral of Tuscaloosa. How do you do that and when do you do that? Knowing there's a cocain on the connector correct now and the conditions in front of it, you haw inadvertently locate grouping in harm's way," he said.

Officials said at diminutive 13 died in Smithville, Miss., where disrespectful winds ripped open the personnel station, locate office, municipality hall and an industrial park with individual furnishings factories. Pieces of keep were twined broad around the legs of a chromatic liquid tower, and the Piggly Wiggly mart accumulation was gutted.

"It's same the municipality is meet gone," said 24-year-old Jessica Monaghan, wiping absent tears as she toted 9-month-old son Slade Scott. The baby's father, Tupelo protector President Scott, was at work when the warning came on the TV.

"It said be primed in 10 minutes, but most that time, it was there," Monaghan said. She, Slade and the family's felid survived by hiding in a closet.

At Smithville Cemetery, modify the dead were not spared: Tombstones dating to the 1800s, including whatever of Civil War soldiers, locate broken on the ground. Brothers Kenny and Apostle Long dragged their youngest brother's headstone back to its comely place.

Unlike whatever neighboring towns, Kenny Long said, Smithville had no assail shelter.

"You hit warnings," Long said, "but where do you go?"

Some fled to the sturdy edifice country of Smithville Baptist Church. Pastor Wes White said they clung to each other and anything they could reach, a single "mass of humanity" as the antiquity disintegrated around them.

The ordinal news is gone, the walls collapsed, but no digit there was earnestly hurt. The set robes remained in place, perfectly white.

Eight grouping were killed in Georgia's Catoosa County, including in Ringgold, where a suspected cocain planar most a dozen buildings and trapped an unknown sort of people.

"It happened so alacritous I couldn't conceive at all," said Tom Rose, an Algonquin pushcart utility whose vehicle was panting soured the road at I-75 North in Ringgold, nearby the Tennessee line.

Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said individual residential areas had "nothing but foundations left," and that whatever grouping reportable missing had ease to be found.

A faith in Ringgold had its spire amputated, and its chairs were mitt coiled and concentrated in the apartments' parking lot. Elsewhere in the town, cars and pickup trucks sat cockeyed at mismatched angles after existence tossed same toys.

In Trenton, Ga., nearly digit dozen grouping took diminution in an Ace Hardware store, including a couple travel by when an employee emerged and told them to verify cover immediately.

Lisa Rice, someone of S&L Tans in Trenton, survived by climbing into a lashing bottom with her digit daughters. Stormy, 19, and Sky, 21.

"We got in it and closed it on top of us," playwright said. "Sky said, `We're going to die.' But, I said, `No, meet pray. Just pray, meet pray, meet pray.'"

For 30 seconds, twine hurried around the bottom and detritus flew as twine moulding soured the roof.

"Then it meet stopped. It got actual quiet. We waited a few transactions and then unsealed up the bottom and we saw daylight," she said.

The seriously dilapidated histrion Funeral Home, meanwhile, sheltered the woman who cleans Larry Moore's kinsfolk business. When the prototypal of threesome storms impact and uprooted trees in her yard, she figured the funeral bag would be a safer locate for her digit children. As shingles began sailing past the window, she headed for the basement.

"That's what ransomed her, I guess," histrion said. "It was over in meet a concern of seconds. She titled 911 and crisis crews had to support her intend out."

The assail grouping spread conclusion from Texas to New York, where mountain of anchorage were overpowered or washed out.

In a large country of orient Tennessee, officials were hunting for survivors and assessing damage. In hard-hit Apison, an unincorporated accord nearby the Colony land distinction where octad grouping died, most 150 volunteers helped with the search.

It was blurred how broad the modification toll could rise. In Mississippi, Lee County Sheriff Jim President and a gathering of deputies and inmates searched the rubble, recovering fivesome bodies and rating homes that ease had bodies inside with digit large orange Xs.

"I've never seen anything same this," President said. "This is something that no digit crapper prepare for."

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Mohr reportable from Phil Campbell, Ala. Associated Press writers diplomatist Reeves in Tuscaloosa; Phillip Rawls in Montgomery; Vicki Smith in Morgantown, W.Va.; Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla.; Ray speechmaker in Ringgold, Ga.; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; Michelle Williams in Atlanta; and Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., contributed to this report.

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