National & International News
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NBCNews.com
2 minutes ago

7 Injured in Mo. Train Collision, Highway Overpass Collapse

Getty Images/Flickr RF Seven people were injured when two freight trains collided and derailed early Saturday in southeast Missouri, NBC News reported. Several rail cars struck a support pillar which triggered the collapse of a highway overpass near Scott City, about 120 miles south of St. Louis, NBC affiliate KSDK reported. Two personnel on the trains and five individuals in cars on the overpass were hurt. All were hospitalized and listed in fair condition. The crash came just over a week after a commuter train derailed in Connecticut, striking another train and injuring more than 70 people. On Thursday evening, a truck crash caused the collapse of a bridge in Washington state, sending two cars plunging into the Skagit River. Three people were rescued. Get More at NBC News

NBCNews.com
2 hours ago

Okla. Tornado 911 Calls Offer Glimpse Into Chaos


The emergency calls from Moore, Okla., reveal the confusion and fear of tornado victims in the minutes after the storm hit, including a chilling call from a daycare. "We've got a daycare full of babies," one caller said. "We got a daycare that just got cremated." The massive twister killed 24 people, including ten children, and funerals for some of those victims will continue this weekend. Meantime, the three high schools in Moore will hold graduations on Saturday, a chance for the community to come together and take their minds off the long cleanup and recovery process that awaits them. Get More at NBC News

NBCNews.com
2 hours ago

Police Arrest Friend of U.K. Murder Suspect

British police have arrested a friend of one of the murder suspects who allegedly hacked a British soldier to death on a London street in broad daylight earlier this week, NBC News reported. The man was taken into custody after he said in an interview with BBC that U.K.'s domestic spy agency tried to recruit the alleged attacker filmed with blood on his hands. Get More at NBC News

NBCNews.com
3 hours ago

Turkey Builds Wall at Syria Border After Bombings

AP Turkey is building 1.5-mile twin walls along a border crossing with Syria to guard against future attacks following three deadly bombings this year, Reuters reported. The concrete wall will be constructed on either side of the road leading from the Turkish side of the crossing at Cilvegozu to the Syrian border gate, the Turkish Customs Ministry said in a statement. In Febuary, 14 people died in a bombing in Cilvegozu and this month 51 people died when twin blasts ripped through the nearby town of Reyhanli. Turkish citizens have not been allowed to cross at the Cilvegozu but the crossing has remained open to allow in Syrian refugees and for humanitarian aid from Turkey to flow across. Get More at NBC News

NBCNews.com
2 hours ago

17 Children Dead in Pakistan School Bus Explosion

Getty Images At least 17 children were burned to death in eastern Pakistan on Saturday after a defective gas cylinder exploded on a bus bringing them to school, The Associated Press reported. Seven other kids were injured in the explosion that occurred on the outskirts of the city of Gujrat. "This is a very sad incident. According to our information, at least 17 children were burned to death," police officer Mohammed Rasheed said. "The school bus caught fire after the blast. We have transported all the victims to a nearby hospital." Gujrat is located about 120 miles southeast of the capital, Islamabad. The accident occurred after a pair of suspected militant attacks killed nine people in two different areas of northwest Pakistan on Friday. Get More at NBC News

NBCNews.com
36 minutes ago

Military Shrinks in Size, Scope Under Obama

Getty Images During President Obama’s four and a half years in White House, military spending has declined and the military active duty force has shrunk by about 29,000, according to NBC News. In two speeches this week, the president signaled that the military is in for more trimming. Obama wants stricter limits on drone attacks and new emphasis on fighting terrorism, based more on targeting isolated threats and less on huge displays of force. In his counterterrorism speech he warned of getting entangled in the Syrian civil war and reminded Americans of the cost of war, lamenting that the dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan limited “our ability to nation-build here at home.” Yet in some ways, the U.S. military in under Obama era much as it was in the Bush or Clinton eras. Obama is still committed to expensive investments. In his speech to the class of 2013 at the Naval Academy, Obama promised “a shipbuilding plan that puts us on track to achieve a 300-ship fleet” over the next 30 years, “with capabilities that exceed the power of the next dozen navies combined.” Get More at NBC News

Arellano-Felix Organization
2 hours ago

Leader of Infamous Drug Cartel Pleads Guilty

Leader of Infamous Drug Cartel Pleads GuiltyNBC 7 San Diego
One of the last leaders of one of the world’s most notorious drug cartel pleaded guilty in federal court in San Diego Friday to money laundering and conspiracy charges. Eduardo Arellano-Felix, 56, is one of four brothers associated with Tijuana’s heavy Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO). In 2008 he was arrested by Mexican authorities in Tijuana following a gun battle with a Mexican Special Tactical Team. The AFO is one of the most notorious international drug trafficking organizations, responsible for transporting cocaine, marijuana and other drugs through the Mexican border cities and into the United States. Its operations also extended into southern Mexico and Colombia. One brother was killed in a shootout with police in 2002 and the other two brothers are currently serving sentences. Read »
NBCNews.com
2 hours ago

Billionaire Under Fire After Suggesting Motherhood Destroys Ambition

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Friday, May 24, 2013 at 2:54 PM
 

Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that make our military strong.  

— President Barack Obama addressing the sexual assault crisis in the military in a speech directed to the graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Human Trafficking
47 minutes ago

Woman Claims She Was Kept as Slave in Northern Va.

Woman Claims She Was Kept as Slave in Northern Va.
A Kenyan woman in Northern Virginia claims she was held as a domestic slave for three months by Saudi Arabian diplomats, according to NBC Washington. The 25-year-old woman said she was brought into the U.S. from Kenya by way of Saudi Arabia this past summer. The people who transported her then forced her to work long hours of domestic labor. She said she was rescued by a man whom she encountered on a Facebook community for Kenyans in the D.C. area. The woman now has an immigration attorney. She remains in the U.S. with help from fellow Kenyans. The allegations come to light two weeks after NBC Washington first reported an investigation into possible human trafficking at a Saudi-owned compound in McLean, Va. Read »
NBCNews.com
2 hours ago

Oversize Truck Is to Blame in Bridge Collapse


The Skagit River Bridge in Washington state that collapsed Thursday evening, was described as "functionally obsolete" by the Federal Highway Administration last year, which meant it was structurally sound, but had an outdated design, NBC News reported. The bridge did not hold up, however, when a truck with an oversize load struck it, collapsing the bridge and plunging cars into the water. Officials are working to determine what exactly happened and are trying to reroute the traffic without disrupting communities near the bridge. The collapse of the bridge along Interstate-5, the main freeway that runs up and down the West Coast between the Canadian and Mexican borders, could cost around $47 million due to lost economic output, NBC News reported. On Thursday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said if a bailey bridge is found, a temporary fix could be in place in weeks. If a replacement can't be quickly secured, it could be months before a replacement bridge can be built, he said. Get More at NBC News

Boy Scouts
4 hours ago

Scouts Face More Turmoil After Vote on Gay Youth

Scouts Face More Turmoil After Vote on Gay YouthAP
The Boy Scouts of America will get no reprieve from controversy after Thursday's contentious vote to accept openly gay boys as Scouts. Dismayed conservatives are already looking at alternative youth groups as they predict a mass exodus from the BSA, while gay-rights supporters vow to maintain pressure on the Scouts to end the still-in-place ban on gay adults serving as leaders. The Boy Scouts' chief executive, Wayne Brock, pleaded for the Scouting community to reunite after the divisive debate that led to Thursday's vote by the BSA's National Council. The proposal to lift the ban on openly gay youth -- while keeping the ban on gay adults -- was supported by about 60 percent of the council's 1,400 voting members. However, Brock's plea failed to sway some conservative religious leaders whose denominations sponsor many Scout units and who consider same-sex relationships immoral. "Frankly, I can't imagine a Southern Baptist pastor who would continue to allow his church to sponsor a Boy Scout troop under these new rules," Richard Land, a senior Southern Baptist Conference official, told the SBC's news agency, Baptist Press. Read »
Sandy
Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 5:18 PM

Jersey Shore Towns to Vacationers: We’re Still Here

Jersey Shore Towns to Vacationers: We’re Still HereRyan Morrill/The SandPaper
More than six months after Sandy, many repeat summer renters have not yet booked homes on Long Beach Island, N.J. over fears of damage from the storm. Realtors and homeowners, who typically have the bulk of their summer properties booked up by Memorial Day, say they’re seeing more rental vacancies than usual for this time of year. They worry the storm damage got more attention than the cleanup and that summer renters, one of the main economic drivers of LBI—an island with one and a half times as many seasonal second homes as permanent residents—will take their vacations and money somewhere else. “People think we’re Seaside Heights and we’re not,” says Joe Mancini, the mayor of Long Beach, the island’s largest township. He, like others on LBI, believe that images of lingering damage in Seaside and Mantoloking, LBI’s neighbors to the north, have sowed the flawed notion that the entire Jersey shore is still damaged. “This was a horrific storm,” Mancini adds, “but we were aggressive in cleaning it up.” Read »
NBCNews.com
6 hours ago

Millions to Cross "Structurally Deficient" Bridges This Weekend

AP The Washington state bridge that collapsed on Thursday underscores a growing crisis of aging infrastructure, deferred maintenance and design flaws in crossings in the United States, NBC News reported. With millions of people hitting the road over Memorial Day weekend and crossing some of the 66,000 bridges that the federal government has deemed "structurally deficient," Thursday night's incident could give travelers a pause and with good reason. Big potholes, weight restrictions and lane closings are some of the inconveniences bridge users face unless reconstruction and replacement is ramped up across the nation, said Dan Goldberg, communications director for Transportation for America. "We are going to see probably some more of this, but the more likely scenario is contending with the issues of decay that happen before the collapse," he said. The Interstate 5 bridge in Mount Vernon, Wash., which apparently crumpled after being hit by an oversized truck, was not on the Federal Highway Administration's structurally-deficient list. Click through to read about six crossings, used by more than 1 million vehicles each day, that don't make the grade. Get More at NBC News

Sandy
Friday, May 24, 2013 at 9:39 AM

N.J. Shore Town Destroyed by Sandy Confronts an Uncertain Future

N.J. Shore Town Destroyed by Sandy Confronts an Uncertain FutureGetty Images
It’s hard to relax in Highlands, a small but proud middle-class town at the northern tip of the Jersey Shore. The borough of 28,000, at the junction of the Shrewsbury River and Sandy Hook Bay, is undergoing a profound transformation that won’t end with the physical rebuilding. The unprecedented damage wrought by Sandy—up to eight feet of water inundated downtown—has prompted what might best be described as an existential crisis, with residents, business owners and public officials confronting daunting questions about the kind of place Highlands will be for those who remain, and how it will survive. Read »
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