Would you prefer living in an earthquake zone or a tornado zone?

Both victims died in a twister that slammed into Shawnee, Okla., leveling a mobile home park.

A storm system stretching from Texas to Minnesota on Monday threatened another round of tornadoes and high winds that has already killed two people in Oklahoma and injured more than 20.

The body of one victim 79-year-old Glen Irish, was found in an open area of the neighborhood after a twister slammed into Shawnee, Okla., on Sunday, leveling a mobile home park.

Read more at USA Today
 

Yahoo confirmed Monday it is buying social media platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion and "we promise not to screw it up," CEO Marissa Mayer blogged on her Tumblr page.

The pledge is a direct acknowledgment of the Internet giant's spotty record as a start-up acquirer. The Tumblr deal will boost Yahoo's audience 50% to more than 1 billion monthly visitors (about 700 million for Yahoo and 300 million for Tumblr for now), the company estimates. Just as important, Yahoo is scrambling to regain the hip factor it once enjoyed and to show investors the deal can increase profits and revenue.

Yahoo shares were up 0.7% to about $26.70 Monday, a positive but but lukewarm investor reaction.

Read more at USA Today 

They’re calling it the “Pee in the Cup’’ initiative — a proposed state ballot measure that would require doctors to be randomly subjected to drug and alcohol testing, the same way bus drivers are.

It’s being pushed by a tech mogul who’s on a very personal crusade to clean up the state’s medical practices.

Bob Pack is a former AOL and NetZero exec whose 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter were struck and killed a decade ago near their Danville home by a driver under the influence of alcohol and prescription pills.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A mother whose 4-year-old was being abducted chased the suspect down and crashed her vehicle into his car, triggering a manhunt and the arrest of the suspect, Albuquerque police said Thursday.

The young girl was playing in her yard at St. Anthony's Plaza Apartments in Albuquerque's North Valley about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday when a group of teenagers saw the kidnapping and ran to alert the girl's mother, police said.

The family called 911 and the mother jumped into her vehicle and gave chase for about seven miles, unaware the man had pushed the girl out of the silver Buick before fleeing the apartment complex, authorities said. The girl was found wandering nearby, uninjured, police said.

According to police, the mother followed the suspect and finally rammed into his car near an intersection. The suspect fled on foot, police said.

Melissa Torrez, the mother, told KOAT-TV she didn't mean to hit the suspect's car and struck it accidentally when she lost control of her car. Torrez said didn't even have time to cry when she jumped to chase the suspect.

"I don't ever want to lose my kids," said Torrez, a mother of three. Read more at the Star Tribune

By SEAN EMERY / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

By Megan McArdle, The Daily Beast 

WE SCRIMP. We save. We plan. And we dream that when we retire—at 50 or 70 or 90—we’ll ride off into the sunset on a chariot made of our sequestered gold.

Posted by David Perez

Elizabeth, New Jersey (AP)--A homeless, hatchet-wielding hitchhiker who became an Internet hero earlier this year was arrested Thursday for allegedly beating a New Jersey lawyer to death inside his home, authorities said.

Caleb ``Kai'' McGillvary , who became known as ``Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker'' after intervening in an attack on a California utility worker, was arrested on a murder warrant at a Philadelphia bus station, according to Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow. He was being held on $3 million bail.

Earlier in the day, Romankow said McGillvary was wanted in the killing of Joseph Galfy Jr., a Clark, N.J. attorney found dead in his home on Monday.

Galfy's body was found two days after authorities said he met McGillvary in New York City. He was found wearing only his underwear and socks by police who went to his home to check on his well-being.

Statements posted on McGillvary's Facebook page following the homicide indicated the encounter was sexual in nature, Romankow said, though he declined to go into specific detail.

On his Facebook page, McGillvary's last post, dated Tuesday, asks ``what would you do?'' if you awoke in a stranger's house and found you'd been drugged and sexually assaulted. One commenter suggests hitting him with a hatchet _ and McGillvary's final comment on the post says, ``I like your idea.''

It was a hatchet that helped give McGillvary a brief taste of fame in February when he gave a rambling, profanity-laced 5-minute interview to a Fresno, Calif.television station about thwarting and unprovoked attack on a Pacific Gas & Electric employee. The interview went viral, with one version viewed more than 3.9 million times on YouTube. He later appeared on ABC's ``Jimmy Kimmel Live!''

Kimmel asked him what people were saying to him since the Feb. 1 incident. ``Hey, you're Kai, that dude with the hatchet,'' he responded.

Romankow said McGillvary, who said in his TV appearance he prefers to be called ``home-free'' instead of homeless, traded on his newfound celebrity to meet fans across the country.

Romankow said McGillvary met Galfy on Saturday in Times Square, then spent at least two nights at his home on a cul-de-sac in Clark, 20 miles west of New York .

McGillvary's movements after that included two trips to meet a fan in Asbury Park, a trip to Philadelphia and another to Glassboro in southern New Jersey. He was considered armed and dangerous before his capture.

McGillvary swiftly gained notoriety after he was interviewed in February after he intervened in an apparently unprovoked attack that led to charges including attempted murder.

McGillvary said he was riding in a car with a man who veered into the worker, got out of the car, walked up to the utility worker and allegedly said, ``I am Jesus and I am here to take you home.'' McGillvary said he then pulled a hatchet from his backpack and struck the driver in the head several times to subdue him, The Fresno Bee reported.

Last month, the driver entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the newspaper reported.

McGillvary also goes by the names Kai Lawrence, Caleb Kai Lawrence and Kai Nicodemus, prosecutors said. A reward of $5,000 was offered for information leading to his arrest.

 

WASHINGTON -- The nation's soon-to-be former top tax official will face questions Friday about why he failed to inform Congress about the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of Tea Party groups last year -- even under direct questioning.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., stopped short of saying that Steven Miller lied to Congress, "but it seems pretty clear that he was aware of this ongoing targeting. And he didn't tell Congress."

Friday's hearing will be a fact-finding mission to "find out who was responsible for subjecting conservative groups to additional scrutiny, why they did it, and how pervasive it was," Camp said.

And Camp said the inquiries won't stop with Tea Party groups, whose applications for tax-exempt status were delayed simply by virtue of their group name. Camp also wants to know if pro-Israel groups and individual donors to conservative causes were also targeted for invasive questioning and audits.

"What struck me is there really seemed to be a culture of discrimination. This was OK with a lot of people, and this went on without anyone batting an eye," Camp told USA TODAY. "And the so-called 'fix' actually made the problem worse." Read more at USA Today