national news

Jason Owen digs through debris as he helps his mother to salvage items from her uncle's home after it was almost destroyed by a tornado in Moore, Oklahoma(Reuters) - Tornadoes that struck the United States from May 18 to May 20 caused between $2 billion to $5 billion of insured losses, disaster modeling company Eqecat said late Thursday. At the high end of the range, the tornado outbreak may rank as the second-worst ever in terms of insured losses, behind the late-April 2011 twisters that devastated Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and other communities. Eqecat said most of the losses were attributed to the tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma, on Monday. ...


Fri May 24 07:55:01 UTC 2013

I-5 Bridge Collapses On Skagit River In WashingtonBy Jonathan Kaminsky OLYMPIA, Washington (Reuters) - A truck crashed into a four-lane freeway bridge in Washington state Thursday evening and may have caused it to collapse, sending vehicles and drivers tumbling into a frigid river, officials said. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigation into what led part of the Interstate 5 bridge to fall into the Skagit River 55 miles north of Seattle was expected to continue on Friday. Three people were rescued from the river and no one died, officials said. Two of those rescued were hospitalized with hypothermia. ...


Fri May 24 08:11:25 UTC 2013
(Reuters) - A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Northern California on Thursday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter of the quake was 6 miles northwest of the town of Greenville, and near the smaller community of Canyondam, the USGS said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Allen Shephard, a hunting and fishing guide at Quail Lodge at Lake Almanor in Canyondam, said the quake knocked him "right off the couch and onto the floor." The floor of the lodge was littered with broken dishware, and cabinets were in disarray, said Shephard, 62. ...
Fri May 24 01:53:09 UTC 2013
The DIY 3-D gun may not be quite ready for prime time. According to Techworld, the police commissioner in Australia’s New South Wales, Andrew Scipione, has issued a warning after his officers tested one of the firearms—dubbed the "Liberator"—and experienced a “catastrophic misfire” (no one was seriously injured). According to the website, the NSW police [...]
Fri May 24 10:48:51 UTC 2013