The Oklahoman, NewsOk.com

A teacher hugs a child at Briarwood Elementary school after a tornado destroyed the school in south Oklahoma City, Monday, May 20, 2013.

By Suzanne Choney, Contributing Writer, NBC News

The loss of life and stunning devastation in Oklahoma City suburbs after a monster tornado ripped through the area are heart-wrenching. "The streets are just gone. The signs are just gone," said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, after she toured the area by helicopter Tuesday. And many, many relief organizations are getting the message out on how to help.

American Red Cross
The Red Cross has set up shelters in various communities. You can donate to the Red Cross Disaster Relief fund here, and the organization also suggests giving blood at your local hospital or blood bank. Fundraising efforts were buoyed Tuesday by a $1 million pledge from Kevin Durant, of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team, via his family foundation.

If you're searching for a missing relative, check Red Cross Safe & Well's site. And please register if you're within the disaster region. The site is designed to make communication easier after a tragedy like this. 

If you want to send a $10 donation to the Disaster Relief fund via text message, you can do so by texting the word REDCROSS to 90999. As in the case with other donations via mobile, the donation will show up on your wireless bill, or be deducted from your balance if you have a prepaid phone. You need to be 18 or older, or have parental permission, to donate this way. (If you change your mind, text the word STOP to 90999.)

The Red Cross also accepts frequent flier miles as donations. Delta, United Airlines and US Airways partner with the Red Cross throughout the year, which uses miles to help get volunteers and staff to key locations during disasters. (Note: The donation is not tax-deductible as the IRS considers it a gift.) For Delta, email: delta.bids@delta-air.com with your SkyMiles number, the number of miles you want to donate, and specify the Red Cross as the charity. You can donate miles online at United Airlines Donate Your Miles and US Airways Dividend Miles.

Phone: 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767); for Spanish speakers, 1-800-257-7575; for TDD, 1-800-220-4095.

OK Strong Disaster Relief Fund
The state of Oklahoma, coordinating with the United Way of Central Oklahoma, on Tuesday established the OK Strong Disaster Relief Fund to help "with the long-term medical, emotional and educational needs of victims of the May 20 tornado in Moore and the May 19 tornado near Shawnee."

Donations can be made online at UnitedWayOKC.org.

Phone: 1-405-236-8441.

Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma
The Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, working with the Oklahoma Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, is seeking monetary donations. To donate, visit the regional food bank's website, or give $10 by texting the word FOOD to 32333.

Phone: 1-405-972-1111

Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief
This organization says donations will "go straight to help those in need providing tree removal services, laundry services and meals to victims of disasters." 

It is requesting monetary donations (It says clothing is NOT needed). For more information, and to donate, visit Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief's website.

You can send checks to: BGCO, Attn: Disaster Relief, 3800 N. May Ave., Oklahoma City, OK., 73112.

Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is organizing disaster response units to serve hard-hit areas in central Oklahoma, including Moore, where it is sending mobile kitchens that can serve meals to 2,500 people a day, and to South Oklahoma City.

In Little Axe, Okla., the organization said, the army's Central Oklahoma Area Command Disaster Service Unit was busy feeding breakfast, lunch and dinner to people, "even as one of our Salvation Army family member's home was destroyed."

Supporters can donate online via the organization's website, SalvationArmyUSA.org. You can also text the word STORM to 80888 to make a $10 donation via cellphone.

If you want to send a check, the Salvation Army asks that you put the words "Oklahoma Tornado Relief" on the check, and mail it to: The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 12600, Oklahoma City, OK., 73157.

Phone:  1-800-SAL-ARMY (1-800-725-2769).

Feed the Children
Feed the Children has set up five locations in Oklahoma City to accept donations to help victims of the Moore tornado. The organization is accepting items including diapers, canned goods, non-perishable food, snack items, water and sports drinks. The organization is also supporting mobile canteens in partnership with the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.

You can donate online, or make a $10 donation by texting the word DISASTER to 80888.

Phone:  1-800-627-4556

United Way of Central Oklahoma
A disaster relief fund is being activated as of May 21 so that individuals can specifically donate to tornado relief-and-recovery efforts, the organization says on its site.

"Financial contributions are the best way to help unless otherwise requested." Donations can be made online at

United Way of Central Oklahoma’s Disaster Relief Fund is open.  Donations may be made online here. Checks, with a notation of "May Tornado Relief" can also be sent to the United Way of Central Oklahoma, P.O. Box 837, Oklahoma City, OK , 73101.

Feeding America
Through its network of more than 200 food banks, Feeding America, whose mission is to "feed America's hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks," says it will deliver truckloads of food, water and supplies to communities in need, in Oklahoma, and will also "set up additional emergency food and supply distribution sites as they are needed." You can donate online here.

Phone: 1-800-910-5524.

Operation USA
The international relief group, based in Los Angeles, says it is "readying essential material aid — emergency, shelter and cleaning supplies" to help Oklahoma's community health organizations and schools recover.

You can donate online here. You can also give a $10 donation by texting the word AID to 50555. Checks should be sent to: Operation USA, 7421 Beverly Blvd., PH, Los Angeles, CA 90036

Phone: 1-800-678-7255.

Convoy of Hope
The Missouri-based nonprofit organization has done work in other disasters, including the Haiti earthquake, with a mission of getting food and water to those after disaster strikes. Now it's doing the same for Moore, Okla. You can donate online here. Convoy of Hope is also going the crowd-sourced route, using HopeMob, a site similar to Kickstarter but for raising money to help disaster victims and others in need, which charges no fees to the organizations that use it. Convoy of Hope's goal on the site is to raise $15,000 in seven days to help Moore.

"Why 7 days? In these first 7 days the town of Moore, OK will be consumed with clearing out destruction and accessing their needs," HopeMob says on its site. "Once those needs are known we want to be able to give them the funds to help them rebuild in the long term."

Phone: 1-800-988-0664

Direct Relief
The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based, non-profit organization provides medical assistance and personal hygiene items to those hurt in disasters, as well as in other circumstances.

"So far we have heard from health center partners responding in Oklahoma and are preparing an emergency shipment to help support the efforts there.  Direct Relief has been receiving requests for emergency supplies, personal care and protection items — including hygiene supplies, infection control products, gloves, soap, shampoo, deodorant, sanitary napkins, diapers, wipes and formula," said Kerri Murray, Direct Relief vice president, in an email.

To donate, visit DirectRelief.org.

Phone: 1-800-676-1638

AmeriCares
The Emergency Response team for AmeriCares is in Oklahoma, "coordinating deliveries of emergency aid and assessing the needs of survivors and health care organizations in the disaster area."

Since 1982, the Connecticut-based nonprofit has delivered medicine, medical supplies and aid to those in need around the world and across the United States.

You can donate online here. You can also give a $10 donation by texting the word LIVE to 25383. Checks or money orders can be mailed to: AmeriCares, 88 Hamilton Ave., Stamford, CT 06902.

Phone:  1-800-486-HELP (1-800-486-4357)

Operation Blessing International
Humanitarian organization Operation Blessing International, which last week coordinated more than 500 volunteers in Granbury, Texas, after that area was hit by a tornado, is working with The Home Depot and dispatching a construction unit, mobile command center, trucks with tools and supplies and a team of construction foremen to Moore.

Late Monday, Operation Blessing International also "loaded and deployed two tractor-trailer truckloads of food and emergency relief supplies from its warehouse in Dallas, Texas, in partnership with the humanitarian organization, Mercury One," said a Operation Blessing spokeswoman.

The Virginia Beach-based group's online link for donations is here.

Phone:  1-800-730-2537

Samaritan's Purse
The international Christian relief organization focuses on cleaning and repairing damaged homes and sent two disaster relief units from North Wilkesboro, N.C. to Oklahoma Tuesday. "The tractor-trailers are stocked with heavy-duty plastic, chainsaws, generators, and other tools and equipment. The units also will serve as command centers for the response," Samaritan's Purse says on its website.

You can donate online here. You can also give a $10 donation by texting the word SP to 80888.

Phone:  1-800-528-1980

United Methodist Committee on Relief
The committee works with local United Methodist churches and trained disaster response workers to help with cleanup and rebuilding, pastoral counseling and support for children and youth who have been through trauma.
 
You can donated online here. You can also give a $10 donation by texting the word RESPONSE to 80888.

Phone: 1-800-554-8583

LifeChurch.tv
Life Church.tv, which describes itself as "Oklahoma's largest evangelical church," says its Oklahoma City metro locations will accept donations of items over the next week, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and distribute them to tornado victims. Among the items needed: Toiletries, diapers, wipes, formula, baby bottles, new clothing, new shoes, and bags, backpacks or plastic tubs for carrying items.

You can also donate money online by visiting LifeChurch.tv, or by texting the word RELIEF to 86613, and selecting an amount you would like to donate.

Phone:  1-405-216-7054

Jewish Federations of North America
The Jewish Federations of North America is working with the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma, which is coordinating efforts with a local food bank, Habitat for Humanity and the Red Cross. The Jewish Federations of North America has established an Oklahoma City Tornado Relief fund. Donors can contribute online here.

Checks can also be sent to the JFNA national mailbox at: The Jewish Federations of North America, Wall Street Station, P.O. Box 148, New York, NY, 10268. Please indicate "JFNA Oklahoma City Tornado Relief Fund" on all checks or in the designation box online.

Oklahoma Tornado Relief 2013
The Oklahoma Tornado Relief 2013 fundraising effort is being done through a crowd-sourced effort using Fundly, a website for fundraising, akin to HopeMob, mentioned above. On the site, you'll find various fundraising causes to help tornado victims, and can choose which you'd like to support.

DonorsChoose.org
DonorsChoose.org is creating a special online fund to collect donations for the teachers and schools of Moore, Okla., to help respond and rebuild. Donors Choose will work with the teachers of Moore to assess what they need for their classrooms and allow them to identify the real-time solutions and supplies their community and their students need: everything from clothing for their students to first-aid kits. 

To donate, visit www.donorschoose.org

And a note of caution ...

Emotions are running high, understandably, in light of the awful news from Oklahoma. Many of us want to help in some way. But this vulnerable time is also rife with and ripe for scammers who want to prey on your emotions and wallet. They may seek you out via email, knock on your door, or even try to get you to give money via Facebook. 

The Federal Trade Commission has guidelines about charity donations, including these tips:

• Donate to charities you know and trust. Be alert for charities that seem to have sprung up overnight in connection with current events, like the tornadoes.
• Ask if a caller is a paid fundraiser, who they work for, and what percentage of your donation goes to the charity and to the fundraiser. If you don’t get a clear answer — or if you don’t like the answer you get — consider donating to a different organization.
• Don’t give out personal or financial information — including your credit card or bank account number — unless you know the charity is reputable.
• Never send cash: you can’t be sure the organization will receive your donation, and you won’t have a record for tax purposes.
• Check out the charity with the Better Business Bureau’s (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator, Charity Watch, or GuideStar.
• Find out if the charity or fundraiser must be registered in your state by contacting the National Association of State Charity Officials.

Ben Popken and Devin Coldewey also contributed to this report.

Related:

• Oklahoma tornado: How to find people, pets 
• Monster tornado deals death, destruction in Oklahoma
• Children found drowned in tornado-flattened school
• Video: Timelapse – nightmare in the suburbs
• Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains
• 'Oh my God!': KFC cook records dramatic footage of monster tornado
• What you're seeing: Videos, images from ground
• Six of the worst twisters in U.S. history
• Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley’s past, future  

NBC News

Grace Duffy dances with her stand-in date Dave Lenahan at the Hillhouse High School class of 1943 reunion and prom.

It took seven decades, but the Hillhouse High School Class of 1943 finally had its senior prom.

Prom for the members of the Greatest Generation was cancelled 70 years ago when the young men in the Connecticut school — and across the country — were called on to go defend the United States during World War II. But as of last Sunday, the high school rite of passage was no longer something these former high schoolers had to live without.

But when it's a senior prom for senior citizens, the rules are different. First of all, the event started at noon, everyone could drink alcohol, and the dress code was, well, comfortable.

NBC News

Honey Pegnataro, right, shares a toast with some of her classmates at the Hillhouse High School class of 1943 reunion and prom.

Many were dropped off not by their parents, but by their children.

And with attendees now in their late 80s, dancing was left to only the most adventurous souls.

Members of the Class of '43 say they did not feel cheated when school administrators told them to stop planning their prom so many years ago. Rather, they felt it was they were fulfilling their responsibility as Americans.

NBC News

Marilyn Unger pins on her corsage at the Hillhouse High School class of 1943 reunion and prom.

"Our country had been attacked, and we felt very strongly that whatever we did to support our country, we would do," said 87-year-old Marilyn White Unger. "So we didn't feel any sense of personal loss, because the boys were fighting."

Unger helped plan the reunion/prom, along with Anthony Pegnataro, 87, then class president who served in Guam and Okinawa during the war. Some of their classmates never came back from the war, and even more have perished in the years since.

"I open the paper every morning, I look at the obituary page and I see two or three more classmates that have gone up to their maker," said Pegnataro.

He estimates that of the 1,250 members of their graduating class, prom organizers have only been able to get ahold of about 10 percent of them. The group has been getting together every five years since 1946.

And like nearly everything else about this prom, he did it the old fashioned way -- no Facebook, just phone calls.

Just as if the prom had been held during the 1940s, on Sunday the group danced to the likes of the Glen Miller band. Though the music may have been the same, but the moves were different -- with some prom goers in wheelchairs.

"Time's running out on all of us. Ya know, how many more years do we have?" said Pegnataro. "And we want to enjoy every year we got."

NBC News

Honey and Tony Pegnataro

Terry Pickard / NBC News

Surviving sailors from the USS Franklin hold a reunion at Patriots Point in Charleston on Friday.

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. -- Two dozen surviving veterans from the World War II aircraft carrier USS Franklin gathered on Friday, probably for the last time, to honor and remember one of the most remarkable naval episodes of the war.

It was before dawn on a late winter morning in 1945 when a Japanese dive bomber dropped two 500 pound bombs on the Franklin. The year-old carrier nicknamed “Big Ben” was serving in the Pacific theater and, at that moment, had maneuvered closer to Japan than any other U.S.-flagged carrier during the war.

Sam ‘Dusty’ Rhodes was asleep in the ship’s bunk area when the bombs hit. Rhodes was a water tender 3^rd class and was responsible for operating the ship’s massive boilers – and with debris from the massive explosions raining down on him, that is just what he did.

Rhodes said he and other crew members ran to the one of the unaffected firerooms and attempted to raise enough steam to light the remaining boiler. When the flame caught from Rhodes’ Zippo lighter, “that’s when the ship’s heart started to beat again,” he recalled.

Above on the flight deck, the scene was nothing short of catastrophic. The Franklin was dead in the water, listing to one side and cut off from communications as fires burned everywhere. More than 800 sailors died in the attack, with hundreds more wounded.

Terry Pickard / NBC News

Flags line the walkway to the USS Yorktown, where a '13' was painted to honor the number of the USS Franklin.

But the Franklin didn’t sink, and that is the legacy crew members like Rhodes like to remember. The Franklin would become the most heavily damaged aircraft carrier of the war to make it back to port.

“We saved the ship,” Rhodes said. “In the Navy, you save the ship. It’s your home.”

William Schauer was a Naval electrician and fireman 1^st class, just out of high school when he reported for duty on the deck of the Franklin, three months before the attack. Looking back on that day 68 years later, he said he was certain he was going to go down with the ship that morning, and “that was the end.”

“But we were there for a purpose,” and despite suffering such heavy losses, Schauer says he still considers their mission – keeping the ship afloat – accomplished.

At the reunion on Friday, Medal of Honor recipient and retired Gen. James Livingston saluted the assembled veterans. He said their “refusal to allow her to sink” allowed the Franklin to limp back to port instead of ending up buried forever on the ocean floor. “That’s a testimony to what you are as men,” he said.

Terry Pickard / NBC News

The tattered battle flag from the USS Franklin hangs on display at the USS Yorktown.

In the belly of the USS Yorktown, another decommissioned carrier that saw battle in the Pacific and now survives as the centerpiece of the Patriots Point Naval Museum in this bucolic Charleston suburb, a tattered and smoke-tinged flag is mounted overhead. It was the original battle flag that flew on the mast of the Franklin’s flight deck the day of the attack -- the same flag that Rhodes remembers looking up and noticing through the haze of black smoke after the bombs hit. Seeing it meant they still had a chance, he remembered, “because we would strike the colors before abandoning ship.”   

“Big Ben” made it all the way back to New York for repairs, where it sat on V-J Day when the war finally ended. It never saw action again, and was sold for scrap in the 1960s. The flag, along with the bell and a gun turret also on display at the Yorktown, are all that remain of one of the most momentous spectacles of heroism and fortitude of World War II. And with what could be the final gathering of the men who saved the ship, it is up to a new generation to remember the Franklin.

By Rohit Kachroo, Correspondent, NBC News

First came the sound of gunshots late at night.

Then, a few hours later, a carcass was found -- his bloodied face and mutilated body shielded by the long grass. 

Before long, the stench of death was rising from what was now a crime scene.

The rangers at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy seemed almost unmoved. But they have seen it, heard it and smelled it too many times before.

Once again, this 60,000-acre park -- home to one in eight of Kenya’s rhinos -- has been struck by an armed gang.

Despite the helicopters, the dog handlers, the electric fencing and the hiring of a former British Army captain as chief executive, Lewa has struggled with the poachers, losing six rhinos over a four-week period earlier this year.

It is a problem for parks across Africa, where some populations of rhino and elephant face extinction within decades. Gruesome killings, like the slaughter of a family of 12 elephants in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park last January, have caused shock but brought no solutions.

At least Lewa has a powerful supporter. This is where Prince William spent much of his gap year.  It is where he proposed to Kate Middleton in 2010. And it is here that he found another love: the precious species that are under threat from the trade in ivory and rhino horn.

On Tuesday, William will challenge African "producer" countries and Asian "consumer" countries to end the slaughter. But what is the chance of a real solution?

The words of a prince will mean little to the paupers who stalk the parks of Africa in search of a rhino horn which may be worth 30,000 pounds – more than its weight in gold. 

Perhaps stiffer sentences in African countries will make a difference -- but campaigners say that some are resisting pressure to punish those involved in the trade.

Then there's the question of how the meeting dignitaries can succeed in choking demand in the Far East, where others have failed before -- and where horns and tusks are said to have medicinal value.

Campaigners welcome the fact that the issue is being talked about at all -- and they accept that solutions will take time.

But for the majestic creatures that roam Lewa, there may be little of that.  

By Ron Mott, Correspondent, NBC News

WASHINGTON – Their similarities are striking, but teenagers Robin Jeter, 18, and Jordan Dickerson, 17, grew up quite differently in the nation’s capital.

They’re smart, pretty and fashion-forward. Both teens are also athletically inclined and have double jointed thumbs they can contort onto the palms of their hands.

But Robin, a senior at Friendship Collegiate Academy in northeast Washington, D.C., grew up in foster care, moving from one home to another until stability finally came her way.

“I only grew up with my one brother, that's all I’d known,” she said.

A few miles away, Jordan, a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School in the Northwest section of the city, was raised as an adopted only child, something her mom never hid.

“Her telling me I was adopted really wasn't that big of a deal,” Jordan said. “I just wanted to know more about it, I was really curious ... She told me that there was a possibility that I did have a sister, but you know, the information wasn't crystal clear.”

What’s clear is that these two young women met under remarkable circumstances in perhaps the most unlikely of places.

'She looked just like you!'

In January, at an indoor high school track meet, one of Jordan’s teammates was watching a girls’ race, cheering enthusiastically.

“I said, ‘Go Jordan, Go Jordan!’" William Carson recalled.

That is, until he realized he was rooting for an opponent. When she crossed the finish line, William realized it wasn’t Jordan after all.

“Jordan was up like 10 feet away from me [in the bleachers]. She was looking at me, like, ‘Who is he talking to?’ And I was like, ‘She looked just like you!’”

The momentary confusion was soon cleared up by another student, Laniyyah Elam, who’d attended elementary school with Robin but was now a schoolmate of Jordan’s at Woodrow Wilson High School.

“I know that girl!” she said. “Her name is Robin Jeter.”

Jordan started to cry. She knew her birth name was also Jeter.

“I escorted her off to the bathroom,” Laniyyah said. “I asked her what was going on, and she told me that that was her sister, because she knew the last name. And I was, like, ‘Oh, wow. Do you want me to introduce you to her?’ Later on, after the meet was over, I told Robin to come up and they met each other.”

Separated by a few miles and 17 long years, the sisters awkwardly began what quickly developed into a comfortable, familiar, strong relationship -- with nary a trace of a sibling rivalry forming.

“I couldn't even say anything,” Robin said of the initial face-to-face conversation at the track meet.

“The only thing I could say was, ‘You know, we look a lot alike,’” Jordan countered.

After several months of getting to know one another—spending many weekends together and, soon, prom night—the sisters look as though they were never apart. They often finish one another’s sentences. Robin lovingly shoos away a fly from her sister’s hair. And in those moments, when they’re in each other’s company, physical contact seems irresistible, as if to suggest they fear ever losing grip on their suddenly discovered treasure.

By Kevin Monahan, Producer, NBC News

GREEN BANK, W.Va. – Every week, Chuck Niday patrols Green Bank, W.Va., in a vehicle that looks a bit like something out of the movie “Mad Max,” aiming to protect the largest steerable radio telescope in the world.

He searches for sources of interference, which can come from something as simple as a spark plug or an electric fence. And when Niday runs across illegal wireless signals or other electronics, he asks residents to desist.

“We just go in and ask them to turn it off, and leave it off,” he said. “People are usually pretty cooperative.”

If they don’t, he can send a report to the Federal Communications Commission. In 1958, the FCC created a 13,000-square-mile quiet zone to shield radio telescopes in Green Bank and Sugar Grove, W.Va., from harmful man-made interference, allowing scientists to study sounds emanating from galaxies all around the universe. 

Cellphones, Wi-Fi, radio, even certain electronics are all regulated. And there’s not a single cellphone tower to be found for miles. The entire U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone straddles the border between Virginia and West Virginia.

Bob Sheets has spent his entire life living in the shadow of the giant telescope -- literally. It’s visible from nearly every window of his home, and looms over his field of cows.

A retired English teacher from the area, Sheets is quite aware that people might consider him “road kill on the technology highway,” as he puts it, but says the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a great neighbor. He doesn’t think outsiders mind much either.

“Most people that come to visit are happy to turn their cellphone off and get away from it all for a while. It seems to reduce their anxiety,” he said.

The remote town of Green Bank sits smack in the middle of the Allegheny Mountain Range, situated in a valley in the mountains that is naturally protected from many of the radio signals flying around. 

It’s the closest community to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which runs the Green Bank Telescope. One-and-a-half times taller than the Statue of Liberty, the radio telescope listens into space. 

Telescope director Karen O’Neil explained: “We listen to galaxies, not just our own, and by doing so, try to understand how these galaxies were formed.”

Michael Holstine, operations manager, says it takes on some of the biggest questions of our time -- and the quiet zone is the perfect place to do it.

“We‘ve been able to peer back to just after the Big Bang, 13.9 billion to 14 billion years ago,” he said. “We need quiet to gather all the signals that are being supplied to us by the universe. Green Bank is just about the quietest place in the country.”

But what about the seemingly draconian restrictions it puts on the local residents here?

At Green Bank Elementary Middle School, which is in direct line-of-sight of the telescope, students actually talk to each other instead of texting.

It doesn’t mean however, that some teenagers wouldn’t prefer to have a cellphone to help beef up their social lives.

“If you have a cellphone with you all the time, everybody can get a hold of you,” said Kourtney Cohenour, 14, who recently moved to Green Bank with her family. “You don’t need to worry about people trying to find you.”

They still have payphones here in Green Bank -- and people seem to use them. Some of the residents even get a kick out of those who still rely on cellphones.

“I saw a lady one time at a local gas station here,” Sheets said with a smile. “She was holding it high above her head to try and get a signal and then she took it over and she waved it around the pay phone.”

At the main general store in town, owner Bob Earvine and his son, Donnie, don’t seem to mind the restrictions.

Donnie Earvine claims to miss using his cellphone when he leaves town and comes back. As for his father, not so much.

“I don’t miss a cellphone one bit,” said Bob Earvine. “If the observatory wasn’t here, I’m not sure we would be. You can see how little other employment there is around here. It’s a small price to pay.”

Brian Farkas / AP file

The Robert C. Byrd Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory rises above the rural Pocahontas County, W.Va., countryside on Oct. 26, 2008. The telescope is the world's largest steerable radio telescope.

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 6:20 PM EDT

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 5:01 PM EDT

As the White House faces a trio of burgeoning controversies that have put the administration and agencies throughout Washington on the defensive, Attorney General General Eric Holder reiterated before a House panel Wednesday that he was not involved in the Justice Department's decision to seize two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as a part of a leak probe.

LIVESTREAM: House Judiciary Committee hearing

The Justice Department has also opened an investigation into revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder said that prosecutors are looking at several different statutes in the investigation of those actions. 

He said those potential violations could include an IRS statute that requires employees to do their jobs without favoritism, civil rights laws, the Hatch Act that restricts a federal employee's political activities, or the law against making false statements to investigators.

“The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he added, promising a nationwide investigation. 

Asked about the leak probe, Holder confirmed that Deputy Attorney General James Cole authorized the subpoenas on AP reporters' phone records after Holder recused himself from the matter.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

Attorney General Eric Holder is sworn in during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill May 15, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Holder first announced Tuesday that he had recused himself from the AP leak probe because he had previously been questioned by the FBI about the intelligence breach.

He added Wednesday that he also turned over his own phone records as a part of that questioning. 

He told the committee that he recused himself because he was one of the “relatively limited number of people” who had first-hand knowledge of the leaked information – and also because he had more regular communication with reporters than Cole.

“I was a possessor of the information that was ultimately leaked,” he added. “And the question then is, who of those people who possessed that information – which was a relatively limited number of people  within the Justice Department – who of those people actually spoke in an inappropriate way to the Associated Press,” he added.

In response to questions, he said that he did not know the date of his recusal for certain and that there was not a written record of it.  He also said that the White House would not have been informed of the recusal. 

Holder has been widely criticized by Republicans for DOJ's handling of the matter, scrutiny Holder noted at the beginning of his remarks.

"The head of the [Republican National Committee] called for my resignation in spite of the fact that I was not the person who was involved in that decision," he said.

The routine Justice Department oversight hearing became a hot ticket after two scandals – the DOJ probe and the revelations about the IRS – erupted since the end of last week. The Obama administration also continues to be dogged by lingering questions over its administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

In opening remarks he was set to deliver before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder says the Justice Department “has taken critical steps to prevent and combat violent crime, to confront national security threats, to ensure the civil rights of everyone in this country, and to safeguard the most vulnerable members of our society.”

NBC's Pete Williams contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 1:07 PM EDT

Evoking the spy games of the Cold War, Russia said Tuesday that it had detained an American diplomat who was carrying cash, two wigs and technical equipment and was trying to recruit a Russian intelligence official to work for the CIA.

Russia ordered the expulsion of the American diplomat, whom it identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, third secretary of the political division of the U.S. Embassy. The State Department said only that an officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had been detained and released.

American officials said they did not expect a rift in U.S.-Russian relations. U.S. officials are trying to improve those relations, and to persuade Russia to help resolve a civil war in Syria.

FSB via AP

Wigs and spy gadgets that the Russian Federal Security Service says were carried by American diplomat Ryan Fogle.

Russia used stronger language, calling the matter provocative and in the spirit of the Cold War.

A statement by the Russian Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, said that Fogle was taken to the service’s headquarters and then to the U.S. embassy after his arrest Monday night.

The security service, known as the FSB, released to Russian media photographs of the American’s arrest and what it said were items he had with him, including the wigs, a torch, a compass and a wad of 500-euro notes, each worth $650.

Russian television also displayed a letter it said was found on Fogle, printed in Russian and addressed “Dear friend.” The letter offered a $100,000 payment as “an advance from someone who has been highly impressed by your professionalism, and who would highly value your cooperation in the future.”

The statement from the security service said that the U.S. had “repeatedly attempted to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement bodies and special departments” recently.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, was participating in a question-and-answer session on Twitter when the detention was announced. He was summoned to Russia’s foreign ministry, The Associated Press reported.

Experts expressed surprise at the old-school nature of the alleged espionage, but they noted that intelligence-gathering had not stopped just because the Cold War ended more than two decades ago.

FSB via AP

In this photo provided by Russian Federal Security Service, a man claimed by the service to be Ryan Fogle is seen at the service's offices in Moscow.

“If anything, it has increased,” said James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the British think tank Chatham House. “The methods have changed — or so we thought — because it’s more about industrial espionage and corruption these days.”

Besides the diplomacy over Syria, there have been questions about whether Russia gave the United States enough information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the attack on the Boston Marathon.

Russian officials asked the U.S. for more information about Tsarnaev, who was born in what is now Russia and traveled to Russia early last year. Russia suspected that Tsarnaev was becoming radicalized, American officials have said.

The FBI interviewed him in 2011 and turned up nothing, and when the FBI asked Russia twice for more information about its concern, Russia failed to respond, the American officials said. Tsarnaev was killed April 19 in a shootout with police.

President Barack Obama later said Russia had cooperated since the attack but noted: “Old habits die hard. There are still suspicions sometimes between our intelligence and law enforcement agencies that date back 10, 20, 30 years, back to the Cold War.”

The incident would not be the only intelligence blunder in Russia. Britain admitted bugging a Moscow park in 2006 by disguising a recording device as a big rock. The FSB saw a British diplomat picking it up and walking away with it.

Related: 

Full Russia coverage from NBC News

Editor’s note: This story includes a correction.

This story was originally published on Tue May 14, 2013 7:59 PM EDT

DNA tests have confirmed that Ariel Castro, the suspect in the kidnapping and decade-long imprisonment of three women in Cleveland, is the father of a 6-year-old girl born to one of the women in captivity, the Ohio attorney general said Friday.

Attorney General Mike DeWine also said that Castro’s DNA did not match other unsolved Ohio cases. He said that the FBI is still checking Castro’s DNA against unsolved cases elsewhere in the country.

Castro, 52, is charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape in the abductions of the three women and is being held on $8 million bond. They were freed Monday night when one of them, Amanda Berry, broke through a door and screamed for help.

Berry is the mother of the 6-year-old, who was also rescued from the house, authorities have said.

The baby was delivered in a kiddie pool by another captive, Michelle Knight, according to a Cleveland police report. Knight told investigators that Castro threatened to kill her if the baby died, the report said.

Knight also told investigators that Castro impregnated her at least five times, and starved her and pummeled her in the stomach to force her to miscarry, the police report said.

A DNA match to Castro would confirm what Berry told police, according to the police account. It also said that Castro would take the child out with him, and made sure the girl did not know Knight’s or DeJesus’ real name in case she said them in public.

An Ohio prosecutor pledged Thursday to pursue charges of aggravated murder against Castro for any pregnancies that he terminated.

Knight remains in a Cleveland hospital. The hospital said Friday that she is in good spirits, is grateful for an outpouring of flowers and gifts and is asking for privacy.

Berry and another captive, Gina DeJesus, returned home to their families earlier this week.

This story was originally published on Fri May 10, 2013 10:57 AM EDT

By Mary Murray, Senior Producer, NBC News

LOS ANGELES -- There are only about 100 people in the U.S. like 7-year-old Jonah Pournazarian.

He suffers from a rare genetic and incurable disease called Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1B. Up until the 80s, most kids with his condition didn't survive past the age of two.

But his best buddy, Dylan Siegel, wanted his friend to get better, so he wrote a book hoping to raise one million dollars to find a cure.

He then nagged his parents to find a publisher. David and Debra Siegel, who live in Los Angeles, Calif., turned to a local printer for help.

"We had 200 copies to sell at a school fair," said Debra Siegel. "We were hoping that we could sell all the books we had printed.  We didn't want to get stuck with these books."

In a couple of hours, the boys sold every copy and had collected $6,000.

"Lo and behold, we had to do a second printing," said David Siegel, who then set up a Facebook page, and eventually a website. "People started to hear about this beautiful little book and wanted to help, be a part of Dylan's Magic."

GSD is a metabolic disorder that affects the liver.

"The only thing keeping my son alive is cornstarch," explained his mother, Lora Pournazarian, as she mixed a precise dose of cornstarch and water. She administers this mixture through a feeding tube around the clock to keep Jonah's blood sugar levels even. 

Jonah is permitted to eat other foods, but sweets, fruits and dairy can only be had in strict moderation. 

"He can have a bite of an apple.  Nothing will happen to him.  He can have a slice of pizza if he wants to, and it's okay," said Lora. "You know, his main food is bread.  If he eats, bread with butter.  And plain pasta."

Despite the work involved in being constant caregivers, Jonah's father Rabin Pournazarian said he's grown to appreciate life more since Jonah was born.

"I understand how fragile life is. I understand how difficult it is, at the end of the day, to have a child with special needs.  I understand what a blessing it is to have a child with special needs," he said. "Unfortunately, I've become a little bit more impatient, and -- just life is more stressful now than it was before.  But that's okay, it's just -- it's different.  But different isn't bad."

The Pournazarians have two other children, Rachel, 9, and Eli, Jonah's twin brother, who both say they're proud of Dylan for everything he's done to help their brother Jonah.

"It's really amazing to me that a boy his age can make this happen," Rachel said.  

An "astounding" book

Professor Dr. David Weinstein, director of the Glycogen Storage Disease Program at the University of Florida, is working on finding a cure through gene therapy. Because it is so rare, he said, "We're just in the infancy of really trying to treat this."

Funding research for what Weinstein describes as an "orphan disease," something rare that affects a small population, has been challenging.

"It's too small for the NIH [National Institutes of Health] to care about, too small to have a foundation," Weinstein said.

Until "Chocolate Bar," he added, "we had no place to turn.”

Like other adults, Weinstein was skeptical that Dylan's book would help his efforts.

"I thought it was wonderful that Dylan wanted to help Jonah," said Weinstein, but at the time he doubted the book would make any real difference.

Now, he calls Chocolate Bar "astounding."

"To think that a 7-year-old boy could write a book that could raise more money than all the medical foundations combined! This book is going to allow us to build research teams so that we can really work toward improving the lives of these children," he said.

And why not? To Dylan and Jonah, friendship is that simple.

"Dylan wrote the book to help me," said Jonah.

"I want Jonah to feel better," said Dylan.

The boys say they've been best buddies for "years." The two first started playing together in nursery school, when they were three. These days, they are inseparable.

"We're not really good friends," said Jonah. "We're really, really good friends."

Correcting him, Dylan replied, "No, we're not really, really good friends. We're really, really, really, really, really good friends."

Clearly, the best of friends.

Satellite imagery can serve as a time machine, revealing dramatic change in just a few seconds — but can you imagine documenting almost three decades' worth of all that change, across most of our planet's land mass? A team of imaging experts, computer scientists and journalists did. Now they've unveiled the result: a global database of zoomable, animated satellite views known as Timelapse.

"We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public," Rebecca Moore, engineering manager for Google Earth Engine and Earth outreach, said Thursday in Google's blog announcement of the Timelapse project.

Moore said the project began in 2009, when Google started working with the U.S. Geological Society to make its archive of Landsat imagery available online. The team sifted through more than 2 million satellite images, adding up to 909 terabytes of data, and selected cloudless, high-quality views for every year since 1984.

Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab smoothed the views into seamless animations, and Time magazine built it all into a presentation that supplements the time-lapse animations with commentaries on climate change, urban growth and the other trends that are transforming the planet.

"I've been chiseling away at this project over the last 11 months, and am in awe of the folks who helped this come together in ways I could never have conceived on my own. Some very bright minds figured out how to make the biggest video frames ever constructed, equivalent to 900,000 HD TVs next to one another," Jonathan Woods, the Time project's executive producer (and a former colleague at msnbc.com), said in an email.

Google Earth is also hosting the Timelapse zoomable map. "Much like the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission — which had a profound effect on many of us — this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore, but we also hope it can inform the global community's thinking about how we live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future," Moore said.

When it comes to telling the story of our changing planet, one time-lapse animation is worth a thousand words. But there's more to tell. Find out more about the trends illustrated in the seven animated images you see here:

Columbia Glacier: Alaska's retreating ice reveals how climate change is changing Earth's surface.

Dubai coastal expansion: New islands are sprouting along Dubai's coastline as part of a $14 billion land reclamation effort, arguably the largest project of its kind.

Irrigation in Saudi Arabia: Agriculture amid the deserts of Arabia? It's a growing concern, thanks to huge irrigation projects that take advantage of underground rivers and lakes. The water won't last, though: Hydrologists estimate that it'll be economical to pump water for only about 50 years. 

Lake Urmia drying up: Iran's great salt lake is not as great as it was, and the reason for that is in dispute. The Iranian government blames climate change and drought, while critics blame the dams that have been built around the lake.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation: Satellite imagery documents the loss of Amazonian forest land in Brazil due to road-building, logging and agricultural clearing.

Las Vegas urban growth: What sprawls in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. Landsat pictures reveal how urban development has spread out around Nevada's biggest city over the decades.

Wyoming coal mining: The Black Thunder mine in Wyoming's Powder River Basin ranks as the largest single coal mining complex in the world, according to Arch Coal, its operator. Satellite imagery shows how the mine has spread out over the decades.

More time-lapse videos:

• One World Trade Center rises
• Shuttle Endeavour traverses L.A.
• Time-lapse gallery from Photoblog

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The Cleveland man charged with holding three women captive for a decade impregnated one of them five times and punched her in the stomach until she miscarried, police said Wednesday in a chilling report on the kidnappings.

The man forced one of his captives, Michelle Knight, to deliver the baby of another captive, Amanda Berry, in a kiddie pool, and threatened to kill Knight if the baby died, police said.

Police made the revelations in a report that laid out a nightmarish captivity, including starvation and imprisonment in the basement. One official said the women apparently were allowed outside the house only twice, and briefly, in the years after they were captured.

The Cleveland city prosecutor charged the man, Ariel Castro, with four counts of kidnapping — one for each of the three women and one for a baby that was born to Berry six years ago. Castro was also charged with three counts of rape for each of the adult women.

But authorities filed no charges against two of Castro’s brothers who were arrested Monday night, after Berry escaped the house with the help of a neighbor and the other two women were freed.

Authorities said they had no evidence that the two brothers, Pedro and Onil Castro, were involved in the kidnappings.

The three captives — Berry, Knight and Gina DeJesus — were allowed only in the backyard when they were let outdoors at all, and were forced to wear wigs and sunglasses when they left the house, the report said.

The escape came on Monday, when Castro went to McDonald’s and left a “big inside door” unlocked, the report said. That was when Berry broke through a locked storm door, afraid to open it further because she worried that Castro was testing her, the report said. Berry made it out and called 911.

“From what we know, their only opportunity to escape was the other day when Amanda escaped,” said Ed Tomba, the deputy Cleveland police chief.

All three women told police that Castro initially chained them in the basement, the report said, but he ultimately let them live on the second floor of the home, a shabby, two-story dwelling on Cleveland’s West Side.

The women were not in the same room but did know the others were there, Tomba said.

“As far as what the circumstances were inside that home, and the control he may have had over those girls, we don’t know that yet,” he said.

According to the report, Knight told investigators that she carried Castro’s baby “at least” five times, and that when he found out, he “would make her abort the baby” — starving her for two weeks and repeatedly punching her in the stomach until she miscarried.

When Berry’s baby was born, Knight put her mouth to the baby’s to keep it alive — and keep herself alive because Castro had threatened to kill her, the report said.

Berry told investigators that none of the women had seen a doctor during their captivity, the report said.

One police source close to the investigation cautioned earlier in the day that it was hard to be sure the women’s memories were completely accurate after such a long time in captivity.

John Gress / Reuters

Gina DeJesus arrives at her home in Cleveland.

Earlier Wednesday, DeJesus and Berry returned home to their families, both greeted by cheering crowds and huge displays of balloons, ribbons, teddy bears and encouraging signs. DeJesus gave a thumbs up.

“She was happy,” said her aunt, Sandra Ruiz. “She looked at the house and wanted a tour.”

Knight remained in a Cleveland hospital and was getting mental health treatment, her mother said.

Cleveland authorities said that a search of the Castro house had revealed no human remains. FBI agents returned to the house Wednesday and also searched a house two doors down that appeared to be abandoned.

Authorities said they did not suspect Castro had kidnapped anyone else. They said they had questioned Castro about the disappearance of a fourth Cleveland woman, Ashley Summers.

Castro was due in court Thursday morning for arraignment. The two brothers are also due in court Thursday, but on unrelated misdemeanor charges, authorities said.

“There is no evidence that these two individuals had any involvement in the commission of the crimes committed against Michelle, Gina, Amanda and the minor child,” said Victor Perez, the city prosecutor.

The three women were reported missing in Cleveland months apart: Knight in August 2002 after losing custody of her son, Berry in April 2003 after finishing her part-time shift at a Burger King, and DeJesus in April 2004 while walking home from middle school.

The police report suggests Castro used the same tactic to capture each of them: He offered them a ride. In Berry’s case, he told her he had a son who also worked at Burger King.

When Berry made her break for freedom years later, kicking the door and screaming, a neighbor, Charles Ramsey, helped free her. In her 911 call, Berry pleaded with the dispatcher to send help: “I’m Amanda Berry. I’ve been on the news for the last 10 years.”

When help came, two police officers crawled through a broken panel of the storm door and kicked it open to allow other officers in, the report said.

Two officers went upstairs, and the other two women threw themselves into the officers’ arms, it said.

Berry is now 27, DeJesus 23 and Knight 32.

Slideshow: Missing women found alive in Cleveland

A daring escape and a dramatic 911 call led to the rescue of three women who allegedly had been held captive for years inside a home in Cleveland.

Launch slideshow

McGrath said that the house had come to the attention of police only twice — in 2000, when Ariel Castro called about a fight on the street, and in 2004, when Castro, a school bus driver, had left behind one of his passengers.

The chief’s account conflicts with that of at least one neighbor, Israel Lugo, who told MSNBC on Tuesday that he called the police in 2011 after his sister spotted a woman with a baby in the home, banging on the window “like she wants to get out.”

McGrath said that his department would have a record of such a call and that there was none. He said that he was “absolutely confident” that his officers did not miss a chance to free the three women.

Ariel Castro, 52, was accused in 2005 of attacking his former wife, The Plain Dealer newspaper reported. Her lawyer at the time said that although the ex-wife had custody of their children, Castro “frequently abducts daughters and keeps them from mother,’’ the newspaper reported.

Khalid Samad, a community organizer, told NBC News that Castro had accompanied him on searches for the missing women.

First lady Michelle Obama told NBC News that the kidnappings were “probably a parent’s worst nightmare.”

“These families are going to have to wrap their arms around these young women and make sure that they get all the help and support they need so that they will go on and lead healthy, normal lives,” she told TODAY. “We’re just grateful that they’re safe.”

Richard Esposito and Jeff Black of NBC News contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Wed May 8, 2013 8:54 AM EDT

It's a story with a happy ending over a decade in the making. A daring escape and a dramatic 911 call led to the rescue of three women who allegedly had been held captive for years inside a home in Cleveland, Ohio. Below is a timeline of events in the case, from before the women first  disappeared to their eventual freedom. 

2000: Police visit the Cleveland home of the three Castro brothers, who years later would be placed into custody for the kidnappings of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina "Gina" DeJesus. At the time, police were responding to a call about a fight involving Ariel Castro, one of the brothers, then a bus driver.

Aug. 22, 2002: Michelle Knight, then 21 years old, disappears. She is last seen at a cousin's house in Cleveland, according to Cleveland.com. She is reported missing the following day to police, but some family members believe she may have left on her own because she was angry that she had lost custody of her son, according to Cleveland.com. As a result, her disappearance and her photo are not widely publicized.

April 21, 2003: Amanda Berry calls her sister to tell her she's getting a ride home from her job at a fast food restaurant on the day before her 17th birthday. According to authorities, she got into a white, four-door sedan with three men inside. She doesn't make it home and is reported missing, prompting a huge search involving national publicity.

Nov. 15, 2003: The FBI reveals that a week after Berry vanished, her mom received a phone call from her cellphone. A male voice said, "I have Amanda. She’s fine and will be coming home in a couple of days.” Authorities are unable to determine the authenticity of the call.

January 2004: Police make their second visit in four years to the home of the Castro brothers. Ariel Castro, the bus driver, had been accused of leaving a child on a bus; when authorities knocked on the door, no one answered. They later interviewed him and discovered he had "inadvertently" left the child on the school bus, according to The New York Times. Officials determined there was no criminal intent, and he was not charged.

March 6, 2004: The FBI announces that the body of a teenage girl found near San Diego earlier in the week isn't a match for Berry's dental records.

April 2, 2004: Gina DeJesus, then 14, vanishes while walking home from school in Cleveland. Her case bears striking similarities to Berry's: Both girls disappeared within in the same five-block radius, both girls were about 5'1'', and neither had a history of running away from home.

April 9, 2004: Police looking for DeJesus tell the public they are seeking a Hispanic man driving a light-color, older-model, compact car with a license plate that includes the letters "SMS," driving in the area where DeJesus disappeared from. 

November 2004: Berry's case is featured on "America's Most Wanted." The same month, psychic Sylvia Browne appeared on Montel Williams' nationally syndicated TV show alongside Berry's mother, and tells her that her daughter is probably dead.

Oct. 24, 2005: DeJesus' parents, Nancy and Felix, make a national plea on the syndicated program "Maury" to ask for help finding their daughter.

March 2, 2006: Berry's mother, Louwana Miller, dies of heart failure at age 43, nearly three years after she started the search for her daughter. “I want her on the news. She’s faded away from the whole world. It just kills me. This is killing me,” Miller had told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter who she often asked to write more about her daughter.

Sept. 21, 2006: Police arrest Matthew Hurayt, a 35-year-old registered sex offender, after receiving a tip that DeJesus' body was buried beneath his garage on Cleveland's West Side. A search of his home yields nothing.

July 6, 2007: Another Cleveland girl, Ashley Summers, 14, disappears without a trace from the same neighborhood as Berry and DeJesus. Her disappearance puts Cleveland on edge, and attracts more media attention than ever to the neighborhood and its unsolved crimes -- even though it isn't clear if there is a connection.

April 2009: FBI says it suspects Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Ashley Summers may have all been kidnapped by one man.

Sept. 8, 2009: Police rule out the possibility that a body found in Wisconsin the previous November is Berry's after DNA tests come back negative.

January 2013: A Cleveland inmate, Robert Wolford, is sentenced to four-and-a-half years for providing a false burial tip in Berry's disappearance, sending authorities to a Cleveland lot in the summer of 2012 to dig for her remains.

May 6, 2013: A neighbor hears a noise coming from the door of the Castro home. Stuck inside, Berry is trying to bust through, "kicking the door and screaming," said the neighbor, Charles Ramsey. "‘I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been in this house a long time and I want to leave right now,’” Berry said, according to Ramsey, who helps kick the locked door down.

Once the door is open, Ramsey gives Berry his phone so she can call 911. She has a child with her. Police arrest the three Castro brothers: Ariel, 52, Pedro, 54, and O'Neil, 50.  The three women inside the home, plus the 6-year-old child, are taken to a hospital. Summers is still missing.

May 7, 2013: The three women are released from the hospital Tuesday morning.

In a press conference, police commend Berry for getting herself and the other women out of the house. "The real hero here is Amanda," said Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no charges had been filed yet against the three suspects.

Related content:

• Three Ohio women found alive after being missing for a decade; 3 men arrested
• 'Can I help?' Neighbor Charles Ramsey tells of role in discovery of missing women
• 'We should never give up hope': 5 other missing-child stories with happy endings

   

Jane Flavell Collins / AP

In a courtroom sketch, Robel Phillipos appears before a federal magistrate last week. Phillipos and two other college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were arrested and charged with removing a backpack containing hollowed-out fireworks from Tsarnaev's dorm room.

A friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev charged with lying to federal investigators after the Boston Marathon bombings was placed on house arrest Monday after posting $100,000 bail.

The friend, Robel Phillipos, was ordered released into the custody of his mother. He will have to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and submit to drug testing. He will not be allowed to leave home except for court appearances and 911 emergencies.

Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Phillipos had filed a joint motion earlier in the day encouraging a judge to put him on house arrest after determining that he was not a flight risk.

Lawyers for Phillipos, 19, had said over the weekend that their client was “frightened and confused” when he was questioned by investigators days after the attack, and argued that he had nothing to do with the attack itself.

Phillipos is one of three friends of Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the bombings, who were arrested last week after they were questioned about the removal of a backpack and fireworks from Tsarnaev’s dorm room three days after the blasts.

Phillipos spoke only once during his hearing Monday. When the judge asked whether he understood the terms of his release, he answered, “Yes.” U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler set his next hearing for May 17.

Family or friends of Phillipos — it was not clear which — said they would put up real estate to meet the $100,000 bond.

Outside court, one of Phillipos’ lawyers, Susan Church, emphasized that he is not charged with removing evidence. Two Kazakh students, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, are charged with that crime.

“Just like all Americans and all people from Boston, Robel is grieving at the tragedy and the lives lost forever,” she said.

All three men knew Tsarnaev from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. In the court papers, lawyers described Phillipos as mild-mannered and peaceful, without a criminal record and with deep ties to his family, his church and the community in Cambridge, Mass.

The lawyers argued that Phillipos was questioned without a lawyer and made himself available to federal authorities at all times. The charge of lying has ruined what was a bright future, they said.

“This case is about a frightened and confused 19-year-old who was subjected to intense questioning and interrogation, without the benefit of counsel, and in the context of one of the worst attacks against the nation,” the lawyers wrote.

The papers seek to distance Phillipos from the two Kazakhs and from Tsarnaev. Phillipos had taken a leave of absence for the spring semester and had not been in touch with the other three for more than two months, the lawyers argued.

It was only by “sheer coincidence and bad luck,” the lawyers wrote, that Phillipos was invited to attend a campus seminar on April 18, the day the backpack and fireworks were removed from Tsarnaev’s dorm room.

The lawyers also submitted 17 letters from people who know Phillipos, including his mother, attesting to his character. One was from a community soccer coach who said Phillipos was “very respectful” and excelled despite being the smallest player.

His mother, Genet Bekele, wrote that the family, which is of Ethiopian descent, looks forward to the marathon each year and cheers, on the sidelines or watching on television, as Ethiopians cross the finish line.

After the bombings, “We mourned for those who lost their lives and prayed for the injured,” she wrote. “My son wants nothing more than the opportunity to clear his name.”

Tsarnaev, 19, who is in a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts, has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and could face the death penalty. He was wounded in a firefight with police before he was captured April 19.

His brother, Tamerlan, was killed in the firefight. A funeral parlor in Worcester, Mass., accepted the body, but as of Sunday the Tsarnaev family had not found a cemetery willing to bury him.

Three people were killed and more than 200 injured when two bombs went off April 15 near the marathon finish line. Twelve people remained in Boston hospitals Sunday.

The One Fund Boston, which has raised more than $28 million for victims, plans to hold a town hall meeting in Boston on Monday to discuss plans for how the money will be distributed.

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 9:45 AM EDT

After an eight-month deployment, the USS John C. Stennis headed home from the Persian Gulf where it played a vital role providing air support to troops in Afghanistan.

Steven Louie/NBC News

But on its way back it had another mission -- to pick up family and friends in Hawaii so they could experience life aboard the Stennis.

Steven Louie/NBC News

Aaniya Dorrah tries on a fireman's suit on the John C. Stennis.

Steven Louie/NBC News

A "Tiger" wears a pilots helmet while getting a tutorial on the Navy's F-18 fighter jet.

The "Tiger Cruise" is the Navy's special take on bringing your loved one to work. 

Steven Louie/NBC News

The Lemons family, Samantha, Michael, and Micheal Jr., watch the Navy's air power demonstration aboard the USS John C. Stennis.

More than 1100 family members and friends gathered to join the crew for a six-day cruise. The 'Tigers' are any friend or family member of the sailor, with the exception of spouses or significant others, invited to experience life, and sailors' duties, out at sea.

Steven Louie/NBC News

A family of "Tigers" gathers on the flight deck of the USS John C. Stennis before departing Pearl Harbor.

Steven Louie/NBC News

All the sights and sounds that accompany the sailors' work on board made memories that will last these families a lifetime. 

Steven Louie/NBC News

The American flag flies off the stern of the USS John C. Stennis in Pearl Harbor with the USS Arizona Memorial just behind.

Steven Louie/NBC News

An F-18 fighter jet sits atop the flight deck of the USS John C. Stennis.

By Mark Potter, Correspondent, NBC News

TUCSON, ARIZ. – On a helicopter inspection tour above the rugged mountains and vast desert in southern Arizona, Commander Jeffrey Self of U.S. Customs and Border Protection reflected on how much security has improved along the U.S.-Mexican border during his long career.

"After the vehicle barriers were built, and with the checkpoints going up, we're experiencing zero [undocumented immigrant] drive-throughs in an area where we were having 30, 40, 50 in a 24-hour period," he said, pointing to miles of vehicle barriers placed in the desert along the frontier.

U.S. Border Patrol has greatly reduced the number of cars and trucks loaded with people and drugs driving across the desert from Mexico into the United States. That, Self explained, has freed agents to focus their attention on immigrant and drug smugglers who walk across the border.  In the meantime, he added, authorities have also greatly reduced the number of hiking trails used by smugglers.

"In Arizona we have been very successful in increasing border security," Self said. "Over the course of many years now we've been resourced with tactical infrastructure, technology and personnel and they've been employed in a fashion that's gotten us greater results."

While conceding there are still many areas where drug and immigrant smugglers cross illegally into the U.S. -- often on private ranch land -- Self argued the threat has decreased dramatically and will continue to do so.

Mark Potter/NBC News

The U.S. border vehicle barrier used by authorities to stop trucks and cars from crossing the Mexican border in southern Arizona.

As the national debate over comprehensive immigration reform plays out, the question looms: just how secure is the U.S. border with Mexico? The answer appears to be mixed, with definite improvements nationwide and a downward trend in illegal immigration in most places – especially in the cities. But there are some areas, in rural Arizona and Texas, where residents insist the border is neither secure nor safe.

Gary Thrasher, a veterinarian and rancher in southern Arizona near Bisbee, says the rural border area where he works is actually less safe now than it was years ago, because of an increase in the number of armed drug and immigrant smugglers.

When the federal government increased security in the border cities, he said, it had the negative effect of forcing the smugglers to move to the large rural areas.

"The border statistically is securer than ever.  That means nothing,” he said.  “That's like saying we fixed this whole bucket, except for this hole down here.  You know it's still not going to hold water."

U.S. officials: look to the numbers 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano frequently travels to the Southwest border and has made appearances before Congress where she has touted the recent improvements in border security and argued for passage of a comprehensive immigration bill.

"Fewer people are trying to emigrate illegally into this country than in four decades,” she testified before a U.S. Senate committee earlier this year. “What I know is that apprehensions are low, because attempts are low. Drug seizures, contraband seizures, all the numbers that need to be up are up."

In the year 2000, agents along the length of the Southwest border reported detaining 1,643,679 immigrants for allegedly entering the country without proper documentation.  Twelve years later, in 2012, that number had plummeted to 356,873, a decrease of 78 percent.

"San Diego and the Mexican border used to be the most lawless, violent places across the face of the earth with thousands of cross-border migrants on a given day,” said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the former head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “We put in triple fencing and adequate Border Patrol and Coast Guard and it stopped."

Ranchers: rural border areas not secure

Critics of the administration's position on border security, however, say that while the overall apprehension numbers are down, they don't fully reflect the reality in areas where smugglers and immigrants still routinely make the illegal crossing into the United States from Mexico.

NBC News

An NBC hidden camera captures footage of border-crossers hiking across private U.S. ranch land in southern Arizona during late March.

On a small ranch near the border in southwestern Arizona, a mother of several children spoke under the condition of anonymity.  She fears what she described as an increase in drug and immigrant smugglers crossing her land by day and night.

"You're still having to pack a gun everywhere with you and make sure your kids can't go outside to play unless you are watching them." she said.  "The border is not secure. The Border Patrol doesn't have a very strong presence out here."

Texas police: a rise in immigrant smuggling

In the small town of San Juan, Texas, a few miles north of the Mexican border, Police Chief Juan Gonzalez toured some of the human stash houses his officers recently uncovered. They had been used to hide immigrants from all over the world who were smuggled across the border into the United States.

Gonzalez says his department has never dealt with as many undocumented immigrants as it encounters now. 

"In the past three years we've seen an increase.  And it's not a steady increase, it's a massive increase," he said.  "Too many people are getting through.  We've got too many holes in the border and we don't have enough manpower to make sure we secure the border."

About 75 miles north of the border, in Falfurrias, Texas, Benny Martinez, the chief deputy of the Brooks County Sheriff's Office, says his area is also deeply affected by a recent rise in illegal immigration. 

“The trending is going up,” he said.  “It hasn’t gone down at all, not here.”

Last year, officials and ranchers there found the bodies of 129 immigrants who died in the harsh terrain, presumably after crossing the border illegally.  Dozens are still unidentified and are buried in a local cemetery.  Some of the metal markers on the graves read, "Unknown Female" and "Unknown Remains."  One says, simply, "Bones."

Martinez does not believe the U.S.-Mexican border is at all secure in South Texas, given the rise in illegal immigration in Brooks County. 

"It's steady and I don't think it's going to go down, it's not going to happen anytime soon," he said.

PHOTOS: Border patrol faces surge in rural Texas border crossings

Ranchers like Linda Vickers, who lives just north of a Border Patrol highway checkpoint near Falfurrias, said she regularly sees, and often photographs, illegal immigrants cutting across her land as they try to evade the agents. 

“I’m seeing groups of 10, groups of 20 and I’m seeing them more often,” she said.

When asked about Obama administration claims that the border is more secure now, Vickers said that while it appears to be true elsewhere in the country, it’s not the case where she lives. 

“In the state of Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, the border is not secure and I don’t think you’ll find a person, a real person, to say it’s secure,” she said.

Border patrol: South Texas a problem area

In South Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley sector, immigrant apprehensions rose 65 percent from the years 2011 to 2012 -- from 59,243 to 97,762, according to U.S. Border Patrol -- bucking the national trend of falling immigration numbers. 

This year, statistics reveal the Rio Grande Valley apprehension numbers have climbed even further, rising 55 percent compared to this time in 2012. 

Federal agents believe it reflects a recent increase in people fleeing the poverty, drug gangs and violence in Central America.

Privately, some agents say that, despite their great success in making more apprehensions, thousands of immigrants crossing the border illegally in South Texas still slip past them.

A majority of people involved in the security debate agree that most of the U.S. cities along the border are now much safer than they used to be and have much lower crime rates, thanks to high fences, increased monitoring technology and thousands of Border Patrol and other federal agents deployed there.  

But McCaffrey says U.S. officials need to do more for the rural areas.

“You have to give the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection the dollars and the technology to protect the American frontier,” he said.  “We’ve got to do it.  We owe it to the American people.”

This story was originally published on Thu May 2, 2013 11:29 AM EDT

By Katy Tur, Correspondent, NBC News

ROXBURY, Mass. — The community of Roxbury had high hopes for its newest public school back in 2003. There were art studios, a dance room, even a theater equipped with cushy seating.

A pilot school for grades K-8, Orchard Gardens was built on grand expectations.

But the dream of a school founded in the arts, a school that would give back to the community as it bettered its children, never materialized.

Instead, the dance studio was used for storage and the orchestra's instruments were locked up and barely touched. 

The school was plagued by violence and disorder from the start, and by 2010 it was rank in the bottom five of all public schools in the state of Massachusetts.

That was when Andrew Bott — the sixth principal in seven years — showed up, and everything started to change.

“We got rid of the security guards,” said Bott, who reinvested all the money used for security infrastructure into the arts.

In a school notorious for its lack of discipline, where backpacks were prohibited for fear the students would use them to carry weapons, Bott’s bold decision to replace the security guards with art teachers was met with skepticism by those who also questioned why he would choose to lead the troubled school.  

“A lot of my colleagues really questioned the decision,” he said.  “A lot of people actually would say to me, ‘You realize that Orchard Gardens is a career killer? You know, you don't want to go to Orchard Gardens.’”

Share your Big Idea with NBC Nightly News! Your ideas may be featured online -- or on our broadcast.

But now, three years later, the school is almost unrecognizable. Brightly colored paintings, essays of achievement, and motivational posters line the halls. The dance studio has been resurrected, along with the band room, and an artists’ studio.

The end result? Orchard Gardens has one of the fastest student improvement rates statewide. And the students — once described as loud and unruly, have found their focus.

“We have our occasional, typical adolescent ... problems,” Bott said.  “But nothing that is out of the normal for any school.”

The school is far from perfect. Test scores are better, but still below average in many areas. Bott says they’re “far from done, but definitely on the right path.”

The students, he says, are evidence of that.

‘I can really have a future in this’

Eighth grader Keyvaughn Little said he’s come out of his shell since the school’s turnaround.

“I've been more open, and I've expressed myself more than I would have before the arts have came.”

His grades have improved, too. Keyvaughn says it’s because of the teachers — and new confidence stemming from art class.  

“There's no one particular way of doing something,” he said. “And art helps you like see that. So if you take that with you, and bring it on, it will actually help you see that in academics or anything else, there's not one specific way you have to do something.”

Keyvaughn has now been accepted to the competitive Boston Arts Academy, the city’s only public high school specializing in visual and performing arts.  

“All of the extra classes and the extra focus on it and the extra attention make you think that, ‘Hey, oh my gosh, I can really have a future in this, I don't have to go to a regular high school — I can go to art school,'” he said.

Chris Plunkett, who has taught visual arts at Orchard Gardens for the past three years, said the classes help develop trust between the faculty and students. During one particularly memorable project, he asked his eighth graders to write a memoir about a life experience and what they learned from it and then create a self-portrait.

“I couldn't believe how honest and candid they were, and how much I learned about them,” Plunkett said.  “I mean it was really, it was one of the most incredible things I've seen in eighth graders.”

Noting that kids need more than test prep, he added, it may have seemed “a little crazy” to get rid of the security guards to hire art teachers but “I definitely feel it was the right move in the end.”

VKontakt

Azamat Tazhayakov (left), Dias Kadyrbayev, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (right) in a photo taken in Times Square. The picture, which appeared on Tsarnaev's page on VKontakt, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, is believed to be from November 2012.

Three college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were accused Wednesday of removing evidence from his dorm room as new details about the case emerged in court papers.

Criminal complaints against the trio revealed that Tsarnaev cut his long hair after the April 15 attack but before the FBI released his photo and that he allegedly told friends a month earlier that he knew “how to make a bomb.”

The court papers also suggest that the 19-year-old suspect was practically blasé when one of the friends texted to say he looked like the man in the FBI photos of the bomb suspect.

Among his replies: ‘lol,” according to the complaints.

The complaints were filed against Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, who were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, and Robel Phillipos, who was charged with making false statements.

The three friends, who are all 19-years-old, allegedly went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room after the FBI photos came out April 18 and left with a backpack that contained fireworks tubes that had been emptied of their explosive powder, according to the documents.

The backpack was later tossed in the garbage, though the suspects’ gave conflicting statement about whether that happened before or after Tsarnaev had been publicly named as the bombing suspect following a night of bloody mayhem.

As the allegations against them were unveiled, Tsarnaev’s three friends appeared in Boston Federal Court Wednesday afternoon. None of the charges suggested they had prior knowledge of the dual bombings that killed three and wounded more than 200 near the finish line of the race.

FBI

This May 1, 2013 FBI handout image released in a criminal complaint, shows fireworks tubes found in a backpack that was disposed of by friends of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev — who are from Kazakhstan and were detained more than a week ago on immigration charges — did not seek bail and were ordered held until a May 14 hearing.

Phillipos is being held until a detention hearing Monday. As he was read his rights, Federal Judge Marianne Bowler admonished him, saying, “I suggest you pay attention to me rather than looking down.”

Outside the courthouse, Harlan Protass, a lawyer for Tazhayakov, said his client “has cooperated fully with the authorities and looks forward to the truth coming out in this case.”

Robert Stahl, a lawyer for Kadyrbayev, said the college sophomore "absolutely denies" allegations of a coverup and was “shocked and horrified” by the bombing. He said his client told investigators about ditching the items from the dorm room but “did not know those items were involved in a bombing.” 

Although only Tazhayakov is currently enrolled, all three men knew Tsarnaev from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

The narrative outlined in the court papers begins about a month ago when, according to Tazhayakov,  Tsarnaev told him and Kadyrbayev that he "knew how to make a bomb.”

Kadyrbayev last saw Tsarnaev on April 17, two days after the bombing, at his dorm room and noticed that he had given himself a short haircut. They chatted outside the dorm, the complaint said.

Little more than 24 hours later, the FBI released photos and video of two men wanted in the bombing. The suspects were not yet identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan.

At least two of the three friends thought one of the men in the pictures looked like Tsarnaev, and Kadyrbayev texted him to say so, the FBI said.

YouTube

This still image is taken from a YouTube video made by Robel Phillipos.

Tsarnaev fired off a flurry of texts, including, "lol," "you better not text me" and "come to my room and take whatever you want," the court papers said.

The trio then met at Tsarnaev's dorm room, where they learned he had already left and were let in by his roommate.

After watching a movie, they spotted a dark backpack containing seven red tubes of fireworks that had been emptied, and Kadyrbayev decided to take it, according to one of the complaints.

They also took a laptop – now turned over to the FBI, according to Kadyrbayev's attorney — because they didn't want to arouse the roommate's suspicions about the backpack, the document said.

After leaving the dorm, the three friends "started to freak out" because they realized Tsarnaev was wanted in the bombing, Phillipos said, according to the feds.

They then "collectively decided to throw the backpack and fireworks into the trash because they did not want Tsarnaev to get in trouble," Kadyrbayev told agents, according to the complaint.

Kadyrbayev allegedly put the items in a large trash bag and tossed it into a dumpster near his off-campus apartment.

The suspects' statements clashed on whether that happened the night of the April 18, before Tsarnaev was formally identified as the accused bomber, or the morning after – an important point if their defense is that they had no idea the items could be evidence.

Tsarnaev never returned to his dorm room. Authorities say that after the FBI put their pictures out, he and Tamerlan executed a campus police officer, stole a car at gunpoint and led police on a wild chase.

It ended with Tamerlan dead after a firefight and Dzhokhar captured in a boat in a Watertown, Mass., backyard. Dzhokhar, who was wounded, has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.

Law enforcement officials have told NBC News that Dzhokhar told them during questioning he and his brother wanted to defend Islam after the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Investigators have been trying to determine if pair – ethnic Chechens who had lived in the U.S. for more than a decade — they received assistance from anyone else in the U.S. or abroad.

NBC News' James Novogrod contributed to this report

Related:

• Tzarnaev's pal drove with 'Terrorista #1' novelty plate, classmate says
• From 'Lol' to bomb boasts: New details from Boston court papers
• Boston carjack victim: 'God was with me'
• Tsarnaev's best defense: Judy Clarke, who keeps clients off death row
• American widow of bombing suspect wants body released to Russian family

Slideshow: Boston bombings

/

Heightened security, empty streets, and memorials mark the the days after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Launch slideshow

This story was originally published on Wed May 1, 2013 6:36 PM EDT

By Ron Allen, Correspondent, NBC News

ATLANTA -- Friendship Baptist Church is making a monumental decision as it celebrates its 151-year anniversary: It's one of two historic churches standing in the path of a new $1 billion domed football stadium that the Atlanta Falcons and the city want to build.

Determined to keep the NFL team downtown, Atlanta is negotiating with Friendship Baptist to move.

"I don't think [money] should even enter our decision-making. I really don't," said parishioner Juanita Jones Abernathy, whose late husband was a confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "It's a landmark. I think it should remain. It's been there for generations, and it needs to be there for generations to come."

For Abernathy, moving the church would be a mistake, "because that's our history," she said. "That's who we are."

'I'm going to use all my power as mayor'

The first offer was about $10 million, or about 10 times the appraised market value of the church and its land.

"It is something that we are looking at very carefully and prayerfully because we understand that this, in a way, is a once-in-a-lifetime decision," said Friendship Baptist board leader Lloyd Hawk, who has been a member for about five decades. 

When asked about the odds of selling or staying, Hawk responded, "I think the congregation right now is very open to possibilities and opportunities in discussion." 

Leaders at the other church being asked to move, Mount Vernon Baptist, chose not to answer questions about their negotiations.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he's moving forward while listening to what the Friendship congregation asks and has to say. If both churches refuse to move, there is an alternative, though less desirable, site nearby.

"I'm going to use all of my power as mayor to make sure that Friendship Baptist Church locates just a short distance from where we are today. And they will be a stronger church, a stronger organization that is much more capable because of the millions of dollars that we are going to pay for that church," Reed said.

Atlanta Falcons team owner Arthur Blank declined an on-camera interview with NBC News. But in an email he echoed Reed, saying, "No one is interested in forcing the church off its property."

Blank also promised to invest $15 million in the communities near the new stadium. That is in addition to the hundreds of millions Blank say his family's foundation has invested or given to Greater Atlanta since the Georgia Dome was first built some 20 years ago. A bigger, brand-new stadium would bring both prestige and money, in addition to making Atlanta an attractive host city for the Super Bowl. 

Reed insists the churches aren't being pressured. 

"I've taken eminent domain off the table, so there's no threat or intimidation occurring here," Reed said. "If the majority of the members of Friendship don't want to move, the only thing you're going to hear from me is respect."

'I will follow them where they go'

After church on a recent Sunday morning, many parishioners at Friendship Baptist said they thought moving was inevitable.

"My heart said 'no,' but you've got progress. And progress is going to prevail no matter what," said Larry Dozier, a member for 25 years.

"I don't think it’s a trade-off situation," church-goer Pearl Logan said. "I think it's accommodating what Atlanta needs."

Member James Hilliard summed it up this way: "It will be sad, but I will follow them where they go."

Both congregations will make decisions in the coming week, with much thought, reflection and a lot of prayer.

By John Yang, Correspondent, NBC News

DETROIT -- It's a scene that fits most people's image of Silicon Valley, not the Motor City: young engineers taking a break with a ping pong game, a business meeting in bean bag chairs, and rows and rows of 20-somethings intently studying computer code on screens.

The setting is two floors of downtown Detroit's Madison Building, which was built in 1917 -- just four years after Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line. It's now home to more than two dozen high-tech start-ups backed by two venture capital firms.  

"The tipping point is here," declared Jacob Cohen, vice president of Detroit Venture Partners. The firm, whose backers include Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, has invested more than $11 million.

"The entrepreneurs of Michigan are now staying in Detroit and they want to be part of this story," Cohen said.

'Detroit has given us opportunities'

After getting his master's degree at MIT, Michigan-native Paul Glomski moved to Detroit to start his company, Detroit Labs, which makes smartphone apps. Clients include GM and Domino's Pizza. In less than two years, the workforce has grown from four to 32--and is expected to hit 60 later this year. The company has already outgrown its workspace and is moving to a new location.

Glomski doesn't think he would have had the same success somewhere else.

"We're not about the sort of big, fancy announcements about what our start-up's going to do. We just go and make stuff and clients really like that," he said. "We definitely have that Midwest work ethic."

The potential for growth is what prompted Harvard classmates Jay Gierak and Nathan Labent to move their website from San Francisco, where they started it, to Detroit, near the suburbs where the pair grew up.

The company, which collects word-of-mouth recommendations for professional services like lawyers and accountants, got $2.5 million from Detroit Venture Partners.

"Detroit has given us opportunities that San Francisco never really presented," said Labent. "Here we immediately stand out and it's been a lot easier than it would have been."

Gierak added, "There's a ton of talent and there's not a lot of web companies like us competing for their services."

Beyond the traditional auto industry 

Entrepreneurship and new technology haven't forsaken Detroit's mainstay auto industry. Albert Lam, a former top executive of England's Lotus Cars, hopes to turn around four years of setbacks and begin making an electric car in the Detroit area. His company bears the same name -- Detroit Electric -- as a company that made electric vehicles in the first half of the 20th century. Among the owners of those Detroit Electric models: Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Mamie Eisenhower.

Another new company with an old name is hoping to play on the boast "Made in Detroit" with watches and bicycles. Shinola -- the old shoeshine polish brand immortalized in the unprintable World War II-era aphorism -- has set up shop in the former General Motors Research Laboratory, where engineers once designed such iconic cars as the Corvette.

It's owned by Bedrock Manufacturing, a private equity and venture capital firm backed by Tom Kartsotis, founder of the watch and clothing company, Fossil.

Bedrock CEO Heath Carr said that when they looked for factory sites, "Detroit was at the top of the list because of manufacturing, it's history, it's heritage in the auto industry."

The company's already provided second chances for its workers.

Watch assembly line leader Willie J. Holley III studied engineering in college and was working as a security guard for the building as Shinola was setting up shop. He was curious about what they were doing -- and ended up getting hired.

"Everything is still fresh, everything is still being put into place," he said. "And being a part of something like that is just amazing."

Five years ago, Lakishka Raybon lost her auto industry job to automation and lost her home as a result. After that, she worked with Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes, but now works on Shinola's watch assembly line. She feels confident this job will be more secure.

"I don't think a machine can do what we do," she said. "Machines don't have passion."

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images file

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has ordered a broad review of how the U.S. handled information before the Boston Marathon bombing.

The nation's top intelligence official has ordered a review of the Boston Marathon bombing case amid questions about whether the U.S. should have known one of the suspects posed a threat.

Retired Gen. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has asked the inspector general who oversees the intelligence community to take a broad look at various agencies' handling of information they received long before the bombing.

“Based on what I've seen so far, the FBI performed its duties, Department of Homeland Security did what it was supposed to be doing, but this is hard stuff,'' President Obama said at a Tuesday news conference.

In 2011, Russia asked the U.S. to check into Tamerlan Tsarnaev because they suspected he was becoming radicalized. The FBI interviewed him but found no sign of terrorist activity.

His name and the name of his mother were put into intelligence databases that track possible terrorist ties, and U.S. agents were "pinged" when Tsarnaev flew last year to Russia, a trip that included time in the militant outpost of Dagestan.

Less than a year after he returned to the U.S., the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarneav, planted two bombs near the finish line of the April 15 marathon, killing three and wounding more than 200 more people, authorities said.

Since then, there's been debate about whether Russia gave the U.S. enough information about Tsarnaev and whether the FBI and CIA should have been more thorough in vetting Tsarnaev.

“It’s not as if the FBI did nothing,” Obama said. “They not only investigated the older brother, they interviewed him.”Obama said that while there were “no signs” of terrorist tendencies then, investigators want to know if something happened later to trigger Tsarnaev’s radicalization and what the U.S. can do to detect such shifts in the future.

He said Russia has been “very cooperative” since the attack, but also noted that “old habits die hard” and that some suspicion between between the two countries’ intelligence agencies, dating back decades, has survived.

He portrayed the review as an effort to improve intelligence, not find fault with anyone.

“What Director Clapper is doing is standard procedure around here,” Obama said.

Still, one U.S. counter-terrorism official said some in the intelligence community are "furious" about Clapper's probe, because it suggests that mistakes were made.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during a shootout with police. His brother was arrested after a manhunt that shut down Boston for a day and has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.

Related:

• Adding up the financial costs of the Boston bombings
• Could Boston bombing suspect avoid the death penalty?

Cambridge Police Dept.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is seen in a booking photo from a 2009 arrest in Cambridge, Mass.

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:54 AM EDT

Prosecutors and lawyers for surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have begun very early discussions about a possible deal, in which he would cooperate in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, legal sources said Monday.

As details of the nascent negotiations emerged, a lawyer who has helped other high-profile suspects cut deals that kept them out of the execution chamber got permission to join Tsarnaev's defense team.

Attorney Judy Clarke's past clients have included Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and, more recently, Jared Loughner, who was spared facing the death penalty for the Tucson, Ariz., shooting that nearly killed former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011.

Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction for the April 15 bombing that killed three and wounded 176 in Boston and could face the death penalty.

The suspect's older brother and accused accomplice, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a firefight with police, and investigators are trying to determine if anyone else was involved.

Law enforcement officials said they took a DNA sample Monday from Tamerlan's wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, to compare to female DNA found on a piece of pressure cooker used to make one of the bombs.

The wife has said she had no inkling of her husband's plans, and officials cautioned that the DNA on the cooker could have come from a worker at the store where it was purchased.

AP Photo/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young

Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan (left) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The FBI is also looking into whether the older brother met with two men considered radical Muslims during a 2012 trip to the Russian republic of Dagestan. Both men — William Plotnikov and Makmud Nidal — were killed last year in Russian operations.

The spotlight has also been trained on the Tsarnaevs' mother, Zubeidat, who was caught on a Russian wiretap talking to Tamerlan about jihad, U.S. officials said.

That conversation led the Russians to ask the FBI to look into Tamerlan in 2011. He and his mother were put into a U.S. terrorism database, but no further action was taken.

While some members of Congress have faulted the Russians for not giving the U.S. more explicit details about the mother, officials in Washington said she spoke so generally about jihad that it's not likely the information would have influenced the outcome of the 2011 probe.

Before he was given a Miranda warning and stopped talking, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that he and his brother were motivated by religion but acted alone, without help from any overseas terrorist organization.

But law enforcement officials believe someone may have carried items out of his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth a few days after the bombings and they searched local landfills for them. So far nothing has turned up, but investigators are still looking in garbage containers.

Three federal public defenders were appointed to represent Tsarnaev, and they asked that two death penalty specialists be added to the team. The court approved Clarke but said the request for a second lawyer, David Bruck of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, was premature since Tsarnaev has not been indicted yet.

Wounded by police during his capture,Tsarnaev was transferred last week from a private Boston hospital to a federal medical prison in central Massachusetts.

Related:

• Russians to US: Bombing suspect, mom discussed jihad
• Congressman: Bombing suspects may have had foreign help

with Kim Cornett and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News

Boston Marathon spectators who lost limbs in the bombings stand to benefit from years of advances in prosthetic medicine made at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Calvin Todd, 26, is among those who have discovered a new life with the help of doctors at Walter Reed. The army medic was on foot patrol in Afghanistan in October 2012 when he stepped on an explosive.

“I stepped on a secondary and lost my lower left leg,” Todd said of the injury, which years ago might have immobilized him for good.

He is one of nearly 1,600 service members to lose limbs in combat since the start of the war in Afghanistan. Six months after his injury, Todd said he is “almost back to new,” and has even started running and playing lacrosse again.

 “I’ve got numerous prosthetics,” Todd said. “I’ve probably got four or five different feet for different activities. I got one for ice skating. I got a running leg. You know, my everyday foot. I got a foot for hiking.”

The traumatic battlefield injuries sustained by troops on the frontlines have helped change the future for all amputees, doctors at Walter Reed said.

“We have plenty of examples from our injured service members who have not only survived, you know, extraordinary blast injuries but have thrived from them,” said Col. Paul Pasquina, chair of the center’s department of rehabilitation medicine. “And there’s no reason to think that the victims in Boston won’t do the same.”

Whether it is bionic hands, knees, ankles, or feet, the advances at Walter Reed have been born of a decade of brutal conflict in which explosions have claimed lives and mangled limbs. While recovery often remains a painful process, the prospect for patients who have lost arms or legs is better than ever.

“While there have been significant advances in rehabilitation medicine and prosthetic technology over the last decade, that’s not to say recovery from a major limb loss is not extremely challenging, but there’s great hope,” Pasquina said. “And people are now able to achieve things that they weren’t able to achieve in the past.”

Among those who have overcome seemingly insuperable odds is Travis Mills, one of five quadruple amputees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A service member in the 82nd Airborne Division, Mills was on a walking patrol on April 10, 2012, when an improvised explosive device went off as he stopped for a break.

“I sat in the wrong spot,” Mills said. “And an IED went off.”

It was Mills’ third tour in Afghanistan. He had a wife and baby daughter not even a year old at home. Now he can help the 18-month-old girl brush her teeth in the morning.

“My daughter, that’s my biggest support,” Mills said. “The biggest thing I work for is to go every day to get better so I can be the best dad I can be for her.”

The cost of prosthetics can run from a few thousand dollars to an estimated tens of thousands and beyond. And while it’s unclear whether insurance will cover these types of prosthetics for the marathon victims, they have more options than ever.

“I’m very fortunate that the research that has been done has benefited myself due to my injuries,” Mills said. “I know that I would’ve got hurt like I did 10 years ago — I probably wouldn’t have made it off the battlefield.”

Whether the injured come from battlefields halfway around the world or a sidewalk on Boylston Street, traumatic wounds are often accompanied by deeper scars, said Dr. Harold Wain, chief of Walter Reed’s psychiatry consultation liaison service.

“They need to have a good perspective of who they are. They can feel good about themselves. They have to accept themselves,” Wain said.

“We’re constantly learning. There are new advances going on in prosthetics, in treatment, in medications,” Wain said. “The goal is to get them back as whole, as quickly as possible, and to reinforce them for their assets rather than just looking at their liabilities.”

For Calvin Todd, he only needs to look to his side for inspiration. While the landscape of Afghanistan is a long way from Massachusetts, this war veteran knows what the Boston victims have to overcome and what they have to look forward to.

“There’s a lot you can do. The sky’s the limit,” Todd said. “You can do anything you want to do, just work for it."

While the possible construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has made for contentious disagreements from the halls of Congress to ranches in Nebraska, the real environmental debate begins in a place most Americans have never heard of.

Nearly 700 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border sits Fort McMurray, Alberta, the unofficial capital of oil sands country, and the heart of the Keystone controversy.

Canada's oil reserves rank third largest in the world and sit beneath the vast Alberta forest. Oil mining companies like Shell, Syncrude and Suncor surround the town. They are big industrial operations in an even bigger forest.

Oil here is not the liquid black gold you think of in Texas or Oklahoma or the Gulf of Mexico.  It is a tar-like substance called bitumen.  It is excavated by mining or steam assisted drilling, where it is literally melted a quarter mile beneath the earth.  This oil is so heavy it must be upgraded or diluted before it can transported.

At Shell's Jackpine Mine in the oil sands, the company digs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Twenty-eight trucks burning 45 gallons of diesel fuel an hour transport the goods once lifted from the ground.

The whole operation is a carbon intensive process sending more global warming gases into the atmosphere. How much depends on your point of view. The oil industry downplays the impact, but opponents claim it is up to 37 percent more carbon intensive to produce a barrel of crude from oil sands.

The State Department, in its review of Keystone, says the oil from this area produces 17 percent more greenhouse gasses than conventional crude.  Those emissions are the heart of the environmental debate in Alberta, and a big reason why opponents call this "dirty oil."

Jeff Mcintosh / AP file

This Sept. 19, 2011 aerial photo shows an oil sands mine facility near Fort McMurray, in Alberta, Canada.

The oil sands industry here plans to more than double its production by 2030. Shell Vice President Tom Purves explains, "We have a massive resource here that's oil from a country that's very stable, it's a democratic country. We're able to transport this oil on pipelines safely to the US and other parts of the world, other parts of North America. And I think we'll be using fossil fuels for a long time - this will be an important part of it."

Opponents say this is not about stopping development. They realize this is a natural resource crucial to Canada's future. For them, it's about the pace, the scale and how it adds to Canada's carbon footprint. They worry approval of the Keystone pipeline will turbo-charge growth.

Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation understands the booming industry brings modern conveniences. It also brings, she says, modern problems threatening the forest and wildlife that are still part of the First Nations culture and have been for centuries.

"There has to be a balance, and respect for human - fundamental human rights and the rights to human subsistence and survivals. What we're seeing is that balance is out of whack here in Alberta. I think we're seeing development take precedence over the preservation of peoples and people's basic right to human survival," she said.

At the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank, the focus is about carbon dioxide.  If things continue the way they are, says Jennifer Grant, Pembina's Oil Sands director, Canada will not meet its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Right now between 2005 and 2020, we're expecting 67 million tons of reductions from other sectors in Canada's economy.  During that same timeframe we're expected to see 72 million tons oil sands greenhouse gas emissions growth," Grant said.

Todd Korol / REUTERS file

Oil, steam and natural gas pipelines run through the forest at the Cenovus Foster Creek SAGD oil sands operations near Cold Lake, Alberta, in a July 9, 2012, photo.

Aware of the concerns in Canada and in the U.S. about climate change, the industry is quick to point out it has reduced carbon emissions intensity – that is, the emissions created per barrel – 26 percent from 1990 to 2009. But overall emissions are still growing because of increases in production. Shell hopes to have the ability to capture some of the carbon emissions at one of its facilities by 2015.

But there is no perfect way to extract oil. Cenovus, a Canadian company which drills for oil, uses natural gas to make steam. Al Reid, vice president of Cenovus' Christina Lake operation, says reducing the amount of natural gas it burns shrinks the carbon footprint and helps the bottom line. But he admits there's only so much they can do.

"With today's technology, we will not get emissions down to zero. Can we continue to decrease them? I think that's very possible and that's something that we work on every single day," he said. "And over time there may be a technology that allows us to do that but we don't have that technology today."

There's no question the debate in the U.S. over Keystone is having an impact in Canada. This month, Alberta's government floated the idea of raising its price on carbon to force the industry to do more to reduce emissions. Will that be enough to convince President Barack Obama to approve a pipeline that carries oil with a bigger carbon footprint?

It's not just the environment. There are issues of energy security and economic impact. The State Department says the extension would provide 3,900 construction jobs over a  1 to 2 year period  and another 38,200 positions associated with the construction over the same time frame. Once built it says the pipeline would create 35 permanent jobs and 15 temporary ones, according to the government study released last month. It is multifaceted issue that will dominate discussion for months to come.