New Orleans officials and cultural advocates say the Mother's Day parade shootings that left 20 people injured won't spell the end of second-line parades, the local tradition that celebrates the city and its people.

Police this week arrested two brothers and charged them with 20 counts each of attempted second-degree murder. They're accused of firing into a second-line parade, scattering the crowd and wounding 19 with gunfire. One person was hurt fleeing the chaos.

In a second-line parade, watchers of a street procession of brass band musicians and elaborately clad marchers often join in, forming a "second line" of marchers.

Second-line parades have been around for generations as part of Mardi Gras and other holiday celebrations, and are perhaps best known as a feature of the city's famed jazz funerals.

Last weekend's Mother's Day march was sponsored by the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and president Edward Buckner said they will re-stage it June 1 through the same neighborhood in New Orleans' 7th Ward. They also plan to return next Mother's Day, he said.

Buckner said the kind of violence that happened May 12 can't be allowed to destroy such a unique tradition.

"These parades are for the people of New Orleans," he said at a rally held at the shooting site. "We won't let the streets beat us."

Fred Johnson, president of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club, said he fully supports the Big 7's plans.

"I would do the same thing," he said. "Organizers of the Boston Marathon said they plan to put on next year's marathon bigger and stronger. We can't succumb to these types of actions. We can't allow our freedoms in a city to get taken over by any kind of terrorist, local or otherwise."

Johnson rejected the notion of doing away with the parades.

"You can't hold the Big 7 hostage because of what someone else did," he said. "If a shooting happens at a carnival parade, no one is saying to end those. Let's be fair and square across the board. Eradicating a second line would be like me saying we won't have Rex on carnival. That's just not gonna happen. People come here from all over the world to embrace the city and the music played in the spirit of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong."

Second-line parades have also been featured in major motion pictures. One such procession in the French Quarter shows up in early segments of the 1973 James Bond film "Live and Let Die."

"Second lines are an amazing part of our culture and we support them," Mayor Mitch Landrieu has said.

Bruce Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University, said any suggestion that second lines attract violence is invalid, as well.

"The reason occasional violence occurs is because of the crowd situation," Raeburn said. "The crowd usually serves as cover for those who want to do violence the same as with Mardi Gras or the Bayou Classic.

"It's the invaders to these events, the people who show up with guns, who use the second line as an opportunity to settle some scores. Those gunmen took out the hate they felt for society on the people at the second line. The second line is the victim here. Don't blame the victim."

In custody for last week's shooting are 24-year-old Shawn Scott and 19-year-old Akein Scott. Each is being held on $10 million bond. Five others were arrested as accessories to the alleged crimes for allegedly helping the suspects avoid capture.

Motives for the shootings have not been given, but police said the shootings were believed to be drug-related and that the Scott brothers are thought to be members of a gang called the Frenchmen and Derbigny Boys.

Authorities say a 6-year-old boy died after he was kicked in the throat by a pony on a south-central Pennsylvania farm.

Police in Lancaster County tell the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era that the boy was playing with other children in a New Holland pasture on Thursday morning.

Lt. Jonathan Heisse says the boy approached a pony from behind and the animal became startled and kicked the child in the throat, leaving him unable to breathe.

Emergency responders from New Holland Ambulance and Ephrata Community Hospital were called and the boy was airlifted to Hershey Medical Center, where Heisse says he died Friday.

Heisse declined to release the name of the child but said he lives "outside the area."

A report released by the Organization of American States encouraged “flexibility” in how the drug war is carried out, including considering the legalization of marijuana.    

Authorities say a 6-year-old boy died after he was kicked in the throat by a pony on a south-central Pennsylvania farm.

Police in Lancaster County tell the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era (http://bit.ly/19HVGaI ) that the boy was playing with other children in a New Holland pasture on Thursday morning.

Lt. Jonathan Heisse says the boy approached a pony from behind and the animal became startled and kicked the child in the throat, leaving him unable to breathe.

Emergency responders from New Holland Ambulance and Ephrata Community Hospital were called and the boy was airlifted to Hershey Medical Center, where Heisse says he died Friday.

Heisse declined to release the name of the child but said he lives "outside the area."

___

Information from: Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era , http://lancasteronline.com

With its ranks deeply divided, the Boy Scouts of America is asking its local leaders from across the country to decide whether its contentious membership policy should be overhauled so that openly gay boys can participate in Scout units.

The proposal to be put before the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA's National Council on Thursday, at a meeting in Grapevine, Texas, would retain the Scouts' long-standing ban on gays serving in adult leadership positions.

Nonetheless, some conservatives within and outside the BSA community have denounced the proposal, saying the Scouts' traditions would be undermined by the presence of openly gay youth. There have been warnings of mass defections if the ban is even partially lifted.

From the other flank, gay-rights supporters and some Scout leaders from politically liberal areas have welcomed the proposed change as a positive first step, but are calling on the BSA to go further and lift the ban on gay adults as well.

The Scouts' national spokesman, Deron Smith, said the policy toward gays had become "the most complex and challenging issue" facing the BSA at a time when it is struggling to stem a steady drop in membership.

"Ultimately we can't anticipate how people will vote but we do know that the result will not match everyone's personal preference," Smith said in an e-mail.

In January, the BSA floated a plan to give sponsors of local Scout units the option of admitting gays as both youth members and adult leaders or continuing to exclude them. However, it changed course, in part because of surveys sent out starting in February to members of the Scouting community.

Of the more than 200,000 leaders, parents and youth members who responded, 61 percent supported the current policy of excluding gays, while 34 percent opposed it.

Those findings contrasted with a Washington Post-ABC News national poll earlier this month. It said 63 percent of respondents favored letting openly gay youth be Scouts, and 56 percent favored lifting the ban on gay adults.

Over the past several weeks, numerous public events have been staged by advocacy groups on different sides of the debate.

A group called Scouts for Equality has organized rallies in several cities aimed at urging local BSA councils to support an end to the ban on gay youth. Rallies opposing any easing of the ban, for youth or adults, have been organized by a group called OnMyHonor.net, which claims the pending proposal "requires open homosexuality in the Boy Scouts."

Both groups plan to have their leaders and supporters on hand in Grapevine as the vote takes place.

Among those heading to Grapevine to lobby for an easing of the ban are Tracie Felker and her 16-year-old son, Pascal Tessier, who, though openly gay, is on track to become an Eagle Scout as a member of Boy Scout Troop 52 in Chevy Chase, Md.

"We are absolutely dedicated to restoring integrity to Boy Scouting and reinvigorating the program," Felker said. "That can only be done by removing the stain of discrimination."

Passions also run deep on the other side, as evidenced by a live online event titled "Stand With Scouts Sunday" presented May 5 by the conservative Family Research Council. The council opposes lifting the ban on gay youth, saying such a change "will dramatically alter the culture and moral landscape of America."

Among the participants was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who lauded the Scouts' tradition of character-building.

"For pop culture to come in and try to tear that up because this happens to be the flavor of the month ... that is just not appropriate," Perry said. "Frankly I hope the American people stand up and say, `Not on my watch."'

Also appearing on the webcast was Jeremy Miller, a Scout leader from Ohio who said the proposed change "will open the door to boy-on-boy sexual contact, bullying and older Scouts being predators on younger scouts."

The BSA's national leadership has rejected such warnings as ill-founded. "The BSA makes no connection between the sexual abuse or victimization of a child and homosexuality," a new background document says. "The BSA takes strong exception to this assertion."

Of the more than 100,000 Scouting units in the U.S., 70 percent are chartered by religious institutions. While these sponsors include liberal churches opposed to any ban on gays, some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative denominations that have supported the broad ban -- notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.

Knowing these churches oppose scouting roles for gay adults, the BSA leadership hopes they will be willing to back the easing of the ban on gay youth. As part of this effort, the BSA is emphasizing that sexual conduct by any Scout -- straight or gay -- would be considered unacceptable.

"We are unaware of any major religious chartered organization that believes a youth member simply stating he or she is attracted to the same sex, but not engaging in sexual activity, should make him or her unwelcome in their congregation," the Scouts say in their new background document.

Southern Baptist leaders were outspoken earlier this year in opposing the tentative plan to let Scout units decide for themselves if they wanted to accept gays as adult leaders.

Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, said the new proposal "is more acceptable to those who hold a biblical form of morality," but he nonetheless favors its defeat.

"A No vote keeps the current policy in place, an outcome we would overwhelmingly support," Page told Baptist Press, the SBC's official news agency.

Baptist Press reported that the Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., was considering ending a nearly 75-year sponsorship of a Boy Scout troop if the policy change prevails. The church's senior pastor, Ernest Easley, echoed warnings from other Southern Baptist leaders that any BSA accommodation of gays might prompt defections and trigger an expansion of the SBC's own youth group for boys, the Royal Ambassadors. According to BSA figures, Baptist churches sponsor Scout units with about 108,000 youth members.

Leaders of some smaller conservative denominations -- including the Assemblies of God and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod -- have signed a statement opposing the proposal to accept gay youth.

Some larger sponsors have either endorsed the proposal, or -- in the case of the United Methodist Church and Catholic Church -- declined to specify a position. The National Catholic Committee on Scouting issued a statement describing the membership debate as "difficult and sensitive" but stopping short of any explicit recommendation for how Catholic delegates to the BSA meeting should vote.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced in April that it supports the new proposal, saying the BSA made a good-faith effort to address a complex issue. The Mormons sponsor more Scout units than any other organization, serving about 430,000 of the 2.6 million youth in Scouting.

The United Methodists are the second-largest sponsor, serving about 363,000 youth members; the Catholic Church is No. 3, with a youth membership of about 273,000.

Several regional Scout councils already have declared their position on the membership proposal.

In Tennessee, the Nashville-based Middle Tennessee Council and Jackson-based West Tennessee Area Council said they oppose the proposed change and support the current broad ban on gay youth and adults.

"We are continuing to uphold the standards, beliefs and traditions Scouting has held for over 100 years," said Lee Beaman, board president of the Middle Tennessee Council, which says it serves 35,000 youth and adults.

The day after that announcement, Bill Moser, a longtime Scout leader in Clarksville, Tenn., announced his resignation, saying he couldn't support a policy that would force openly gay youth out of Scouting when they turned 18.

The Greater New York Councils, which serve about 43,000 Scouts in New York City, is supporting the proposal to accept gay youths, calling it "a positive step forward." It is among the councils urging the Scouts to also accept gays as adult leaders.

The Los Angeles Area Council said it follows a nondiscrimination policy that extends to sexual orientation and it proposed that the BSA adopt a similar policy nationwide, opening its ranks to openly gay adults as well as youth.

However, the BSA leadership says no such alternative proposals will be put to a vote at the Grapevine meeting -- only the single proposal to lift the ban on gay youth.

If the proposal is approved, the new policy would take effect on Jan. 1, 2014. A task force already has been created to oversee its implementation.

New Orleans officials and cultural advocates say the Mother's Day parade shootings that left 20 people injured won't spell the end of second-line parades, the local tradition that celebrates the city and its people.

Police this week arrested two brothers and charged them with 20 counts each of attempted second-degree murder. They're accused of firing into a second line, scattering the crowd and wounding 19 with gunfire. One person was hurt fleeing.

In a second-line parade, watchers of a street procession of brass band musicians and elaborately clad marchers often join in, forming a second line of marchers.

Second-line parades have been around for generations as part of Mardi Gras and other holiday celebrations, and are perhaps best known as a feature of the city's famed jazz funerals.

With its ranks deeply divided, the Boy Scouts of America is asking its local leaders from across the country to decide whether its contentious membership policy should be overhauled so that openly gay boys can participate in Scout units.

The proposal to be put before the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA's National Council on Thursday, at a meeting in Texas, would retain a ban on gays serving in adult leadership positions.

Nonetheless, some conservatives within and outside the BSA community oppose the proposal. There have been warnings of mass defections if the ban is even partially lifted.

Gay-rights supporters, including some Scout leaders, have welcomed the proposed change as a positive first step, but want the BSA to lift the ban on gay adults as well.

Purple wildflowers sprout in abundance around the bright-yellow pipe, one of several jutting from the sandy soil in this unassuming patch of grass and mud. A dirty hose runs from the pipe to an idling truck and into a large tank labeled, "NON-POTABLE WATER."

This is the former Hadnot Point fuel farm, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune's main fuel depot until it was ordered closed in the 1980s. At one point, a layer of gasoline 15 feet thick floated atop the groundwater here, and this "fluid vapor recovery" truck is part of the continuing effort to remove it.

"He's skimming that contaminate out of that well, into this tank," civilian Bob Lowder, head of environmental quality for the base, said during a recent tour. "We'll take that off for recondition or disposal, as appropriate."

The coastal base is the site of what's considered the worst case of drinking-water contamination in the nation's history. But the Marines stress that that's just what it is — history.

Of the more than 600 polluted sites scattered about the 170-square-mile base, about five dozen remain to be addressed. ABC Cleaners — the offsite business that dumped cancer-causing solvents into the Lejeune water table — stands vacant, the paint flaking from its rotting clapboards.

Wells tainted with gasoline, pesticides and toxic degreasers have been isolated, and technicians test the water from the base's treatment plants monthly. Marine families stationed at Lejeune enjoy what Lowder proudly describes as "the safest and most tested drinking water that they can find."

"We probably have the most aggressive sampling regime for our drinking water than anybody else in the nation," he says. "Maybe in the world."

The worst of the contamination occurred during the height of the Cold War. But records suggest that toxic substances began leaking — or were being intentionally dumped — into the ground almost immediately after the Department of War carved a spot for the 1st Marine Division out of the coastal pine forest at the mouth of the New River in late 1941.

Workers say there were no guidelines for disposing of chemicals on the base until the mid-1980s. A building once used as storage the toxic insecticide DDT later housed a day care and nursery; PCB-laden transformer oil was routinely spread on roads to keep down the dust.

Researchers believe two of the most serious pollutants — trichlorethylene and percholoroethylene — first exceeded today's maximum allowable levels in the groundwater in the early 1950s, about the time the U.S. was winding down the Korean War.

At least one measurement taken in 1982 found levels of TCE — even then widely banned as toxic to humans — of 1,400 parts per billion in the base's drinking water supply. That is five times the levels discovered around the same time in Woburn, Mass., scene of a childhood leukemia cluster recounted in the book and movie "A Civil Action."

ABC Cleaners turned out to be the primary source of the TCE and PCE contamination in the well water provided to Tarawa Terrace, a military housing development. But subsequent testing revealed even more extensive pollution from an outdated, poorly maintained fuel farm in the Hadnot Point area, where the Naval hospital and housing for most of the enlisted men and their families were located.

A June 1980 facilities survey found a general state of decay at the aging Hadnot Point fuel farm — the result of decades of poor maintenance and "insufficient funding."

"Because of their age," the study concluded, "it is expected all the tank valves leak." As late as spring 1988, the underground tanks at Hadnot Point were leaking about 1,500 gallons of fuel a month — a total of more than 1.1 million gallons, by some estimates.

In 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added the base to its National Priorities List.

Since then, contractors have dug up dozens of steel drums and underground storage tanks, removed spent ordnance and hauled off tons of contaminated soil. Elaborate rigs scattered about Lejeune are sucking up and filtering tainted water.

At the former site of Lot 203 — a 46-acre storage area and dump from which TCE, PCE, PCBs and the pesticide DDT are believed to have leaked into Hadnot Point water wells — a large, white tower looms over a corrugated building. Groundwater pumped to the top is allowed to trickle down, volatilizing contaminates, before passing through massive tanks of activated carbon, being tested for acidity and finally discharged into nearby Wallace Creek.

In the shadow of a gleaming, aboveground fuel depot at Hadnot Point, a "sparging well" pumps air into the ground to force volatile gases to the surface, where they can be safely burned off. Another technique known as "biopulsing" involves pumping oxygen underground to help microorganisms naturally break down the contaminates.

Meanwhile, the EPA maintains a smaller pump-and-treat at the entrance to Tarawa Terrace, across busy Highway 24 from the former dry cleaner.

Today, a row of chin-up bars stands beside a grassy mound topped with a manhole cover bearing the words, "WARNING DO NOT FILL." This is the only visible reminder of Hadnot Point Well No. 602, in which one 1984 test found levels of the carcinogenic gasoline additive benzene at 76 times the allowable federal limit.

Lowder says the base has about 60 active wells drawing groundwater from the Castle Hayne aquifer, and that each is tested twice annually. A wellhead management plan guarantees a 1,000-foot buffer around all affected sites, he says.

Nearly three decades after the first drinking wells were ordered shut, Lowder says the end is in sight.

"The Navy anticipates we'll have remedy in place by the year 2014," he says. "So, for the most part, we're on the downswing."

___

Online:

Camp Lejeune Community Involvement Program https://portal.navfac.navy.mil/portal/page/portal/navfac/navfac_ww_pp/navfac_hq_pp/navfac_env_pp/env_restoration_installations/lant/midlant/lejeune/outreach

___

AP Writer Martha Waggoner in Raleigh also contributed to this report. Breed, a national writer, reported from Camp Lejeune.

Follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/(hash)!/AllenGBreed and http://twitter.com/(hash)!/mjwaggonernc

The Louisiana governor channels the right's fury over the scandal.

Say they need to know who else was pursued.

Cash-rich interest groups get consultants in gridlocked D.C. to see the value of cooperation.

Last Sunday Andrea Rebello, a 21-year-old Hofstra University junior studying public relations, posted a recipe for how to prepare July 4-themed strawberries covered in sparkling sugars on her blog.

Less than a week later, Nassau County police announced that Rebello, who was with her twin sister Jessica and several other college students inside an off-campus house, had been shot and killed during an early morning break-in Friday that also left the armed intruder dead.

The shooting, which took place just steps from the Long Island campus, has cast a pall over the university community gearing up for commencement ceremonies this weekend. Police are still investigating.

"Today is the last day of finals and this should be a happy day on campus; but it's not," said Hofstra freshman Scott Aharoni of Great Neck, as he passed through the area rife with yellow crime-scene tape Friday. "It's really sad."

Police said a press conference was scheduled for Saturday morning, when more details may be released about the shooting.

It wasn't clear who fired the fatal shots or how many rounds were fired, but authorities said police were involved in the shooting, which happened at about 2:30 a.m. A weapon was found inside the house, police said. The gunman has not yet been identified.

Rebello's father, Fernando, was too distraught to discuss the incident in detail outside the family's Tarrytown, N.Y., home Friday.

"It's my daughter, my baby daughter," he told the Journal News through tears. "She was so beautiful. I'm so confused.

"I don't know what to do," he said.

The two sisters, another woman and another man were inside the two-story rental house when the gunman, wearing a ski mask, forced his way in, according to Nassau County Inspector Kenneth Lack. The intruder allowed the third unidentified woman to leave, and she called 911. Police provided no other details on the man who was in the house at the time of the break-in, except to say he was not injured.

A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press that the woman called 911 from near an ATM. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Victoria Dehel, who lives four houses away, said she heard what sounded like fighting. At first she ignored it, figuring it was from rowdy students coming home from a bar.

Suddenly, "This girl was shrieking," followed by loud bangs just seconds later.

"It didn't sound good at all," Dehel said. "I turned to my boyfriend and I said, `I think someone just got murdered.' It was awful."

The university sent a text alert to notify students and staff.

"While our hearts are laden with grief, this weekend's commencement ceremonies will go on as scheduled," Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz said in a statement. "The accomplishments of our graduates must be recognized, and together our community will heal and find the strength to move forward."

Andrea Rebello and her sister were 2010 graduates of Sleepy Hollow High School, according to principal Carol Conklin-Spillane.

"They were smart happy beautiful young women," Conklin-Spillane said. "I speak about them together because they were very much a matched pair. They were best friends by choice."

Andrea Rebello quoted Benjamin Franklin and Bob Marley in a yearbook photo from the school.

"Believe some of what you hear and only half of what you see" was attributed to the founding father and "Love the life you live, live the life you love" was the citation for the reggae legend.

A police car was parked Friday in front of the Rebello house in Tarrytown, a well-kept ranch home.

Neighbor Jane Phelan said the twins' mother recently told her the sisters had moved out of a dormitory and into an off-campus house.

"It must be very hard on the parents and particularly on the surviving twin," her husband, Jack Phelan said.

The growing role of the U.S. in world energy markets was underlined on Friday as the Obama administration approved wider exports of liquefied natural gas.

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 jolted northeastern Japan on Saturday, but no tsunami warning was issued, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Switzerland is set to bow to years of pressure from the EU by overhauling its corporate tax system.

Restaurant owners are worried that a tough new drunk driving law may hurt their business.

China's housing inflation quickened in April, marking the fourth consecutive year-on-year rise.

A judge is determining the constitutional significance of so-called hit rates, which have long been at the center of the public debate over stop-and-frisk tactics in New York City.    

A woman who lived with a Delaware pediatrician accused of waterboarding her 11-year-old daughter has agreed to plead guilty to child endangerment charges and testify against him.

In accepting a plea offer from prosecutors, Pauline Morse agreed Friday to plead guilty to three misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child and to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against Dr. Melvin Morse.

Melvin Morse, 59, has written a best-selling book and achieved national recognition for his research into near-death experiences involving children. Police suggested in an affidavit that he may have been experimenting on the girl last year, a claim he denies.

A trial for Melvin Morse is scheduled to start June 10. Morse and his attorney, Joe Hurley, did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment Friday.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office had no immediate comment.

Representative Darrell Issa issued a subpoena to Thomas R. Pickering, a retired diplomat, to force him to appear at a deposition to answer questions about his panel’s report.