In a commencement address at Atlanta's historically black Morehouse College, President Obama said graduates should "find time to defend the powerless."

The president said his own success was due to "the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most, people who didn't have the opportunities that I had — because there but for the grace of God, go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed."

In New Jersey, Rutgers University graduated the largest class in school history — an estimated 14,302 students.

At New York's Hofstra University, students wore white ribbons at their graduation ceremony in honor of Andrea Rebello, one of their colleagues killed by a gunshot early Friday morning. A police officer accidentally killed 21-year-old Rebello as an armed intruder held her in a headlock.

Here are some images from college commencements across the nation:

Authorities say tornadoes have touched down in Wichita, Kan., and a suburb of Oklahoma City but there are no immediate reports of injuries or significant damage.

Sedgwick County, Kan., emergency management director Randy Duncan says officials are "very grateful" about the few reports of damage from the tornado that touched down near Wichita Mid-Continent Airport shortly before 4 p.m. CDT Sunday.

A tornado also reportedly grazed the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond before heading toward a sparsely populated area. There were reports of debris but no injuries or traffic crashes.

The National Weather Service described the tornado as "large, violent and extremely dangerous" and said it was moving northeast at 30 mph.

The tornadoes are part of a large storm system moving through the Plains and upper Midwest.

With a bullet still in his body, the police officer who survived a showdown with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said Sunday he's determined to return to duty.

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Officer Richard Donahue has been recovering alongside victims injured in the April 15 attack by the marathon's finish line since his transfer to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston on Friday.

The 33-year-old uses crutches to get around now, and is coping with nerve damage that makes it painful to walk and difficult to sleep. But sitting alongside his wife Kim Donahue, the transit officer said he's getting stronger and healthier every day.

Besides building strength to walk on his own, Donahue also is doing speech therapy and other exercises to prepare his mind and body to head home again. He said he's looking forward to the end of his hospitalization so he can spend more time with his 7-month-old son, who's gotten four new teeth in the meantime, and toss a ball around with his family's beagle.

Donahue doesn't recall anything about the gun battle that left him wounded on a street in suburban Watertown. His last memory from the day he almost bled to death is roll call at the start of his shift.

That was hours before Donahue responded to the call that came after authorities say bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fatally shot his police academy friend, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Officer Sean Collier.

It was in Watertown that Donahue suffered a severed femoral artery when a bullet pierced his groin during a gun battle with the Tsarnaev brothers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died on the same street where Donahue was wounded. Authorities have said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drove over his brother while fleeing the scene after Tamerlan, 26, ran out of ammunition and was tackled by officers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's cause of death was listed as gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso.

But Donahue, an MBTA officer of three years, has no memory of the encounter that nearly killed him.

"As of right now, it's all been a blackout," he said.

Exactly how Donahue was wounded isn't clear. He said if his injury turned out to be from a fellow officer's bullet, he was just glad police "got the job done" at a chaotic scene where authorities said the suspects tossed explosives and fired on officers.

"If it was friendly fire, it was friendly fire, he said. "We got the job done and the other suspect got captured shortly thereafter, so I'm just happy with that."

The transit officer said he is in favor of authorities filing additional charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with Collier's death and his own close call. But he wouldn't say if he favored the death penalty in the case of a guilty verdict for the 19-year-old, who remains in a prison hospital after his arrest.

"One of them, I guess, has already been brought to justice," Donahue said of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Donahue's wife said she's proud of her husband, and while they won't use the word "hero" a lot at home, their 7-month-old son will have a lot to live up to as he grows up.

"We keep saying he's not going to be able to get away with anything. Like, 'Oh, you don't want to eat your green beans? Well, Daddy's got a bullet in his leg and came back from the dead. So, if you could do us a favor and just eat your food that would be great,'" the 31-year-old mom said with a smile.

MBTA Police Chief Paul MacMillan nodded in approval Sunday as he heard Donahue talking about getting back into the shape he was before the line of duty shooting.

"I think it's absolutely incredible the effort that was put into saving his life that night and the fact that he has come so far," the chief said later. "... We'd love to get him back, but we want him to get well first and foremost."

The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department.

Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans' information from all news outlets.

Pruitt told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the government has no business monitoring the AP's newsgathering activities.

"And if they restrict that apparatus ... the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that's not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment," he said.

In a separate interview with the AP, Pruitt said the news cooperative had not decided its next move but had not ruled out legal action against the government.

"It's too early to know if we'll take legal action but I can tell you we are positively displeased and we do feel that our constitutional rights have been violated," he said.

"They've been secretive, they've been overbroad and abusive — so much so that taken together, they are unconstitutional because they violate our First Amendment rights," he added.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the government needs to stop leaks by whatever means necessary.

"This is an investigation that needs to happen because national security leaks, of course, can get our agents overseas killed," he said.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the government should focus on those who leak sensitive national security matters and not on journalists who report on them. The Texas Republican said his committee should hold hearings on how the Justice Department obtained phone records from AP reporters and editors.

"What confuses me is the focus on the press, who have a constitutional right here and we depend on the press to get to the bottom of so many issues that we, as individuals, cannot," Cornyn said.

Cornyn said the Justice Department's actions were part of a pattern for President Barack Obama's administration to quiet its critics.

"It's a culture of cover-ups and intimidation that is giving the administration so much trouble," Cornyn said.

He also renewed his call for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, citing the contempt citation the House of Representatives voted against him last year for refusing to turn over documents in a failed government gun smuggling sting.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said the president "has complete faith in Attorney General Holder." He also insisted the White House was not involved in the decision to seek AP phone records.

"A cardinal rule is we don't get involved in independent investigations. And this is one of those," Pfeiffer said.

Although the Justice Department has not explained why it sought phone records from the AP, Pruitt pointed to a May 7, 2012, story that disclosed details of a successful CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot around the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden.

The AP delayed publication of that story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security.

"We respected that, we acted responsibly, we held the story," Pruitt said.

Pruitt said that only after officials from two government entities said the threat had passed did the AP publish the story. He said the administration still asked that the story be held until an official announcement the next day, a request the AP rejected.

The news service viewed the story as important because White House and Department of Homeland Security officials were saying publicly there was no credible evidence of a terrorist threat to the U.S. around the one-year anniversary of bin Laden's death.

"So that was misleading to the American public. We felt the American public needed to know this story," Pruitt said.

The AP has seen an effect on its newsgathering since the disclosure of the Justice Department's subpoena, he said.

"Officials that would normally talk to us and people we talk to in the normal course of newsgathering are already saying to us that they're a little reluctant to talk to us," Pruitt said. "They fear that they will be monitored by the government."

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of personal and work telephone records for several reporters and editors, as well as general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery.

"It was sweeping and broad and beyond what they needed to do," Pruitt said.

He objected to the "Justice Department acting on its own being the judge, jury and executioner in secret," saying the AP would not back down.

"We're not going to be intimidated by the abusive tactics of the Justice Department," he said.

McConnell and Pfeiffer were interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press." Cornyn appeared on "Face the Nation."

The man who police say hurled homophobic slurs at a gay man on a Manhattan street before firing a single fatal shot to his head has been charged with murder as a hate crime.

Elliot Morales appeared Sunday in Manhattan Criminal Court. He also was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and menacing.

Authorities say Morales used a revolver to kill 32-year-old Mark Carson early Saturday as he walked with a companion in Greenwich (GREN'-ich) Village.

Ben Petok, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney, says no plea was recorded for Morales. He's being held without bail. His next court appearance is Thursday.

On Saturday, in the lively Village streets, police say Morales followed Carson and a companion and asked if they wanted to die seconds before opening fire.

Two members of the FBI's ultra-elite Hostage Rescue Team were killed Friday during a training accident involving a helicopter off the coast of Virginia Beach.

A spokeswoman for the FBI's Norfolk office, Vanessa Torres, confirmed Sunday the accident occurred Friday afternoon off the Virginia Beach coast, but did not provide additional details. The FBI said in a statement that the two men killed were Special Agent Christopher Lorek, 41, and Special Agent Stephen Shaw, 40.

"We mourn the loss of two brave and courageous men," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said. "Like all who serve on the Hostage Rescue Team, they accept the highest risk each and every day, when training and on operational missions, to keep our nation safe. Our hearts are with their wives, children, and other loved ones who feel their loss most deeply. And they will always be part of the FBI Family."

Lorek joined the FBI in 1996 and is survived by his wife and two daughters, ages 11 and 8, while Shaw joined in 2005 and is survived by his wife, 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.

The Norfolk Medical Examiner's office told WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, Va., that no information regarding the cause of death would be released from that office until Monday morning, at the earliest.

The HRT, as it's known, earlier this year celebrated its 30th anniversary. The team, which reportedly handles the toughest assignments within the U.S., was formed ahead of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. "By law, the military cannot operate within the U.S. without presidential or legislative approval, so officials needed other tactical alternatives," according to the FBI's website.

"When Los Angeles won the nomination . . . the question was, 'Who would handle an event such as Munich?' And there weren't a lot of good answers," said FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce.

At the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, terrorists shocked the world by taking 11 Israeli athletes hostage and later murdering them.

"That's how the idea of a Hostage Rescue Team evolved. As an elite counterterrorism tactical team for law enforcement, the HRT is one of the best, if not the best, in the United States. They are elite because of their training."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

 

 

The Somali community in Minnesota is reacting with a mix of outrage, confusion and relief to sentences handed down last week in the long-running investigations into recruiting and financing for the terrorist group al-Shabab.

At least 22 young men have left Minnesota since 2007 to join the group in Somalia.

Nine people who have been convicted were sentenced last week and received penalties ranging from two to 20 years in prison.

Family members of the men who were recruited say the sentences bring justice. But others say the penalties were harsh, particularly for a woman who raised money. She got 20 years in prison while two men who joined the group got three years.

Experts say the laws are strict to deter fundraising for terrorists.

Commuter trains damaged in a crash in Connecticut were being removed Sunday in the first step to making repairs and restoring service, the agency that runs Metro-North said.

Aaron Donovan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, gave Metro-North the OK to remove the trains. Hundreds of feet of track need to be repaired, he said.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us, to restore signals and overhead wires," Donovan said.

Later Sunday, the Connecticut Department of Transportation will announce jointly with Metro-North a plan for the rush-hour commute beginning Monday.

Investigators are looking at a broken section of rail to see if it is connected to the derailment and collision outside Bridgeport that left dozens injured. Seventy-two people were sent to the hospital Friday evening after an eastbound train from New York City derailed and was hit by a westbound train. Nine remain hospitalized.

Service has been suspended between South Norwalk and New Haven, which includes stops at 12 stations.

Donovan compared the loss of service to a "very significant storm."

Most recently, the Waterbury branch of Metro-North was down immediately after the massive Feb. 9-10 snowstorm that blanketed the Northeast.

Investigators said Saturday that the crash was not the result of foul play, but a fractured section of rail is being studied to determine if it is connected to the accident. National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said the broken rail is of substantial interest to investigators and a portion of the track will be sent to a lab for analysis.

Weener said it's not clear if the accident caused the fracture or if the rail was broken before the crash. He said he won't speculate on the cause of the derailment and emphasized the investigation was in its early stages. Officials earlier described devastating damage and said it was fortunate no one was killed.

The crash damaged the tracks and threatened to snarl travel in the Northeast Corridor. The crash also caused Amtrak to suspend service between New York and Boston.

NTSB investigators arrived Saturday and are expected to be on site for seven to 10 days. They will look at the brakes and performance of the trains, the condition of the tracks, crew performance and train signal information, among other things.

The MTA operates the Metro-North Railroad, the second-largest commuter railroad in the nation. The Metro-North main lines -- the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven -- run northward from New York City's Grand Central Terminal into suburban New York and Connecticut.

The last significant train collision involving Metro-North occurred in 1988 when a train engineer was killed in Mount Vernon, N.Y., when one train empty of passengers rear-ended another, railroad officials said.

In the spring of 1963, a prominent civil rights leader led dozens of protesters on a march from a predominantly African-American college campus to the center of Charlotte's downtown.

At the rally, Dr. Reginald Hawkins warned city leaders that if something wasn't done to end segregation, future marches might not be so peaceful

Nearly two weeks later, civil rights and white business leaders ate lunch together in segregated restaurants to help integrate those establishments and hotels.

The city's community relations director says it was a turning point in Charlotte's emergence as a New South city. It helped Charlotte avoid the violence that marred other Southern cities grappling with desegregation.

That lunch is being remembered this month with a series of events, including a panel discussion on race relations.

Three Chicago teenagers are accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl and posting the attack on Facebook.

Prosecutors say 15-year-old Kenneth Brown, Justin Applewhite and Scandale Fritz, both 16, attacked the girl at Fritz' home on Dec. 15.

According to court records, Fritz took the girl to the basement of his home and assaulted her. Fritz allegedly brought Brown and Applewhite to the basement where they assaulted her as Fritz videotaped the rapes. Fritz was identified because he turned the camera toward his face.

Court documents indicate the video was first posted on Brown's Facebook account. It was later posted on Fritz' and Applewhite's Facebook pages.

The three were ordered held Friday in lieu $900,000 bail for aggravated criminal sexual assault. It wasn't immediately known if they have lawyers.

Authorities are searching by land and sea for an 8-year-old Autistic boy who went missing while vacationing in the Florida Panhandle.

Escambia County Sheriff's officials said Owen Elliot Black was on the beaches of Perdido Key with his mother and wandered off on his own and 4 p.m. Friday. He has brown hair and eyes and was last seen wearing a red and blue striped shirt and brown sweatpants.

Deputies and K-9 dogs trampled over sand dunes and searched in bushes, hoping Owen may be hiding because he was separated from his mother and was taught to avoid strangers.

The Pensacola News Journal reports 80 volunteers gathered to knock on doors and look in cars Saturday. Authorities also assembled teams of 10 to search sections of the beach.

It was a hefty surprise -- borne from a much slimmer woman.

Deployed for a year in Afghanistan, Army Spc. Larry Shaffer returned to North Carolina this week to discover his wife, Misty, had dropped more than 100 pounds in that 12-month period as a homecoming gift to her husband. 

"Wow," Shaffer reportedly said after first laying eyes on a much svelter Misty and ecstatically throwing his arms around her. 

"This is icing on the cake because I've been happy with the way she's looked since day one, but it's something she wanted to do and she reached her goal."

"I just kept pictures off Facebook, off the Internet," Misty told WECT in Wilmington. "When I did send him pictures, they were from the shoulder up."

The homecoming came with another shock for the Army specialist – a new home.

Misty Shaffer not only dropped the weight in the interim since her husband departed overseas, but purchased a new home for her beloved.

 "He's been wanting to buy a house now forever and I went and did it while he was gone," Misty reportedly said.

Together, the couple has a 3-year-old daughter named Nevaeh, who, as Shaffer said, is much bigger than he recalled when leaving.

Family and friends tried to keep Misty's new look a secret till the last-possible moment.

As Larry Shaffer approached the baggage-claim area of Wilmington International Airport, the assembled throng reportedly parted with a big cheer of, "Surprise!"

"Everything's new," Shaffer told WECT. "I pretty much have a new wife. My daughter's three times the size she was and we have our own home now."

Click for more from WECT.

 

Minneapolis police have reopened a 17-year-old cold case of a woman found stabbed to death in the trunk of her car.

Police say a tip in March prompted investigators to reopen the investigation into the death of 31-year-old Anne Dunlap. She was found Jan. 1, 1996, in a Kmart parking lot in south Minneapolis.

At the time, she and her husband Brad Dunlap were living temporarily with her parents while the couple was building a home in the suburbs.

"The information that we received stems from a conversation that Brad had years earlier, way before this murder occurred," Minneapolis police spokeswoman Cindy Barrington told KARE-TV. &quot(It is) significant information of a prior conversation from Brad Dunlap that led to us reopening this case.&quot

No one was ever charged with the murder. Police have long considered Dunlap the prime suspect, but Barrington said she didn't want to label one person as a suspect.

&quotThe investigators that have been assigned to it were not in the homicide unit back in 1996,&quot she said. &quotSo, it is a fresh set of eyes on the case and they have been told to start at page one.&quot

Shortly after his wife's death, investigators discovered that Brad Dunlap had taken out an insurance policy on his wife and allegedly forged her signature on related paperwork, MyFoxTwinCities.com reported.

Dunlap was forced to sued the insurance carrier to pay out his wife's policy, according to KARE-TV. He reportedly settled with the carrier for a substantial sum.

Now in Arizona, Brad Dunlap has remarried and has two children, KARE-TV reported. Two numbers listed under the name Brad Dunlap in Scottsdale, Ariz., rang unanswered Saturday afternoon when tried by The Associated Press.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click here for more from KARE-TV.

Click here for more from MyFoxTwinCities.com.

Authorities believe the driver who plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Virginia mountain town parade suffered from a medical condition and did not cause the crash intentionally, an emergency official said Sunday.

Officials did not have a formal confirmation or any specifics on the condition, but based on the accounts of authorities and witnesses on the scene, they are confident the issue was medical, according to Pokey Harris, Washington County's director of emergency management. "There is no reason to believe this was intentional," she said.

In what witnesses called a frantic scene at the parade, about 50 to 60 people suffered injuries ranging from critical to superficial Saturday. No fatalities were reported. Three of the worst injured were flown by helicopter to area hospitals.

Two people were kept at hospitals overnight, but their injuries were not critical as of Sunday, Harris said. "For the most part, everyone was treated and released," she said.

The crash happened around 2:10 p.m. Saturday during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail in Damascus, near the Tennessee state line about a half-hour drive east of Bristol.

Damascus Police Chief Bill Nunley didn't release the driver's name or age but said he was participating in the parade and he had traversed the Appalachian Trail in the past. Several witnesses described him as an elderly man.

Nunley said the man's 1997 Cadillac was one of the last vehicles in the parade and the driver might have suffered an unspecified medical problem when his car accelerated to about 25 mph and struck the crowd on a two-lane bridge along the town's main road. The driver was among those taken to hospitals.

"It is under investigation, and charges may be placed," Nunley said Saturday.

On Sunday, festival events were continuing as scheduled, Harris said. Mayor Jack McCrady had encouraged people to attend the final day.

"In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.

Harris said that the incident left a "sad heart and black cloud" over the event and that people were proceeding with "heightened awareness." But she emphasized the crash was an accident and said no additional security measures were taken.

On Saturday, Rudolph "Chip" Cenci, 64, of Minoa, N.Y., told The News-Item newspaper in Shamokin, Pa., that he heard people yelling "get out of the way" and turned around to find the car was about to hit him. He jumped onto the hood and held onto the gap at the base of the windshield near the wipers. He said the driver had a blank stare on his face.

"I bet you that man never realized someone was on his hood," Cenci said.

Cenci said he had a bump on his knee but was otherwise OK. He added that his wife, Susan, 63, narrowly missed being hit.

Amanda Puckett, who was watching the parade with her children, ran to the car, where she and others lifted the car off those pinned underneath.

"Everybody just threw our hands up on the car and we just lifted the car up," she said.

Keith Neumann, a hiker from South Carolina, said he was part of the group that scrambled around the car. They pushed the car backward to free a woman trapped underneath and lifted it off the ground to make sure no one else was trapped.

"There's no single heroes," he said. "We're talking about a group effort of everybody jumping in."

A Hofstra University student being held in a headlock at gunpoint by an intruder was accidently shot and killed by a police officer who had responded to the home invasion at an off-campus home, police said Saturday.

Junior public relations major Andrea Rebello was shot once in the head early Friday morning by an officer who opened fire after the masked intruder pointed a gun at the officer while holding the 21-year-old student, Nassau County homicide squad Lt. John Azzata said.

In a tense confrontation with the officer, gunman Dalton Smith "menaces our police officer, points his gun at the police officer," Azzata said. The officer opened fire, killing Smith and his hostage.

Azzata said the Nassau County police officer fired eight shots at Smith, who police described as having an "extensive" criminal background. Smith was hit seven times and died. Rebello was shot once in the head.

"He kept saying, `I'm going to kill her,' and then he pointed the gun at the police officer," Azzata said.

A loaded 9 mm handgun with a serial number scratched off was found at the scene, police said.

Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Dale said he had traveled to Rebello's Tarrytown, N.Y., home to explain to Rebello's parents what happened.

"I felt obligated as a police commissioner and as a parent to inform them as soon as all the forensic results were completed," Dale said.

The veteran police officer, who was not identified, has about 12 years of experience on the Nassau County police force and previously spent several years as a New York City police officer, Dale said.

The officer is currently out on sick leave. He will be the focus of an internal police investigation once the criminal investigation is completed, which is standard police procedure in any officer-involved shooting, the commissioner said.

Earlier Saturday, police announced that Smith, 30, had been wanted on a parole violation related to a first-degree robbery conviction and had an arrest history dating back nearly 15 years.

The shooting came just days before the school's commencement ceremonies, which are scheduled to take place Sunday.

A university spokeswoman said students will be handed white ribbons to wear in memory of Rebello. The shooting, which took place just steps from campus, has cast a pall over the university community as it geared up for commencement on Sunday.

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

Rebello was in the two-story home with her twin sister Jessica, a third woman and a man when Smith, wearing a ski mask, walked into the house through an open front door, Azzata said. Smith demanded valuables and was told they were upstairs, Azzata said.

Smith, apparently unsatisfied with the valuables upstairs, asked if any of the four had a bank account and could withdraw money, Azzata said. The intruder then allowed the unidentified woman to leave and collect money from an ATM, telling her she had only eight minutes to come back with cash before he killed one of her friends, Azzata said.

The woman left for the bank and called 911, according to Azzata.

Minutes later, two police officers arrived at the home and found Rebello's twin sister Jessica running out of the front door and the male guest hiding behind a couch on the first floor, Azzata said.

One of the officers entered the home and encountered Smith holding onto Rebello in a headlock, coming down the stairs, Azzata said. Smith pulled Rebello closer and started moving backward toward a rear door of the house, pointing the gun at her head before eventually threatening the officer, Azzata said.

Rebello's family declined comment Saturday.

The Rev. Osvaldo Franklin, who gave Rebello and her sister Jessica their first communions, on Saturday night told The Associated Press their mother, Nella, couldn't even speak to him earlier in the day.

"She was so devastated," said Franklin. "She's just crying. We have to pray for Andrea, to pray for Jessica because she needs help."

Franklin said a funeral is scheduled for Wednesday at Teresa of Avila Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and will be in Portuguese.

"The family's a very good family, they have very good values," he said. "I gave them first communion to Andrea and Jessica and they started to help me in the mass for many years. They are a very good, very devoted family."

Alaska's remote Pavlof Volcano was shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air, but its ash plume was thinning Saturday and no longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby.

A narrow ash plume extends a couple hundred miles southeast from the volcano, which is 625 miles southwest of Anchorage, said Geologist Chris Waythomas of the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The eruption that began Monday seemed to be slowing on Saturday, but Waythomas said that could change at any time.

"Things could ramp up quickly," he said.

There are no flight restrictions because of the eruption, but pilots are being told to use caution and pay attention, Waythomas said.

Ash plumes would need to rise above 20,000 feet to threaten aviation, he said.

Seismic tremors from the 8,262-foot volcano have been going up and down, but remain at a fairly high level, Waythomas said.

Scientists are not expecting the eruption to end anytime soon but so far it has not been explosive. There are mud flows, but no one lives close enough to be threatened.

Pilots flying by on Saturday morning reported lava fountaining, which Waythomas described as rooster tails of incandescent lava shooting up a couple of hundred feet above the summit.

Pavlof is among the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian arc, with nearly 40 known eruptions, according to the observatory.

The volcano last erupted in 2007. During the 29-day eruption, Pavlof emitted mud flows and erupting lava, as well as ash clouds up to 18,000 feet high.

"Ash is the main thing we're keeping an eye on," Waythomas said. "But if it stays below 20,000 (feet) things will be good."

The weather forecast is calling for winds to shift and the ash cloud to head west, pushing it toward the community of Sand Point, but Waythomas said residents shouldn't expect more than a trace amount of ash.

It's all about the odds.

With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, someone is almost sure to win the game's highest jackpot, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars -- and that's after taxes.

The problem, of course, is those same odds just about guarantee the lucky person won't be you.

Lottery officials said Saturday night that the latest Powerball jackpot figure results are still pending. Estimates have put the jackpot at around $600 million.

The chances of winning the prize remain astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million. That's how many different ways you can combine the numbers when you play. But lottery officials estimate about 80 percent of those possible combinations have been purchased.

The winning numbers drawn Saturday night were: 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball of 11. Officials conducted the drawing live from Tallahassee, Fla.

"This would be the roll to get in on," Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich said earlier Saturday. "Of course there's no guarantee, and that's the randomness of it, and the fun of it."

That didn't deter people across Powerball-playing states -- 43 plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands -- from lining up at gas stations and convenience stores Saturday for their chance at striking it filthy rich.

At a mini market in the heart of Los Angeles' Chinatown, employees broke the steady stream of customers into two lines: One for Powerball ticket buyers and one for everybody else. Some people appeared to be looking for a little karma.

"We've had two winners over $10 million here over the years, so people in the neighborhood think this is the lucky store," employee Gordon Chan said as he replenished a stack of lottery tickets on a counter.

Workers at one suburban Columbia, S.C., convenience store were so busy with ticket buyers that they hadn't updated their sign with the current jackpot figure, which was released Friday. Customer Armous Peterson was reluctant to share his system for playing the Powerball. The 56-year-old was well aware of the long odds, but he also knows the mantra of just about every person buying tickets.

"Somebody is going to win," he said. "Lots of people are going to lose, too. But if you buy a ticket, that winner might be you."

The latest jackpot was expected to be the world's second largest overall, behind a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in March 2012. If $600 million, the jackpot would currently include a $376.9 million cash option.

Charles Hill of Dallas said he buys lottery tickets every day. And he knows exactly what he'd do if he wins.

"What would I do with my money? I'd run and hide," he said. "I wouldn't want none of my kinfolks to find me."

Clyde Barrow, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, specializes in the gaming industry. He said one of the key factors behind the ticket-buying frenzy is the size of the jackpot -- people are interested in the easy investment.

"Even though the odds are very low, the investment is very small," he said. "Two dollars gets you a chance."

That may be why Ed McCuen has a Powerball habit that's as regular as clockwork. The 57-year-old electrical contractor from Savannah, Ga., buys one ticket a week, regardless of the possible loot. It's a habit he didn't alter Saturday.

"You've got one shot in a gazillion or whatever," McCuen said, tucking his ticket in his pocket as he left a local convenience store. "You can't win unless you buy a ticket. But whether you buy one or 10 or 20, it's insignificant."

Seema Sharma doesn't seem to think so. The newsstand employee in Manhattan's Penn Station purchased $80 worth of tickets for herself. She also was selling tickets all morning at a steady pace, instructing buyers where to stand if they wanted machine-picked tickets or to choose their own numbers.

"I work very hard -- too hard -- and I want to get the money so I can finally relax," she said. "You never know."

A new federal report says inmates at jails in Indianapolis, Baltimore, St. Louis and Philadelphia face the nation's highest levels of sexual abuse at the hands of guards.

The U.S. Department of Justice's report says the Marion County Jail in Indianapolis had the nation's highest rate of inmate sex abuse by staff. Its 7.7 percent abuse rate was well above the 1.8 percent average abuse rate among all jails based on inmate surveys from February 2011 to May 2012.

The Baltimore City Detention Center had the second-highest abuse rate by guards at 6.7 percent. The St. Louis Medium Security Institution and the Philadelphia City Industrial Correctional Center both had 6.3 percent abuse rates.

The report's authors surveyed inmates at 233 prisons, 358 local jails and 15 special correctional facilities.

About 50 to 60 people were injured Saturday when a driver described by witnesses as an elderly man drove his car into a group of hikers marching in a parade in a small Virginia mountain town.

It happened around 2:10 p.m. during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail in Damascus, near the Tennessee state line about a half-hour drive east of Bristol.

Washington County director of emergency management Pokey Harris said no fatalities had been reported.

The injuries ranged from critical to superficial, he said. Three of the victims were flown by helicopters to regional hospitals. Another 12 to 15 were taken by ambulance. The rest were treated at the scene.

At a news conference, Damascus Police Chief Bill Nunley didn't release the driver's name or age but said he was participating in the parade. Multiple witnesses described him as an elderly man.

Nunley said the man's 1997 Cadillac was one of the last vehicles in the parade and the driver might have suffered an unspecified medical problem when his car accelerated to about 25 mph and struck the crowd on a two-lane bridge along the town's main road. The driver was among those taken to hospitals.

"It is under investigation and charges may be placed," Nunley said.

There were ambulances in the parade ahead of the hikers and paramedics on board immediately responded to the crash.

Nunley cited the "quick action" by police, firefighters, paramedics and hikers to tend to the victims, including a Damascus volunteer firefighter who dove into the car to turn off the ignition. The firefighter, whose name wasn't released, suffered minor injuries.

Nunley said about 1,000 people participated in the parade. Nunley said the driver was a hiker, too -- someone who had traversed the Appalachian Trail in the past.

What caused the car to drive into the crowd wasn't immediately known. A thud could be heard, people yelled stop, and at some point, the car finally stopped.

Witnesses said the car had a handicapped parking sticker and it went more than 100 feet before coming to a stop.

"He was hitting hikers," said Vickie Harmon, a witness from Damascus. "I saw hikers just go everywhere."

Damascus resident Amanda Puckett, who was watching the parade with her children, ran to the car, where she and others lifted the car off those pinned underneath.

"Everybody just threw our hands up on the car and we just lifted the car up," she said.

Keith Neumann, a hiker from South Carolina, said he was part of the group that scrambled around the car. They pushed the car backward to free a woman trapped underneath and lifted it off the ground to make sure no one else was trapped. Another person jumped inside to put it in park.

"There's no single heroes. We're talking about a group effort of everybody jumping in," he said.

Mayor Jack McCrady encouraged people to attend the festival on Sunday, its final day.

"In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.

McCrady said a donation fund was being set up to assist the injured, some of whom don't have medical insurance.

"We want to make sure they don't suffer any greater loss than they already have," he said.

Funeral services have been held for the New Jersey woman and boy whose bodies were found in their home after a 37-hour hostage standoff last weekend.

The Times of Trenton (http://bit.ly/113Q2dJ) reports Carmenlita Stevens' four surviving children were among those attending Saturday's service for the 44-year-old woman and her 12-year-old son, Quavon Foster. Stevens' boyfriend had held three of the surviving children hostage during the standoff.

Authorities have said Stevens and Foster died from stab wounds on April 25, nearly three weeks before the standoff began May 10. It ended two days later when hostage-taker Gerald Tyrone Murphy was fatally shot in the head by police who stormed the home.

Authorities have said Murphy killed the pair, but a motive has not been determined.

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Information from: The (Trenton, N.J.) Times, http://www.nj.com/times