EDMOND, Okla. -- A powerful storm system rumbled through the Plains and upper Midwest on Sunday, spawning tornadoes that damaged homes and buildings near Oklahoma City and put the Tulsa area on high-alert.

There were no immediate reports of injuries caused by any of the tornadoes that touched down in Oklahoma and Kansas, including one that hit the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond before moving northeast toward Tulsa, 90 miles to the northeast.

Read More...
More on Tornadoes

Surely Selena Gomez knew all eyes would be on her at the Billboard Music Awards. While the whole world wondered why the singer would be seated next to her on-again, off-again boyfriend, we were a little more distracted by her outfit.

Selena showed up in a skintight white Atelier Versace gown... accessorized with glow sticks? On closer inspection, we realized Gomez' dress featured neon trim, perhaps a nod to the DayGlo brights she sported in March's "Spring Breakers" -- and her ponytail and flyaway strands would certainly be welcome on the beach. A sheer panel cut from collarbone to hip added requisite sex appeal, and zipper embellishments toughened up the look.

What do you think of Selena's "Spring Breakers"-esque Billboard Awards dress?

Read More...
More on Video

NEW YORK — James Levine rolled onto the Carnegie Hall stage in his black motorized wheelchair and into a 6-by-6-foot mechanical podium constructed by the Metropolitan Opera.

Belted into the wheelchair, Levine and two aides waited while the podium hoisted him about 3 feet in the air and its interior rotated 180 degrees to leave him facing the audience. Given a 1-minute standing ovation, he blew a kiss to the crowd in the sold-out 2,804-seat auditorium, raised his fists in triumph and tapped his heart.

Read More...
More on Music

BOSTON — Claude Julien wanted his Bruins to play more aggressively in the third period. The Boston coach got his wish with the help of some shaky defense by the New York Rangers.

A rare rough day for goalie Henrik Lundqvist certainly helped, too.

Read More...
More on 2013 NHL PLayoffs

You never know what you're going to get with Ke$ha, who's as famous for her unpredictable fashion sense as she is for her unfiltered personality.

At the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, Ke$ha showed up in what appeared to be a low-key black Givenchy dress with a conservative top... and a nearly bare bottom. As the singer said to red carpet host Michelle Marie, "I went more naked... all over... than usual."

You can say that again. Thankfully a giant gust of wind didn't come and blow those flaps right up, given that we didn't spy a hint of underwear.

Read More...

DAMASCUS, Va. -- 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, said Pokey Harris, Washington County's director of emergency management. "There is no reason to believe this was intentional," she said.

Read More...
More on News

SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Spurs opened the Western Conference finals resembling the past champions who've been there so many times before.

The Memphis Grizzlies looked like the first-timers still trying to adapt to their first conference finals appearance.

Read More...
More on Video

OSLO, May 19 (Reuters) - Extreme global warming is less likely in coming decades after a slowdown in the pace of temperature rises so far this century, an international team of scientists said on Sunday.

Warming is still on track, however, to breach a goal set by governments around the world of limiting the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, unless tough action is taken to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions.

"The most extreme rates of warming simulated by the current generation of climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely," the University of Oxford wrote about the findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The rate of global warming has slowed after strong rises in the 1980s and 1990s, even though all the 10 warmest years since reliable records began in the 1850s have been since 1998.

The slowdown has been a puzzle because emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have continued to rise, led by strong industrial growth in China.

Examining recent temperatures, the experts said that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere above pre-industrial times - possible by mid-century on current trends - would push up temperatures by between 0.9 and 2.0 degrees Celsius (1.6 and 3.6F).

That is below estimates made by the U.N. panel of climate scientists in 2007, of a rise of between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius (1.8-5.4F) as the immediate response to a doubling of carbon concentrations, known as the transient climate response.


OCEANS

The U.N. panel also estimated that a doubling of carbon dioxide, after accounting for melting of ice and absorption by the oceans that it would cause over hundreds of years, would eventually lead to a temperature rise of between 2 and 4.5 C (3.6-8.1F).

Findings in the new study, by experts in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and Norway, broadly matched that range for the long-term response.

But for government policy makers "the transient response over the next 50-100 years is what matters," lead author Alexander Otto of Oxford University said in a statement.

The oceans appear to be taking up more heat in recent years, masking a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that passed 400 parts per million this month for the first time in human history, up 40 percent from pre-industrial levels.

Professor Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, one of the authors, said that the lower numbers for coming decades were welcome.

But "we are still looking at warming well over the two degree goal that countries have agreed upon if current emission trends continue," he said.

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 Celsius (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution and two degrees C is widely viewed as a threshold to dangerous changes such as more floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

"The oceans are sequestering heat more rapidly than expected over the last decade," said Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Australia, who was not involved in the study.

"By assuming that this behaviour will continue, (the scientists) calculate that the climate will warm about 20 percent more slowly than previously expected, although over the long term it may be just as bad, since eventually the ocean will stop taking up heat."

He said findings "need to be taken with a large grain of salt" because of uncertainties about the oceans. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Read More...
More on Climate Change

The Billboard Awards (you know, the music awards show that's not the Grammys and not the MTV Video Music Awards) are here! That means it's time yet again to honor the biggest names in the music biz, from Taylor Swift and Maroon 5 to fun. (each nominated in 11 categories). Also finalists: Rihanna, Carly Rae Jepsen and One Direction -- cue the T-Swift and Harry Styles drama...

But forget the awards -- it's all about the clothes! Since the award shows take place in Las Vegas, we're looking forward to glitter, cutouts, neon and more glitter. Who will be best-dressed? Who will commit a sartorial stumble? And who will make a style statement like Miley Cyrus' pantsless Jean Paul Gaultier look to be remembered for years to come?

See all the fashion in our red carpet slideshow and watch the red carpet livestream at JustJared.com.

Read More...
More on Video

there's the almost ritual expectation by the public that second term presidents will be dogged by some scandal. This was the case with Eisenhower, Nixon, of course, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. This shouldn't surprise.
Read More...
More on GOP

There should be a warning for this movie, because while it's labeled a documentary, with its chiaroscuro lighting, it could be called an impressionist kaleidoscope dream, culled from real-life footage.
Read More...

Debtors with high interest rates on their federal student loans would refinance into cheaper loans under proposed legislation to be unveiled this week, in a move that would lower borrowers’ burdens and potentially hurt private lenders and investors.

The plan sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) would force the U.S. Secretary of Education to automatically refinance most government loans carrying interest rates above 4 percent into fixed, 4-percent loans. Roughly nine of 10 federally-backed loans would be affected, saving nearly 37 million borrowers billions of dollars in annual interest payments.

“At a time when corporations, homeowners and even local governments are refinancing at historically low interest rates and saving millions of dollars, students and families who take out loans to pay for college are getting left behind," Gillibrand said. "Ensuring that our graduates are not saddled with unmanageable debt by keeping interest rates low is just common sense."

Read More...
More on Student Loans

One of the defining characteristics of the LGBT community is our resilience and refusal to accept oppression. We're also known for our capacity, as a community, to put on a grand party when the situation demands it.
Read More...
More on LGBT

Are the Clintons simply too powerful for Colbert to "speak truth to power"? Because if prominent satirists are now afraid to make fun of powerful politicians, our American Republic is in trouble, and it's no laughing matter.
Read More...
More on Video

By Mohammed Abbas

LONDON, May 19 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron is "losing control of his party", Conservative Party grandee Geoffrey Howe said on Sunday, as a row raged over whether a close aide to Cameron had labelled grassroots activists "mad, swivel-eyed loons".

The furore threatens to further alienate Cameron and his inner circle from the core of his party, with whom ties are already almost at breaking point.

Differences with the grassroots over Britain's membership of the European Union and Cameron's support for legalising same-sex marriage have raised questions over his leadership and could hurt the party's chances in the next election, due in 2015.

"Sadly, by making it clear in January that he opposes the current terms of UK membership of the EU, the prime minister has opened a Pandora's box politically and seems to be losing control of his party in the process," Howe wrote in an article for the Observer newspaper.

Howe was former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving cabinet minister, but fell out with her over relations with Europe and is best remembered for a scathing resignation speech that helped topple her as leader in 1990.

Cameron's Conservatives have been rattled by the surging popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), whose main aims are to pull Britain out of the EU and curb immigration.

Its rise has fuelled a heated national debate over whether Britain derives sufficient benefits from EU membership to outweigh the financial cost and the ceding of some important powers to Brussels, like the ability to limit immigrants from the other 26 countries in the union.

An opinion poll by pollster ComRes for the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday newspapers put support for UKIP at 19 percent, which ComRes said was the highest level the party had achieved in any survey yet.

The opposition Labour party led with 35 percent, while the Conservatives were on 29 percent and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners on 8.

"The ratchet-effect of Euroscepticism has now gone so far that the Conservative leadership is in effect running scared of its own backbenchers, let alone UKIP," Howe said, referring to the hundreds of rank-and-file Conservative members of parliament who occupy the rows of seats behind Cameron and his ministers.


REFERENDUM PROMISE

In January, Cameron promised that if the Conservatives won the 2015 election they would call a national referendum in 2017 on whether Britain should stay in or leave the EU. But that did not go far enough for many Conservatives, who last week forced him to back a new bill that would enshrine it in law.

The Conservatives' restive right wing also last week voted to criticise the government's legislative agenda for not including such a bill in the first place, an unusual move in British politics that embarrassed Cameron.

Compounding Cameron's problems are media reports that an un-named close aide, at a private dinner last week, described the Conservative grassroots as "swivel-eyed loons".

Cameron's office says the comment did not come from them, and insist the prime minister is still in charge of his party.

The row comes at an especially bad time for Cameron, whose flagship bill to legalise same-sex marriage will be debated in parliament this week. Conservative activists wrote to Cameron on Sunday warning that the move would boost UKIP's membership.

"The prime minister seems to have gathered around himself a metropolitan elite who seem to inhabit a different planet to most of us ... Droves of previously loyal Conservative Party members are leaving," Bob Woollard, chairman of the Conservative Grassroots umbrella group, told the BBC.

Cameron says he would like to do more to satisfy the Conservative core, but is held back by being in coalition with the left-leaning Liberal Democrats.

Ties between the two parties have frequently come under strain since they teamed up in 2010, but they have pledged to stay together to help revive Britain's weak economy.

However, in an article published on Sunday, Cameron hinted that he could end the partnership before the 2015 election.

"Can we improve the state of the country? Can we fulfil our manifesto? The best way to do that is to continue with the coalition, but if that wasn't the case then we'd have to face the new circumstances in whatever way we should," he told Britain's Total Politics magazine. (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Read More...
More on Video

WASHINGTON -- The president and CEO of The Associated Press says the government's seizure of AP journalists' phone records was "unconstitutional" and already has had a chilling effect on newsgathering.

Gary Pruitt says the Justice Department's secret subpoena of reporters' phone records has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists.

Read More...
More on AP

Over 1,000 Harvard students delivered a petition to Harvard University’s JFK School on Saturday, demanding an investigation into how and why the school approved a 2009 doctoral thesis arguing that Hispanics have lower IQs. The thesis was written by Jason Richwine, a co-author of a paper by the conservative Heritage Foundation that argued immigration reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion. The discovery of Richwine’s paper by the Washington Post sparked a firestorm around the Heritage study, and several days later Richwine resigned from the think tank.

Read More...
More on Latino Politics

Not to be outdone by Octomom, "Tan Mom" Patricia Krentcil has launched her own music career, releasing her first single earlier this month.

In its lyrics, Krentcil takes on some of her fellow tabloid-fixtures, bragging, "I'm sexier than the Teen Mom / I am cool, I'm the cool one / I'm hotter than the Octomom."

And now TMZ has obtained the video for her pop song, aptly titled "It's Tan Mom." (We prefer Chelsea Handler's tribute to the track, recently performed by her show's staffers.)

Read More...
More on Video

A Las Vegas boy was killed Thursday after being run over when two men attempted to steal his iPad.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, Marcos Arenas, 15, was walking on the side of the road with his iPad when an SUV pulled up. A suspect jumped out, accosted the boy and attempted to steal his iPad.

Police investigators told the newspaper that the suspect dragged the teen, who tried to hold onto the device, back toward the car.

Read More...
More on Video

A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the parents.

The pattern goes against any notion that moving to America improves every aspect of life. It also demonstrates that at least in terms of health, worries about assimilation for the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants are mistaken. In fact, it is happening all too quickly.

Read More...
More on Latino Politics