Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Rescue and cleanup crews picked through wreckage in several states Sunday after another batch of storms roared through the country, doing heavy damage in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Winds up to 150 mph tore into homes in central Kentucky, causing more than a dozen injuries. Rescue workers found the body of a woman in a river under debris scattered by a tornado that tossed her mobile home into the Salt River and cut a 7-mile swath of damage in Mercer County.
The storms stem from a volatile weather system that "has been hung up over the area the past two or three days," said Chris Geelhart, a National Weather Service spokesman. The worst of the storms appeared to have moved out of the region Sunday morning.
More than 300 tornadoes have been reported across the Midwest since the start of May, and at least 45 people have died in the storms. The toll includes an Oklahoma man who died Sunday, becoming the first victim of twisters that swept through central Oklahoma on Thursday and Friday. About 145 injuries were reported in those tornadoes.
In addition, a 5-year-old West Virginia boy was found dead Sunday in a flooded creek, and authorities said a 13-year-old Alabama girl was killed when a tree fell on her home during the storms.
Meteorologists say it was the most active week of tornadoes on record, easily eclipsing the most recent comparable rash, in 1999.
President Bush, wrapping up a weekend vacation in New Mexico, said he planned to visit some tornado sites Tuesday.
In Missouri, the steel dome of Culver-Stockton College's administrative building lay crumpled on a lawn Sunday, and the gymnasium, which had held about 1,000 people for graduation hours before the storm, was in ruins after it was hit Saturday.
Tornadoes were reported in 10 counties across the central part of Illinois, officials said. A twister that tore through South Pekin, Ill., 10 miles south of Peoria, damaged more than 150 homes, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency reported. More than 30 injuries were reported.
In Tennessee, three tornadoes struck the middle part of the state. At least four people were taken to hospitals, but none of the injuries were life threatening, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency reported. About 400 homes and 100 churches and businesses were damaged.
Pneumonia vaccine may help heart, study showsWASHINGTON - Vaccine used to prevent pneumonia may also have benefits for the heart, new research indicates.
Mice vaccinated using a bacteria that is a common cause of pneumonia developed high levels of an antibody that slows or halts the progression of heart disease, researchers working in California and Finland found.
Trials are under discussion to see if the same response occurs in larger animals, says Gregg J. Silverman of the University of California, San Diego, a co-author of the study.
"If we can harness this potential, we may have new ways to treat patients with heart disease," Silverman said.
Workers won't get paid time off for Bush visitOMAHA, Neb. - Employees of a plastics plant have been told they will need to make up the time they're off work while the plant is used as the site of a speech by President Bush on his economic and employment proposals.
The president, who has been campaigning across the country to drum up support for his tax cut and economic plan, scheduled a speech Monday at the Airlite Plastics Co.
Bush is expected to speak to the company's 575 employees about how his economic stimulus plan would benefit them.
Airlite president and CEO Brad Crosby said workers will be given one of four options during the visit: work their regular shift in an adjacent plant not visited by the president, take the day off and make up the work on Saturday, use one of their vacation days or take an unpaid day off.
Elsewhere . . .MAN FALLS FROM CRUISE SHIP: Search and rescue teams swept the waters of the Gulf of Mexico off the Mississippi coast Sunday, looking for Matthew Scott Bjorn, 35, of Northport, Ala., who fell from the Carnival Conquest into a shipping channel in the middle of the night, officials said.
MURDER CHARGE IN DORM FIRE DEATH: Police arrested Lucas Goodrum, 21, Sunday in connection with a dormitory fire that killed 18-year-old freshman Katie Autry, found a week ago with stab wounds in her burning room at Western Kentucky University. Goodrum, who was not a student at the university, was charged with murder, university police Chief Bob Deane said Sunday.