DXPG

Total Pageviews

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Astronaut Covers ‘Space Oddity\' From Space

A cover version of David Bowie's “Space Oddity,” recorded on board the International Space Station by the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has documented his five months in charge of the International Space Station in great detail in Twitter photographs and YouTube videos, celebrated his last day aboard the craft by releasing an elaborately produced cover version of David Bowie's “Space Oddity.”

Among the many admirers of the astronaut's remarkable music video, which was viewed more than a million times in the 18 hours after it was posted on YouTube, were the editors of Mr. Bowie's official Facebook page, who praised the cover as “possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created.”

Unlike most 53-year-old Bowie fans who record cover versions of his hits around the office in their spare time, Mr. Hadfield, who is scheduled to return to Earth on Monday in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, had the benefit of shooting in a zero-gravity work station with stunning views and help from a musician who once toured with Mr. Bowie.

The Canadian musician Emm Gryner, who sang with Mr. Bowie in 2000, explained in a post on her blog that she was happy to collaborate with the astronaut. “Chris is a musician and a pretty damn good one at that,” Ms. Gryner wrote late Sunday. “When Chris brought up collaborating while he was on this current mission I of course said yes with a capital Y-E-S and we went back and forth for a while figuring out what our collaboration might entail. When he told me he wanted to cover ‘Space Oddity' I was over the moon - pardon the pun.”

She added:

The task was in front of me. I came up with a piano part. I then enlisted my friend, producer and fellow Canadian Joe Corcoran to take my piano idea and Chris's vocal and blow it up into a fully produced song. Drums! Mellotrons! Fuzz bass! We also incorporated into the track ambient space station noises which Chris had put on his SoundCloud. I was mostly blown away by how pure and earnest Chris's singing is on this track. Like weightlessness and his voice agreed to agree.

And voila! An astronaut sings “Space Oddity” in space!

As the CBC reports, Mr. Hadfield's embrace of social networks to post sounds, images and video from space has earned him a huge following:

When he left Earth on Dec. 19, he had 20,000 Twitter followers, a number that has grown to more than 824,000 today. Followers come from around the world, and have been particularly intrigued by his much-praised photos of places on the globe.

Eighty-one videos of his I.S.S. experiences have proved an unexpected hit for the Canadian Space Agency, generating 22 million views.

Before the “Space Oddity” clip, the astronaut's most popular YouTube clip was a demonstration of what happens when you wring the water out of a washcloth in space.

Among the sounds of the space station Mr. Hadfield recorded for his SoundCloud page was one titled “Spacewalk Pressure Equalization.”

As the Guardian blogger Paul Owen noted, the astronaut was fully aware of the fact that many of the photographs of Earth he posted on his @Cmdr_Hadfield Twitter feed from the space station resembled abstract expressionist paintings.

In his last hours on the station on Monday, Mr. Hadfield continued to share the experience with his Twitter followers.



Video Appears to Show Syrian Rebel Mutilating a Soldier\'s Corpse

Supporters of the Syrian government posted a graphic video to YouTube on Sunday that appeared to show a rebel commander cutting out the heart and liver of a government soldier and threatening members of the country's Alawite religious minority. He then held the organs up to his mouth and appeared to take a bite.

The video is one of several posted online in recent months that appear to show people being killed or dead bodies being mutilated, although the perpetrators shown in these videos are typically members of pro-government paramilitary groups called the shabiha. It is less common to see videos of such graphic violence committed by rebels, and this was the first that appeared to show cannibalism.

No previous video showing grisly violence has gone viral in the same way as the video posted on Sunday, which has been viewed more than 560,000 times between its Arabic and English versions.

In the video, a man identified as Abu Sakkar stands over the corpse of what appears to be a government soldier lying in a ditch. He carries a knife in his hand and saws into the corpse's chest, while someone off-camera says, “God bless you, Abu Sakkar, you look like you are drawing a heart of love on him.” Abu Sakkar then cuts out the dead man's internal organs, which Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, said appeared to be his heart and liver.

Abu Sakkar holds the organs up to his face and threatens both President Bashar al-Assad and the Alawites, who have been among Mr. Assad's most steadfast supporters. He also refers to Baba Amr, a neighborhood in Homs that became an icon of the Syrian conflict after a siege and bombardment by the government in February 2012 that lasted for weeks, driving away rebel fighters and leaving the area in ruins.

“I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar, you dogs - we will eat your heart and livers!” Abu Sakkar says. “God is great! Oh, my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!” He looks at the organs and holds them closer to his mouth, as if to take a bite. The video then ends abruptly.

In a statement issued on Monday, Human Rights Watch described the mutilation depicted in the video as an atrocity and said that the man who apparently committed it was a leader of the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade. Human Rights Watch accused that brigade of participating in the “indiscriminate shelling” of two Shiite villages in Lebanon, al-Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyed, in April, but said it was not clear if the group operated as part of the Free Syrian Army.

By comparing frames of the mutilation video to other videos showing what appears to be the same man participating in the shelling that indiscriminately hit Lebanese Shi'a villages and talking about killed Hezbollah fighters, Human Rights Watch believes the person in the video to be Commander Abu Sakkar. Journalists and other commanders have said that Abu Sakkar is the nom de guerre of a former commander from the mainstream al-Farouq Brigade from the Baba Amr district of Homs, in Syria.

Four international journalists told Human Rights Watch that they met him during or after the battle of Homs in 2011 and 2012. Several other videos posted by the Independent Omar al Farouq Brigade also show the man known as Abu Sakkar, wearing the same jacket as in the mutilation video, loading rockets into an improvised rocket launcher before apparently firing them into Lebanon at Shi'a villages in the Bekaa Valley. In yet another video, Abu Sakkar appears with what he claims are the bodies of killed Hezbollah fighters in the town of al-Qusayr.

So, who is Abu Sakkar?

On Monday, Time magazine reported that two of its correspondents had seen the video in April “in the presence of several of Abu Sakkar's fighters and supporters, including his brother,” and that “they all said the video was authentic.” Time said it had tried to verify that the video was authentic but had been unable to do so.

In its report, Time identified Abu Sakkar as the nom de guerre of a man named Khalid al-Hamad and said, as Human Rights Watch did, that he was a commander in the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, a group of around 60 men active in Homs.

Whether or not Abu Sakkar is actually named Khalid al-Hamad, it appears likely that this was not his first time in front of a camera. A man who appears to be the same person shown in Sunday's video can also be seen in at least three videos taken near Homs in the second week of April. On Monday, Eliot Higgins, who blogs under the name Brown Moses, posted all three videos on his Web site.

There is a strong physical resemblance between the man in these three videos and the man who carved the organs out of the corpse - he wears the same jacket in all four videos - and the speaking voice sounds the same in all of the videos.

In one video, posted on April 8, the man who appears to be Abu Sakkar stands in the middle of a group of men in the back of a pickup truck, preparing missiles to be fired at government positions near Abel, a village outside Homs. He wears a silver vest over a blue shirt and speaks to the camera, saying his brigade is “striking the shabiha and Assad's army in the village of Abel.”


.nytVideo, .nytVideo video, .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo iframe { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #000000; } .youtubeVideo { position: relative; } .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo .thumb { height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } .youtubeVideo iframe { height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; z-index: 1; } .youtubeVideo .playButton { border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 10px; height: 46px; left: 50%; margin: -23px 0 0 -35px; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 70px; z-index: 2; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Safari 5.1+, Mobile Safari, Chrome 10+ */ background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Firefox 3.6+ */ background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* IE 10+ */ background-image: -o-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Opera 11.10+ */ } .youtubeVideo .thumb { overflow: hidden; width: 100%; } .youtubeVideo .thumb img { height: auto; width: 100%; margin-top:-45px; } .youtubeVideo:hover .thumb { cursor: pointer; } .youtubeVideo:hover .playButton { } .youtubeVideo .playButton .arrow { border-bottom: 10px solid transparent; border-left: 20px solid #FFFFFF; border-top: 10px solid transparent; height: 0; left: 28px; position: absolute; top: 13px; width: 0; } .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: "."; display: block; height: 0; visibility: hidden; }

This video from April appears to show the same man seen mutilating a soldier's corpse in a video posted online on Sunday.

In a second video posted the next day, April 9, the same man is shown preparing to launch missiles from the back of a pickup truck. It appears to be the same vehicle. He looks at the camera and says, “Don't step down, Bashar. We are coming for you,” before launching the missiles. “I swear to God, the sons of Baba Amr are coming for you.”

This video from April appears to show the same man seen mutilating a soldier's corpse in a video posted online on Sunday.

In a third video posted two days later, April 11, the same man is again seen loading missiles to be launched from the back of a pickup truck. Speaking to the camera, he again threatens Mr. Assad, telling him that “the sons of Baba Amr” are coming for him “from everywhere.”

This video from April appears to show the same man seen mutilating a soldier's corpse in a video posted online on Sunday.



Video of American\'s Arrest in Moscow

An image released by Russia's Federal Security Service showed Ryan Fogle, an American accused of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency, being arrested in Moscow late Monday.Pool photo by Federal Security Service An image released by Russia's Federal Security Service showed Ryan Fogle, an American accused of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency, being arrested in Moscow late Monday.

Last Updated, Wednesday, 12:06 p.m. As my colleague Ellen Barry reports from Moscow, Russia's Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., announced Tuesday that it had arrested a Central Intelligence Agency officer posing as an American diplomat as he tried to recruit a Russian agent.

The Russian intelligence agency released photographs and video of the arrest to Russia Today, a satellite news channel whose broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish are financed by the Kremlin and promoted by the country's foreign ministry.

Video released by Russia's Federal Security Service on Tuesday showing the arrest of Ryan Fogle, an American accused of working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to the broadcaster's report, Russian intelligence said it had detained the American, identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, “in the act of trying to recruit a Russian special service agent, a counterterrorism agent working in the North Caucuses, to try and work for the C.I.A.” Russia's security services have been battling an insurgency in the North Caucuses, where the brothers accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings have roots, for two decades.

Russian intelligence officials displayed wigs, money, papers and a compass they said an American arrested in Moscow used as part of his spycraft.Russian Federal Security Service, via Reuters Russian intelligence officials displayed wigs, money, papers and a compass they said an American arrested in Moscow used as part of his spycraft.

The report also showed items the Russian intelligence service said it had seized from Mr. Fogle, including two wigs, a compass, a large amount of cash and written instructions for the would-be recruit explaining how to contact his American handlers. Russia Today, also known as RT, provided an English translation of the written instructions supposedly found on Mr. Fogle.

The arrest was announced just as the American ambassador in Moscow, Michael McFaul, started answering questions from the public on Twitter, but he refused a request to comment on the affair submitted by a reporter for a publication in Moscow.

A short time later, Russia's foreign ministry did address the episode on Twitter, saying that Mr. Fogle was being expelled from the country and a formal protest would be lodged with Mr. McFaul.

Russia Today's report suggested that the supposed plot bore “the hallmarks of a cold war spy thriller,” but Western spies have been publicly unmasked on Russian television in the more recent past. In 2006, state television broadcast grainy black-and-white video showing a British diplomat picking up a fake rock concealing what the F.S.B. called a communications device used to download and transmit classified information through hand-held computers.

A video report from Euronews last year, after a British official admitted that a fake rock had been used by spies working in Moscow in 2006.

Last year, Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister at the time, confirmed for the first time that Russian claim was accurate. “The spy rock was embarrassing,” Mr. Powell told the BBC, but “they had us bang to rights.”



Syrian Rebel Reportedly Defends Sinking Teeth Into Dead Soldier\'s Flesh on Camera

A man identified as Khalid al-Hamad, a rebel commander who uses the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, appeared in a battlefield video posted on YouTube in April. A man identified as Khalid al-Hamad, a rebel commander who uses the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, appeared in a battlefield video posted on YouTube in April.

A Syrian rebel commander who appeared to bite into the flesh of a government soldier's corpse in a horrifying video clip posted on YouTube this week defended his actions in an interview with Time magazine on Tuesday. The rebel, Khalid al-Hamad, known by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, confirmed that he sank his teeth into an internal organ that he had laboriously carved out of the dead soldier's chest as a colleague recorded the scene. “Our slogan,” he said, “is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

As The Lede reported on Monday, the extremely graphic, distressing video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube since it was uploaded by supporters of President Bashar al-Assad who called it evidence that the war in Syria is a fight against sectarian extremists from the Sunni sect of Islam.

Speaking to Time's Middle East bureau chief, Aryn Baker, by Skype, Abu Sakkar, a Sunni, said that the atrocity was prompted by video footage on the dead soldier's phone that showed the man torturing and sexually abusing three naked women before he was killed. Abu Sakkar also blamed the broader descent into brutality on fighters from Syria's Alawite religious minority, to which the president belongs. “You are not seeing what we are seeing and you are not living what we are living,” he said. “Where are my brothers, my friends, the girls of my neighborhood who were raped?”

Referring to the pummeling of a rebel district in the city of Homs last year, Abu Sakkar told the magazine that Alawite troops “were the ones who killed our children in Baba Amr and raped our women.” He held the same sect responsible for a recent massacre said to have been carried out by supporters of Mr. Assad. “They were the ones who slaughtered the children and women in Bayda,” he said. “We didn't start it, they started it.”

The rebel commander, who has also been accused by Human Rights Watch of taking part in the indiscriminate shelling of Shiite Muslim villages across the border in Lebanon, said that he had never before tried to eat the liver of a dead enemy soldier. (According to a surgeon who screened the video for Time magazine, the organ was not the dead man's liver but part of his lung.)

Abu Sakkar seemed to confirm that the point of the video was to instill terror in enemy fighters when he claimed to have another video. “In the clip I am sawing another shabiha,” he said, using the Syrian Arabic word for a member of a pro-Assad militia notorious for its brutality. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them.”

After the video of Abu Sakkar biting into the flesh of the dead soldier spread online this week, a French photojournalist recognized him as the same man he had interviewed last year for Britain's Channel 4 News. The journalist, who uses the pseudonym Mani, said that Abu Sakkar was a former street vendor from Baba Amr, a district of Homs, who first took up arms as part of the city's rebel Farouq Brigade.

Last August, after the brigade had been driven out of Baba Amr, Mani filmed Abu Sakkar instructing other fighters in sniper fire during fighting in the town of Talbiseh.

Writing on the Channel 4 News Web site on Tuesday, Mani recalled:

He continually cracked jokes - often dark ones - but this initially didn't disturb me, as black humor is common during war. Sometimes he unnerved me. I never really knew if he was joking or not. Unlike most of the other fighters I was with on that trip, I never felt 100 percent safe with him.

He would often joke he was a member of Al Qaeda, and that if I wasn't careful he'd cut my throat. He said this repeatedly. There was an element of bravado in his talk, he would always say it in front of the other fighters. Sometimes he would laugh afterwards, sometimes not. It was disturbing.

Abu Sakkar told Time magazine that he was currently fighting near the border with Lebanon around the Syrian town of Qusayr, a focal point for clashes between insurgent Sunni fighters and Shiite militants loyal to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant organization. The multiconfessional area is of strategic importance because it links the capital, Damascus, with routes to Lebanon used by the rebels, as well as government strongholds along the coast.

Writing about the atrocity for Foreign Policy on Tuesday, Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said:

Abu Sakkar is just one man, and there are many other armed fighters in Syria who reject such sectarian actions and would be horrified by the mutilation and desecration of a corpse - let alone an act of cannibalism. But he is a commander in a decisive battle in Syria - hardly a marginal figure.

To prevent further atrocities, Mr. Bouckaert argued that the United Nations Security Council should give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to indict Syrians for war crimes:

The work of the I.C.C. will be only one piece of the larger accountability effort needed in the wake of this conflict - national trials, documentation, truth telling, reparations and vetting will also be necessary - but it is a crucial step, given the pervasive climate of impunity currently plaguing Syria.



Raucous Cheers for Iran\'s Wrestlers in Grand Central Terminal

Video of Iranian fans cheering their wrestling team on to victory over the United States at an exhibition match in Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday (Bahman Kalbasi/BBC Persian).

Cheered on by a raucous crowd waving flags and chanting, a team of Iranian wrestlers defeated the United States, 6-1, in an exhibition match staged in New York's Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday.

As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar reported on Tuesday, when American, Iranian and Russian wrestlers visited the United Nations, the match was part of a unified effort by sporting officials from the three nations to save wrestling as an Olympic sport. The International Olympic Committee suggested in February that wrestlers might not be invited to compete in the 2020 Olympic Games.

Wrestling officials, diplomats and reporters - including Arash Azizzada and Negar Mortazavi of Voice of America's Persian News Network and Bahman Kalbasi, the United Nations correspondent at BBC Persian - posted video, photographs and text updates as the match unfolded.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.



Witness Reports on Texas Tornado


.nytVideo, .nytVideo video, .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo iframe { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #000000; } .youtubeVideo { position: relative; } .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo .thumb { height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } .youtubeVideo iframe { height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; z-index: 1; } .youtubeVideo .playButton { border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 10px; height: 46px; left: 50%; margin: -23px 0 0 -35px; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 70px; z-index: 2; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Safari 5.1+, Mobile Safari, Chrome 10+ */ background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Firefox 3.6+ */ background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* IE 10+ */ background-image: -o-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Opera 11.10+ */ } .youtubeVideo .thumb { overflow: hidden; width: 100%; } .youtubeVideo .thumb img { height: auto; width: 100%; margin-top:-45px; } .youtubeVideo:hover .thumb { cursor: pointer; } .youtubeVideo:hover .playButton { } .youtubeVideo .playButton .arrow { border-bottom: 10px solid transparent; border-left: 20px solid #FFFFFF; border-top: 10px solid transparent; height: 0; left: 28px; position: absolute; top: 13px; width: 0; } .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: "."; display: block; height: 0; visibility: hidden; }

Video showing the devastation caused in the aftermath of a tornado in North Texas, via The Associated Press.

Last Updated, 5:15 p.m. At least six people were killed and seven others are missing after multiple tornadoes touched down in and around a small town near Fort Worth, about 65 miles southwest of Dallas, as our colleague John Schwartz reports.

At a news conference, Sheriff Roger Deeds of Hood County warned that the death toll could rise as rescue workers continue to comb through two devastated neighborhoods in Granbury, Tex. More than two dozen people were taken to local hospitals.

Sheriff Roger Deeds gives an update on the damage and the lives lost.

Sheriff Deeds said a subdivision known as Rancho Brazos Estates was hardest hit. At dawn, Teresa Woodard, a local television reporter for WFAA-TV, posted this photo from the scene on Twitter.

Another television reporter, Samantha Davies, of a local NBC affiliate, shared this view from her station, which is streaming live video online from the scene on Thursday morning.

A local resident said he captured this video from the back of his home.

Multiple tornadoes may have hit the area, according to the National Weather Service. While a mile-wide storm was reported over Cleburne, no fatalities have been reported there.

A local resident, George Kourounis, who describes himself on his Web site as a storm chaser, captured this view of a tornado near Millsap and posted it to YouTube.

George Kourounis, a local resident, posted this video of a tornado near Millsap.

As the tornadoes, packing winds of more than 80 miles per hour, hit Granbury around 8 p.m., residents captured video and images that they shared on YouTube and Twitter.


A video, posted by a local resident, of a tornado approaching the town of Granbury, Tex.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 16, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of a subdivision of Granbury, Tex. It is Rancho Brazos Estates, not Ranchos Brazos Estates. An earlier version also misspelled the name of one of the towns affected by the tornadoes. It is Millsap, not Milsap.



Long Before Crack Cocaine Allegations, Toronto Mayor Was a Source of Controversy


.nytVideo, .nytVideo video, .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo iframe { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #000000; } .youtubeVideo { position: relative; } .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo .thumb { height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } .youtubeVideo iframe { height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; z-index: 1; } .youtubeVideo .playButton { border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 10px; height: 46px; left: 50%; margin: -23px 0 0 -35px; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 70px; z-index: 2; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Safari 5.1+, Mobile Safari, Chrome 10+ */ background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Firefox 3.6+ */ background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* IE 10+ */ background-image: -o-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Opera 11.10+ */ } .youtubeVideo .thumb { overflow: hidden; width: 100%; } .youtubeVideo .thumb img { height: auto; width: 100%; margin-top:-45px; } .youtubeVideo:hover .thumb { cursor: pointer; } .youtubeVideo:hover .playButton { } .youtubeVideo .playButton .arrow { border-bottom: 10px solid transparent; border-left: 20px solid #FFFFFF; border-top: 10px solid transparent; height: 0; left: 28px; position: absolute; top: 13px; width: 0; } .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: "."; display: block; height: 0; visibility: hidden; }

Mayor Rob Ford denies allegations that he used crack cocaine in a cellphone video viewed by reporters, via Reuters.

As our colleague Ian Austen reports, Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto angrily dismissed allegations on Friday that he had used crack cocaine in a 90-second cellphone video that is being peddled to United States and Canadian news organizations for more than $100,000.

Speaking briefly to reporters at City Hall, Mr. Ford called the allegations “ridiculous.” He declined to answer further questions about the video, which prompted at least two online crowdfunding efforts on Friday to raise money to purchase it and make it public.

A former Toronto City Council member who became mayor in December 2010, Mr. Ford has had a political career marked by ethics investigations; questions about his public temperament; and outspoken, aggressive comments, on issues ranging from the homeless to bike lanes, that have been captured on video and uploaded to YouTube.

The Toronto Star published a list of “42 remarkable moments” from his career, including his inviting women to call him so he could explain to them over coffee how politics works.

The questions about the cellphone video began on Thursday night after John Cook, the editor of Gawker, reported that he had seen it. He said he had traveled to Toronto after being contacted about the video's contents and told it was for sale. He said that he viewed the video but did not purchase it, and that it showed a man who appeared to be Mr. Ford holding a glass crack pipe.

The Toronto Star said that two of its reporters had also seen a cellphone video this month and that they, too, had concluded that Mr. Ford “appears to be smoking a crack pipe.”

In a video on The Star's Web site, the reporters, Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle, describe Mr. Ford seated in a chair in a well-lit room, appearing to be in an impaired state with a crack pipe. They said the video was being shopped around by young Somali men who wanted six figures for it. They also declined to purchase it.

Mr. Ford, who was cleared in an ethics investigation earlier this year, has been battling questions about his conduct.

In March, he was accused by Sarah Thomson, a former mayoral rival, of touching her inappropriately while they were standing together at an event, according to The Toronto Sun. Mr. Ford denied that he made such a move and told reporters, speaking about Ms. Thomson, “In my personal opinion, I've always said I don't know if she's playing with a full deck, from the first time I met her.”

Former Toronto mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson claims in a CBC broadcast that Mayor Rob Ford made inappropriate comments and advances while they were both attending an event.

Mr. Ford began drawing attention for his aggressive remarks, captured in a handful of YouTube videos, more than a decade ago as a member of the Toronto City Council.

In 2007, he expressed his opposition to bike lanes by saying that, while his “heart bleeds” for cyclists who die in traffic accidents, “it's their own fault at the end of the day.”

This video shows Mr. Ford saying of bicyclists who die in traffic accidents, “It's their own fault at the end of the day.”

In a video from 2002, Mr. Ford objects angrily to a proposal to open a homeless shelter in his Toronto district, calling it “an insult” to his constituents. Instead of holding a “public meeting” on the matter, he says, “Why don't we have a public lynching?”

Rob Ford, as a member of the City Council, speaks about a proposed homeless shelter in his district.

An undated video, which was uploaded to YouTube in September 2010, appears to show Mr. Ford angrily disrupting a City Council meeting in 2003.

A video posted online appears to show Rob Ford angrily disrupting a City Council meeting.

“There's no way I am going to sit here and take this nonsense, I will tell you that right now,” Mr. Ford shouts, shortly after the council speaker opened debate on the culture budget. He then jabs his finger at another councilor and says he wants “this snitch to get back in his cage.”

He also calls the councilor a “slithering snake” and “a weasel” before his colleagues begin to clamor for him to be physically removed from the chamber. One female lawmaker can be heard on the video saying, “He has to be removed, he has to be removed, he scares me.”



Images From Connecticut Train Derailment

Two Metro-North trains collided after a derailment near Bridgeport, Conn., on Friday, injuring at least 60 people, five of them critically, according to Governor Dannel P. Malloy. Commuters on the trains, and local reporters, began posting images from the scene almost as soon as the collision occurred.



May 20 Updates on Tornado That Left Dozens Dead Near Oklahoma City


.nytVideo, .nytVideo video, .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo iframe { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #000000; } .youtubeVideo { position: relative; } .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo .thumb { height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } .youtubeVideo iframe { height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; z-index: 1; } .youtubeVideo .playButton { border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 10px; height: 46px; left: 50%; margin: -23px 0 0 -35px; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 70px; z-index: 2; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Safari 5.1+, Mobile Safari, Chrome 10+ */ background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Firefox 3.6+ */ background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* IE 10+ */ background-image: -o-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Opera 11.10+ */ } .youtubeVideo .thumb { overflow: hidden; width: 100%; } .youtubeVideo .thumb img { height: auto; width: 100%; margin-top:-45px; } .youtubeVideo:hover .thumb { cursor: pointer; } .youtubeVideo:hover .playButton { } .youtubeVideo .playButton .arrow { border-bottom: 10px solid transparent; border-left: 20px solid #FFFFFF; border-top: 10px solid transparent; height: 0; left: 28px; position: absolute; top: 13px; width: 0; } .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: "."; display: block; height: 0; visibility: hidden; }

KOCO-TV's Michael Seiden talks with a resident of Moore, Okla., who lives in a neighborhood destroyed by the tornado just a few streets from Plaza Towers Elementary School, via YouTube/KOCO-TV

Last Updated, 11:37 p.m. Video and images in the aftermath of a tornado that tore through Moore, Okla., on Monday afternoon show a wide swath of destruction in this suburb south of Oklahoma City. At least 91 people have been killed, including 20 children, state officials said. Another 143 others have been injured.

As my colleagues Nick Oxford and Michael Schwirtz report, the twister leveled entire neighborhoods. Into the night, rescue crews continued to search for students and teachers feared trapped inside the crumpled Plaza Towers Elementary School, according to reports from KFOR-TV, which is streaming live coverage online from Moore.

KOCO-TV, the ABC News affiliate in Oklahoma City, is also providing live updates from its reporters tracking the storm on the ground.

Lance West, a reporter and anchor for KFOR-TV, was overcome by emotion as he reported live from the elementary school on Monday afternoon. He described a chaotic scene of parents arriving to pick up their children to find rescue crews calling out for survivors as they combed through what was left of the school: a 10-foot mountain of debris. Mr. West said that the school's cinder-block walls had collapsed and that the roof was missing.

Mr. West said that fourth, fifth and sixth graders were accounted for at Plaza Towers, but that some younger students and staff members may be trapped inside. Students at another nearby elementary school, Briarwood, have been accounted for.

A child was pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Monday.Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press A child was pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Monday.

A video from The Associated Press shows an aerial view of rescue workers taking victims to a triage area set up near Plaza Towers.

An aerial view showing rescue workers taking people trapped at Plaza Towers Elementary School to a triage area.

In the suburban neighborhood near the school, reporters on the scene described multiple homes destroyed, making it difficult for search and rescue crews to find survivors and impossible for anyone returning to the neighborhood to find their home.

Mr. Oxford, reporting for The New York Times, posted multiple images on Twitter of the destruction after arriving in Moore to report on the aftermath of the storm.

Natalie Ruhl, a television producer from Oklahoma City, posted photos on Twitter of the destruction in Moore.

David Massey, who said he lives two and half miles from the center of the devastation, posted several videos on Vine, showing the damage in the aftermath of the storm and people looking for survivors.

The tornado was at least a mile wide when it touched down at 2:56 p.m. and traveled for 20 miles, striking the town of Newcastle before it reached Moore, about 10 miles away. Weather officials said it was on the ground for about 40 minutes.

Michael Welch captured this video of the tornado from Newcastle and uploaded it to YouTube.

A video of the tornado captured from nearby Newcastle as it approached Moore, uploaded to Youtube by Michael Welch.

On Facebook, Jeff Lechus shared a cellphone video he captured while caught in the middle of the storm, driving to pick up his son.

The National Weather Service is reporting that the preliminary rating for the tornado that struck Moore is at least an EF-4, indicating winds between 166 and 200 miles per hour.

In 1999, Moore was struck by a tornado with a wind speed of 318 miles per hour, which at the time was the highest wind speed recorded on Earth. A look at how this storm tracked and compared with the 1999 storm:

The tornado on Monday came after severe weather on Sunday spawned at least two dozen tornadoes across Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois. The hardest hit area appeared to be a mobile home park in Shawnee, Okla., where two older men were killed and more than a dozen were injured. The half-mile-wide tornado overturned tractor-trailers and also caused damage in nearby towns.

KOCO-TV uploaded multiple videos to YouTube from Sunday, including raw footage shared by viewers and its own reports showing aerial views of the destruction in the aftermath of the storm.

KOCO-TV report with aerial footage of a mobile home park area devastated by a tornado, via YouTube.
Raw footage of a tornado that killed two people and damaged more than 85 homes in Oklahoma, via KOCO-TV.
Raw video of an approaching tornado near Shawnee, Okla., via KOCO-TV.

Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel shared images of the destruction at the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park near Shawnee, the area that was hit by Sunday's tornado.

In Oklahoma, Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for 16 counties that were affected by tornadoes, severe storms, straight-line winds and flooding.

In Kansas, a tornado touched down in Viola, west of Wichita, and was spotted near Mid-Continent Airport on the city's southwest side, knocking down power lines and destroying a handful of homes, according to The Wichita Eagle.

The National Weather Service reported that severe weather was possible on Monday in parts of northwest Arkansas, southeast Kansas, southern Missouri, central and eastern Oklahoma, and North Texas.



Live Video Coverage From KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City


KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City is streaming live coverage online in the aftermath of the deadly tornado that struck Monday afternoon in Moore, Okla.



Complete Text of Israel\'s Report on the Muhammad al-Dura Video

A frame from a video shot in Gaza in September 2000 showed Jamal al-Dura attempting to shield his son Muhammad, 12, during a gun battle between Israelis and Palestinians.France 2/Agence France-Presse A frame from a video shot in Gaza in September 2000 showed Jamal al-Dura attempting to shield his son Muhammad, 12, during a gun battle between Israelis and Palestinians.

As my colleague Isabel Kershner reported, an Israeli government review panel asserted on Sunday that a French television report broadcast in 2000, which appeared to show the death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura during clashes in Gaza, was so deeply flawed that it was possible that the boy had been neither shot nor killed during the incident.

The boy's father, Jamal al-Dura, rejected the report as “propaganda” in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Monday. Mr. Dura said he was willing to “do anything to reveal the truth, including opening my son's grave.” Speaking to Israel's Army Radio, he called for an impartial inquiry. “I am prepared for an international investigation in which people from the outside investigate and see who is right - the government and the soldiers or the al-Dura family,” he said. “Israel is afraid.”

Charles Enderlin, the French-Israeli journalist who narrated the original video report for France 2, a public television channel, also denounced the new Israeli investigation on Twitter, calling it the “report of a secret commission” that had failed to contact the boy's father, the French channel and others who were present when the video was recorded.

A French television report first broadcast on Sept. 30, 2000, appeared to show the death of Muhammad al-Dura, 12, during a gun battle in Gaza.

Building on the conclusions of a previous investigation carried out on behalf of the Israeli military, the new report, which was posted online by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, also endorsed a theory popular with pro-Israel bloggers - that the whole event might have been staged by Palestinian militants and the local cameraman who recorded the incident in order to damage Israel's standing and create a child martyr to advance their cause. (To read the report embedded below in full-screen mode, click on the icon at the bottom right of the Scribd document viewer.)

Kuperwasser Report

As the Canadian-Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman reported in 2010, Mr. Enderlin discussed the criticism of his report at length that year in an English-language interview with France 24, following the publication of his book “A Child Is Dead.”

As James Fallows observed a decade ago in The Atlantic, doubts about the authenticity of the Enderlin video report might appeal to some Israelis and their supporters abroad, but are deeply offensive to Palestinians and their supporters.

“The truth about this case will probably never be determined. Or, to put it more precisely, no version of truth that is considered believable by all sides will ever emerge,” Mr. Fallows wrote. “For most of the Arab world, the rights and wrongs of the case are beyond dispute: an innocent boy was murdered, and his blood is on Israel's hands. Mention of contrary evidence or hypotheses only confirms the bottomless dishonesty of the guilty parties - much as Holocaust-denial theories do in the Western world. For the handful of people collecting evidence of a staged event, the truth is also clear, even if the proof is not in hand.”

While the Israeli government's latest report was welcomed by the American academic Richard A. Landes, a leading proponent of the theory that the video was staged, the Haaretz journalist Barak Ravid argued that it was unlikely to change any minds:

The result of the committee's work was a document for the extremely meticulous. It is doubtful whether even a hundred people in Israel or worldwide are sufficiently familiar with all the intricate details of the incident to be able to follow the convoluted arguments by the report's authors. Furthermore, the document contains no new evidence that might significantly impact the accepted version. Even the new interpretation given to some of the old findings seems groundless. For example, Dr. Ricardo Nachman, deputy director of Israel's National Forensic Institute, determined, based on viewing poor quality video footage, that Muhammad al-Dura wasn't shot and killed in that incident.

The expert opinion attached to the report reads like an article by a movie critic and not by a pathologist. “The final scenes, in which the boy is seen raising his head and arms, bringing his hand to his face and looking into the distance are not compatible with death throes, but seem like voluntary movements,” wrote Nachman. “One doesn't need to be an expert to see that.”

It seems as though the report was written for use within Israel alone. The evidence and arguments that were presented might convince the already convinced, but no more than that. The committee could not present any “smoking gun” evidence showing the 25-year-old al-Dura sunbathing on a Gaza beach. Not even close. Any thought of getting such a report to change the globally accepted narrative after 13 years is akin to trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube.



May 21 Updates in the Aftermath of the Tornado in Oklahoma

.nytVideo, .nytVideo video, .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo iframe { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #000000; } .youtubeVideo { position: relative; } .youtubeVideo, .youtubeVideo .thumb { height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%; } .youtubeVideo iframe { height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; z-index: 1; } .youtubeVideo .playButton { border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 10px; height: 46px; left: 50%; margin: -23px 0 0 -35px; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 70px; z-index: 2; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Safari 5.1+, Mobile Safari, Chrome 10+ */ background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Firefox 3.6+ */ background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* IE 10+ */ background-image: -o-linear-gradient(90deg, #6e0610, #ff0000); /* Opera 11.10+ */ } .youtubeVideo .thumb { overflow: hidden; width: 100%; } .youtubeVideo .thumb img { height: auto; width: 100%; margin-top:-45px; } .youtubeVideo:hover .thumb { cursor: pointer; } .youtubeVideo:hover .playButton { } .youtubeVideo .playButton .arrow { border-bottom: 10px solid transparent; border-left: 20px solid #FFFFFF; border-top: 10px solid transparent; height: 0; left: 28px; position: absolute; top: 13px; width: 0; } .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: "."; display: block; height: 0; visibility: hidden; }

After the tornado struck, a resident in Moore captured scenes of the devastation with a cellphone moments after emerging from his basement.

The Lede is following reports from witnesses and our correspondents in Moore, Okla., a southern suburb of Oklahoma City, where dozens of people were killed and more than 200 were injured on Monday after a powerful tornado tore through the city.

.youtubeVideo .thumb img { margin-top:-45px; }

Auto-Refresh: ON
Turn ON
Refresh Now
Feed
11:28 P.M. Amid Tragedy, Reunions and Relief

When the winds died down and the debris settled following Monday's tornado in Oklahoma, residents began scrambling to find loved ones amid the rubble of homes and businesses and at least two schools. For some, that search ended in searing grief. As my colleagues Manny Fernandez and Jack Healy report, at least 24 people were killed, nine of them children. For many others, like Trenda Purcell, who was shown on video reuniting with her son, Kamden, tear-filled reunions and relief awaited.

Live updates of the recovery effort in Oklahoma will continue on Wednesday morning.

- Michael Schwirtz

6:03 P.M. Scenes of Destruction From Tornado's Path Through Moore

As our colleague John Eligon reports from Moore, Okla., residents struggled to make sense of the devastation wrought upon their community by Monday's tornado, while officials said they hoped to finish their search for survivors by nightfall on Tuesday.

The National Weather Service said on Tuesday that the storm was an EF5 tornado, the most powerful and destructive category. The tornado left a path of destruction through the town of Moore, leveling entire neighborhoods and killing dozens of people, although officials cautioned that it was too early to know the exact number of the dead.

As residents emerged from storm shelters to a community transformed, many turned to camera phones and social media to document the devastation they witnessed and share it with the world. Journalists covering the tornado also shared photographs of what they saw in Moore on social media.

Mike Jenkins, a television producer at The Weather Channel, posted a photograph to Twitter that showed the kitchen of a damaged home. The roof had been ripped off the structure, but a chandelier hanging in the kitchen appeared intact. Chairs were undisturbed around the kitchen table, and a potted plant sat in its center.

Mark Robinson, a self-described storm chaser, posted several photographs to Twitter. This one claims to show a ruined shopping center in Moore.

Priscilla Luong, a reporter for Fox 25 in Oklahoma City, posted a photograph to Twitter that showed brightly colored, child-size furniture outside a devastated day care center in Moore.

Ms. Luong also posted a photograph that showed a 6-year-old boy helping his teacher clean up the rubble of their day care center.

Michael Konopasek, a reporter for the local CBS affiliate in Oklahoma City, posted a photograph to Twitter of a ruined building and an overturned car near where his camera crew was filming on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Konopasek also posted a photograph of a tornado shelter built after another devastating EF5 tornado tore through Moore in May 1999. He reported that many residents hiding in shelters similar to this one survived Monday's storm.

5:40 P.M. ‘Man's Best Friend to the End,' says Okla. Sheriff

At 7:20 p.m. on Monday, the Oklahoma County Sheriff's office posted this photo on its Twitter account of a little black dog with white markings that survived the devastating tornado. It was retweeted more than 1,900 times.

Today, the sheriff's staff shared on Facebook the story behind finding the dog.

He was found standing by his owner, who was killed during the storm.

May 20, 2013 we posted this picture of a dog on our Twitter account “scared, but this little pup survived.” Today we found out the story behind the picture. The dog was standing guard over a deceased individual, possibly its owner, in Moore following the tornado there. The dog was taken to a shelter and the deputy who found the pup, if possible, plans on adopting the dog. Man's best friend to the end.

5:01 P.M. Google Crisis Response Map for Moore

Google's Crisis Response team published a map with resources and information for residents of Moore and surrounding communities in the aftermath of the tornado.

4:34 P.M. National Weather Service: Moore Tornado Was an EF5

The National Weather Service said on Tuesday that the tornado that cut a path of destruction through Moore, Okla., and surrounding communities on Monday afternoon was an EF5, the most powerful category of tornado.

National Weather Service researchers in Norman, Okla., close to the epicenter of Monday's destruction, said that they had found at least one area of EF5-level damage, at Briarwood Elementary School, according to a report on the Weather Channel.

Tulsa World reported on Tuesday that wind speeds during the tornado reached a maximum gust of 200 to 210 miles per hour, at the low end of the EF5 scale. It was 1.3 miles wide and 17 miles long. Studies on Monday had indicated wind speeds of around 190 miles per hour, leading meteorologists to classify the storm initially as a weaker EF4.

4:24 P.M. Moore Medical Center Destroyed During Storm

The tornado took with it one of the region's medical centers, forcing patients who had sought refuge from the swirling storm to evacuate to other hospitals.

The storm cut what appeared to be a direct path through Moore Medical Center, a small emergency services hospital. The force of the winds gutted and nearly flattened the building, stripping away its second floor.

Emergency crews that arrived at the hospital in the hours after the storm found an eerie scene: a once-vibrant hospital unrecognizable, its alarms blaring in the background and its parking lot strewn with rubble, debris and piles of crumpled cars, The Oklahoman reports.

About 30 patients were at the hospital in the hours before the tornado struck. Those patients and many hospital staff were evacuated to two sister medical centers in the Norman Regional Health System, sparing anyone from injury. But hospital workers said the damage done was far beyond what they had anticipated.

“It was very traumatic for those people that were there; the hospital did take a direct hit,” said Kelly Wells, a spokeswoman for Norman Regional Health System, which runs Moore Medical Center, in an interview. “We did have warning that there was a risk for these types of storms. But it popped up rather quickly. It was really fast and massive and destructive.”

Some of the patients at Moore were being treated for minor storm-related injuries. Others were there for routine procedures like labor and delivery. Ms. Wells said that more than 100 tornado victims had been taken to the two other hospitals in the health system, Norman Regional and HealthPlex, for things like broken bones, lacerations and internal injuries.

On its Web site, the health system noted that it was trying to find the parents of one of its patients, a 9-year-old girl, Kaileigh Hawkins, who was at her elementary school when the tornado struck. “She is doing O.K., but her parents are not with her,” it said.

At Norman Regional Hospital, about 35 of the patients were what the hospital called “walking wounded.” The health system was trying to divert much of the staff that evacuated Moore Medical Center to the other hospitals, but some were dealing with personal losses.

“We had a lot of staff whose homes were impacted by the storm,” Ms. Wells said. “But those who are able to are being asked to come to the other campuses to help where they can.”

The hospitals saw a barrage of patients in the hours after the storm, which has now slowed down tremendously, Ms. Wells said. Administrators are now trying to figure out their next steps as crews sift through the ruins of Moore Medical Center.

“The pictures that they're sending back are just incredible and devastating,” she said. “We drill for these types of situations. But you're never totally prepared.”

- Anahad O'Connor

3:30 P.M. Fire Chief Promises Searches of All Damaged Property

Gary Bird, the Moore fire chief, said on Tuesday that search and rescue crews would continue to look for survivors in damaged buildings with the goal of getting to them all for a second time by nightfall.

“We will go through every damaged piece of property in this city,” he said.

Mr. Bird said that no new survivors had been found since Monday night.

Search and rescue crews from around the state and region have arrived to assist the more than 200 emergency responders who had been working since the tornado touched down to find survivors.

Among those who arrived on the scene to assist were members of the National Guard Airmen from the 146th Air Support Operations Squadron. Second Lt. Gabriel Bird explained how thermal imaging technology and other tools are used to try to locate victims:

The state medical examiner's office lowered the official death toll from the storm to 24 victims, after as many as 91 people were initially reported killed.

It is unclear how many people are still missing, city officials said.

2:18 P.M. State Emergency Official: No Safe Rooms at Schools Hit

Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma's top emergency management official, said at a televised news conference that the two elementary schools in the direct path of the storm did not have safe rooms for students and teachers to take shelter. Nor did the schools have basements.

He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had provided funds for safe rooms for more than 100 schools in the state, but Plaza Towers Elementary School and Briarwood Elementary School were not among them.

All students have been accounted for at Briarwood. However, rescue crews continued to sift through the rubble of Plaza Towers on Tuesday in the hope of finding more survivors. At least seven children at that school were killed.

Mr. Ashwood described safe rooms as a “mitigating measure. It's not absolute.” However, he acknowledged that additional safety measures may have provided better protection for the children killed at Plaza Towers Elementary.

FEMA provides this definition of a safe room on its Web site, along with a Q. and A. about them.

Safe room is a hardened structure specifically designed to meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) criteria and provide “near-absolute protection” in extreme weather events, including tornadoes and hurricanes. Near-absolute protection means that, based on our current knowledge of tornadoes and hurricanes, the occupants of a safe room built in accordance with FEMA guidance will have a very high probability of being protected from injury or death.

2:07 P.M. National Weather Service Official Describes Rare Event

A National Weather Service official said the tornado cut a path about 17 miles long with winds up to 190 miles an hour. Numerous structures in its path were wiped clean to the foundations.

The tornado began at about 2:56 p.m. Central time on Monday.

By 3:01 p.m., the National Weather Service issued an emergency statement about the storm, which it described as a rare event, an unusual step taken only when there is expected to be significant impact from a storm.

- Christine Hauser

1:38 P.M. Damage Recalls 1999 Tornado in Oklahoma

Monday's devastating tornado was not the first severe weather event to wreak havoc in the area around Moore, Okla. In May 1999, a severe storm system unleashed violent weather across Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee, including at least 74 tornadoes that cut a path of destruction across Oklahoma.

In a video posted to YouTube in May 2011 by AccuWeather, the meteorologist Mark Mancuso called it “the most prolific tornado outbreak in Oklahoma history.”

A video posted to YouTube by AccuWeather explained the violent tornado that struck Moore in 1999.

The strongest of those storms was a tornado that cut a 38-mile path of destruction across the southern suburbs of Oklahoma City, including the towns of Bridge Creek, Newcastle, Moore, Midwest City and Del City, according to a CNN report. Mr. Mancuso said that the tornado was the last official F5 on record, the highest level on the Fujita tornado damage scale, and packed winds of up to 301 miles per hours. The storm killed 48 people, 36 of them in Oklahoma City, and destroyed as many as 8,000 homes.

The 1999 tornado caused $1.1 billion in damage, according to Mr. Mancuso, and was the costliest tornado in United States history. In an interview with CNN, officials in Oklahoma said they expected Monday's tornado to meet, if not surpass, that record.

Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, told reporters the two tornadoes are “equally devastating.”

“And I think the fact that what we see so far today is going to be very similar if not exceed what we saw in 1999,” he said. “But keep in mind, any time there's a loss of life, it's a devastating disaster.”

Heather Moore survived both the 1999 and Monday's storms.

“It was very, very similar,” Moore told CNN's Piers Morgan. “Cars were turned over, some houses were half gone, some houses were all gone. … All the trees are gone, all the power lines are gone.”

U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, who lives in Moore, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer the damage he was seeing on television Monday looked as bad as the 1999 tornado that destroyed more than 1,000 houses in his hometown.

The Discovery Channel television show “Storm Chasers” dedicated an episode to the 1999 tornado, and a brief video clip on its Web site provides a glimpse of the power of that storm.

1:29 P.M. Oklahoma Governor Gives Update on Tornado
Video from news conference Tuesday with the governor and other officials

Officials at a news conference gave a briefing on the relief efforts in the aftermath of the tornado in Moore, Okla.

“The path of the storm is 20 miles long and estimated two miles in width,” said Gov. Mary Fallin, who described the tornado as one of the state's most horrific disasters. She said the state would rebuild, making sure it uncovered “every piece of debris.”

Ms. Fallin took an aerial tour of the damage. “Homes were absolutely destroyed,” she said. “There are just sticks and bricks.”

There are no firm numbers yet on how many people died, but 237 have been reported injured so far. Some bodies may have been taken to local funeral homes.

- Christine Hauser

12:37 P.M. Live Video From Oklahoma

KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City is streaming live coverage online in the aftermath of the deadly tornado that struck Monday afternoon in Moore, Okla.

12:12 P.M. How the Tornado Looked From Space

This image, taken from space at 2:55 p.m. Central time on Monday, shows the storm developing directly over central Oklahoma. A minute after this image was recorded, the tornado touched down.

A satellite image of the tornado one minute before it touched down in Oklahoma.NOAA A satellite image of the tornado one minute before it touched down in Oklahoma.

- Christine Hauser

12:02 P.M. Devastation After the Tornado
A look at the tornado damage at the Moore Medical Center in Oklahoma.
11:16 A.M. Teachers Describe Efforts to Protect Students in Storm
Video from ABC News of two teachers from Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City describing the terrifying moments after the tornado struck.

In an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News, two first-grade teachers from Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City described the steps they took to protect their students as the tornado struck.

“It was not like anything I had ever experienced, to have those children in my care and to do what is best for them,” Sherri Bittle told Ms. Roberts.

Ms. Bittle said her students were getting ready to attend their last class of the day, art and music, and had already prepared their backpacks. She quickly saw the backpacks as a tool to help keep the children safe.

“I had them take their backpacks and put them over their little heads as they were down in the center of our building,” she said.

On the other side of the building, Cindy Lowe, another first-grade teacher, said she looked outside and saw the tornado headed their way. “I saw how serious it was,” she said.

Ms. Lowe said she tried to keep the children calm as she reminded them of the steps they practiced during tornado drills. “This is not a drill,” she told them as she lay her body on top of as many children as she could.

In an interview with The Oklahoman, a second-grade teacher, Annette Brown, recalled huddling with her students in the restroom and the hallways of Briarwood Elementary before the ceiling collapsed and pinned them to the ground.

Metal beams and cinder blocks crushed her. She held the hand of her son - a student at the school - the whole time, despite losing feeling in her arms. She said her thoughts were on the children and keeping them calm.

“I thought we were going to die,” Brown said.

She said the children were “surprisingly calm.” First responders pulled them from the rubble.

“I'm just thankful that we made it,” she said. “We had guardian angels for sure. There's no way we could've made it without guardian angels.”

All of the students at Briarwood Elementary have been accounted for, but search crews remained at another school, Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, where some students and teachers had been rescued. Others are still missing.

11:33 A.M. How to Help Victims of the Tornado

Aid for the tornado victims poured in on Tuesday as emergency crews continued to search for survivors. Several disaster relief organizations were holding donation drives, and news organizations provided information on Twitter about how to donate to relief efforts. Volunteers also showed up in person, flooding the offices of the local Red Cross.

Donations can also be made through the Red Cross Web site. OperationUSA and Feeding America are also accepting donations.

- Christine Hauser

10:36 A.M. Obama Pledges Support for Tornado Victims

Speaking at the White House after being briefed by federal emergency officials, President Obama pledged support for the victims of the tornado. “In an instant, neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured and among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew: their school,” he said.

He expressed gratitude to teachers, neighbors and emergency personnel, as well as those who searched through the night for survivors. While making clear that urgent rescue work would be followed by the work of recovery and rebuilding, the president said the people who were affected would have all the resources they need and issued a disaster declaration.

FEMA staff have been deployed to the scene, and teams have joined in the effort to help, including one from Joplin, Mo., which was devastated by a tornado in 2011. The University of Oklahoma is providing housing for displaced families. The people of Moore, Mr. Obama said, should know their country will stand alongside them “for as long as it takes.”

He said that officials did not yet know the full extent of economic losses, but that empty spaces that used to be bedrooms or living areas needed to be refilled with “love and laughter and community.”

“We are a nation that stands with our fellow citizens,” the president said.

- Christine Hauser

9:10 A.M. More Severe Weather Expected in Oklahoma

As crews continued to sift through rubble and twisted metal, KOCO-TV's meteorologist, Brad Sowder, warned that Oklahoma could face more severe weather today. He said that thunderstorms were likely in Moore and that more severe weather could be expected south of Oklahoma City.

Mr. Sowder's report.

The National Weather Service issued a warning about the potential for tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds later today and tonight in the following areas:

SOUTHWEST ARKANSAS
NORTHWEST LOUISIANA
SOUTHEAST OKLAHOMA
CENTRAL AND NORTHEAST TEXAS

ELSEWHERE … SEVERE STORMS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE FROM … SOUTH CENTRAL
TEXAS INTO THE MID MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

8:55 A.M. Video of the Tornado as It Tore Through Moore
Video of the tornado.
8:51 A.M. President Obama Is Expected to Speak at Noon

President Obama declared Oklahoma a major disaster in the aftermath of the tornado.

He is scheduled to make a statement at noon.

8:38 A.M. Video From the Search at Plaza Towers Elementary School

As dawn broke over a storm-ravaged Moore, Okla., rescue workers continued to sift through the rubble at two schools and in entire neighborhoods leveled by a tornado with winds estimated at roughly 200 miles per hour. At the Plaza Towers Elementary School, as our colleagues report, rescue crews were able to pull several children from the rubble late Monday, but concerns grew overnight that no more victims would be found alive.

On the scene, reporters from KOCO-TV in Oklahoma talked to rescue workers as they were told the effort was moving from rescue to recovery operations.

An overnight report from KOCO-TV at Plaza Towers Elementary School.


Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)