Nation and World News

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. – A truck hauling an oversized load struck an overhead bridge girder on the major interstate between Seattle and Canada, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the Skagit River below. All three occupants suffered only minor injuries.

MOORE, Okla. – A massive tornado was carving its way through town. There was no time to hesitate. LaTisha Garcia had to get to her children.

WASHINGTON – Moving quickly to stem a raging controversy, the new acting head of the Internal Revenue Service started cleaning house Thursday by replacing the supervisor who oversaw agents involved in targeting tea party groups.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama sought Thursday to advance the U.S. beyond the unrelenting war effort of the past dozen years, defining a narrower terror threat from smaller networks and homegrown extremists rather than the grandiose plots of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. – An Interstate 5 bridge over a river north of Seattle collapsed Thursday evening, dumping vehicles and people into the water, the Washington State Patrol said.

GRAPEVINE, Texas – The Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks Thursday to gay Scouts but not gay Scout leaders – a fiercely contested compromise that some warned could fracture the organization and lead to mass defections of members and donors.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama was interrupted three times by a woman who shouted about drones and detainees in Cuba as he delivered a speech on national security.

LONDON – Two men accused of butchering a British soldier had been part of previous investigations by security services, a British official said Thursday, as investigators searched several locations and tried to determine whether the men were part of a wider plot to instill terror on the streets of London.

MOORE, Okla. – With its single-story design and cinder-block walls, Plaza Towers Elementary School may have seemed sturdy when it was built a couple of generations ago. But a powerful tornado revealed the building's lack of modern safety standards, destroying the school and killing seven students.

WASHINGTON – At the center of a political storm, an Internal Revenue Service supervisor whose agents targeted conservative groups swore Wednesday she did nothing wrong, broke no laws and never lied to Congress. Then she refused to answer lawmakers' further questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.

CEO pay has been going in one direction for the past three years: up.

In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day.

LONDON – Two U.K. government officials say a brutal attack that left one man dead near a London military barracks appears to have been motivated by radical Islam.

ORLANDO, Fla. – A Chechen immigrant who was being questioned about his ties to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was shot to death by authorities early Wednesday after he lunged at an FBI agent with a knife, officials said.

WASHINGTON – Summoned by Republicans, a key figure in the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups plans to invoke her constitutional right against self-incrimination and decline to testify at a congressional hearing today.