When a deadly tornado struck Oklahoma City suburbs with winds of up to200 mph (320 kph), it should not have come as a surprise to local citizens. The Storm Prediction Center, located in Norman, Oklahoma, had been warning about severe weather in the region since Wednesday, and on Friday, it zeroed in on Sunday as the day the storm system would likely pass through.

There were also two reports of tornadoes touching down in Iowa on Sunday night, both in the Des Moines region. The tornadoes, high winds and hail across Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa were part of a massive, northeastward-moving supercell storm system that stretched from Texas to Minnesota.

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MOORE, Okla. — The search for survivors and the dead was nearly complete Tuesday in the broken remnants of an Oklahoma City suburb where a massive tornado flattened homes and demolished an elementary school, the fire chief said. Authorities lowered the death toll to 24, down from 51.

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Fire Chief Gary Bird said that he’s “98% sure” there are no more survivors or bodies to recover under the rubble in the town of Moore. He said every damaged home had been searched at least once and that he’s hopeful the work could be completed by nightfall Tuesday, though heavy rains slowed efforts.

Bird said no additional survivors or bodies have been found since Monday night.

Authorities initially reported a higher death toll because some victims were apparently counted twice in the early chaos of the storm, said Amy Elliot, a spokeswoman for the state medical examiner’s office. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.

The death toll included at least nine children. More than 200 people were treated at area hospitals.

“We will rebuild and we will regain our strength,” said Gov. Mary Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as “hard to look at.”

The ferocious storm, clocking winds of up to 200 mph (320 kph), reduced homes to piles of splintered wood in Moore, a town in a central U.S. region known as Tornado Alley. Less than 1% of all tornadoes reach such wind speed.

Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images A man searches a destroyed liquor store on May 21, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. Families returned to a blasted moonscape that had been an American suburb Tuesday after a monstrous tornado tore through the outskirts of Oklahoma City, killing at least 24 people.

The National Weather Service said the tornado was an EF-5 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the most powerful type of twister. It was the first EF-5 tornado of 2013, said spokeswoman Keli Pirtle.

In Washington, President Barack Obama pledged urgent government help.

“In an instant, neighbourhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured,” Obama said. “Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew — their school.”

The storm left scores of blocks barren and dark in Moore, a community of 41,000 people 10 miles (16 kilometres) south of Oklahoma City.

New search-and-rescue teams moved at dawn Tuesday, taking over from the 200 or so emergency responders who worked all night. A helicopter shined a spotlight from above to aid in the search.

Other search-and-rescue teams focused their efforts at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.

Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighbourhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage centre in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.

After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph (160 kph) through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got there, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off,” Wheeler said.

The Oklahoman / Paul B. Sutherland / APPlaza Towers Elementary second grader Courtney Brown, 8, shows off her bruised forehead as she sits on the edge of her hospital bed at Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City Tuesday, May 21, 2013. Courtney was rescued from the destroyed school in Moore, Okla. after Monday's powerful tornado.

Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head — but he was alive.

As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher — whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon — thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.

The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.

“She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.

Oklahoma has reinforced tornado shelters in hundreds of schools across the state, but the two that were in Moore did not have them, said Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. He said a shelter would not necessarily have saved more lives at Plaza Towers Elementary.

Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage. The weather service said the tornado’s path was 17 miles (27 kilometres) long and 1.3 miles (2 kilometres) wide.

Roofs were torn off houses, exposing metal rods left twisted like pretzels. Cars sat in heaps, crumpled and sprayed with caked-on mud. Insulation and siding was smashed up against the sides of any walls that remained standing. Yards were littered with pieces of wood, nails and pieces of electric poles.

Monday’s twister also came almost exactly two years after an enormous twister ripped through the city of Joplin, Missouri, killing 158 people.

That May 22, 2011, tornado was the deadliest in the United States since modern tornado record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant, Sean Murphy and Ramit Plushnik Masti; and Associated Press photographer Sue Ogrocki contributed to this report.

PHOENIX — A jury has been sent to begin deliberating Jodi Arias’ fate, deciding whether she should be sentenced to life in prison or execution.

The woman at the centre of a murder case that riveted many Americans with its details of sex and violence made a plea for life in prison Tuesday instead of execution, saying she can contribute to society if allowed to live.

Jodi Arias’s statement contradicted what she told a TV reporter minutes after her conviction for first-degree murder: She would rather be executed than spend the rest of her life in prison. On Tuesday, she said she “lacked perspective” when she said that.

Her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, suffered nearly 30 knife wounds, his throat was slit from ear to ear, and he was shot in the forehead. Arias then dragged him into his shower, where his decomposed body was found days later.

Arias, 32, initially said she knew nothing about the June 2008 killing. Then she blamed masked intruders before eventually settling on self-defence. Prosecutors said she killed Alexander in a jealous rage because he wanted to end their relationship and go to Mexico with another woman.

Arias has said the attack was a defence against domestic abuse.

“This is the worst mistake of my life. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done,” she said Tuesday.

She said she planned to use her time in prison to bring about positive changes, including donating her hair to be made into wigs for cancer victims, helping recycle trash and designing T-shirts that would raise money for victims of domestic abuse.

The judge instructed jurors they can consider a handful of factors when deciding what sentence to recommend, including the fact that Arias has no previous criminal record.

STOCKHOLM — Ah, Europe.

Sure, it’s easy to make fun of things like the Eurovision song contest (staged in nearby Malmo during my stay here and won by Danish pixie Emmelie De Forest); man purses on flat-capped bearded dads pushing strollers (a phenomenon in Sodermalm, Stockholm’s trendiest neighbourhood); the worst potato chips in the world; and those silly gold helmets handed out to Team Sweden after they easily defeated the previously undefeated Swiss in the tournament final of the world championships.

But, for eight days, I felt as if being in a place other than North America — a better place, I’d told myself while in the throes of traveller’s romance — was good for me.

Moving around Stockholm was, at times, to participate in some kind of anti-commercial cleanse, spending large parcels of time in places ignored by consumerism or the slavish market pulse where a fat yellow line separates the server and the servee. Because Stockholm — and other cities like it — are so old, there’s as little room for the neon crunch of big box stores as there is for a workforce dependent on these kinds of product-facilitators.

Instead of chain after chain after chain, large city strips are filled with charming shoebox businesses that open late and close early. Frustrated at first by this, I realized that, were store hours more like our own, city squares wouldn’t be teeming with Swedes eating ice cream or watching a steeplechase broadcast on a large screen at dusk. Fewer hours means less consumerism means less money, but the formula fits Stockholm to a tee: making it a fine, modest and well-paced city. Social, too.

On the last night of our stay, we ordered tea to our room during the second period of the tournament final, and the server — a young man — brought us the tray. Hearing the sound of the game coming from the TV, he put the tray down, and, before leaving, went over and peeked at the set. My companion remarked on the dynamic at play here: because his country — Sweden — is not entirely rooted in a culture of capital wealth, the line between us — server and servee — was smaller. The game ended and we all went out and ate ice cream.

The streets were busy with the yellow and blue of the Tre Kroner after Sweden’s win, although, as a Canadian, I was a little underwhelmed by the mania expressed by local fans, which probably says more about us than it does about them. On the national news the following morning, Sweden’s win was merely the fourth item, something that would never happen in Canada after a major international win at home by a hockey team. Wandering home earlier to catch the beginning of the game, we had passed a myriad of bars not showing it, which seemed strange as well.

Also, the city seemed to actually continue doing what it did throughout most of Sweden’s games; unthinkable at home, but, in the end, perhaps healthier and more well-adjusted: making room for those who don’t like or follow hockey (perish the thought).

Stockholm is an expensive city with an enormous sales tax, but they are way ahead of us in terms of progressive urban ideas; from motion-triggered escalators in subways to double-setting toilets to bagless stores to designing carriage ramps for parents in most public places. It was strange to observe all of this while getting news from home that Rob Ford had allegedly appeared in an alleged video allegedly smoking crack, but I tried not to feel too disappointed in the condition of my city, which also struggled with the concept of building an enormous casino when so many other small and equally important gestures would make it a better place.

One afternoon, we were out with Kalle Pilfalk, a drummer and Swedish Tourism rep, who hosted us at a restaurant called Riche, once Stockholm’s bohemian epicentre and now home to a fine dining room filled with largely beautiful people in fine clothes. My first moments with him were filled with great suspicion, for it was only after just sitting down that a beautiful Scandinavian woman — the restaurant’s somelier — asked us, “Do you like champagne?”

At this point, I was sure that the fix was in: Stockholm had purposefully romanced us so that we would submit to their socially democratic charms; resulting in the very kind of propaganda you’ve been reading these last few days. I considered telling the somelier that in no ways was I interested in drinking champagne at four o clock in the afternoon and that it would be best if she stopped cradling the glimmering bottle near the crest of her bosom. But I did not. We drank, we ate. And then, shaking his head, Kalle asked about Toronto.

I was about to admit that, yes, I came from a worse place; a place infected by misguided ideas about time and money and space. But before I could, Kalle said: “It’s terrible, so terrible, what happened. The collapse.” I told him that this was my life as a Torontonian and we all had to live with it. Rob Ford was our problem and we were quite pitiable. Sadly, we can’t all be Stockholm.

“Maybe next year it will be better,” he said. “Maybe you will beat Boston this time, and everything will be right with the world.”

I ordered more champagne.

“F—ing right we will.”

National Post

OTTAWA — The fact that Prime Minister Stephen Harper wasn’t in question period Tuesday did little to deflect the opposition attack over the Senate expense scandal.

Earlier in the day, Harper held a rare public caucus speech to tell Canadians he was “not happy” about the controversy, which saw his chief of staff resign Sunday.

“I’m very upset about the conduct we have witnessed, the conduct of some parliamentarians and the conduct of my own office,” Harper told reporters.

Shortly after, the prime minister left for a three-day trip to South America, leaving a political firestorm behind him.

The Opposition highlighted Harper’s absence in question period before calling on the Tories to bring in the RCMP to investigate the $90,000 “backroom deal” between the prime minister’s chief of staff Nigel Wright and Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy.

“Mr. Speaker, when the going gets tough, the tough get going … to Peru, apparently,” said NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, who also accused the Tories of using a taxpayer-funded lawyer to negotiate the deal that saw the paying back of Duffy’s incorrectly claimed expenses.

Standing in for Harper in the House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said the prime minister had no knowledge of the money exchange before it was reported in the media last week.

“This matter has been referred to two independent bodies for review,” Baird said. “We look forward to the results of these reviews.”

Wright resigned over the weekend after admitting he wrote a personal cheque to Duffy to cover the $90,000 the senator owed in incorrectly claimed expenses. Harper claims he knew nothing of the transaction.

Before he left, Harper gave a public speech to his caucus, stressing his long-term plans for Senate accountability and ignoring questions shouted by members of the media.

In South America, he’s expected to trumpet Canada’s economic strength and competitive advantages in mining and energy.

Harper will take questions Wednesday when he makes a joint statement with the Peruvian president, Ollanta Humala Tasso. On Thursday, he attends the Pacific Alliance trade summit in Colombia.

Kevin Lamoureux, the Liberal deputy House leader, plans to ask Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer to allow an emergency debate on the Senate scandal.

In the Commons on Tuesday, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau accused the Harper government of losing its “moral compass” and asked it to produce more details about the deal with Duffy.

“The prime minister’s right-hand man secretly paid a parliamentarian $90,000 to obstruct an audit. Canadians deserve better,” Trudeau said in question period.

“What precisely was the secret deal that the Prime Minister’s Office made with Senator Duffy? Show us the documents.”

Baird denied the existence of a document.

Trudeau then called on the Tories to issue an apology to Canadians.

“Apparently when Conservatives break the rules, they get their debts secretly paid off by their friends in high places. Mr. Speaker, it boggles the mind,” Trudeau said.

“Nobody over there even thinks anybody did anything wrong except get caught. When will they release this secret document, allow for a full investigation and while they’re at it, how about apologizing to Canadians?

Baird again denied the existence of any document, and said he looked forward to the outcome of two independent reviews.

With files from The Canadian Press

Toronto police confirm they are formally investigating two additional cases linked to Dellen Millard, charged in the slaying of Tim Bosma, even as Hamilton police are denying reports that additional remains have been found on a Millard-owned farm.

“The investigation continues and at this point there is no confirmation that other remains have been located,” said Const. Debbie McGreal-Dinning, Hamilton police spokeswoman.

Further, Staff-Sgt. Matt Kavanagh, the lead investigator in the case, said Tuesday that no other remains have been found anywhere and the report needs to be “cleared up.”

Last week, he told the National Post: “The report of further bodies is totally untrue at this time.”

Continuing developments in the high-profile murder case come as a public memorial for the slain Hamilton father — who vanished during a test drive of a pickup truck he was selling online — is planned for Wednesday morning.

Glenn Lowson for National PostPolice tape guards against intruders at Dellen Millard's farm property in Ayr, Ontario on May 14, 2013.

Mr. Millard, 27, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Mr. Bosma. Toronto police confirmed Tuesday they are re-examining the death of Mr. Millard’s father as well as a missing person case.

“Toronto police homicide squad is investigating both of those cases — the missing woman, Laura Babcock, and Wayne Millard’s death,” said Const. Wendy Drummond, spokeswoman for Toronto police.

“We can’t come to any conclusions, obviously, however they are being looked at.”

TwitterDellen Millard bought his friends Seadoos and traveled with them widely in Greece, Alaska and France.

On Nov. 29, 2012, Wayne Millard died, reportedly of a gunshot wound, in the Toronto home on Maple Gate Court he shared with his son and where Mr. Millard continued to live until his arrest.

Ms. Babcock, 23, disappeared last June and her friend, Shawn Lerner, says Mr. Millard was the last call on record with the missing woman’s phone.

“We’re just holding our breath. I’m not going to speculate. We’re still hopeful she’ll be found alive,” Mr. Lerner, a former boyfriend of Ms. Babcock’s who remained a close friend, said Tuesday.

“We are just waiting to hear back from police on the remains that have been found. It’s very frustrating,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Millard, heir to an aviation company founded by grandfather, is trying to cope with emerging reports, said his lawyer, Deepak Paradkar.

“The family is 100% confident that this is a suicide, a non-criminal matter. They had a very loving relationship and there was nothing untowards between the two of them,” Mr. Paradkar said of Mr. Millard and his father.

As for the case of Ms. Babcock, he said: “It all seems to be an ocean of conjecture and speculation.”

Mr. Bosma, 32, went missing May 6 after accompanying two men on a test drive of his Dodge Ram pickup truck. A well-organized search, mounted by his family, friends and police, brought wide attention to the case.

Efforts to return Mr. Bosma alive to his wife, Sharlene, and their two-year-old daughter ended a week later when Hamilton police announced he was dead and his remains had been found, although “burned beyond recognition.”

Police searched two large properties of Mr. Millard’s — an large airport hangar at Waterloo airport and a rolling farm in Ayr, Ont.

Investigators found an industrial incinerator on the farm, although police have not confirmed it is linked to the case.

National Post, with files from The Canadian Press

• Email: ahumphreys@nationalpost.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

OTTAWA — The Liberals in the Senate are trying to trigger special parliamentary hearings in the hopes of forcing the Prime Minister’s former top aide and other Conservatives to testify.

Liberal Senate leader James Cowan is expected to argue that Stephen Harper’s office violated the sacrosanct privileges of parliamentarians.

Harper’s chief of staff Nigel Wright gave Sen. Mike Duffy $90,000 to pay off improper housing expenses. Wright resigned on Sunday, and Duffy from the Tory caucus on Thursday.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian WyldHarper's chief of staff Ray Novak stands watches the Prime Minister speak Tuesday.

After that payment, Duffy stopped co-operating with an audit into his expenses, and sources say a Senate report into his claims was stripped of some of its most critical language.

Cowan will say that the executive branch interfered in the proceedings of the Senate committee tasked with studying Duffy’s expense claims.

If Senate speaker Noel Kinsella agrees that there was a breach of parliamentary privilege, he could send the issue to a special committee.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he is “not happy” with the actions of some Senators and with the conduct of his own office.

The message was delivered in a speech to the Conservative caucus on Parliament Hill, as the Senate expense scandal enveloped Harper’s government.

“I did not get into politics to defend the Senate,” said Harper.

He said that anyone who wants to use their public office for their own benefit should either leave office or exit the Conservative caucus.

“Let me be very blunt about it,” Harper said Tuesday morning. “Anyone who wishes to use and have public office for their own benefit should change their plans or better yet, leave this room.”

He reminded the caucus of a 2005 speech when he said that anyone planning to reap personal benefits from public life should change those plans or get out of the Conservative party.

Many in the caucus looked sombre as they awaited Harper’s arrival, but they greeted his speech with an ovation.

Harper’s office decided to briefly allow journalists into the closed-door meeting on Parliament Hill so they could record the prime minister’s remarks before they were told to leave.

After reporters left, Tory MPs and senators were expected to grill Harper with questions over how the expense scandal in the upper chamber has escalated and how questions are now also focused on the involvement of the prime minister’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright, who secretly paid Sen. Mike Duffy to repay his housing expenses. Wright resigned over the weekend because of the controversy connected to the affair.

Opposition parties are calling on Harper for a full explanation of what happened.

In his speech Tuesday, Harper focused on how the government must restore public trust in the Tories’ long-standing promise to handle taxpayers’ funds with care, and also to reiterate that Senate reform is long overdue.

Harper has not answered any questions on the scandal in recent days — a fact that is frustrating opposition parties who return to the House of Commons for question period Tuesday afternoon after a week-long break.

Harper meets with his caucus after a tumultuous long weekend that saw two senators he appointed leave caucus, and his chief of staff resign amid a Senate spending scandal that appears to have no clear end in sight.

The Senate will also move Tuesday to reopen the review of Sen. Mike Duffy’s expense audit, but the upper chamber’s own investigative abilities are in tatters after the Conservative majority apparently toned down the final report on Duffy’s spending.

Opposition parties are now calling for the Mounties to investigate allegations of political interference and review a $90,000 transaction between Duffy and Wright.

Duffy quit the Conservative caucus on Thursday over his spending, including reports he may have billed the Senate for expenses while he was campaigning for the Tories in the 2011 election. Sen. Pamela Wallin stepped out of caucus on Friday while she remains under investigation for her three-year travel bill of more than $300,000. Early Sunday morning, Wright’s resignation was made public with a statement from Wright saying he “did not advise the prime minister of the means by which Sen. Duffy’s expenses were repaid.”

Duffy stopped co-operating with auditors reviewing his expenses once the $90,000 repayment of his housing allowance was made. When he did offer to help in late April, the Senate committee overseeing the audit turned him down.

However, it was not known if Harper would take any questions from the media Tuesday because he was due to fly to South America in the early afternoon for a trade mission.

With files from Jordan Press

MACKENZIE, B.C. – Mounties are investigating after a 12-year-old girl died in a Jeep driven by an 11-year-old girl near Mackenzie, B.C.

Police say the youngster behind the wheel was being supervised by a 41-year-old man when she lost control.

The vehicle overturned on a logging road six kilometres from town, fatally injuring the passenger last Friday evening.

RCMP Sgt. Sydney Lecky says the incident has had a huge impact on the local elementary and high schools and that police are continuing to support the families involved.

The coroner’s service is also investigating.

OTTAWA — The Conservative government appears to be throwing beleaguered rebel backbencher Mark Warawa a bone.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson Tuesday announced government support for the Langley, B.C., MP’s private member’s bill, which would impose a variety of restrictions on offenders released from prison under certain conditions.

First introduced last month, Bill C-489 would prohibit child sex offenders from coming within two kilometres of a victim’s home. It would also bar offenders subject to parole, probation, conditional sentences and child sex offender peace bonds from contacting their victims without their consent.

“In Langley, two brave families endured constant turmoil when the sex offender of their child was permitted to serve house arrest in their neighbourhood,” he said, adding the offender in one case served his sentence across the street from his victim, while the second lived next door.

“In both cases, these children and their families were revictimized each time they saw their offender, which was often daily. Everyone should have the right to feel safe in their homes, and young victims of a sexual assault are no exception.”

Warawa is among several anti-abortion Conservatives who have proven to be thorns in the side of the Conservative government.

His motion to condemn sex-selective abortion was thought to be an attempt to reopen the wider abortion debate, something Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed not to do despite pressure from within his caucus.

Warawa was barred from speaking about the issue in the House of Commons in March, which prompted a mini-revolt by caucus members who felt the party was trying to silence those who wished to raise contentious issues.

He abandoned his efforts to have parliamentarians vote on the motion, however, last month saying he had decided to work “constructively” with MPs while still raising public awareness by other means about sex-selection abortions.

Support for Bill C-489 is consistent with our past government initiatives to ensure victims’ rights are considered in sentencing child sex offenders and other offenders, and it’s certainly consistent with our government plan for safe streets and communities

The next day, he introduced his Safe at Home Act to protect victims of sex offenders, which, a little more than a month later, received his government’s stamp of approval.

His bill is also the latest in a string of government-supported private member’s bills.

Both the NDP and Liberals have slammed the Conservatives for usurping private members’ business to pass legislation more expeditiously since the process for a private bill is less cumbersome than it is for government bills.

As much of the legislation is justice-related, they also fear the Criminal Code tweaks will lead to more Charter of Rights challenges if the bills are not properly scrutinized.

That said, Nicholson indicated Tuesday that Warara’s bill requires “certain technical amendments” to “ensure clarity and consistency with the existing law.

“Support for Bill C-489 is consistent with our past government initiatives to ensure victims’ rights are considered in sentencing child sex offenders and other offenders, and it’s certainly consistent with our government plan for safe streets and communities,” he said.

MIAMI — A homeless man whose face was mostly chewed off in a bizarre attack last year in Miami appeared Tuesday to be mostly at peace with his disfigurement, strumming a guitar, making jokes and thanking people for their donations to help pay for his care.

Ronald Poppo doesn’t like to leave his hospital room, though, and he won’t allow anyone to visit, other than his doctors and nurses. “My face,” he said.

The 66-year-old Poppo lost his left eye, his nose and most of the surrounding skin when a naked man attacked him for no reason beside a highway a year ago.

A police officer shot and killed Poppo’s attacker, Rudy Eugene. It’s still not clear provoked Eugene. Callers reported seeing a naked Eugene swinging from a light pole minutes before the attack. Lab tests found only marijuana in his system.

Poppo doesn’t blame Eugene for what happened, said Adolfa Sigue, nurse manager at the Jackson Memorial Perdue Medical Center, where he lives.

“The only thing that he always tells me is that, ‘I’m sure that that man had a bad day that day,”’ Sigue said.

In a brief video posted online Tuesday by the hospital caring for him, Poppo’s left eye socket is a hollow shadow, his blinded right eye is covered by a skin graft and his nose is reduced to just the nostrils. Still, he leaves his face uncovered to address the camera.

Poppo could still use his own tissues or prosthetics to replace his nose or eye, but he is not interested in more facial reconstruction.

“There’s still work that can be done, but he’s more than happy with how he is now, and he’s quite grateful,” said Dr. Wrood Kassira, a plastic surgeon.

Poppo still requires daily medical care for his wounds. He can dress himself and is learning again to play the guitar, an instrument he had not picked up for 40 years.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s message Tuesday that Conservative senators should quickly pass proposed reforms to the Senate’s spending rules put the ball back in the red chamber’s court.

His remarks suggested the Tories would move quickly to have the reforms passed as early as Tuesday night, possibly using their Senate majority to try to push the changes through.

“Sen. (Marjory) LeBreton and I have discussed this and she has my full support to accelerate changes to the Senate’s rules on expenses and close any loopholes in those existing rules and I expect Conservative senators, regardless of what opposition you may face, to get that done in the Senate,” Harper said.

So what exactly would be changed? (You can read the full text of the committee’s recommendations here.)

Death of the “honour system”:

For years, the Senate’s expense rules said that in the absence of any receipts or documentation, a senator’s signature was all that was needed to vouch for the authenticity of an expense claim. A Senate committee recommended deleting section 4 of chapter 1:02 of the Senate Administrative Rules, which says “senators act on their personal honour and senators are presumed to have acted honourably” unless determined otherwise. The death of the honour system would mean receipts and explanations would be required for everything.

On the road again:

Among the new set of receipts senators would have to submit are those for taxi rides of any price. The honour system allowed senators to sign for any taxi ride under $30. Now, they may need to furnish a receipt. Travel logs would also have to be maintained for senators who use their car for work purposes. The logs would be subject to regular audits of mileage claims.

Fred Chartrand / Canadian PressPrime Minister Stephen Harper speaks to his caucus on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Tuesday

Documents for housing claims:

Senators would have to pass a new “smell test” for claims of a secondary home in the capital. Rather than simply signing a form stating where their primary and secondary residence were, senators would have to provide a driver’s licence, health card and income-tax return annually to claim the $22,000 a year allowance. (Sen. Patrick Brazeau, one of the three senators whose claims were audited, passed this test, but a committee of his peers decided he violated the rules by not spending enough time at his primary residence.)

So long, international travel:

The most contentious proposal is one that limits the amount of travel for senators. Senators could only be allowed 12 round-trip flights inside Canada annually for Senate business, and four round trips to either New York City (for United Nations business) or Washington, D.C. All other international travel could be spiked. Up to 52 trips would be allowed for travel between Ottawa and the province the senator represents. The argument from some senators is that by limiting travel, some work, for instance that of former senator Gerry St. Germain, who criss-crossed the country to work on aboriginal issues, would die, leaving the Senate as a rubber stamp on House of Commons bills without being able to push larger issues.

Per diems:

Senators from outside Ottawa who come to the city on Senate business are currently allowed about $85 per day for meals and incidentals. They’d be allowed to claim a per diem for days when the Senate sits, when they attend a committee meeting or caucus meetings, and up to 20 additional days a year.

Changing definitions:

Rather than using the terms “primary” and “secondary” residence, the Senate wants to change the definitions to read this:

National Capital accommodation: “accommodation within 100 kilometres of Parliament Hill that is not a senator’s provincial residence and that the senator occupies in order to attend to his or her parliamentary functions in Ottawa.

Provincial residence: “the home of a senator that the senator has identified to the Senate for administrative purposes as his or her provincial home within the province or territory for which he or she is appointed.”

MOORE, Okla. — Emergency crews searched the broken remnants of an Oklahoma City suburb Tuesday for survivors of a massive tornado that flattened homes and demolished an elementary school. At least 24 people were killed, including at least nine children, and those numbers were expected to climb.

The state medical examiner’s office cut the estimated death toll by more than half but warned that the number was likely to climb again. Gov. Mary Fallin said authorities did not know how many people were still missing, but vowed to account for every resident.

“We will rebuild, and we will regain our strength,” said Fallin, who went on a flyover of the area and described it as “hard to look at.”

Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm that struck Monday afternoon. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said.

“It was a very eventful night,” Elliott said. “I truly expect that they’ll find more today.”

Authorities initially said as many as 51 people were dead, including 20 children.

New search-and-rescue teams moved at dawn Tuesday, taking over from the 200 or so emergency responders who had worked all night. A helicopter shined a spotlight from above to aid in the search.

Many houses have “just been taken away. They’re just sticks and bricks,” the governor said, describing the 17-mile path of destruction.

The National Weather Service said the twister was on the ground for 40 minutes, with winds estimated at 190 mph. The agency issued an initial finding that the tornado was EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale — the second strongest type of tornado — and that it was at least half a mile wide.

Emergency crews were having trouble navigating neighborhoods because the devastation is so complete, and there are no street signs left standing, Fallin added.

Fire Chief Gary Bird said fresh teams would search the whole community at least two more times to ensure that no survivors — or any of the dead — were overlooked. Crews painted an “X” on each structure to note it had been checked.

“That is to confirm we have done our due diligence for this city, for our citizens,” Bird said.

The community of 56,000 people, 10 miles south of Oklahoma City, braced for another long, harrowing day.

Families anxiously waited at nearby churches to hear if their loved ones were OK. A man with a megaphone stood Monday evening near St. Andrews United Methodist Church and called out the names of surviving children. Parents waited nearby, hoping to hear their sons’ and daughters’ names.

While some parents and children hugged each other as they reunited, others were left to wait, fearing the worst as the night dragged on.

“As long as we are here … we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

More than 200 people had been treated at area hospitals.

Other search-and-rescue teams focused their efforts at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm ripped off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.

Fallin said she arrived in Moore late Monday and observed the search and rescue operation at the school.

Click to view full-sized version

“It was very surreal coming upon the school because there was no school,” she said at the Tuesday news conference.

Earlier, she described her astonishment at the destruction, saying: “It would be remarkable for anyone to survive.”

Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighborhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage center in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.

Officials were still trying to account for a handful of children not found at the school who may have gone home early with their parents, Bird said Tuesday.

Many parents of missing schoolchildren initially came to St. Andrews United Methodist Church, which had been set up as a meeting site. But only high school students were brought to the church, causing confusion and frustration among parents of students enrolled at Plaza Towers. They were redirected to a Baptist church several miles away.

“It was very emotional — some people just holding on to each other, crying because they couldn’t find a child; some people being angry and expressing it verbally” by shouting at one another, said D.A. Bennett, senior pastor at St. Andrews.

After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off,” Wheeler said.

Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head – but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher – whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon – thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.

AP Photo/Steve GoochThis aerial photo shows the remains of homes hit by a massive tornado in Moore, Okla., Monday May 20, 2013. A tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school.

The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.

“She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.

The tornado also grazed a theater, and leveled countless homes. Authorities were still trying to determine the full scope of the damage.

Roofs were torn off houses, exposing metal rods left twisted like pretzels. Cars sat in heaps, crumpled and sprayed with caked-on mud. Insulation and siding was smashed up against the sides of any walls that remained standing. Yards were littered with pieces of wood, nails and pieces of electric poles.

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

Brett Deering/Getty ImagesPhilip Gotcher stands in the rubble of his house after a powerful tornado ripped through the area on May 20, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. The tornado, reported to be at least EF4 strength and two miles wide, touched down in the Oklahoma City area on Monday killing at least 51 people.

“Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew – their school,” he said Tuesday.

The town of Moore “needs to get everything it needs right away,” he added.

Obama spoke following a meeting with his disaster-response team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and top White House officials.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., forecast more stormy weather Tuesday in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, including the Moore area.

In video of the storm, the dark funnel cloud can be seen marching slowly across the green landscape. As it churns through the community, the twister scatters shards of wood, awnings and glass all over the streets.

Monday’s tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region with 300 mph winds in May 1999. It was the fourth tornado to hit Moore since 1998.

Brett Deering/Getty ImagesVolunteers help with cleanup of Tom and Ronda Clark's property after it was damaged by a tornado May 20, 2013 near Shawnee, Oklahoma. A series of tornados moved across central Oklahoma May 19, killing two people and injuring at least 21.

The 1999 storm damaged 600 homes and about 100 businesses. Two or three schools were also hit, but “the kids were out of school, so there were no concerns,” recalled City Manager Steve Eddy.

At the time of Monday’s storm, the City Council was meeting. Local leaders watched the twister approaching on television before taking shelter in the bathroom.

“We blew our sirens probably five or six times,” Eddy said. “We knew it was going to be significant, and there were a lot of curse words flying.”

Betty Snider, 81, scrambled inside with her son and husband. She put her husband, who recently had a stroke, in a bathroom, but there wasn’t room for both of them. So she and her son huddled in a hallway.

“That is the loudest roar I’ve ever heard in my life,” she said.

She said she didn’t have time to do anything. She couldn’t duck, couldn’t cover her ears, couldn’t find another place to hide.

She said this was the closest a twister had ever come to her house, which remained standing.

Monday’s twister also came almost exactly two years after an enormous tornado ripped through the city of Joplin, Mo., killing 158 people and injuring hundreds more.

That May 22, 2011, tornado was the deadliest in the United States since modern tornado record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before Joplin, the deadliest modern tornado was June 1953 in Flint, Mich., when 116 people died.

Associated Press writers Tim Talley and Ramit Plushnik Masti; and Associated Press photographer Sue Ogrocki contributed to this report.

BEIJING — A four-year-old disabled Chinese boy was put in a prison for more than three years because his parents were political activists, his foster father has claimed.

Chen Ya, who is now eight, was taken away by officials in Sanzao county in the southern province of Guangdong in 2009, according to Chen Fengqiang, his foster father.

Despite having developmental problems, the boy was kept alone in a windowless 40 sq ft cell until April, when he was finally released into Mr Chen’s care.

Today, the boy “cannot walk very far and his head shakes,” said Mr. Chen. “He cannot talk so I do not know what happened to him. But you can imagine what it is like for a four-year-old child to be taken and shut away.

“There are no bruises on his body, so I do not know whether he was abused, but if you raise your hand, he curls into a ball, afraid.”

Mr. Chen could not explain why the authorities had chosen to put the boy in solitary confinement. Yesterday, he travelled to the regional capital, Guangzhou, to engage a new lawyer, Wu Kuiming, to seek redress.

“This is a cruel method that the government uses when it wants to control protesters,” said Mr Wu. “But I do not know what they wanted to achieve by locking up a four-year-old boy.”

Mr. Chen, 54, and his former partner, the boy’s mother, Wei Lipei, 40, have been thorns in the side of the local government for more than a decade. Since 2002, the couple have vigorously protested against the seizure of their land by the local government, which they say paid them scant compensation.

Mr. Chen has two other children by a previous partner, a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. As the couple fell deeper into the frustrating cycle of protesting their plight to the various branches of the Chinese government, their children were increasingly left to fend for themselves.

Chen Ya, because of his disability, was often taken along to protests, in order to exploit public sympathy.

In 2008, while Mr Chen was protesting in Beijing, Ms Wei disappeared. He claimed she was put in detention. At that point the three children were cared for by a nanny from the neighbourhood committee.

The following year, Chen Ya was taken away to a detention centre run by a special police squad that often targets protesters. The centre was originally built in the 1960s as a labour camp.

In 2010, Mr, Chen was also imprisoned for two years in another city.

This is a cruel method that the government uses when it wants to control protesters

Two other protesters confirmed that they had seen the boy in a cell in the centre last year. Another lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, said he had accompanied Mr Chen to the centre in December to try to free the boy.

Illegal detention centres are common in China but their existence is routinely denied by the authorities.

“I have never heard of this case but I can assure you nothing like this would happen in this area,” said a policeman at Jingwan district who declined to give his name. He added that a colleague in Sanzao had never heard of the detention facility.

Four officials in Sanzao county denied all knowledge of the case. One suggested contacting the local propaganda bureau.

The fifth official, Wu Jing, from the civil administration bureau, said he had not heard of the boy and to contact the head of the local harmony maintenance bureau, whose name he gave as Mr Tang.

“Who gave you my number?” said Mr Tang angrily, upon answering the phone.

“If Mr. Wu gave you my number, you should ask him about the case, he knows better than me,” he added, before hanging up and refusing to answer further calls.

In 2007, a reporter for Reuters saw and photographed a three-year-old boy being held in a “black jail” alongside his father in the south-west of Beijing. The father of the boy told him that they had been “held there for months”.

The Daily Telegraph

OTTAWA — Family members have joined a frantic search for a Canadian man with survival training who has been missing for more than a week in Australia’s Gold Coast region.

Prabhdeep Srawn of Brampton, Ont., hasn’t been heard from since parking his rental car on May 13 in the village of Charlotte Pass in Kosciuszko National Park.

The 25-year-old has been a law student at Bond University in Brisbane for the past couple of years.

Srawn is also a Canadian Forces reservist and former Australian military reservist, and one family member says he has had extensive survival training.

He is also considered an avid bushwalker.

Members of Srawn’s family arrived in Australia today to aid in the search being conducted by Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service officers, police and State Emergency Service volunteers.

Family members and friends have also posted messages on social media websites hoping to glean any information they can about Srawn’s whereabouts.

OTTAWA — A Mountie who was once part of the famed Musical Ride is suing the national police force, alleging she was sexually assaulted, harassed, repeatedly doused in cold water and dragged through horse feces by colleagues.

In a statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court, Staff Sgt. Caroline O’Farrell says the cruel behaviour she suffered in the 1980s left her with post-traumatic stress, led to a marriage breakdown and stunted her RCMP career.

O’Farrell, 52, says an internal investigation at the time substantiated her claims but no real action was taken.

The lawsuit says many of O’Farrell’s tormentors continue to work in the RCMP today, some in senior positions.

O’Farrell, who still serves with the RCMP, is seeking millions of dollars in damages for assault, sexual assault, infliction of mental suffering, loss of income and pension entitlement, and breach of contract.

The allegations have not been proven in court and the RCMP has yet to respond to the lawsuit.

PARIS — Some 1,500 visitors were cleared out of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after a man put a letter on the altar of the 850-year-old monument Tuesday, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head.

It’s the first suicide in decades at the landmark site, Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, the cathedral’s rector, told The Associated Press.

The BBC is reporting that the man is Dominique Venner, an award-winning far-right historian.

“It’s unfortunate, it’s dramatic, it’s shocking,” Jacquin said. The motives for the suicide, and the contents of the man’s letter, were unclear.

AFP PHOTO / PIERRE VERDYPIERRE VERDY/AFP/Getty ImagesPeople gather while French policemen cordon off in front of Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral near a vehicle of French firefighters on May 21, 2013, following the evacuation of the cathedral after a man shot himself dead in front of the altar. The man, in his 70s, who was well-known far-right figure, committed suicide with a pistol some time after 1400 GMT, investigators said.

Police ushered people out of the cathedral after the shooting, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said from the grand stone plaza in front of Notre Dame. “We call for compassion,” he said.

It’s highly unusual for the cathedral, visited by some 13 million people from around the world every year, to be evacuated.

Police, the Paris prosecutor and church employees gathered inside the cathedral, while puzzled tourists crowded outside on the island in the Seine River that has been home to the cathedral since the 12th century.

School groups lined up in hopes of entering the cathedral Tuesday evening, when it was expected to reopen for an evening service that church officials said would include a prayer for the man who committed suicide and other struggling souls.

Tuesday’s death comes less than a week after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic school in the French capital.

Jacquin said a few people had committed suicide by jumping from Notre Dame’s twin towers, but he had no knowledge of anyone ever committing suicide on the altar. The Eiffel Tower occasionally shuts down because of suicides or attempts to jump off its ledges.

Spectators burst out cheering Tuesday as city council voted overwhelmingly to reject a new casino in Toronto and to oppose expanded gaming facilities at Woodbine Racetrack.

The 38-6 vote ended a bitter, year-long debate that fuelled inter-city bickering, divided Toronto council and prompted a slew of major casino players to swoop in with glitzy promises. In the end, it was the province’s refusal to meet Mayor Rob Ford’s revenue-sharing demands that sapped the last bit of strength from pro-casino forces.

“Hosting a casino in Toronto that does little to address Toronto’s financial needs and simply makes the provincial government richer is not in the best interests of Toronto,” Mayor Ford told council. “The province wants money for nothing. They are not going to put out one red cent into the development of a new convention and entertainment complex. The financial risk will be entirely on the private sector; they’re not willing to accept a single drop of political risk. Once again, they’ve asked the council to battle it out so the premier doesn’t get her hands dirty.”

The vote comes just days after Mayor Ford learned the province would provide the city only about half of the $100-million it sought in hosting fees, a revelation that coincided with Postmedia president Paul Godfrey’s ouster as chairman of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

Though Mayor Ford’s executive committee had previously recommended moving forward with a casino, Councillor Mike Layton moved two separate amendments Tuesday to nix “the establishment of any new gaming sites” in the city and to oppose Woodbine’s expansion. The anti-casino motion passed 40-4, while the Woodbine vote was tighter, passing 24-20.

“This wasn’t just about a hosting fee,” Mr. Layton said. “This was about the impact on the citizens of Toronto and the people of Ontario that don’t want us to put forward a policy that encourages more people to get addicted to gambling.”

Peggy Calvert of No Casino Toronto, which has strenuously opposed a casino for months, called it “surreal” that her grassroots group trumped intensive lobbying efforts by several gambling giants: “We could only hope way back when that this would be the outcome,” she said.

The mayor and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford — who both supported adding new slot machines and live gaming tables to Woodbine — were among the six overall “no” votes. The mayor had introduced a separate motion to kill a new casino while expanding Woodbine, but it failed 13-31.

Woodbine Entertainment president Nick Eaves warned the facility’s ability to compete would be “severely compromised” if the OLG follows through on plans to build a casino in a neighbouring 905 municipality. A separate motion passed Tuesday expressed council’s opposition to a casino complex in any of the proposed GTA locations.

“For Woodbine to be left on a status-quo basis, to compete against something that may well happen in Vaughan or Markham, is going to put our industry, the jobs at Woodbine, in an untenable position,” Mr. Eaves said, citing ongoing discussions with the province on the matter.

Before Tuesday’s vote, many anti-casino councillors brought forward petitions from hundreds of residents who opposed a casino, and delivered short speeches about the anticipated social ills and the risk of “cannibalizing” other local businesses. Others, such as Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, spoke in favour of a casino, saying it would bring thousands of jobs into the city and help alleviate property-tax pressure.

Although the casino idea is dead, council voted to have staff pursue discussions with Ottawa and Queen’s Park about expanding convention space in Toronto.

National Post

MOORE, Okla. — Rescuers continued to search rubble for survivors as authorities lowered the death toll from a massive tornado that devastated a town outside Oklahoma City, saying Monday it killed at least 24 people, down from 51, according to the state medical examiner’s office.

Spokeswoman Amy Elliot said she believes some victims were counted twice in the early chaos of the storm. Downed communication lines and problems sharing information with officers exacerbated the problem, she said. The death toll, which includes nine children, was expected to climb back up.

The ferocious storm — less than 1 per cent of all tornadoes reach such wind speed — ripped through the town of Moore in a central region of the U.S. known as Tornado Alley, demolishing an elementary school and reducing homes to piles of splintered wood.

In Washington, President Barack Obama pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of “one of the most destructive” storms in the nation’s history.

“In an instant neighbourhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured,” Obama said from the White House State Dining Room. “Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew — their school.”

The president added that the town of Moore “needs to get everything it needs right away.”

The storm left scores of blocks barren and dark in Moore, a community of 41,000 people 16 kilometres south of Oklahoma City. Rescuers tried to listen for any voices calling out from the rubble. A helicopter buzzed above, shining lights on crews below.

As Monday turned into Tuesday, Moore braced for another long, harrowing day.

“As long as we are here … we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

More than 120 people were being treated at hospitals, including about 50 children.

Families anxiously waited at nearby churches to hear if their loved ones were OK. A man with a megaphone stood Monday evening near St. Andrews United Methodist Church and called out the names of surviving children. Parents waited nearby, hoping to hear their sons’ and daughters’ names.

While some parents and children hugged each other as they reunited, others were left to wait, fearing the worst as the night dragged on.

Click to view full-sized version

Crews continued their desperate search-and-rescue effort throughout the night at Plaza Towers Elementary, where the storm had ripped off the school’s roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal as students and teachers huddled in hallways and bathrooms.

Seven of the nine dead children were killed at the school, but several students were pulled alive from under a collapsed wall and other heaps of mangled debris. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain of parents and neighbourhood volunteers. Parents carried children in their arms to a triage centre in the parking lot. Some students looked dazed, others terrified.

James Rushing, who lives across the street from the school, heard reports of the approaching twister and ran to the school where his 5-year-old foster son, Aiden, attends classes. Rushing believed he would be safer there.

“About two minutes after I got there, the school started coming apart,” he said.

“We had to pull a car off a teacher in the hallway,” a man who helped with early rescue efforts at Plaza Towers told CNN. “I don’t know what that lady’s name was, but she had three little kids underneath her.”

The children were alive, and the teacher was seriously hurt, he said. More than 75 students were believed to have been huddled inside when the tornado struck, hugging and clinging to the walls as the twister took the building apart, KFOR-TV reported.

After hearing that the tornado was headed toward another school called Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 160 kilometres per hour through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got there, “it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off,” Wheeler said. 

Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head — but he was alive. 

As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher — whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon — thought it didn’t look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said. 

The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said. 

“She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down,” Wheeler said.

As dusk fell, heavy equipment rolled up to the school, and emergency workers wearing yellow crawled among the ruins, searching for survivors. Crews used jackhammers and sledgehammers to tear away concrete, and chunks were being thrown to the side as the workers dug.

AP Photo/Steve GoochThis aerial photo shows the remains of homes hit by a massive tornado in Moore, Okla., Monday May 20, 2013. A tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school.

Another school, Briarwood Elementary, was also damaged by the tornado, but not as extensively as Plaza Towers.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin deployed 80 National Guard members to assist with rescue operations and activated extra highway patrol officers. Fallin also spoke Monday with President Barack Obama, who declared a major disaster and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

In video of the storm, the dark funnel cloud could be seen marching slowly across the green landscape. As it churned through the community, the twister scattered shards of wood, awnings and glass all over the streets.

Brett Deering/Getty ImagesPhilip Gotcher stands in the rubble of his house after a powerful tornado ripped through the area on May 20, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. The tornado, reported to be at least EF4 strength and two miles wide, touched down in the Oklahoma City area on Monday killing at least 51 people.

The tornado also destroyed the community hospital and some retail stores. Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis watched it pass through from his jewelry shop.

“All of my employees were in the vault,” Lewis said.

A map provided by the National Weather Service showed that the storm began west of Newcastle and crossed the Canadian River into Oklahoma City’s rural far southwestern side about 3 p.m. local time. When it reached Moore, the twister cut a path through the centre of town before lifting back into the sky at Lake Stanley Draper.

Brett Deering/Getty ImagesVolunteers help with cleanup of Tom and Ronda Clark's property after it was damaged by a tornado May 20, 2013 near Shawnee, Oklahoma. A series of tornados moved across central Oklahoma May 19, killing two people and injuring at least 21.

The National Weather Service issued an initial finding that the tornado was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the second most-powerful type of twister.

The Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma forecast more stormy weather on Tuesday, predicting golf ball-sized hail, powerful winds and isolated, strong tornadoes for parts of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. The area at risk does not include Moore, Oklahoma.

Monday’s powerful tornado loosely followed the path of a killer twister that slammed the region in May 1999.

The weather service estimated that Monday’s tornado was at least 800 metres wide. The 1999 storm had winds clocked at 300 mph.

Kelsey Angle, a weather service meteorologist in Kansas City, Missouri, said it’s unusual for two such powerful tornadoes to track roughly the same path.

It was the fourth tornado to hit Moore since 1998. A twister also struck in 2003.

Monday’s devastation in Oklahoma came almost exactly two years after an enormous twister ripped through the city of Joplin, Missouri, killing 158 people and injuring hundreds more.

That May 22, 2011, tornado was the deadliest in the United States since modern tornado record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before Joplin, the deadliest modern tornado was June 1953 in Flint, Michigan, when 116 people died.

With files from Bloomberg

BEIJING — Gunmen wearing North Korean military uniforms released a Chinese fishing boat Tuesday after holding its crew for two weeks, beating up the captain and stealing the vessel’s fuel, the boat’s owner said. He added that the hijackers did not get the $100,000 ransom they had demanded.

The seizure May 5 in what boat owner Yu Xuejun said were Chinese waters was the latest irritant in relations between North Korea and a Chinese government increasingly frustrated with its neighboring ally over tests of its nuclear and rocket technologies in defiance of U.N. bans. One of China’s North Korea watchers said rogue border guards were probably responsible, rather than the Pyongyang government itself.

Yu said in an interview that the men were allowed to move around the boat while they were held captive, but were locked in a room at night. He said the captain suffered an arm injury when he was beaten, but he has since recovered, and that no other crew member was harmed. They now planned to stay out at sea for another 10 days.

“The North Koreans only left the crew with one sack of rice and one sack of flour. But this shouldn’t be a problem as there are a lot of boats in that region now, all from Dalian,” he said, referring to the northeast China port where his boat is based. “With their help, the crews will do OK for the next 8 or 10 days.”

Yu publicized the boat’s capture over the weekend on the Twitter-like Tencent Weibo as a ransom deadline neared. China then publicly demanded that North Korea release the men, though Chinese officials have not said whether they believe the armed captors were operating on their own or under North Korean government authority.

No ransom was paid, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a news briefing Tuesday.

“We demand North Korea investigate this case fully and furnish China with details, and take measures to stop such cases repeating themselves,” Hong said.

Yu also said he hadn’t paid any ransom. “We were working in our country’s waters – why should I pay them?” he said. He had earlier written online that he couldn’t afford it.

He said the captors “looked like soldiers, and the captain said they had guns and used force to take over the boat.”

Yu posted coordinates on his microblog indicating the seizure took place about 100 kilometers from the westernmost point of North Korea and about 190 kilometers from Dalian.

That area is outside both countries’ territorial waters – defined as 12 nautical miles from their shores – but within their overlapping Exclusive Economic Zones, which give them rights to resources including fishing. Jurisdictions in overlapping zones are not always clear.

Yu said the North Koreans took about five tons of light diesel oil and six barrels of gasoline and food, but navigation and communication equipment that was initially taken was returned, Yu said.

Yu’s pleas for help and his frets that his crew might be mistreated were forwarded thousands of times on the Internet, and a high-ranking Chinese military officer, Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, wrote on Sina Weibo of his fury over the detention.

“North Korea has gone too far! Even if you are short of money, you can’t grab people across the border and blackmail,” wrote Luo, who has more than 300,000 followers.

A similar abduction a year ago of Chinese fishermen by armed North Koreans caused an uproar in China. After their release, those fishermen said they had been starved and beaten, and some had been stripped of everything but their underwear.

Hong, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, had declined to answer a question Monday about who exactly China believed was behind the boat seizure, but he made clear that Beijing was looking for the North Korean government to secure the release of the boat and crew.

An expert on North Korea at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences in northeast China said he doubted the North Korean government would have had any knowledge of the incident when it happened.

“This incident is purely about a lawless act by the North Korean border police to blackmail our fishermen,” said Lu Chao, adding that such things frequently happen to Chinese fishermen working near border waters.

“Sometimes, if the amount they are asking for isn’t too high, the boat owner would just pay it,” he said. This time, it might be related to spring food shortages, “so they are asking for a huge ransom.”