14 dead as 'enormous outbreak' of tornadoes tears through U.S.

By the CNN Wire Staff


(CNN) -- A devastating storm system moved across the United States on Friday, spawning a slew of tornadoes that contributed to at least 14 fatalities in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.

National Weather Service meteorologist John Gordon reported Friday afternoon the agency had about "half a dozen reports of tornadoes on the ground," as well as reports of "significant damage" -- making his comments before some of the worst twisters were reported in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

"This is an enormous outbreak that's going on right now across Kentucky and the South," Gordon said. "It's crazy. It's just nuts right here."

Southern Indiana was particularly hard hit, with Indiana Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson saying three had died in Jefferson County as a result. Sgt. Rod Russell with the Indiana State Police said later that three people also were killed in Scott County.

In addition, Emergency Management Director Leslie Cavanaugh of Clark County -- which has about 110,000 people -- reported one death. Sheriff's Department Maj. Chuck Adams added that a man was found dead in his car several miles outside Henryville.

"We've got total devastation in the north-central part of the county (and) widespread damage from the west to the east," added Adams. "We are inundated with calls."

Aerial footage from CNN affiliate WLKY showed structures torn to shreds and large swaths of trees knocked down in Henryville, about 20 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky.

Other aerial images showed similar devastation in St. Paul, Indiana. Several officials -- including Jeffersonville, Indiana, Mayor Mike Moore, U.S. Sen. Dan Coats and Adams -- indicated that the town of Marysville suffered especially significant damage.

Cavanaugh also said that the local high school, Henryville Junior-Senior High School, had been "demolished."

According to Sara Reschar, an administrative assistant for the West Clark Community Schools, "students were already out of the school when the storm hit" -- having been dismissed about 15 minutes earlier. Adams said there were some "scrapes and scratches," but no serious injuries as a result.

Authorities used thermal imaging equipment, search dogs and other means Friday night to look for a 9-year-old boy in Henryville whose whereabouts was unknown after the tornadoes came through, Adams said.

Amid the devastation, there was also some hope -- in the form of a 20-month-old girl found alone, and without identification, in a field in Salem, about 20 miles from Henryville.

Adam said the girl was intubated and then flown to Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville. He said that people since had called in to identify the girl, while adding he did not know her current condition.

About four hours after the National Weather Service said a twister touched down in Indiana's Posey County, Gov. Mitch Daniels said crews "are racing the nightfall" to assess the damage and help those in need.

"I am constantly amazed by both the unpredictability and the ferocity that Mother Nature can unleash, when she chooses to," Daniels said of the severe weather.

His counterpart in Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear, on Friday declared a statewide emergency to facilitate local authorities' access to state resources. The governor said there are fears there will be multiple fatalities in the state.

"The storm system hasn't cleared Kentucky yet, but we obviously have reports of some heavy damage," Beshear told CNN's Erin Burnett.

At least five people were killed in Kentucky tied to Friday's severe weather, said Chuck Wolfe, a spokesman for the Kentucky Emergency Management Agency.

Shawn Harley, from the National Weather Service, confirmed that people were trapped in damaged buildings after a large tornado struck the small town of West Liberty in eastern Kentucky. There was no immediate word on casualties as a result and Wolfe said state authorities had lost contact with the town.

Wolfe said officials believe the town "got hit pretty heavily." Beshear is expected to visit West Liberty to assess the damage Saturday.

Separately, a man in his 50s was found dead in his mobile home in Bethel, Ohio, the Clermont County Commissioners said in a press release.

In Tennessee, severe weather was responsible for critical injuries of as many as eight people in the cities of Harrison and Oolteweh, officials there said.

The storm brought golf-ball-size hail, strong winds and rain into the two northeast Alabama counties before continuing on a northeastward path into Tennessee.

Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Jeremy Heidt said there were reports of possible tornado touchdowns in nine counties total. At least 29 people were injured across the state, according to Dean Flener, also with TEMA.

Between 40 and 50 homes in Hamilton County, Tennessee, have "significant damage that we know about," the county's Chief of Emergency Management Bill Tittle told CNN.

Reporting from that area near Chattanooga, CNN's Rob Marciano observed a continuous stretch of damage about 200 yards wide that ripped what had been brick-and-mortar homes down to their foundations.

Tittle said that there are 24 reported injuries and, while none of them appears to be life-threatening, he acknowledged that "we have not reached all the homes."

"We obviously have lots of debris, homes with roof damage, streets that are impassable that we have crews cutting down trees with chainsaws in order to get emergency vehicles through, and as of now our crews are just going door-to-door on foot," said Amy Maxwell, Hamilton County, Tennessee, emergency management spokeswoman.

Maxwell later said six to 10 people were at local hospitals after suffering injuries, and a triage area was set up at Ooltewah High School to treat patients on the scene.

Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said a touchdown of a tornado had been confirmed, though he expressed optimism that sound preparation and safety measures appeared thus far to prevent any deaths.

Survivor: 'Half the roof was coming off' "We're just working diligently at this hour to try to make sure that everyone is accounted for," Coppinger told CNN. "And hopefully we'll be able to escape (without fatalities)."

Meanwhile, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said there have been seven injuries and about 40 homes destroyed but no fatalities after two tornadoes touched down in his state Friday morning.

"The April 27 tornado and the track of the two this morning were exactly the same," Bentley told CNN, referring to last year's twisters that left at least 238 dead.

Both Buckhorn High School in Madison County and the Limestone County Correctional Facility in an adjacent Alabama county were hit Friday.

There was also widespread damage in Madison County, the National Weather Service said, and some injuries were reported, according to a local ambulance service.

The Madison County Emergency Management Agency confirmed that a rain-wrapped tornado was spotted near the Harvest area, just northwest of Huntsville, which itself was hit hard by a tornado last year.

"The key thing that let me know it was serious was the loud wind," said Hovet Dixon of Harvey, Alabama. "It almost seemed like it was trying to lift my roof off."

The warden for the Limestone Correctional Facility, Dorothy Goode, said the prison was hit by the storm. All prisoners -- the facility holds about 2,200 -- were accounted for, she said.

Storms are expected to begin to weaken during the late evening as they move east toward the Appalachians. The severe weather threat should diminish overnight Friday into Saturday morning, Morris said.

These tornadoes follow an earlier outbreak that began Tuesday night and left 13 dead across Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee and battered parts of Kentucky.

Arizona sheriff Arpaio unveils findings of Obama birth certificate probe

PHOENIX – Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has unveiled preliminary results of an investigation, conducted by members of his volunteer cold-case posse, into the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate.

At a news conference, Arpaio said the probe revealed that there was probable cause to believe Obama's long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April is a computer-generated forgery. He also said the selective service card completed by Obama in 1980 in Hawaii also was most likely a forgery.

Obama's campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt offered a light-hearted dismissal of Arpaio's probe -- he tweeted what he referred to as a "live link" to the sheriff's news conference, but instead provided a link to a snippet of the old conspiracy-theory based TV series, "The X-Files."

UN to propose planetary regulations of water, food

By Kelley Vlahos / FoxNews.com

An environmental report issued by an agency of the United Nations last month has some critics sounding the alarm, saying it is a clarion call for "global governance" over how the Earth is managed.

The report, “21 Issues for the 21st Century,” from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Foresight Process, is the culmination of a two-year deliberative process involving 22 core scientists. It is expected to receive considerable attention in the run-up to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which will be held in Rio, Brazil, in June.

The scientists who wrote the report say it focuses on identifying emerging issues in the global environment, and that it is not about mandating solutions.

But its critics see an agenda lurking in its 60 pages, which call for a complete overhaul of how the world's food and water are created and distributed -- something the report says is “urgently needed” for the human race to keep feeding and hydrating itself safely.

“This is more utopianism, pie-in-the-sky pleading for ‘global governance,’ including what they acknowledge as ‘novel governance arrangements,’ including, ‘alliances between environmentalist and other civil society groups,’” charged Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, and a senior fellow for energy and environment at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in Washington, D.C.

The Foresight Report suggests actions to save humanity from starvation, the overheating planet and the collapse of the world’s oceans -- options that include new “constitutional frameworks,” “international protocols” and a “shared vision” for land and water management that essentially rewire existing treaties and governments.

But the group insists it’s not a call for global governance.

“We are not talking about a world government,” said Dr. Oren Young, professor of institutional and international governance and environmental institutions at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and one of the scientists who issued the report.

He said the panel’s conversations included questions like, “How do we resolve these problems without creating this monster entity?”

Young said the panel wasn’t tasked with finding all the answers.

“We realize that government can be part of the problem,” he told FoxNews.com. “But we can’t close our eyes and say, ‘oh well, everything will work out,’ without us even looking at it.”

Even environmentalists don’t believe that planet-wide accords are particularly popular.

“I don’t think there is a global appetite right now for new institutions … or a world environmental organization like we have, say, with the World Trade Organization,” said Janet Redman, co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

“There are a lot of places -- especially the oceans and food security -- where everyone is saying that doing this piecemeal is not going to address the bigger sense of these environmental issues.”

But on the whole, she said, global government probably won’t work.

“I think everyone agrees this is not the right time,” Redman told FoxNews.com.

The State Dept. has already weighed in on many of the issues presented by the Foresight Panel in its own statement, titled “Sustainable Development for the Next Twenty Years United States Views on RIO+20.”

Submitted to the U.N by the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OIES) in November, this policy vision makes it clear the State Dept. will back global government solutions -- whether they be in addressing the overfishing of the oceans, making national laws and regulations more transparent, addressing land and ocean-based pollution, or water management.

The U.S. also is wholly supportive of strengthening the UNEP as “a body through which governments can cooperate to recommend environmental policies, promote best practices, and build national capacity for governance, monitoring and assessment,” according to the vision statement.

Yet UNEP is unsuited for that, by the agency’s own admission.

An internal U.N study obtained by Fox News last June found that the $450 million organization is an administrative mess, not knowing how its money is spent or how many public and private partners it might be working with at any given time.

Questions about the ability of nations to work with global bodies such as the U.N, and whether they should subscribe to transnational guidelines or mandates, will no doubt be a subject of concern in the run-up to the Rio summit.

Just as global governance solutions are raised in the report, so are local solutions that involve local governments, private industry and promoting individual and community shifts in the way people live and tend to the environment in their daily lives and workplaces.

Google’s new privacy policy takes effect sparking global Web privacy fears

by Jameson Berkow / Financial Post

Famous for its ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra, the company behind the world’s largest search engine is facing widespread concerns over what it might do with all the data it started collecting on Thursday.

Google’s new privacy policy is now in effect for all Google services. The key change is all the information Google used to collect from users of Gmail, Google+, YouTube, Docs or Maps separately will now be kept in a single location in hopes of offering a more personalized experience.

“In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” is how Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy, product and engineering, explained it in a January 24 post to the company’s official blog.

So if you posted an update to your Google+ account about getting a new job in a different city, your next Google search might show ads for local apartments and your next visit to YouTube might suggest you check out a new up-and-coming band out of that city.

Innocuous as it may sound, reaction from around the Web has been one of anxious discontent. In the five weeks since the change was announced, many have openly expressed their fears over whether the Web giant is beginning to learn too much about what they search for, who they talk to and what they say.

And they are not alone. Governments have also expressed ire over new policy with some going as far as saying it might be illegal.

The data protection watchdog in France, CNIL, said Wednesday the policy was a breach of European policy laws and promised a Europe-wide investigation after Google refused several requests to delay its implementation.

“The CNIL and EU data authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services: they have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation,” the French regulator wrote in a letter dated February 27.

Japan’s Ministry of Trade and Industry also expressed concerns on Wednesday, releasing a statement saying the new policy must be in line with Japanese laws and that Google must offer “additional explanations or measures to address actual user concerns.”

To be fair, Google’s actions are no different than strategies employed by other leading Internet firms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Zynga: All of which attempt to learn as much as they possibly can about their users so they can generate more revenues by offering detailed metrics to their advertisers. Many argue this is simply the price users must pay in exchange for otherwise free access to such services.

That does not mean users must simply accept Google’s new privacy policy and continue with their online activities with the implicit knowledge that someone in Mountain View, California is watching them. There are plenty of ways to wade past the watchers.

Clear your history

Google makes it easy for users to erase their previous search terms. There is even a Website — google.com/history — where users can quickly select that option.

While it won’t immediately stop Google from seeing where you’ve been, the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes disabling the ‘record search history’ option will let you browse “partially anonymized after 18 months.”

Take your data and run

If anything “partial” is not enough to make you feel safe, Google has also set up the Data Liberation Front to provide step-by-step instructions for users to export all their data from every Google service quickly and easily.

Go somewhere else to search

Although Google still controls the lion’s share of the search market, there are alternatives out there such as the Bing search engine from Microsoft Corp. — a company which has gone out of its way (see the ad embedded below) to paint itself as less invasive than its largest rival.



Just log off

The only way Google can record information about you is if you are logged into your Google account. So if you don’t want the watchers to see you search for “ear hair removal tips,” all you need to do is hit “logoff” and you are once again once among millions.

In truth, whether or not Google is going against its own “Don’t be evil” mantra by potentially breaking privacy laws along with the trust of its users, or just going with the flow of Web 2.0, is largely irrelevant. The choice still lies with you.

Crude hits 10-month high after Saudi pipelines blast

Oil prices have soared to their highest level in the past ten months following reports of an explosion of pipelines in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province.

Brent North Sea crude is trading at nearly $ 127 per barrel while West Texas Intermediate is trading above $ 109 a barrel.

Meanwhile, light, sweet crude for April delivery soared to as high as $110.55 a barrel after it settled for Thursday at $108.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up $1.77 from Wednesday's closing level. Brent crude on the ICE Futures Europe exchange also rose to $128.40 a barrel.

On Thursday evening, an explosion in Saudi Arabian city of Awamiyah in the east of the kingdom destroyed the pipelines feeding one of the most important oil hubs in the world.

The major pipeline starts in Abqaiq and ends at Ras Tanrua oil terminal carrying nearly six million barrels of oil every day.

Last week, oil prices rose to a nine-month high due to Iran's cutting of crude exports to certain European Union states in response to the EU oil sanctions imposed against Iran.