Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

From left, Black Forest resident Kristin Brown, whose family lost their home in the wildfire, is joined by Ashley Clipp, Kaitlyn Barlow and Ashley's son Jackson, 2, as they support first responders outside of a fire camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Sunday.

The most destructive wildfire in Colorado’s history is 75 percent contained and expected to be fully under control by Thursday, officials in Colorado Springs said Monday.

Since the Black Forest Fire started on Tuesday, 480 structures have been destroyed, but the mandatory evacuation zone was reduced Monday morning, according Jennifer Brown, an El Paso county public information officer.

Although Brown said more areas are being cleared for displaced residents to return, The Associated Press reported that people whose houses are in areas where the fire did the most damage may be delayed by fire investigators. 

The cause of the fire is still unknown and evidence in those areas could help officials determine what or who started the blaze.

Slideshow: Colorado wildfires

The Black Forest fire raging in Colorado is now the state's most destructive wildfire ever.

Launch slideshow

While officials said that three subsequent wildfires may have been caused by lightning strikes, at the time when the Black Forest Fire started, lightning hadn’t been an issue, so the fire is believed to be a result of a person or machine.

Meanwhile thunderstorms were bringing welcome rain as they helped firefighters contain the fire further on Sunday and Monday, and more showers were forecast into the week.

In the midst of firefighters extinguishing the remaining fires, the Sheriff’s office is focused on damage assessment of structures and cleanup, to prepare for more people to return to their homes. However, according to KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado, even those who are allowed back into their homes, or allowed to retrieve what they can from the rubble, still “must be ready to go at a moment's notice.”

Two deaths were caused by the wildfire, officials said, but the Sheriff’s department has yet to release their names. The two who lost their lives were in the midst of packing up belongings from their garage when it collapsed on them, officials said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

US Marshals Service via Reuters; AP

James 'Whitey' Bulger in a 2011 booking photo, left, and John Martorano in 2008.

James “Whitey” Bulger, already charged with killing 19 people, was accused Monday of emotionally wounding a Boston hitman.

John “The Executioner” Martorano –  a star witness at Bulger’s racketeering and murder trial – told the jury that it “sort of broke my heart” when he learned his pal was an FBI informant.

He said Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi had been his “partners in crime,” his best friends and godfather to his children, the Associated Press reported.

But the news that Bulger and Flemmi were working with the feds “broke all the trust that we had, all loyalty,” Martorano said, according to the Boston Globe.

So he hit them where it hurt: He decided to become a government snitch, too.

As a result of his cooperation agreement, Martorano served just a dozen years in prison even though he admitted to 20 murders, some of which he matter-of-factly recounted in his first hours on the stand.

“I shot him … in the heart,” Martorano said of the 1973 slaying of Joseph Notarangeli. He said he dressed as a butcher for the rubout at a Medford, Mass., restaurant called the Pewter Pot.

Martorano also described a 1974 hit on Notarangeli’s brother, Alfred, and claimed Bulger watched from a second car – the first time in the week-old trial that a witness has directly tied the 83-year-old ex-fugitive to a killing.

The confessed hitman said he botched the initial attempt on Alfred Notarangeli’s life, mistakenly killing bartender Michael Milano who drove a similar car.

“Wrong guy,” he told the prosecutor, according to the Globe.

Milano wasn’t the only unintended victim of Martorano’s bloody membership in the Winter Hill Gang. Innocent bystanders Elizabeth Dickson, 19, and Douglas Barrett, 17, were caught in the crossfire and killed when Martorano opened fire on associate Herbert Smith in 1968.

Smith’s capital crime? He laughed at Flemmi, Martorano said.

The witness admitted he felt bad about Dickson and Barrett.

“I wanted to kill myself,” he said, according to the Globe.

Martorano – who has reportedly sold his life story to a movie producer for $250,000 – is one of three former Bulger cronies testifying for the prosecution. In opening statements, the defense argued the trio only squealed to save themselves and have no credibility.

Bulger, who spent 16 years on the lam before being nabbed with his girlfriend in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011, is charged with taking part in 19 murders, extortion, money-laundering, drugs and weapons.

He has pleaded not guilty, and in opening statements, his lawyer described him as a small-time drug-dealer and loanshark – not the notorious gang kingpin who prosecutors say kept a stranglehold on South Boston for decades and inspired Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed.”

Bulger also has denied he was an informant for the FBI, even though he wanted to put on a defense that argued he had immunity from the feds to commit crimes.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 5:33 PM EDT

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Ken Feinberg, administrator for "The One Fund, Boston", waits to begin a town hall style meeting about the fund in Boston on May 7.

The primary compensation fund for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings has garnered upwards of $50 million and received more than 200 applications for payments, according to the fund’s administrators. 

The One Fund Boston received 212 claims by the Saturday postmark deadline, with additional applications known to be en route to the fund’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. in courier mail, according to Camille Biros, the deputy fund administrator.

The June 15 deadline marked two months to the day since twin explosions went off at the marathon's finish line, killing three and injuring over 260 people.

“We are still receiving applications. Typically, many applications come near or on the deadline,” Biros said Monday. “We don’t know what the ultimate number will be.” 

Any requests postmarked past deadline will be reviewed and distributed on a "case-by-case" basis, Biros said. The fund hopes to have payments in claimants' hands by July 1, she said.

The distribution protocol, finalized in May, will prioritize deaths, double amputees, and victims who sustained brain damage, followed by single amputees and then people whose injuries required an overnight hospital stay.

Families of four people killed –  three by the April 15 explosions and one MIT campus police officer killed by the suspects days later — are eligible for payments, but Biros on Friday declined to say whether those four families had applied for compensation. 

Applicants were required to fill out a three-page form, available on the fund’s official website. The form asks claimants to specify the nature of any injuries and the duration of the hospital stay. It also requires a hospital statement confirming that the purported injuries were sustained during the attack.

Fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg has said that, despite the sum of money in the fund’s coffers, claimants should 'lower their expectations' about the impact of potential payouts.

“Whatever we do with this fund is inadequate,” Feinberg, 68, said at a town hall-style meeting in May. “Everyone, please lower your expectations about this fund. If you had a billion dollars, you would not have enough money to deal with the problems with these attacks.”

Feinberg has managed compensation for families damaged by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre; and the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Rebecca Cook / Reuters file

Yellow crime tape surrounds a field which investigators are prepared to dig up for the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa in Oakland Township, Mich., on June 17.

For a guy who's been dead since 1975, Jimmy Hoffa really gets around.

Through the years, tipsters have insisted the Teamsters boss — who vanished from a suburban Detroit restaurant — was laid to rest in the swamps of Florida, under the artificial turf of Giants Stadium and more than a dozen other spots.

Monday, the feds were digging up a field in Oakland Township, Mich., with new designs on finding Hoffa's remains and solving the mystery of his disappearance.

Here are some of the places where the labor leader has been rumored to be spending eternity:

Giants Stadium: A mob informant told the FBI in 1986 that Hoffa was killed by an Irish gangster in a Detroit suburb and buried in an end zone near section 107 of the football field. Stadium officials said they they dug four feet down while replacing artificial turf and didn't find any trace of Hoffa. The stadium was demolished in 2010.

Mark Lennihan / AP file

Urban legend has it that Jimmy Hoffa is buried beneath section 107 at Giants Stadium.

General Motors' headquarters: Hoffa's onetime driver, Marvin Elkind, told a Canadian journalist that a Detroit mobster revealed the final resting place in 1985 when he walked past the GM building, known as the Renaissance Center, nodded toward the massive foundation and said, "Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys."

Driveway in Roseville, Mich.: Acting on a tip, authorities used radar last September to inspect the driveway of a private home and saw something that made them want a closer look. Police drilled for soil samples but experts found no sign of human decomposition in the dirt.

Sheraton Hotel on Wilmington Island, Ga.: A Teamsters pension fund owned this property near Savannah when Hoffa vanished, so it's been dogged by rumors that he was laid to rest under the helipad. "It's had a colorful past," a developer who converted it into condos once said.

A dump in Jersey City, N.J.: Authorities spent several days in 1975 digging up a mob-linked waste facility after a tipster claimed Hoffa could be found there, a 55-gallon drum serving as a his coffin. They didn't find anything but animal bones.

Wexler's Tavern in Cleveland: The owner of the watering hole was doing some renovation work last month when he made an intriguing find: bone fragments and a matchbook from the Palm Desert Lodge in California, which had strong ties to Hoffa. But pathologists determined the remains were not human.

Florida Everglades: An ex-hitman who said he was Hoffa's bodyguard told a Senate committee in 1982 that Hoffa's body was ground up and stuffed in a steel drum that was then dumped in the Sunshine State's gator-infested wetlands.

A Japanese-made car: A 2006 book claimed that a convicted hitman confessed before his death that he knifed Hoffa to death, took the body to New Jersey, burned it in a steel barrel, dumped the remains in a car that was compressed into a hunk of metal and sent to Japan to be used in new vehicles, the Detroit News reported. 

Incinerator in Hamtramck, Mich.: A Pennsylvania Teamsters official purportedly confessed on his deathbed that he flew to Pontiac, Mich., to collect Hoffa's body from his killers and then had it burned. The same source, Frank Sheeran, supposedly also told an author he shot Hoffa at a Detroit home, but blood found there in 2004 was not a match.

Pool in Hampton Township, Mich.: A convicted murderer who had already led cops to one body in his home claimed they could find Hoffa under an above-ground pool there. So in July 2003, a backhoe dug up the yard while the tipster watched in shackles, but nothing was found.

Gary Malerba / AP file

Excavation crews converged on a Michigan horse farm in Milford, Mich., on 2006 to look for Hoffa's remains.

Tire-shredding plant in Hamtramck, Mich.: A 1978 book posited that Hoffa's corpse was disposed of at Central Sanitation Services, once owned by organized crime figures. The FBI said at the time they looked into that theory and discounted it.

Horse farm in Milford, Mich.: The FBI spent 14 days looking for Hoffa at the 89-acre Hidden Dreams Farm after a 75-year-old prison inmate who once worked there claimed he witnessed the burial. That story, like so many others, turned out to be a pile of manure.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 3:55 PM EDT

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defense contractor, is seen in this still image taken from video during an interview by The Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong June 6, 2013. Snowden, an American who has leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programmes, is technically free to leave the China-ruled city at any time, local lawyers said on June 12, but the ex-CIA employee said he would stay.

NSA leaker Edward Snowden scoffed Monday at the notion he's a spy for China, saying that he would be living like royalty if he were.

"If I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now," a writer who identified himself as Snowden said in an online question-and-answer session hosted by The Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian says Snowden was taking questions “with the help of Glenn Greenwald” but did not explain what role Greenwald, a reporter who broke the story on NSA phone surveillance, played in the session.

Snowden, 29, called speculation that he might give secrets to China in exchange for asylum "a predictable smear ... intended to distract from the issue of U.S. government misconduct."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has questioned whether Snowden had ties to China before he left Hawaii for Hong Kong ahead of published reports on U.S. surveillance programs that were based on documents he claims he leaked.

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American," Snowden wrote in the Q-and-A, which The Guardian said was conducted over a secure Internet connection.

The former Booz Allen Hamilton employee, who says he was a contractor for the National Security Agency, is the target of a federal criminal investigation.

In a moment of virtual fist-pounding, he intimated that prison is not the worst thing that could happen to him.

"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped," he wrote.

One commenter asked what advice Snowden would give to others who could leak classified information "that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?"

"This country is worth dying for," he replied.

Meanwhile, his father, Lonnie Snowden, told Fox News that he hopes his son does not "release any secrets that could constitute treason."

"I would like to see Ed come home and face this. I shared that with the government when I spoke with them," he said, adding that he loves his son and believes he is "principled."

Snowden unmasked himself a week ago as the contractor who leaked documents and information to The Guardian and Washington Post about the U.S. government's collection of citizens' phone and Internet data — programs that officials say are legal, don't infringe on civil liberties and have thwarted terrorist plots.

Since then, the South China Morning Post reported that Snowden also exposed hacking by the United States in Hong Kong and China. And the Guardian reported Monday that documents he provided reveal a British agency hacked into foreign diplomats' phone and emails during summits in London.

Snowden struck several themes during the online session: his claim that the U.S. is accessing Americans' and foreigners' data without cause, his belief that wide-net surveillance is unconstitutional and unethical, and his disillusionment with the Obama administration.

Asked to provide more specific details about how so-called "direct access" to private databases worked, Snowden said those would come later. But in general, he claimed, analysts from an alphabet soup of federal agencies "can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same."

He said that if he were to target a foreign email address "and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time."

Snowden made it clear he's not only opposed to the U.S. collecting data from Americans: "The 'US Persons' protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%."

All told, Snowden answered 19 questions. One of them asked why he told the Guardian that his salary was $200,000 a year when Booz Allen later said he made $122,000. Snowden said that the report had been imprecise.

"The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my 'career high' salary," he wrote.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 1:26 PM EDT

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down an Arizona law that requires people to submit proof of citizenship when they register to vote.

The vote was 7-2. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said that a 1993 federal law known as the Motor Voter Act takes precedence over the Arizona law because of its requirement that states “accept and use” the federal voter registration form.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two members of the court’s conservative wing, dissented.

Only a handful of states have similar laws, which the states say are meant to reduce voter fraud. Civil rights groups said the Arizona law was an effort to discourage voting by legal immigrants, and they worried that more states would have followed if the Supreme Court had upheld it.

Groups opposed to the Arizona law said that the court had blocked an attempt at voter suppression.

“Today’s decision sends a strong message that states cannot block their citizens from registering to vote by superimposing burdensome paperwork requirements on top of federal law,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Citizenship is a requirement to vote in any federal election, and the federal registration form requires people to state, under penalty of perjury, that they are American citizens. States can use their own forms, but they must be equivalent to the federal form.

The Arizona law, known as Proposition 200 and adopted by Arizona voters in 2004, went further than the federal form by requiring applicants to provide proof of citizenship. Arizona has used the law to reject 30,000 voter applications, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Challengers to the law argued that it put an extra burden on naturalized citizens. Using a naturalization document as proof would require an applicant to register in person, as opposed to through the mail, because federal law prohibits copying the document.

A federal appeals court said that Arizona had gone too far and essentially rejected the federal form. Arizona said it was not a rejection of the federal form any more than asking for ID at an airport is a rejection of a plane ticket.

The Supreme Court ruling pointed out that Arizona still has an option: It can ask the federal government to include state-specific instructions on the federal form, and go to court if the government says no.

Three other states — Alabama, Georgia and Kansas — have laws almost identical to Arizona’s and joined it in urging the court to uphold the additional requirement for proof of citizenship.

At an oral argument in March, Thomas Horne, a lawyer for Arizona, told the justices that the state was within its rights to ask for additional information beyond the simple federal form.

“It’s extremely inadequate,” Horne said. “It’s essentially an honor system. It does not do the job.”

“Well,” answered Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “that’s what the federal system decided was enough.”

The court’s conservatives had appeared sympathetic to the Arizona side. Scalia said during the argument that federal law clearly empowers the states to take additional action to assess a potential voter’s eligibility.

“Under oath is not proof at all,” he said. “It’s just a statement.”

Patricia Millett, a lawyer for groups opposed to the law, countered: “Statements under oath in a criminal case are proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal cases that result in execution.

“It’s a very serious oath,” she said.

Arizona is known for its tough stance on immigration. Last year, the Supreme Court struck down some key provisions of a state law meant to crack down on illegal immigration.

But it let stand the most controversial part — a requirement that police making traffic stops check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:26 AM EDT

Hank Walker / Time Life Pictures / Getty Images file

President of Teamsters union Jimmy Hoffa makes a phone call.

The search for Jimmy Hoffa has stretched far and wide for nearly 40 years. Now, federal agents are digging in a field 30 miles north of Detroit in hopes of solving the mystery of his disappearance.

A team of agents descended on a field in northern Oakland Township, Mich., on Monday after a former Mafia underboss said Hoffa's remains were buried there, NBC affiliate WDIV reported.

Hoffa, a former president of the Teamsters labor union, was last seen in suburban Detroit in July 1975. He was declared legally dead on July 30, 1982. His body has never found.

But that may change in the next few days if Tony Zerilli is to be believed. Zerilli, who spoke publically about Hoffa in January, is considered one of a handful of people who may know what happened to Hoffa because his father, Joseph Zerilli, was the Detroit mob boss when Hoffa disappeared.

The property where authorities are searching Monday was formerly owned by Jack Tocco, Zerilli’s cousin. The FBI reportedly believes Hoffa was killed by organized crime because of a power struggle within the labor union.

LONDON -- British spies intercepted the phone calls of foreign politicians and delegates at the G-20 summit in 2009, according to documents provided to The Guardian by self-declared NSA leaker Edward Snowden, the newspaper reported Monday.

U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ also monitored the computers of delegates at the London conference and tried to capture their passwords, the newspaper said.

Among the foreign politicians targeted were then-President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, and Turkish finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, the newspaper said.

The report came hours before President Barack Obama and other world leaders from the G-8 countries - all of which are in the G-20 – were due to attend a two-day summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

Although espionage at international conferences has often been rumored, it is rare for evidence to be uncovered, The Guardian said.

It said the evidence was contained in classified documents shown to its reporters by Snowden, a U.S. citizen who worked for a private defense contractor and now faces a federal investigation into a string of embarrassing leaks about the National Security Agency and the PRISM surveillance program.

Snowden is reportedly in Hong Kong, where he told The Guardian that he was hoping to fight the U.S. government in the courts.

A spokesman for Britain’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the report. A spokesman for GCHQ said the agency never commented on intelligence matters.

Related:

• Edward Snowden, professed NSA leaker, may have few safe havens
• What we know about NSA leaker Edward Snowden
• Girlfriend of self-professed NSA leaker blogged that she felt 'lost at sea'

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:29 AM EDT

Ogden Police Dept.

Charles Richard Jennings is accused of shooting a man who was attending church in Utah on Sunday.

A Utah man was critically injured Sunday after he was shot in the back of the head while attending Mass.

Police in Ogden, Utah, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, say Charles Richard Jennings, 35, entered  St. James Catholic Church and confronted the victim before shooting him. 

Authorities believe Jennings then pulled out a gun in the church and fired at the man, whose name has not yet been released. The victim was transported to a nearby hospital where he remained in critical condition Sunday evening.

Ogden police said in a statement that, "The suspect was specific in the desired target and action," and no one else was hurt during the altercation.

Jennings was at large earlier in the day before he was captured, following a search operation that involved authorities throughout the state.

NBC's Salt Lake City affiliate KSL-TV reported that parishioners dove under pews when they heard the gunshot.  

Police said the alleged shooter is related to the victim through marriage, according to KSL.

Megan Rogers / Equality House

Jayden Sink, 5, and her father, Jon Sink, set up a lemonade stand at Equality House on Friday, across the Street from Westboro Baptist Church. The money she raised will go to the organization that founded Equality House, Planting Peace.

A five-year-old girl set up a lemonade stand "for peace" right across the street from a notorious church in Kansas which has been accused of spreading hate and homophobia wherever it goes.

The purpose behind young Jayden Sink's beverages is to raise money for a nonprofit organization called Planting Peace, which supports orphanages, works to conserve rainforests and provides medication to poverty-stricken children all over the world.

Sink's stand is in front of the group's "Equality House" —  a rainbow-colored headquarters intentionally set up just 20 feet away from the front door of Westboro Baptist Church, which has become famous for picketing soldiers’ funerals, protesting in front of the Holocaust Memorial Museum and celebrating massacres like Sept. 11 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, all in the name of homophobia.

While each panel of siding on Equality House is painted a different color to act as a foil to the heavily anti-homosexual agenda across the street, Planting Peace’s founder and president Aaron Jackson said the house is much more than a statement. Volunteers use the space to work on LGBTQ equality programs and anti-bullying initiatives.

It was Jayden’s father, founder of a “creative compassion” project called Freshcassette, who inspired her to raise money for Planting Peace.

Jackson said that Sink could not fully explain to his daughter what Westboro Baptist stood for, but did explain to her the mission of Equality House and she immediately wanted to do something.

So far, Jayden’s lemonade stand has only been in business since Friday and  has raised over $200, said Jackson. That doesn’t count over $6,000 that people who can’t make it to Kansas have donated to her crowdsourcing initiative on Crowdrise.com.

Jackson said that he’s touched by the support, monetary and otherwise, that the house has received since it first opened three months ago. He said that while he gets the occasional, "you’re going to rot in hell” hate mail, “Even people who don’t believe in LGBTQ rights are supportive of our efforts because we stand against the church.”

Megan Rogers / Equality House

Jayden Sink and her father, Jon Sink set up a lemonade stand outside of Equality House in Kansas to raise money for Planting Peace.

The Westboro Baptist Church — which is officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — did not respond to requests for comment, but they are clearly not happy with Jayden’s presence. On Sunday, they tweeted, “*WHO* let nasty f--s get hands on this poor child? #danger.”

Jackson said members of the church were standing in the front yard on Sunday and were visibly aggravated.

Brian Demarco, 50, was arrested June 13 for allegedly calling in multiple bomb threats to federal buildings in Albuquerque.

This may be the first incidence of someone threatening to blow up a building with a burrito.

Brian Demarco, 50, was arrested late last week after he allegedly called the FBI’s Public Access line, based in West Virginia, on June 11 and said he was going to blow up the Albuquerque FBI field office by sending “a burrito with CO2 explosive inside of it,” according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico.

But that wasn’t the only bomb threat Demarco made, according to the complaint. Demarco allegedly threatened another Albuquerque building the next day — and told FBI investigators that he has made “terrorist bomb threats” to California in the past.

And his end goal was to actually wind up behind bars, according to the feds.

“He wanted to be sent to Federal prison,” the complaint said. “The caller said that he wanted the voices and sounds to stop.”

Demarco later told the FBI that he has previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, the report said.

One June 12, the Denver MegaCenter, a security monitoring system for the Department of Homeland Security, got a call from a man who said he was going to bomb the Albuquerque Social Security Administration building with a timer bomb containing C-4 plastic explosives, according to the complaint.

The building was evacuated, but no bombs were found.

Investigators traced the call to a Super 8 motel in Albuquerque – the same location Demarco had said he was staying in the day before. FBI agents obtained a search warrant for room 209 in the Super 8 motel, where they found a handwritten note with the Albuquerque FBI phone number on it.

That same day, Demarco called 911 because he was “feeling frantic”, according to the criminal report. The Albuquerque Police Department interviewed him and brought him to the University of New Mexico hospital for a mental health evaluation.

After Demarco was released from the hospital, the FBI interviewed him at the hotel where he admitted to placing both bomb threats to the Albuquerque buildings.

“Demarco stated that he was angry at the U.S. government because the government placed a tracking device inside his head and is watching him, in addition to beaming photons into his head,” the report said.

Demarco was arrested by the FBI as he was boarding a bus to Amarillo, Texas, at the Albuquerque Greyhound bus station on June 13. It was unclear why he was not arrested on June 12 after he allegedly first confessed to making the calls. The Albuquerque FBI declined to comment further because of the ongoing criminal case.

He is currently in federal custody on charges of making threats and conveying false information.

Eric Kayne

Boston Marathon survivor Rebekah Gregory, who has undergone 13 surgeries to save her left leg. She was medivaced to Houston, where she is from, two weeks ago.

RICHMOND, Texas – After 13 surgeries aimed at saving her lower left leg, including one that used live back muscle to cover an open and infected wound, a mother seriously hurt in the Boston Marathon bombings has managed to keep that injured limb – for now.

But the days are full of pain and exhaustion for Rebekah Gregory, 26, who is believed to have been the last patient connected to the Boston bombings released from hospital when she was discharged on June 10. She spent 56 days total in hospitals in Boston and Houston, near her home.

Though tales of triumph and comeback abound among the 275 injured in the April 15 bombings on the city's famed road race, some victims like Gregory have a long and uncertain path ahead -- one that does not guarantee full recovery.

“I am kind of just taking it one day at a time because we don't really know what's going to happen,” Gregory said Thursday as she sat in bed and an IV drip fed antibiotics into her body to keep at bay a bone infection – first detected around the fourth week of her recovery – that could force amputation of her limb. “I have a leg today, but I could not have it tomorrow.”

Gregory's case is rare even among the more seriously wounded: while amputees are moving ahead with prosthesis training and others are recovering in rehabilitation, she is stuck many steps back, wondering what will happen with her leg.

Doctors have told her at least ten times that they would need to amputate, but then would quickly walk back as her condition changed. One time, they asked her to make the call.

“How do you make that decision? Because I could say, 'Okay, yeah this hurts really bad,” she said, “ … and all these other people that didn't have the choice to have the amputation are out and they're being fitted for their prosthetics and going on about their lives.”

“But how do you make that decision to just say, 'Okay, just take it?'” she said. “At that point, I still didn't feel like that was the way to go. So at least now if I lose my leg tomorrow or next week, I can at least say I tried to keep it.”

A catalog of injuries

Gregory's injuries are primarily to her left side and include: losses of a lot of soft tissue to her foot and in what she calls a series of “craters” going down her leg, the destruction of about 30 percent of her fibula bone, fractures to her tibia and hand, and multiple fractures to her foot as well as the loss of part of her fourth and fifth metatarsals.

She was medically evacuated to Houston after nearly 40 days in Boston to continue her care near home.

When she got there, doctors at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center tended to a pressing matter: irrigating and cleaning the infected open wound on her foot that, if not remedied, could lead to amputation.

After doing that, they removed a small piece of muscle from her back, with a blood vessel attached, to connect to her foot and a corresponding artery and vein. They placed skin grafts from her thigh on top of it, said Dr. Emmanuel Melissinos, a microsurgeon who performed the procedure.

So far, Gregory has responded well to treatment and her recovery is in line with doctors' expectations, he said. He believes the chances of amputation are remote but possible, especially if the six weeks of antibiotics doesn't squelch the infection.

That recovery is now happening at the home of Gregory's parents, which they moved into the weekend of the bombing. Her mom, Tina, and dad, Tim, packed up her house in Houston and moved her and her son Noah, 5, in with them and her two younger sisters.

Back home

Though Gregory was anxious to get out of the hospital, the transition hasn't been easy.

Eric Kayne

Michael Umana, RN, performs wound care on Boston Marathon survivor Rebekah Gregory, who has undergone 13 surgeries to save her left leg.

Every move she makes must be calculated in advance. That's because she can't bear weight on her leg and she has to keep her left foot raised above her heart for at least 50 minutes of every hour to protect the transplanted muscle and skin graft.

“My leg hurts really bad every day, all day,” she said. “It's a constant pain.”

Going to the bathroom, steps away from her bedroom, is a workout. It entails her getting in the wheelchair, rolling to the door and then using a walker.

“That process alone, I mean, I could take a nap for three hours afterwards. ... It's very difficult right now,” she said as she laid in bed with her left foot propped up on three pillows: “What you see is what I do.”

But that's only part of the adjustment.

“It's not only the physical part of it but it's just the getting back to normal routine as best as I can,” she said, noting the humdrum sounds of everyday life made her anxious.

“Noises really bother me right now ... especially loud noises, I know that Noah's the same way,” she added, noting both her eardrums were ruptured in the blast. “It sends your body into freakout mode … because that day is very much relived. It's like it happened yesterday.”

That day for Gregory was the culmination of what up to then had been a perfect weekend. It began on Friday with her birthday celebration in Rochester, N.Y., at the home of her boyfriend, Pete DiMartino.

The couple, Noah, DiMartino's sister and his parents, and others then traveled to Boston to watch his mother compete in the marathon. They were at the finish line when the first bomb went off.

“All of a sudden, everything was gray,” she said. “I was on the pavement and I couldn't move my body.”

Her main concern was Noah. “Out of all the people screaming and crying, and all the commotion going on around us, I could hear his little voice saying, 'Momma, momma, momma.'”

DiMartino's aunt whisked Noah up and brought him to Gregory. Noah had been struck by shrapnel in the back of his head, where he now has a bald patch, and straight to the bone on his right leg, where he has a long scar that he has dubbed the “swordfish.” He was in the hospital for five days.

Bystanders wrapped Gregory in jackets and she was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with another victim. She could hear the medics saying, “We have an amputee,” and thought they were speaking about her. When she gained consciousness, her parents had to show her a photo of her leg to convince her that she still had it.

“I'm just hoping that I'll be able to keep it,” she said. “But if not, my leg is not my life.”

The costs of recovery

Complicating matters for Gregory, who had been working as an account executive at a corporate housing relocation company, is that her health insurance expired on her birthday, just two days before the attacks.

She had been on her parents' plan and had planned quickly to apply for the one provided by her work, but instead is paying $400 a month for Cobra coverage on top of the costs that her insurance doesn't cover.

Doctors have told her a full recovery could take up to 16 months and she will likely have more surgeries. To help with the medical bills, she applied for the One Fund set up by authorities in Massachusetts to aid the marathon victims.

"It would make a huge difference," she said. "There's a lot. I mean right now, home health (care from a practitioner) and all of the medicines I am on. ... I have $1,000 at least worth of prescriptions a month, and a lot that insurance doesn't cover."

Taking it slow

Eric Kayne

Boston Marathon attack survivor Rebekah Gregory, with her son Noah. She has faced the possibility of amputation many times, and is resigned to the fact that may be a possibility. She says her life is not about her leg and is just happy to be alive.

Dr. Edward Ken Rodriguez, one of the doctors who treated Gregory in Boston at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said he believed Gregory was the most severely injured marathon patient at the hospital who had kept such a wounded limb.

He was very optimistic about her prospects going forward with her leg but cautioned: “When you salvage a limb like that, it's never a normal limb. What's hard to predict is the level of chronic pain she will have in the future, how functional the limb will be, how strong it will be.”

“We understand that you can go through many, many surgeries and end up with a very unsatisfying limb, a limb with chronic pain. So it's not unusual for patients who have even started down the course of salvage (to) have changed their minds after a few months,” he added.

At least 15 of the people wounded in the marathon had amputations. Gregory's case was an example of the debate and conflict between salvage and amputation that has been going on for many years, said Rodriguez, the hospital's chief of orthopedic trauma.

“Salvage is a very time intensive, slow first phase. It could be a good year before you get to the point where you have a bit of a picture of how it's going to turn out,” he said.

“She could do very well with an amputation, but she could also do very well with her own leg,”  he added. “This is the uncertainty and how long a road you want to ride before you find out.”

Gregory plans to ride that road out for the time being. She is also mindful that she and her son need also to recover from the emotional scars and lamented that Noah “remembers too much” from that day.

He doesn't want them to leave the house and brings his mom breakfast daily: one day it was soggy Froot Loops, another it was toast slathered with an inch thick of jelly.

“I take care of my momma and she takes care of me,” he said.

Gregory maintained a positive attitude and a constant smile while talking about some of their darkest days. She keeps up with her boyfriend, DiMartino, who was also injured and is recovering at home, by video chatting online.

The experience has made her “appreciate everything just a little bit more,” she said.

"I'm grateful for every single day that comes because it's just reinforced what I've known all along -- that we don't have as much time as we think we do.”

How to help: To donate to Gregory, her employer set up this fund: http://corporates.com/rebekah/

Related:

Full coverage of the Boston Marathon tragedy on NBCNews.com

Jerilee Bennett / Colorado Springs Gazette via AP

Jaycie Francis, right, is comforted by her boyfriend, James Folk as they look at a destroyed house that belonged to Francis' aunt on Thursday n the Black Forest burn area.

Five days after a massive wildfire began to cut a lethal path through Colorado Springs, killing two people and destroying 473 homes, some residents were returning home over the weekend to face the devastation.

Fire crews fighting the monstrous Black Forest Fire made strides over the weekend, bringing the blaze to 65 percent containment, following surprise showers and mild winds Friday. By Sunday afternoon officials were optimistic containment would improve even more by early Monday.

Authorities have lifted some of the evacuation orders in neighborhoods surrounding the 15,500-acre fire, according to NBC station KOAA of Colorado Springs.

Jack and Judy Roe were sure their home was among the hundreds wrecked by the ferocious flames but discovered it largely intact when they came back to their neighborhood.

“We’ve been on such an emotional roller coaster over this, thinking we had lost everything and then to find out that it’s still there,” Judy Roe told The Associated Press. “It was a big relief to us, but I mean, our hearts were breaking for our neighbors.”

Neighbors Steve Boone and Lana Foery returned to their homes Friday afternoon. The fire was selectively destructive – Boone’s home, which he shared with his wife and two daughters, burned to the ground; Foery’s still stands.

“It really is confirmation for me that it’s gone,” Boone told The Denver Post.

Across the street, Foery wept with joy at the sight of her grandchildren’s hands imprinted in the cement near her home, unscathed by the fire.

“I just can’t believe it,” Foery told The Denver Post. “I can’t believe everything is still standing.”

Bob and Barbara Metzger’s home was completely ravaged, but their car and clotheslines survived the Black Forest Fire’s deadly march through their neighborhood.

“As long as the world around me looks the same, I’ll be fine,” Barbara Metzger told the AP, reportedly holding up a photograph of her charred house still flanked by trees. “We’ll rebuild.”

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

Black Forest Colo., residents Marlice Van Zandt, center in green, hugs fellow resident Linette Perschke, in blue, who lost her home in the Black Forest Fire during an informational meeting on the progress of the fire at Palmer Ridge High School in Monument, Colo. on Saturday

Officials have yet to determine what sparked the Black Forest Fire, which broke out Tuesday amid record-setting heat and arid conditions. It has cost upwards of $3.5 million to battle the blaze, according to the AP.

The White House Office of the Press Secretary reported that over 1,000 personnel are responding to the fire. FEMA and the Department of Defense are contributing resources to help expand containment.

In a call made to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, President Obama expressed his “gratitude and appreciation for the brave men and women fighting tirelessly to combat these devastating fires,” as well as his condolences to the families of those lost.

The fire is reminiscent of the Waldo Canyon Fire in northwest Colorado Springs a year ago, which destroyed 346 homes.

NBC News' Gillian Spears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• Crews see progress against killer Colorado wildfire
• Nightly News: Family rescues 27 animals from Colorado fire
• Colorado fire now most destructive in state history  

JAMISON CITY, Pa. — Four central Pennsylvania residents said they used only a rope and a flashlight during a wild chase to rescue a young bear whose head had been stuck in a plastic jar for at least 11 days.

The frightened but powerful bruin fell into a swimming pool at least twice during the ordeal, according to a report Saturday in the Press Enterprise of Bloomsburg (http://bit.ly/166z97k ). But the group eventually yanked off the jar and set the animal free.

"I thought, 'No one is going to believe us,'" said Morgan Laskowski, 22, the bartender at the Jamison City Hotel and a member of the impromptu bear-wrangling team.

Area residents first spotted the 100-pound bruin with its head in a red jar on June 3, but it eluded game wardens. The animal was attracted to the container because it appeared to have once contained cooking oil.

"He put his head in, and had a problem," said Mike Jurbala, 68, another rescuer. "He'd have died in a couple more days."

Jurbala saw the bear Thursday night as he was leaving the bar at the Jamison City Hotel. He called Jeff Hubler, a local employee of the state Game Commission who had been among those trying to capture it for days with a lasso.

The two teamed up with Laskowski and her mother, bar owner Jody Boyle, to follow the bear through the darkness.

"You knew where he was because you could hear him banging into things," Jurbala said.

They cornered the bear in a resident's backyard, where it ended up falling into a pool a couple of times. Eventually, they wrangled the animal into a position where Hubler could pull off the jar.

"You'd think the bear would be weak, because it hadn't eaten or drunk for a week, but it was strong," Boyle said.

Hubler said people should keep lids on food jars that they throw away.

The Associated Press

A private jet carrying former President George W. Bush to Texas was diverted to Louisville, Kentucky late Saturday after the pilot reported possible smoke in the cockpit, according to his spokesman and Federal Aviation Administration officials.

The aircraft was traveling from Philadelphia International to Dallas Love Field airport when it made an unscheduled landing. President Bush later continued to Texas.

"President Bush's flight was briefly diverted to Louisville late this evening, but he is already safely home in Dallas,” spokesman Freddy Ford told NBCDFW.com in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the FAA confirmed that the flight was diverted because the captain reported possible smoke in the cockpit.

Evan Vucci / AP file

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on April 18, before the House Appropriations subcommittee on Military Constructions, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies hearing on the Veterans Affairs Department's fiscal 2014 budget.

The U.S. Veterans Affairs department says it has hit a “tipping point,” cutting its monstrous backlog of disability claims by 74,000 since late April, yet agency critics contend that growing throngs of ex-troops waiting for injury compensation in America’s biggest cities show the VA is “over-promising and under-delivering.”

Amid scrutiny from Capitol Hill and the White House, a top VA official reaffirmed last week the agency will meet its goal to process all disability-benefit claims within 125 days by 2015. Three of the VA’s 56 regional offices — St. Paul, Minn., Sioux Falls, S.D., and Providence, R.I. — have achieved that threshold, and VA officials told NBC News they will pluck lessons from those “pockets of success.”

“We can get those best practices, (and) shine the light on some of our problem areas,” said Beth McCoy, who oversees 14 VA regional offices in the country’s midsection, including St. Paul, where benefit claims are typically processed in 100 days. 

But those “problem areas” — where some duty-injured veterans wait 16 to 19 months for disability checks to stay financially afloat — are coloring the national mood regarding the VA.

Jonathan Goodman, 29, a Marine veteran from Tulsa, Okla., and his wife, Shannon, say the delay in his disability-benefit claim has been putting a strain on their finances.

“It's sad to see so many veterans come back and apply for this, and it just takes so long. It can send a lot of guys into a downward spiral,” said Jonathan Goodman, 29, a Marine veteran from Tulsa, Okla. who earned a Purple Heart Medal for wounds sustained in a 2004 suicide-bomb blast. He's been waiting 11 months for the VA to process his disability-benefit claim.

“I just want to see guys get the (financial) help they've earned. I don’t want to see veterans put on the back burner," he added.

Veterans in 12 cities now face delays of more than 400 days, on average, for their regional VA offices to handle their disability claims. One year ago, no cities posted VA backlogs surpassing 400 days, according to the agency’s online benefits dashboard.

As of May 30 this year, the average backlog wait for veterans in New York City was 496 days, up 34 percent from a year ago, the dashboard shows. In Los Angeles, the average wait is now 568 days, up 63 percent since last year.

In May 2012, the VA reported a national “rating claims processing time” of 250 days. As of May 30 this year, that national average was 302 days. 

“VA has been over-promising and under-delivering for decades under both Democrat and Republican administrations,” said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “While VA leaders seem confident they’re on track to break the backlog by 2015, they haven’t provided us with any evidence to support that projection. That’s why the closer we get to 2015, the more I’m convinced that ending the backlog by then will require a commitment from the only person with the power to ensure VA lives up to its word: President Obama.”

And veterans are challenging President Barack Obama to act. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), which represents more than 200,000 men and women, posed five questions about the backlog to Obama on June 5. They asked, for example, how the White House is coordinating efforts between the Department of Defense and the VA to slash wait times.

Other VA watchdogs want to know: Does the quick work executed at VA regional offices in St. Paul, Sioux Falls (where it typically takes 115 days to process claims) and Providence (117 days) foreshadow the dawn of a larger fix?

“It’s worth looking at the leadership climate and the procedures used at those regional offices to see what they are doing differently,” said Tom Tarantino, IAVA's chief policy officer. “You also have to consider ... you only have 831 claims pending at the Sioux Falls office. When we solve those problems in L.A., then we will see progress.” 

In Tulsa, where Marine veteran Goodman waits on a disability claim he filed with the VA in July 2012, life means managing wounds and ailments he sustained during two Iraq tours: a traumatic brain injury, back problems, and migraines plus memory and anxiety issues — all of which make working and going to school difficult, he said.

While he appreciates the medical treatment he gets from his local VA hospital, he said, the job that best suits his symptoms is night bartending: dark and calm.

The benefit-compensation delay, meanwhile, forced his wife, Shannon, to pull extra work hours. Goodman had to grab additional bar shifts.

“It’s put a lot of stress on our marriage. It’s been rough financially. She works full time. I work nights. We spend a lot of time just seeing each other in passing,” Goodman said, adding that tax-free VA compensation for his combat wounds “would help us actually enjoy a normal life."

As 30,000-plus troops return from Afghanistan by 2014, the VA is completing a wholesale transformation.

Workflow is being redistributed to cities with available hands and reorganized from an “assembly-line system” to a network of “express lanes” for simple claims and “special-operations lanes” for complex claims like brain injuries, said VA’s McCoy. New employees are being trained to work more efficiently.

And the biggest overhaul: VA is switching to digitized benefits claims, replacing “thousands of tons of paper on shelves,” McCoy said. The electronic system is considered the lynchpin to reducing all backlog waits to 125 days or less. Meanwhile, the VA says it has processed more than 1 million disability claims during each of the past three years. 

“We have a sense of urgency,” McCoy said. “We don’t have the luxury of shutting down the shop, building a great system then opening the doors back up,” McCoy said. “We’re flying the plane as we’re changing it.” 

Related: 

• Unmasking the agony: combat troops turn to art therapy
• Obama urged to step in to fix VA backlog
• As VA backlog grows, Congress, veterans grow weary of excuses 

This month, the Supreme Court will likely rule on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, marking a historic moment for the issue of marriage equality in the United States.

In anticipation of these decisions, MSNBC is hosting a series of Google+ Hangouts On Air about same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court cases. The series of four Hangouts On Air, beginning Monday, June 17, will bring together experts, celebrities, and members of the Google+ community who will be affected by the court’s decisions, for a conversation about the implications of these historic rulings.

MSNBC Hangouts On Air on the DOMA and Prop. 8 decisions:

• Monday, June 17, 12:15 p.m. ET: What Does This All Mean?, hosted by Thomas Roberts
• Tuesday, June 18, 12:15 p.m. ET: Changing Your Community, hosted by Chris Hayes
• Wednesday, June 19, 12:15 p.m. ET: Both Sides of the Aisle, hosted by Steve Kornacki
• Monday, June 24, 2:15 p.m. ET: From Hollywood to Your Hometown, hosted by Andrea Mitchell

RSVP for the discussions with MSNBC, and join the conversation by using #MarriageEquality on Google+.