CHARDON, Ohio -- A 17-year-old youth was charged Thursday with three juvenile counts of aggravated murder in shooting that killed three students at a high school.

Thomas "T.J." Lane was accused of pulling out a semiautomatic pistol he had stolen from his uncle and opening fire in the Chardon High School cafeteria on Monday. Three boys were fatally wounded, and two other students were injured. One is still in the hospital.

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Lane also faces two counts of attempted aggravated murder and one count of felonious assault.

The juvenile counts of aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder would mean only a few years in detention if Lane is convicted. But the prosecutor has already said he plans to try the boy as an adult. That could mean life in prison if he is found guilty.

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MOBILE, Ala.  -- Authorities have hauled the wreckage of a Coast Guard helicopter out of Alabama waters but did not find the bodies of three missing crew members inside.

U.S. Coast Guard officials say the search continues for the missing men. A fourth man was found after the crash but died.

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Coast guard officials identified the missing as Petty Officer 3rd Class Andrew Knight, Lt. j.g. Thomas Cameron, and Lt. Cmdr. Dale Taylor.

The MH-65C helicopter crashed on a training mission Tuesday evening near Point Clear in Mobile Bay.

Chief Petty Officer Fernando Jorge was found unresponsive in the water and later was declared dead.

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An armored car guard accused of killing his partner and fleeing with more than $2 million that they had just picked up from a casino admitted the crime to a friend, court documents say.

Pittsburgh police have charged Kenneth J. Konias Jr., 22, with homicide, robbery and theft in the Tuesday heist and killing of armored truck guard Michael Haines, 31, of East McKeesport, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Officials say Konias admitted the crimes in phone calls following the slaying in a Garda Cash Logistics truck.

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Haines’ body was found in the back of the truck when company workers went to find out why it had been idling under a Pittsburgh bridge, The Associated Press reported.

"Our belief is that he planned to rob the company, and if he had to kill a guard, he planned to do that," Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "He shot the guy from close range in the back of the head. That's pretty cold-blooded."

Read the original story on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

After the slaying, authorities say, Konias phoned a friend and admitted the murder, saying he had enough money to stop working, the newspaper reported, citing the criminal complaint in the case.

"Konias made statements such as, 'My life is over.'... Witness No. 1 then said to Konias, 'What? Did you kill someone?' ... Konias was silent for several seconds and then he answered, 'Yes,' " according to the complaint quoted by the Pittsburgn Tribune-Review.

Konias was apparently unsuccessful in trying to persuade the friend to run off with him, after asking about the extradition laws of Mexico and Canada, the newspaper reported.

Garda Cash Logistics is offering a $100,000 reward in the case. Police say Konias is armed and dangerous, the AP reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- The mystery man whose tryst with Tyler Clementi is at the center of a privacy invasion trial prepared to testify as early as Thursday against the former Rutgers student accused of using a webcam to spy on them in a dorm room.

He was one of the last people to see Clementi, 18, who committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010, just days after learning his Rutgers University roommate Dharun Ravi, now 20, covertly saw them kissing and encouraged others to look too.

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Ravi is not charged in Clementi's suicide, which was widely portrayed as a tragic example of bullying and the toll it too often takes on gay teenagers.

Ravi is charged with 15 counts of invasion of privacy, witness and evidence tampering and bias intimidation, which is a hate crime. If convicted, he faces the possibility of 10 years in prison.

The man known only M.B., who is not a Rutgers student, visited Clementi in the dorm room he shared with Ravi on two evenings in the week before the suicide, the last being Sept. 21.

The man's identity has been closely guarded because he is considered a victim himself. Efforts to protect M.B.'s identity were requested by his lawyer, Richard Pompelio.

He said in court papers that M.B., who apparently met Clementi online, has an "overwhelming" fear that release of his identity will lead to a "total invasion" of his privacy.

Thus far, the judge has agreed to place tight restrictions on the disclosure of his identity, ordering that M.B.'s name and date of birth be given only to Ravi, his attorney and his attorney's investigator, who are bound not to disclose these details to anyone else.

It was not clear the extent to which his identity will continue to be shielded once he takes the witness stand in the trial in Middlesex County, N.J., court.

Students who lived in the same college dorm and have been called as witnesses in the trial described M.B. as about 30 years old and "sketchy."

One student witness got a laugh from the jury when she described him as "not obscenely old"; another said his age -- not that he was a man -- made his liaison with their dorm-mate "scandalous."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Two San Diego Navy doctors en route to a medical training course in Texas ended up saving a man's life before their plane even landed.

Lt. Gregory Capra and Lt. Art Ambrosio were residents in the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. They boarded a plane to San Antonio on Feb. 8 for a cadaver dissection course, according to a press release from the Center.

Two hours into the flight, a man at the front of the plane went into cardiac arrest.

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Despite two failed CPR attempts, and an unsuccessful administering of an automated external defibrillator (AED), the man was still not responding. A nurse on the plane tried to inject an IV line with epinephrine, but the man's veins were inaccessible.

Finally, the two Navy doctors tried an unconventional trick. The man's wife revealed her husband had a history of airway obstruction." Capra thrusted the man's jaw upward and opened his airway, while Ambrosio inserted a plastic hook-shaped device into his throat.

Read the original story on NBCSanDiego.com

The man began to squeeze Capra's hand and became responsive. Once the plane made an emergency landing, medics took over care. The man's condition at this time is unknown.

“We were in shock that it had actually happened, and that we were in the middle of it all,” said Capra in the release. “We were like, ‘Did that just happen to us?’ It was very surreal.”

Ambrosia added that at the Navy hospital, they were trained to work under pressure, which helped them to respond so quickly.

"There are different things they teach us here like poise under pressure, no wasted movements, knowing what you mean and meaning what you say … all of that helped us respond to this situation quickly and efficiently.”

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Modesto police are investigating if there’s a criminal case against a former high school teacher who resigned his job to move into an apartment with an 18-year-old girl he met while teaching.

James Hooker, 41, was placed on administrative leave Feb. 3 by Modesto City Schools and resigned less than three weeks later, according to a report at the Modesto Bee.

The newspaper reports that the man, who had taught business and computer classes,  left his wife and children, to move in with Jordan Powers, an Enochs High School senior whom he met when she was a freshman at the school. One of Hooker's children also attends the same high school.

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"In making our choice, we've hurt a lot of people," Hooker told the Bee. "We keep asking ourselves, 'Do we make everyone else happy or do we follow our hearts?' "

Tammie Powers, the student’s mother,  told the Bee she believes Hooker pursued her daughter, and cited recent problems with her daughter’s grades and health. Her daughter had panic attacks.

"I believe it was the stress of the lie," Tammie Powers told the newspaper.

Read the original story on The Modesto Bee

Modesto police are trying to determine if there was inappropriate contact between the teacher and the student before she turned 18 in the fall, the Bee reported.

The community of Modesto has largely reacted with shock and disapproval, the newspaper said.

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A Philadelphia woman was arrested Wednesday at a so-called "pumping party," where police say she was planning to administer buttock-enhancing injections.

Police say they received a tip that Padge Windslowe, also known as "Black Madam," would be performing the procedure at a Germantown home.

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For more, visit NBCPhiladelphia.com

This wasn't the first time the "Black Madam" was connected to illegal buttock enhancements.

Windslowe is under investigation for a botched butt-enhancement procedure on 20-year-old British student Claudia Aderotimi at the Hampton Inn near Philadelphia International Airport  in February 2011, according to police. Aderotimi died after the procedure was performed.

Police say that on Feb. 19 another woman -- an exotic dancer from North Philadelphia -- received injections of what is believed to have been silicone into her buttocks. Police say she went to Temple University Hospital two days later complaining of shortness of breath and spitting up blood.

"What we believe happened is the same thing that happened in a previous case... the injection struck a blood vessel," Philadelphia Police Lt. John Walker said. "Whatever the stuff is -- we believe it's silicone -- went into the blood stream, landed into her lungs and caused shortness of breath."

Police say the woman from the most recent incident has since recovered.

Windslowe was charged with aggravated assault in connection with the most recent incident. She has not been charged in connection with Aderotimi's death.

Police say they plan to meet with the Philadelphia district attorney and the medical examiner on Thursday to discuss the Aderotimi case.

"The mere fact that she's out there continuing to still inject people makes us all irate," Walker said.

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Frustrated with fellow bus riders incessantly talking on their cell phones, a Philadelphia man began jamming the cell reception to silence their conversations. 

The NBC10 Investigators tracked down the cell phone zapper who targets talkers on a SEPTA bus route. Not only does he admit doing it, he thinks it’s a good thing.

For story, video, visit Philadelphia's NBC10.com

The man, who calls himself Eric, told the NBC10 Investigators, “I guess I’m taking the law into my own hands and quite frankly, I’m proud of it.”

Eric says he doesn’t want to hear people talking on their cell phones in public.

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“It’s still pretty irritating and quite frankly it’s pretty rude,” said Eric.

Eric says he’s firing up a cell phone jammer that he bought online to shut down conversations he doesn’t want to hear.

“A lot of people are extremely loud, no sense of just privacy or anything, when it becomes a bother, that’s when I screw on the antenna and flip the switch,” said Eric.

An NBC10 employee, whom the NBC10 Investigators are calling “Marie,” says she freaked out when she saw the man jamming passengers’ cell phones on her bus ride to work.

“He’s blatantly holding this device that looks like a walkie-talkie with four very thick antennae. I started to watch him and any time somebody started talking on the phone, he would start pressing the button on the side of the device,” said Marie.

Marie tipped off the NBC10 Investigators who went undercover to catch the cell phone vigilante with a hidden camera.

Within minutes of boarding the 44 bus, the NBC10 Investigators spotted Eric jamming cell phones. A couple of weeks later, they caught up with him as he got off the bus, they informed Eric that the cell phone jammer device is illegal.

“It is my understanding it is more of a gray area. It is my understanding that it’s illegal to, you know, stop a television signal, a radio signal. You know, it’s my understanding according to the FCC that it’s not illegal to disrupt a cell phone signal,” Eric said.

But according to federal law, it is illegal to use, own, buy or sell cell phone jammers. The Feds say breaking the law could result in jail time and up to a $16,000 fine. Cell phone jammers are illegal because of the public safety concerns.

Drexel University's Dr. Rob D’Ovidio works with cell phone forensics and electronic crime. D’Ovidio says some cell phone jammers can stop GPS, two-way radios and can even block police radio if they’re close enough.

“With cell phone jammers you are limiting all types of communication tools that use the radio frequencies. You have the potential to cause a public safety disaster. Cutting off communication by not only our public officials to their dispatch centers but also cutting off the public’s communication to 911 can be a dangerous thing,” said Dr. D’Ovidio.

What about emergency calls?
The NBC10 Investigators asked Eric if he was concerned about disrupting someone who is trying to get emergency help.

“Well, of course if there were such a situation on the bus, I imagine I would be right in the middle of it. And I would imagine that would be a very different situation of course, I’d imagine I’d be dialing 911 myself, “ Eric said.

SEPTA officials say they have been getting a lot of complaints from riders on the 44 bus route about lost calls. But SEPTA insists that riders are safe.

SEPTA says all buses have a panic button. Drivers can also alert police with the digital destination sign on the front of the bus. The transportation authority says it has tested its two-way radio communication and insists cell phone jammers will not affect it. But that doesn’t make Marie feel any better.

“Every time I see this guy on the bus, I have a mixture of fear and anger. Part of me wants to go up to him and say, ‘Stop doing this, how dare you,’” said Marie.

Just hours after the NBC10 Investigators told Eric that the cell phone jamming device was illegal, he called to say he did more research and discovered what they told him was true and said he would dispose of the device.

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A federal judge acknowledged forwarding a racially charged email about President Barack Obama, saying he isn't a racist and apologizing while adding that he sent it "because it's anti-Obama."

"I apologize to anybody who is offended by it, and I can obviously understand why people would be offended," Richard Cebull, the chief U.S. district judge in Montana, said in comments reported by the Great Falls Tribune newspaper on Wednesday.

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"The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan," he said. "I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is. I sent it out because it's anti-Obama."

In his email to six friends, Cebull writes: "Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine."

The forwarded content states: "A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?' His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

Cebull, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, has served as the state's chief federal judge since 2008. He told the Great Falls Tribune that he doesn't consider himself prejudiced, and that is actions in the courtroom have shown that.

"I have never considered myself that way," Cebull said. "All I can emphasize is I've treated people in my courtroom all these years fairly. I don't think I've ever demonstrated racism. Nobody has ever even implied it."

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As towns cleaned up and survivors recalled near-death tornado experiences, forecasters on Thursday warned of a new round of severe weather Thursday night and Friday that could produce even more twisters.

"We've got a really bad system starting to develop, just as bad if not worse for tomorrow," NBC weather anchor Al Roker reported on the TODAY show, citing "a strong risk of storms from Huntsville, Alabama, to Indianapolis and on into central Ohio."

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Parts of Illinois and Mississippi are also at risk, he noted, and any twisters could be several miles long due to the system's strength.

Thirteen people were killed Wednesday in Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee and Kansas by a system that spawned more than a dozen twisters across the Midwest. Hardest hit was Harrisburg, Ill., where six people died, some 300 homes were destroyed or damaged, and residents had stories of survival and tragedy.

Son finds bodies of parents
Jeff Rann had ample warning early Wednesday. A frantic call to his wife from his mother-in-law alerted them to reports that a tornado was barreling down, and Rann heard the deafening wail of storm sirens.

Rann's home was untouched, but just two blocks away, his parents were not as fortunate.

Rann raced through the darkness to his parents' duplex, but saw instantly there was nothing left, natural gas whistling eerily as it spewed from the property's severed meter. In the mud of a debris-strewn field, Rann found the body of his dad, 65-year-old Randy Rann, and his mother, 62-year-old Donna Rann.

"She just said, 'It hurts. It hurts,'" Rann said of his mother, who had been looking forward to early retirement next month but who died a short time later at a hospital.

The National Weather Service preliminarily listed the tornado as an EF4, the second-highest rating given to twisters based on damage. Scientists said the tornado was 200 yards wide with winds up to 180 mph.

Across the road from the Ranns, a co-worker of Donna's, Amanda Patrick, was roused by the sirens about five minutes before all hell broke loose. She called Donna Rann — her co-worker at the U.S. Forest Service — to alert them but got no answer, then thrust herself into a bathtub as the twister she described as sounding "like a bulldozer and Hoover vacuum at the same time" ripped through.

How to help tornado victims
PHOTOBLOG: Destruction across Midwest

"Not trying to be holy, I got on my knees and said, 'God, watch over me,'" she said.

The winds shifted the tub as the walls buckled above her. In a gray T-shirt and pink-striped pajama pants, she crawled shoeless out into the rain and muck.

She called out for the Ranns but heard nothing back.

Hours later, tears streamed down Patrick's face as she grieved for the late couple.

"A couple weeks ago, there was a bad storm and I looked out the window to check on them," she said, sobbing. "Donna texted me and said, 'I saw you in the window.' She was checking on me. That's the way we were, always just looking out for each other."

This time, she said, "they didn't have a chance."

Hospital patients moved in time
At Harrisburg Medical Center, staffers were alerted to the tornado's approach by the sheriff's department some 20 minutes before the severe weather finally threw its punch, the center's CEO Vince Ashley said.

"We get these calls periodically, and often it's a false alarm," Ashley said. "But we get them often enough that everyone knows what to do."

Nurses hustled the patients into the hallways and away from their room's windows, closing the doors behind them, and were fighting to close the last of the heavy, steel fire doors at the end of the hallway when the tornado came, Ashley said. Seconds later, he said, windows started shattering, walls shook and ceiling tiles rattled.

The fierce winds blew some walls off some rooms, leaving disheveled beds and misplaced furniture but miraculously no injuries. Hours later, Ashley said some of the destroyed portions of the hospital will have to be razed and rebuilt.

Adding to the danger, it hit as many slept — a timing research meteorologist Harold Brooks called unusual but "not completely uncommon."

Brooks, with the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., said perhaps 10 percent of tornadoes happen between midnight and 6 a.m., a time when the danger level rises because the storms are harder to spot and it's harder to get the word out.

"If you're asleep, you're less likely going to hear anything, any warning message on the danger," Brooks said.

Deaths, damage elsewhere
In southern Missouri, one person was killed in a Buffalo trailer park while two more fatalities were reported in the Cassville and Puxico areas.

A tornado hopscotched throughthe main thoroughfare of Missouri country music mecca Branson, damaging some of the city's famous theaters just days before the start of the town's crucial tourist season.

It went "bouncing from business to business to business -- tens if not hundreds of millions in property damage," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon told NBC.

Three people were reported killed in eastern Tennessee — two in Cumberland County and another in DeKalb County.

And in Kansas, much of tiny Harveyville was in shambles from what state officials said was an EF2 tornado packing wind speeds of 120 to 130 mph.

A man whose Harveyville home collapsed on him was taken off life support Wednesday evening.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Caustic commentator Andrew Breitbart was loved by conservatives who championed his viral Internet exposes that brought down politicians, and hated by others who said he selectively used the truth to do it.

The conservative media publisher and activist who died Thursday at 43 was embraced by anti-tax, conservative tea partiers and reviled by liberals for his Internet investigations that led to the resignations of former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner and former U.S. Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod.

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According to the Associated Press,  Breitbart was walking near his house in the Brentwood neighborhood shortly after midnight Thursday when he collapsed, his father-in-law Orson Bean said. Larry Dietz, watch commander at the Los Angeles County coroner's office, said a cause of death was unknown and an autopsy was likely. Breitbart had suffered heart problems previously. Breitbart's website, bigjournalism.com, said Thursday he died of natural causes.

Someone saw him fall and called paramedics, who tried to revive him. They rushed him to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, Bean said. Breitbart had suffered heart problems a year earlier, but Bean said he could not pinpoint what happened.

"I don't know what to say. It's devastating," Bean told The Associated Press. He is survived by his wife Susannah Bean Breitbart, 41, and four children.

Breitbart, in addition to publishing a number of websites devoted to repudiating what he saw as the liberal-dominated coverage of politics and culture, once served as an editor for the Drudge Report and helped Arianna Huffington launch the Huffington Post website.

In addition to his Web properties, Breitbart was also very active on Twitter, where he often retweeted criticism from some of his harshest critics. The last tweet from his account was from late Wednesday.

Following news of his death, Breitbart's name shot to the top of Twitter trends.

In addition, a number of Republican lawmakers tweeted their sympathies.

• Eric Cantor ‏ @EricCantor  I'm stunned to hear about the passing of Andrew Breitbart. My thoughts and prayers are with his wife Susie, his children, and his friends
• Thaddeus McCotter ‏ @ThadMcCotter  Good by & God bless, Brother Andrew. You are loved & mourned & ever remembered. biggovernment.com/lsolov/2012/03…
• Herman Cain ‏ @THEHermanCain  I admired @AndrewBreitbart's fighting spirit. Thoughts & Prayers to his family. He was my friend & I will miss him #RIP
• Rep Blake Farenthold (R-TX)‏ @farenthold RIP Andrew Breitbart your conservative voice will be missed and your family is in my prayers.

Media Matters, the liberal watchdog that was a frequent Breitbart critic, said the organization's "thoughts and prayers are with his family today."

"We've disagreed more than we've found common ground, but there was never any question of Andrew's passion for and commitment to what he believed," said Media Matters' Ari Rabin-Havt.

Republican presidential contenders also weighed in.

Rick Santorum called Breitbart a "powerful force" after learning of his death from reporters at a rally in Dalton, Ga. "He will be what a huge loss ... for our country and certainly for the conservative movement and my prayers go out to his family," Santorum told reporters. "I'm really sorry to hear it."

Mitt Romney posted to Twitter: "Ann and I are deeply saddened by the passing of (at)AndrewBreitbart: brilliant entrepreneur, fearless conservative, loving husband and father."

Newt Gingrich tweeted: "Andrew Breitbart was the most innovative pioneer in conservative activist social media in America. He had great courage and creativity."

Breitbart's fans have praised him for exposing government corruption and media bias.

Breitbart also sparked a controversy that ultimately led to the resignation Weiner, whose problems began on May 28 when Bretibart's biggovernment.com posted a lewd photograph of an underwear-clad crotch and said it had been sent from Weiner's Twitter account to a Seattle woman.

Initially, Weiner lied, saying his account had been hacked. But he pointedly did not report the incident to law enforcement — a step that could have led the way to charges of wrongdoing far more serious than mere sexting.

Additionally, his public denials were less than solid — particularly when he told an interviewer that he could not "say with certitude" that he wasn't the man in the underwear photo.

Weiner's spokesman said the photo was just "a distraction" and that the congressman "doesn't know the person named by the hacker."

The congressman denied sending the photo and said he had retained an attorney and hired a private security company to figure out how someone could pull off such a prank.

But Weiner dropped that story line on June 6, offering a lengthy public confession at a Manhattan news conference, acknowledging to online activity involving at least six women.

Breitbart seldom showed restraint in his vitriol to his critics and seemed to relish in the negative attention his antics earned him.

After Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts died in 2009, Breitbart tweeted "Rest in Chappaquiddick" and called him "a special pile of human excrement." When critics questioned his tone, he tweeted they "missed my best ones!"

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two American soldiers were killed Thursday in a shooting by an Afghan soldier and a literacy teacher at a joint base in southern Afghanistan, officials said, the latest in a series of deaths as anti-Americanism rises following the burning of Qurans by U.S. soldiers.

Both were killed on the same day that the top NATO commander allowed a small number of foreign advisers to return to work at Afghan ministries after more than a week of being locked down in secure locations because of the killing of two other Americans.

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Thursday's killings raised to six the number of Americans killed in less than two weeks amid heightened tensions over the Feb. 20 burning of Qurans and other Islamic texts that had been dumped in a garbage pit at Bagram Air Field near Kabul. More than 30 Afghans also were killed in six days of violent riots that broke out after the incident.

President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials apologized and said the burning was an accident, but that has failed to quell the anger.

"We are staying the course in Afghanistan," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today, adding that the strategy of partnering and working with Afghan National Security Forces "is not changing."

NYT: Quran burning outrage complicates US pullout

One of the gunmen was wearing civilian clothing and the other was believed to be a member of the Afghan army, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

"Two individuals, one believed to be an Afghan National Army service member and the other in civilian clothing, turned their weapons indiscriminately against International Security Assistance Force and Afghan National Security Force service members in southern Afghanistan today," the statement said.

A senior defense official confirmed to NBC News that both of the NATO service members were American.

The Associated Press quoted a U.S. official as saying three attackers were believed to be involved, two of whom were subsequently killed. He said the third may be in custody. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

A district chief in southern Kandahar's Zhari district said the shootings took place on a NATO base when an Afghan civilian who taught a literacy course for Afghan soldiers and lived on the base started shooting at NATO troops. Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi said the shootings occurred at 3 a.m. and that NATO troops returned fire and killed the man and an Afghan soldier.

Mohammad Mohssan, an Afghan Army spokesman in Kandahar city, confirmed the incident occurred at a base in Zhari and involved two Afghans, one of whom was a soldier, who opened fire on coalition troops from a sentry tower. He said both were killed.

The shootings on Thursday were the latest in a series of attacks by Afghan security forces — or militants disguised in their uniforms — against Americans and other members of the international alliance. Last month the Pentagon released data showing that 75 percent of the more than 45 insider attacks since 2007 occurred in the last two years.

More than 75 NATO ISAF troops have been killed by Afghan forces in the past 5 years.

They are likely to raise further questions about the training of Afghan security forces by coalition troops as foreign forces prepare to withdraw by 2014.

Afghanistan unrest stirs worries, but doesn't shake commitment

Hundreds of advisers were pulled out of ministries and other government locations after an Afghan gunman shot and killed two U.S. military advisers on Feb. 25 inside their office at the Interior Ministry. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the ministry shootings, saying they were conducted in retaliation for last week's Quran burnings, but no one has been arrested in the case.

An Afghan soldier also killed two U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan on Feb. 23 during a protest over the Quran burnings.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said Thursday that Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, approved the return of selected personnel. He could not elaborate which ministries were involved, but an Afghan official said some had returned to a department setting up a government-run security force that will guard international development projects.

A NATO official said less than a dozen advisers had returned. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Foreign advisers are key to helping improve governance and prepare Afghan security forces to take on more responsibility. The U.S. is already reducing its own troop presence by 30,000 at the end of the summer. Many of the remaining soldiers will switch from fighting to training and mentoring Afghan forces. 

NBC News' Courtney Kube, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Officials said three people have died following a single-engine plane crash at Melbourne International Airport.

Federal Aviation Administration reports said the Cirrus SR22 was attempting to land Wednesday evening when it crashed off the end of a runway.

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Airport spokeswoman Lori Booker said witnesses who saw the plane nosedive called in the crash.

"We got an eyewitness call that was specific enough that we were able to hone down a specific area in our search," Booker said.

Click here for WESH's video report on the crash

Rescue crews searched the wooded area at the end of the runway for about an hour before they found the wreckage at the southwest part of the airport.

Airport officials said the tail number couldn't immediately be identified.

"We have no identification confirmed at his time. The dissemination of the aircraft upon impact has made it very difficult," Booker said.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.

NBC station WESH and The Associated Press contributed to this report.