Updated at 7:30 p.m. ET: Construction work continued on a Murfreesboro, Tenn., mosque Wednesday despite a judge’s ruling a day earlier voiding building permits for the controversial project.

Chancellor Robert Corlew III of the 16^th District Chancery Court ruled that construction must cease because not enough notice was given about a May 24, 2010, public meeting in which Rutherford County planning commissioners approved the site plan for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.

"This is Sharia law," Joe Brandon, plaintiffs’ attorney, said of construction continuing without a valid permit. "They’re thumbing their nose at the state of Tennessee."

Brandon lodged an order Wednesday at the Chancery Court asking that construction at the mosque be stopped completely.

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The county had not issued a stop work order by the end of Wednesday, Brandon said.

"If it were you or I, they'd be out there and stop us," Brandon charged. "The county attorney needs to man up and tell them to stop."

Corlew ruled in favor of Kevin Fisher and other Rutherford County residents who sued the Planning Commission. The mosque is free to reapply for permits, he said.

"It's a good day for the plaintiffs; I'm very pleased with the outcome," plaintiff Henry Golcyznky said, adding he was somewhat surprised Corlew ruled in the plaintiffs' favor.

See the original story on NBC Station WSMV of Nashville, Tenn.

"There should have been public notice. People should have been allowed to come in and express or at least understand what was going on," Golcyznky said.

A public notice about the 2010 Planning Commission meeting, in which no public hearing was required over the mosque’s site plan, was published in the twice-weekly Murfreesboro Post, which has a contract to handle Rutherford County’s legal advertising. 

Islamic Center members said they hoped to complete the first phase of the mosque by Ramadan, a month-long Muslim holiday beginning this year on July 20, based on the Islamic lunar calendar.

"This decision comes at a crucial time, because we were at a point about to celebrate the opening of our center. which we were hoping to happen, probably within two to three months. It's a sad day in our community," said mosque member Saleh Sbenaty.

Construction of the $2 million, 52,000-square-foot mosque is well under way, with the first phase, a 12,000-square-foot building, nearly complete.

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The mosque was not a party in the lawsuit.

"We really don't know the implications of the ruling that the judge came with. We're still in contact with our legal counsel. ... We're going to see what the next step is going to be," Sbenaty said

If the mosque officials must reapply for permits, then they will, he said.

A construction crew was at the mosque site Wednesday.

 "The decision of the court will not be final at the earliest until 30 days after a court order is filed, county attorney Jim Cope said. "Therefore, things will remain in a fluid state during the next several weeks until the parties, ICM, and the court address all the legal issues that remain pending and unresolved."

The judge's ruling drew nationwide attention.

Council on American-Islamic Relations called for the Department of Justice to intervene in the case if the county doesn't issue new building permits to "protect the religious rights of Tennessee Muslims."

CAIR said the judge’s ruling “used phrases and reasoning which could be viewed as indicating that a higher degree of public notice is required for issues related to Tennessee Muslims.”

Earlier story at NBC station WSMV of Nashville, Tenn.

"American Muslim constitutional rights should not be diminished merely because anti-Muslim bigots are able to manufacture a controversy about what would otherwise be normal religious activities," said CAIR attorney Gadeir Abbas.

"If the Rutherford County Planning Commission does not immediately issue new permits for the mosque, we urge the Department of Justice to intervene in this case to support the religious rights of Tennessee Muslims."

Mosque opponents have fought construction for two years, arguing that Islam is not a real religion deserving of First Amendment protections and that the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has terrorist ties.

The judge dismissed those allegations but held the trial on the narrower claim that the public meeting law was violated.

Larry Flowers is a reporter at NBC station WSMV of Nashville, Tenn.

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The trial of Jerry Sandusky will begin next week in Pennsylvania as scheduled, the presiding judge ruled Wednesday, denying a request for a delay by lawyers for the former Penn State assistant football coach.

"The reality of our system of justice is that no date for trial is ever perfect, but some dates are better than others," wrote Judge John Cleland ahead of a pre-trial hearing Wednesday afternoon to take care of any remaining matters.

Sandusky's lawyers and state prosecutors will begin picking jurors from a pool of State College-area residents on Tuesday. 

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Sandusky is charged with 52 counts of child sexual abuse. The 68-year-old former defensive coordinator for Penn State's famed football program denies the allegations. 

The hearing Wednesday focused on the evidence regarding so-called "Victim 8," a young man allegedly seen by a janitor being molested by Sandusky in team showers more than a decade ago.

Prosecutors have said the janitor, Jim Calhoun, has dementia and is not available to testify, so they want to call to the stand co-workers who would recount what Calhoun told them.

Sandusky lawyer Joe Amendola has argued there is not sufficient evidence to take the Victim 8 charges to trial, and at the Wednesday hearing he asked for a hearing at which prosecutors would either show he is wrong or have Cleland dismiss those counts. The same applies to charges involving two alleged victims.

Amendola also has asked for the remaining charges to be dismissed on other grounds.

"We're faced with a myriad of charges," Amendola told Cleland. "And the more charges that are presented to a jury, the more likely it is they're going to feel that something must have happened."

Frank Fina, a prosecutor with the state attorney general's office, said it was difficult to make an argument that the evidence is sufficient when there isn't any evidence in the record, because Sandusky waived his preliminary hearing.

"There's not a single fact of record in this case," Fina told the judge. "And that is, I think it's fair to say, solely as a result of the decisions of the defense."

Sandusky was not in court but did attend a closed-door session Tuesday with the judge, prosecutors and lawyers.

Cleland's order said the delay request was the topic of the Tuesday proceeding.

Cleland wrote that Amendola told him that if the trial starts next week, experts would not be available or able to help, an investigator was facing surgery, large amounts of material had yet to be analyzed and two Penn State administrators who face their own trial would not be available as witnesses. Another issue involved the grand jury that investigated Sandusky, and although Cleland did not elaborate on it, citing grand jury secrecy, he denied it as well.

Cleland said starting jury selection on Tuesday would, on balance, protect Sandusky's right to a fair trial, the alleged victims' rights to their day in court, the state's obligation to prosecute promptly and the public's expectation of a swift proceeding. Opening statements in the case will not occur before June 11, he said.

Cleland did not rule on recent requests by attorneys for five alleged victims to keep their identities secret.

The charges against Sandusky concern his relationships with boys he met through his charity for at-risk kids, The Second Mile. Prosecutors allege Sandusky groomed the boys for sexual abuse, offering gifts and access to the team in addition to companionship.

At least some of the alleged abuse happened in the Penn State football team's facilities, prosecutors said. One of the alleged attacks was witnessed by former receivers coach Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant.

Details of the grand jury report touched of a massive scandal that engulfed the university, ultimately leading to the firing of Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno and the ouster of university President Graham Spanier. Two other university officials are charged with failing to report suspected abuse and perjury related to their grand jury testimony.

Those two officials, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz, are the potential witnesses referred to in Cleland's latest order. Curley, on leave, and Schultz, now retired, have told Sandusky's lawyer they will invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if subpoenaed.

Also Wednesday, Cleland issued a detailed "decorum order" that will govern reporters and others who plan to attend the trial. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- "W-i-t-t-i-c-i-s-m." And with that word, correctly spelled by Kevin Lazenby, 13, of Opelika, Ala., the 85th National Spelling Bee got under way on Wednesday morning.

Each of the 278 participants spells two words during the day's preliminary rounds, and their scores will be combined with their scores from a 50-word computer test they took Tuesday to determine the field of no more than 50 semifinalists, The Associated Press reported. You can follow along with the day's rounds here.

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This year's contest included the bee's youngest speller ever: 6-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Va. Lori Anne, speller No. 269, correctly spelled "dirigible" during her turn just before noon Wednesday. The Washington Post reported that she asked for a definition, got the word right and quickly took her seat. 

But she misspelled "ingluvies" during the third round later that afternoon. Ingluvies is the crop (throat) of birds; Lori Anne provided the spelling e-n-g-l-u-v-i-e-s. When the final scores were released by early Wednesday evening, she learned that she would not move on to the semifinal round.

Lori Anne is a home-schooled student who loves swimming, math and the outdoors -- and says she wants to be an astrobiologist.

Think you're a good speller? Take this audio quiz

"She loves it and she does it because it's a passion, and we never push her into anything and want her to make her own choices," her mother, Sorina Madison, told The Associated Press.

 

 

For nearly half the spellers, math is a favorite subject, according to the National Spelling Bee web site, with science coming in second. And another fun fact -- at least 20 spellers have a relative who has competed in the event before. 

Among their favorite words is humuhumunukunukuapuaa, which is a small Hawaiian trigger fish, according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. (Some of the words are so specific or archaic that they don't appear in standard dictionaries.)

As for winning words throughout the years, those seem to have become more difficult. In 1925, Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, Ky., won the bee with "gladiolus." The next year, Pauline Bell, also from Louisville, won with "cerise."

Last year, Sukanya Roy won with cymotrichous, which redirects to "hair" on Wikipedia.

NBC News’ Ellie Hall contributed to this report.

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West Virginia preacher Mark Randall "Mack" Wolford, who believed Christians should handle snakes to test their faith, died after a rattlesnake bit him over the weekend.

Wolford was bitten on the thigh about 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon, but he didn't come to the hospital until 10:30 p.m., a nursing supervisor at Bluefield Regional Medical Center  told the Charleston Daily Mail. The incident occurred during an outdoor service at Panther State Forest, about 80 miles west of Bluefield in southern West Virginia, the paper said.

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Wolford had turned 44 on Saturday. He had seen his father die of a snakebite when he was teenager, the Daily Mail reported.

The Washington Post Magazine had profiled Wolford in a story in November about the snake-handling faith. The Post said adherents cite Mark 16:17-18: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Snake-handling is legal in West Virginia, and Wolford was trying to keep it alive there and in neighboring states where it is not, the Post reported.

The Daily Mail reported that Wolford was bitten Sunday by a yellow timber rattlesnake -- named Sheba -- that he had often handled.

Wolford's sister told the Post that during the service he passed the snake to another church member and his mother, then laid it on the ground. "He sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh," the sister said, according to the Post.

The Post said Wolford was taken to a relative's house in Bluefield to recover, as he had from previous bites, but his condition worsened.

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A teenager from Westchester County, N.Y., has been missing since last Friday and was "in a fragile state" when he was last seen, his concerned parents said.

Police say Pierce Crowley, 15, of Rye, N.Y., left New York-Presbyterian Hospital in White Plains, N.Y. with a close friend before he went missing.

In an email to friends, his parents wrote that their son was “in a fragile state” and hadn't been feeling well when he disappeared. "It is URGENT that we locate him ASAP," they wrote, according to the New York's Hudson Valley Journal News.

It's not clear what Crowley was in the hospital for. The White Plains medical center is one of the top psychiatric hospitals in the nation.

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According to police, Crowley's friend came forward to say the two left the hospital and went to The Cheesecake Factory restaurant together, Newsday reported.

The two then took a cab to the White Plains Metro-North train station, the report said. Crowley's friend took a train to New York City while Crowley stayed behind in the cab.

According to White Plains police, Crowley was last seen wearing a bright blue Florida Gators short sleeve T-shirt with dark blue jeans and black sneakers with lime green-trim. The teen is enrolled at Iona Prep in New Rochelle.

Crowley has light brown hair, blue eyes, and wears braces, The Journal News said. He is 5'10'' and 150 pounds.

Hundreds of volunteers have mobilized to help the Crowleys find their son, a family friend told media. Fliers were posted in Westchester, Manhattan and the Bronx, and the family set up a Facebook page. 

“We love Pierce. We miss Pierce,” his father, Peter Crowley, said, according to Newsday. “His brothers miss Pierce. We need him home.”

Crowley family friend Peggy Dunne told The Journal News, “(Pierce) is a charming, talented, bright student and an amazing athlete. His family and his friends are just totally distraught about him missing.”

There is a reward for information that leads to his safe return, the family said. White Plains police have asked anyone with tips to contact them.

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The Boy Scouts of America opens its annual meeting on Wednesday, and among the headlines coming out of it will be one the organization has grappled with over the years: gay membership.

The issue has come to the forefront again with the ouster of den leader Jennifer Tyrrell, who was removed from her position with her son’s Tiger Cubs pack in April because she is gay. An online petition to reinstate her has received more than 285,000 signatures, and Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, the son of a lesbian couple, handed it over Wednesday morning to officials gathering for the two-day meeting in Kissimmee, Fla.

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Wahls told msnbc.com that he delivered the three boxes bearing the petition to senior members of the Scouts leadership and a spokesman, wearing his Eagle Scout uniform. He said it was an "unprecedented" and "honest" conversation -- "one scout to another" -- that lasted about 20 minutes.

"It’s really, I think, a very positive step in the right direction,” said Wahls, 20, of Iowa City, Iowa, who became known nationally after speaking before his home state's legislature in 2011 about having gay parents. "We’re not trying to force the Boy Scouts of America to change its policy, we want the Boy Scouts to change of its own volition.”

Tyrrell served as den leader in her Bridgeport, Ohio, community for less than a year. The then 32-year-old stay-at-home mother of four said she agreed to take up the role on the day she signed up her son, Cruz Burns, for the troop. She had concerns about the Boy Scouts' policy against homosexuals, but a Cubmaster said that they wouldn’t have problem locally.

“The best time in our lives we’ve had in the last year, it’s gone … because we can’t be scouts any more. I can’t stop crying,” she told msnbc.com in late April, noting that she would continue to push for a change to the policy to include all Americans. “… because we’re just people …gay people who love their kids.”

The Boy Scouts’ policy became a focus of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, when the justices sided with the organization in a lawsuit involving a former Assistant Scoutmaster who was gay, citing the protections of the First Amendment.

Boy Scouts spokesman Deron Smith said in an email that accepting the petition was not on the agenda, but scouting officials would take it in a private meeting “out of respect for different viewpoints.”

“Scouting maintains that its youth development program is not the appropriate environment to introduce or discuss, in any way, same-sex attraction. Parents and caregivers should have the right to decide when and how to discuss this issue with their children,” he wrote in an email statement to msnbc.com.

Smith said there were no plans to change the organization’s stance.

“Throughout the years some have expressed their disagreement with this policy. The BSA is a voluntary, private organization that sets policies that allow it to most effectively accomplish its mission. Its policies are not meant as a social commentary outside of the Scouting program,” he said.

'A new era for scouting'
But Wahls said it was time for the Boy Scouts to move forward, citing the changes in the U.S. military which ended its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that had barred gay people from serving if they acknowledged their sexual orientation. He said they are in communication with people within the organization already advocating for change.

"It is really my sense that, you know, as we do see this changing of the guard especially under the (Scouts) new leadership … I do believe this is the beginning of a new era for scouting," he said. "Now, how long it takes for this new era to really kick in is unfortunately kind of up in the air at this point, but I do believe we will see this change a little bit sooner than a lot of people expect."

Like Jennifer Tyrrell, Wahls' mothers had served in leadership roles in the local Scouts in the Wisconsin town of Marshfield, but unlike her, they never had to deal with the Boy Scouts' executives who removed the Ohio mother from her post.

Noting that supportive comments for the petition came from current and former scouts and leaders, Wahls said: “I’m a part of this not because I’m opposed to the Scouts, but in fact because I support the Scouts.”

"It was a very important part of my life … the Boy Scouts really reinforced the values that my moms taught me," he added. "The Scouts are right on literally thousands of things, and they’re only wrong on one. So I really do hope that they can change this policy so they can go back to having that perfect scorecard."

After apologizing for using a webcam to spy on his male roommate kissing another man days before the roommate killed himself, former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi told a New Jersey state court he would report to jail Thursday to serve his 30-day sentence.

Indian-born Ravi, 20, was found guilty of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy in a case that exploded into the headlines when Ravi's roommate, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide.

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Dharun Ravi apologizes for spying on roommate, heads to jail Thursday

Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010, after finding out that Ravi saw him kissing another man and appeared to encourage others to watch his romantic encounters through a camera on his computer.

Ravi appeared in state court Wednesday to formally announce his decision to report to jail on Thursday. NBCNewYork.com reported Ravi will likely get a 10-day credit for good behavior, and may serve only 20 days in jail.

More on Ravi from NBCNewYork.com

Prosecutors are appealing Ravi's sentence, which they believe is too lenient, but they said they are not requesting the 10-year maximum sentence he faced.

Joseph Benedict, Ravi's lawyer, said Ravi plans to do community service when he's out of jail, reported NBCNewYork.com. He was sentenced to 300 hours of community service.

Assistant prosecutor Julia McClure told the court on Wednesday that she felt statutory requirements warranted a five-year jail term. But Judge Glenn Berman stood by his 30-day sentence.

"I can't find it in me to sentence this gentleman to a state prison that houses people convicted of offenses such as murder, armed robbery and rape," Berman said. "I know he's an adult, but I think the interests of justice demand I deviate from the guidelines."

In a statement issued Tuesday through a lawyer, Ravi said he would begin serving his jail term on Thursday even though the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office is appealing the sentence, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported.

"It's the only way I can go on with my life," he said in the statement.

Tuesday's statement was the first time Ravi apologized.

Former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi sentenced to 30-day jail term in webcam spying case

"I accept responsibility for and regret my thoughtless, insensitive, immature, stupid and childish choices that I made on September 19, 2010 and September 21, 2010," Ravi's statement read. "My behavior and actions, which at no time were motivated by hate, bigotry, prejudice or desire to hurt, humiliate or embarrass anyone, were nonetheless the wrong choices and decisions."

When Ravi was sentenced on May 21, Judge Berman chastised him for not apologizing for his actions.

"I heard this jury say 'guilty' 288 times," Berman said, referring to all the sub-parts of the charges Ravi faced repeated 12 times, once for each juror. "And I haven't heard you apologize once."

During the court proceeding, Ravi, who expressed remorse in March in an interview with the New Jersey Star-Ledger, chose not to address the judge, though he cried as his mother pleaded for mercy from the judge.

Because Ravi's sentence is under a year, it decreases chances that immigration authorities will try to have him deported to India, where he remains a citizen.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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LOS ANGELES -- James Lee Crummel, a pedophile and convicted killer sentenced to die for the 1979 murder of a teenage boy, has hanged himself on California's death row, months before voters in the state are due to decide whether to abolish the death penalty, prison officials said on Tuesday.

The 68-year-old was found hanging in his cell at San Quentin State Prison, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Sam Robinson said in a written statement.

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He was pronounced dead at 4:20 p.m. local time (8.20 p.m. ET) on Sunday, Robinson said.

Crummel had been housed on death row since he was sentenced to death in 2004 for the 1979 kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder of 13-year-old James Wilfred Trotter.

Trotter was snatched as he walked to meet his school bus in Costa Mesa, California, in April of 1979. His charred remains were found more than a decade later, in 1990, but not confirmed as that of the boy until 1996.

Crummel was also convicted in San Bernardino County, California, for molesting three boys in Big Bear City, and was suspected of abducting and killing 9-year- old Big Bear Lake resident Jack "J.D." Phillips, who disappeared near his home in 1995, the San Bernadino Sun newspaper reported. 

It said Jack's remains have never been located, and his father said in June 2004 that Crummel refused to disclose to authorities where the boy's remains were located unless the death penalty was taken off the table.

The suicide comes ahead of a ballot measure in November which asks voters to repeal the death penalty in California, home to nearly a quarter of the nation's death row inmates.

The ballot initiative focuses on the high cost of the death penalty in a state that has executed 13 people since capital punishment was reinstated in the nation in 1976. More than 720 inmates sit on death row pending lengthy and expensive appeals.

Crummel joins another 20 inmates who have committed suicide while on California's death row. According to the corrections department, since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1978, 57 condemned inmates in the state have died from natural causes and six died from other causes.

A federal judge halted all California executions in 2006 after ruling that the three-drug protocol that has been used for lethal injections carried the risk of causing the inmate too much pain and suffering before death.

California has since revised its protocol but an appeals court has blocked resumption of executions over the same objections.

A 1997 profile of Crummel and the detective who helped secure a key conviction against him, was re-published by the Orange County Register on Wednesday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 10:05 a.m. ET: LONDON -- Two U.S. reports published Tuesday provide significant insights into President Obama’s personal and controversial role in the escalating covert U.S. drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

In a major extract from Daniel Klaidman’s forthcoming book Kill Or Capture, the author reveals extensive details of how secret U.S. drone strikes have evolved under Obama – and how the president knew of civilian casualties from his earliest days in office.

The New York Times has also published a key investigation exploring how the Obama Administration runs its secret 'Kill List' – the names of those chosen for execution by CIA and Pentagon drones outside the conventional battlefield.

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The Times' report also reveals that President Obama "embraced" a broadening of the term "civilian", helping to limit any public controversy over "non-combatant" deaths.

As the Bureau's own data on Pakistan makes clear, the very first covert drone strikes of the Obama presidency, just three days after he took office, resulted in civilian deaths in Pakistan. As many as 19 civilians – including four children – died in two error-filled attacks.

Until now it had been thought that Obama was initially unaware of the civilian deaths. Bob Woodward has reported that the president was only told by CIA chief Michael Hayden that the strikes had missed their High Value Target but had killed "five al Qaeda militants."

Read more stories from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Now Newsweek correspondent Daniel Klaidman reveals that Obama knew about the civilian deaths within hours. He reports an anonymous participant at a subsequent meeting with the president: "You could tell from his body language that he was not a happy man." Obama is described aggressively questioning the tactics used.

Yet despite the errors, the president ultimately chose to keep in place the CIA’s controversial policy of using "signature strikes" against unknown militants. That tactic has just been extended to Yemen.

'Covert' US drone operation is mapped on Twitter

On another notorious occasion, the article reveals that U.S. officials were aware at the earliest stage that civilians – including "dozens of women and children" – had died in Obama’s first ordered strike in Yemen in December 2009. The Bureau recently named all 44 civilians killed in that attack by cruise missiles.

'I'd have to go to confession'
No U.S. officials have ever spoken publicly about the strike, although secret diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks proved that the U.S. was responsible. Now Klaidman reveals that Jeh Johnson, one of the State Department’s senior lawyers, watched the strike take place with others on a video screen:

"Johnson returned to his Georgetown home around midnight that evening, drained and exhausted. Later there were reports from human-rights groups that dozens of women and children had been killed in the attacks, reports that a military source involved in the operation termed “persuasive.” Johnson would confide to others, “If I were Catholic, I’d have to go to confession.”

Klaidman describes a world in which the CIA and Pentagon constantly push for significant attacks on the U.S.’s enemies. In March 2009, for example, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen reportedly called for the bombing of an entire training camp in southern Somalia in order to kill one militant leader.

Pakistan official: US drone strike hits mosque; 10 killed

One dissenter at the meeting is said to have described the tactic as "carpet-bombing a country." The attack did not go ahead.

Obama is generally described as attempting to rein back both the CIA and the Pentagon. But in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki – "Obama’s Threat Number One" – different rules applied.

According to Klaidman, Obama let it be known that he would consider allowing civilian deaths if it meant killing the U.S.-Yemeni cleric. "Bring it to me and let me decide in the reality of the moment rather than in the abstract," an aide recalls him saying. No civilians died that day, as it turned out.

In its own major investigation, the New York Times examines the secret US 'Kill List' – the names of those chosen for death at the hands of US drones. The report is based on interviews with more than 36 key individuals with knowledge of the scheme.

Drone spotting at secret Nevada base stirs up debate

The Times' report says:

"[Obama's] first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a 'Whac-A-Mole' approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers."

It is often been reported that President Obama has urged officials to avoid wherever possible the deaths of civilians in covert U.S. actions in Pakistan and elsewhere. But reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane reveal that Obama "embraced" a formula understood to have been devised by the Bush administration:

"Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

So concerned have some officials been by this "false accounting" that they have taken their concerns direct to the White House, according to the New York Times.

Photos document alleged US drone strike victims in Pakistan

The revelation helps explain the wide variation between credible reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan by the Bureau and others, and the CIA’s claims that it had killed no "non-combatants" between May 2010 and September 2011 – and possibly later.

The investigation also reveals that more than 100 U.S. officials take part in a weekly "death list" video conference run by the Pentagon, at which it is decided who will be added to the U.S. military’s kill/ capture lists. "A parallel, more cloistered selection process at the CIA focuses largely on Pakistan, where that agency conducts strikes," the paper reports.

But according to at least one former senior administration official, Obama’s obsession with targeted killings is "dangerously seductive." Retired admiral Dennis Blair, the former US Director of National Intelligence, told the paper that the campaign was:

"The politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no US casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term."

 

Clarification: An earlier version of this story said that President Obama "personally authorized the broadening of the term 'civilian'" and attributed the redefining of "civilian" to his administration. However, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism now understands that the Obama administration instead embraced a pre-existing policy introduced under President George W. Bush. The Bureau apologizes for this error.

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Lori Anne Madison may be only 6 years old, but she's got a big talent: She's among the best spellers in the nation.

On Wednesday, the home-schooled girl from Lake Ridge, Va., who loves swimming, math and the outdoors, will compete with 277 other contestants -- many twice her age and size -- at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

“It’s been a busy day for everyone and I know her parents want her to get some rest and to be ready for the competition,” Ria Schalnat, spokeswoman for the bee, told msnbc.com on Tuesday.

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Schalnat said Lori Anne's parents have refused interviews until Thursday, “and that is dependent on whether she qualifies for the semifinals.”

The annual spelling bee continues through Thursday. Preliminary competition starts at 8 a.m. ET Wednesday. The championship finals, slated for 8 p.m. ET Thursday, will be aired live on ESPN. 

Lori Anne started making waves in March when she correctly spelled “vaquero” to win her regional bee in northern Virginia, according to the Washington Post.

"It was shocking," The Associated Press quoted Sorina Madison as saying. "I didn't expect all the media attention. We're private people. We're regular people. It was intimidating. But I'm happy for her. She loves it and she does it because it's a passion, and we never push her into anything and want her to make her own choices."

Take the test: Could you keep up with these kids?

Lori Anne says she wants to be an astrobiologist.

Why? She told the AP: "I'm going to sort of find life forms. And, plus, alien planets are new."

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The disappearance of a Louisiana college student Michaela "Mickey" Shunick is not related to a similar case in Indiana or any others, Lafayette police said Tuesday at a news conference where they unveiled new evidence.

Shunick disappeared May 19. Her bicycle was found Sunday under water and with a damaged rear tire in Atchafalaya Basin, Cpl. Paul Mouton revealed.

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State crime lab investigators are going over the bicycle for evidence but police believe a perpetrator who took Shunick climbed down an Interstate 10 bridge embankment and dumped it in the basin, Mouton said.

Officials could not be sure if the bicycle was damaged before or after Shunick was grabbed, Mouton said.

“We don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Mouton said.

Lafayette police have talked to officials in Bloomington, Ind., where the nearly year-old case of missing Indiana University student Lauren Spierer, 20, remains unsolved, Mouton said.

Both cases involve petite, blonde students, and white pickups with crew cabs were spotted near the last places each student was last seen alive.

“We don’t feel those two cases are connected,” Mouton said. Nor is the Louisiana case connected to any other, he said.

In the Louisiana case, three vehicles were caught on videos near places Shunick had been.

Besides the white pickup, an '80s General Motors sedan with Bondo on the rear right quarter panel and a pickup with a covered bed were also seen.

Shunick left a friend's house alone about 2 in the morning.

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Spierer, from Greenburgh, N.Y., left her friend's townhome alone about 4:30 a.m. on June 3, 2011. Bloomington police said the white pickup was determined to be the owner picking up an employee.

Bloggers point to 12 cases of petite white females missing around the country, including nursing student Holly Bobo, snatched from her Darden, Tenn., home on April 13, 2011, NBC station WTHR of Indianapolis reported.

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Brendan Haas earned a prize any young kid would appreciate — an all-expenses paid trip to Disney World. Instead of going, though, the Massachusetts boy gave the vacation to the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Haas earned the trip through a trading contest on Facebook he set up to help out a military family. He got the idea from the story of a man who traded up from a red paper clip to a house.

In February, Brendan and his mother Melissa set up the "Soldier for a Soldier" Facebook page in an attempt to trade up from a toy soldier to a Disney trip.

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Through a series of trades on the social network site, he managed to amass Disney gift certificates worth almost $900 as well as airfare and a stay at a Disney resort hotel.

On Memorial Day, the boy pulled the name of 2-year-old Liberty Hope Steele out of a hat. She is the daughter of U.S. Army Lt. Timothy Steele, 25, who was killed last August in Afghanistan.

“I think it would make them a lot happier,” Brendan Haas said.

It turned out that Timothy Steele’s parents live in nearby Duxbury, Mass., so Brendan went over to the family’s home and surprised the soldier’s parents with the news of the trip.

The story was first reported by NBC station WHDH-TV.

“Tim was pretty special to us,” Jack Steele, Timothy’s father told WDHT-TV. “He knew what he wanted to do at a very young age.”

Haas' ingenuity, sacrifice and thoughtfulness led to an outpouring of admiration on Facebook.

“Your one amazing young man,” wrote Ann Marie Smith Braga, “Our family lives on Hanscom AFB in Bedford, Mass. We are an active duty Army family. I want to thank you from all the Army families here at Hanscom.” 

“Your parents must be so proud of you,” wrote Cheryl Simoes-Buente. “I hope you always will be such a caring and amazing person. God bless you for your thoughtfulness!!!”

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Seven officers and a supervisor at the Milwaukee police department have had their badges taken away after allegations surfaced that police have been conducting body cavity searches on suspects with no authority to do so.

Reports of officers arresting suspects then subjecting them to cavity searches first surfaced in local media in March. On Monday, after getting access to a police report, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that officers allegedly performed these searches on a routine basis.

One Milwaukee officer, Michael Vagnini, "had a reputation" for forcing suspects he believed had drugs in their body cavities to bend over for him, said defense attorney Alex Cossi, who handled a July 2011 case that alleges Vagnini searched his client and another suspect in the booking room.

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"This was not a rogue happenstance. This was a tacit acceptance of strip searches without proper procedures or supervision," Cossi told The Journal Sentinel.

Vagnini found suspected cocaine "between (their) butt cheeks," the police report said.

Strip searches, which Wisconsin state law defines as searching "a detained person's genitals, pubic area, buttock or anus, or a detained female person's breast," can only be performed by a doctor, physician's assistant or registered nurse. The state law requires written permission before a strip search is conducted, unless there's probable cause to believe the suspect is hiding a weapon.

Cossi said his client was not provided with written documents before Vagnini performed the cavity search, which is a strip search involving penetration, on him. Because improper tactics were used to find the cocaine, the drug dealing charge against Cossi's client was thrown out, The Journal Sentinel reported.

It's not clear how many allegations of cavity searches the Police Department is facing. 

"A number of people came forward so that we have many more complaints than we certainly started out with," Milwaukee police Chief Edward Flynn said at a news conference Wednesday on April 11. "Of those complaints, I'd say a significant majority of them are of a very similar nature, which indicates that we have more people to talk to than we initially had."

An improper strip search carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000, according to Wisconsin law.

Vagnini, six other officers and a supervisor, Sgt. Jason Mucha, have had their badges and guns taken away while the department investigates the claims.

In March, an alleged victim came forward to speak to NBC's TMJ-4 to talk about his claim, which he said happened when he was only 15.

'They slammed me on the ground'
Kevin Freeman Jr. told TMJ-4 he and his friends were violated during a traffic stop in December.

"When they searched me they eased their hands right between my butt.  I tried to reach back and soon as I tried to reach back to stop them, they slammed me on the ground," Freeman said.  

It's illegal to conduct a body cavity search outside, where people other than the one conducting the search could see it taking place.

Milwaukee police spokeswoman Anne Schwartz told msnbc.com she could not comment on the matter since it was a pending investigation. Police chief Edward Flynn said in a news conference in March the cavity search complaints go back a couple of years. The department's internal investigation will determine whether searches violated department policy, state law, or both, The Journal Sentinel said.

Improperly conducted body searches can be construed under Wisconsin law as sexual assaults because of their invasive nature. It's not clear how much penetration allegedly occurred during the searches.

John Birdsall, a Milwaukee defense attorney, said that if the claims are true, police are abusing their authority.

"One thing is clear, if they're doing rectal searches in the field, that's just illegal," he told the Journal Sentinel. "Clothes or no clothes, you can't do a body cavity search. They don't have the authority to do that."

Milwaukee County prosecutors have launched a John Doe investigation, in which prosecutors can subpoena documents without public knowledge. The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office are monitoring the investigation, The Journal Sentinel reported, and could launch an investigation.

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Gay marriage opponents in Maryland said Tuesday they’ve handed in more than double the signatures required to hold a ballot referendum to squash the state’s new same-sex marriage law.

Thursday is the deadline to submit to election officials at least one-third of the 56,000 signatures needed to get the referendum on the November ballot. But Maryland Marriage Alliance, which supports defining marriage as between a man and a woman, said it handed in some 122,000 later Tuesday.

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The final deadline for all signatures, which the state Board of Elections has to count and verify, is June 30. Derek McCoy, executive director of Maryland Marriage Alliance, told msnbc.com that he was confident they now had the signatures to get on the ballot but they would still continue to collect them.

“What we’re finding is that people are just engaged and passionate about this, even after Obama and the NAACP came out” in support of gay marriage," McCoy said. “Anybody that was on the fence is no longer on the fence.”

A similar effort is under way in Washington state, where legislation approving same-sex marriage was signed into law by the governor earlier this year. Six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, while 31 states have constitutional amendments that effectively ban gay marriage (this tally does not include California, where federal judges have ruled the amendment unconstitutional though further appeals are expected).

In mid-May, North Carolina became the most recent state to ban same-sex marriage. The day after that vote, President Barack Obama said he supported same-sex marriage, becoming the first American president to do so.

Obama who? Gay marriage foes seek to extend gains
Obama: 'I think same-sex couples should be able to get married'
In North Carolina gay marriage vote, it's Bill Clinton versus Billy Graham

Since then, a survey of Maryland voters has shown a “significant” uptick for support of gay marriage among African-Americans, according to results released last Thursday by Public Policy Polling, which said it did the poll on behalf of Marylanders for Marriage Equality -- the group campaigning to keep the same-sex marriage law on the books.

Some 57 percent of the state’s voters say they would support the law in November, compared to 37 percent who are opposed. Meanwhile, 56 percent of African-Americans say they’ll back the new law, with 39 percent opposed, almost a complete reversal from earlier numbers, said the polling firm.

The survey’s overall margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percent, and for the African-American sample it was plus or minus 4.9 percent.

Nationwide, a Gallup poll released in May revealed closer numbers, with 50 percent of Americans saying same-sex marriage should be legal, compared to 48 percent opposed. Support for gay marriage fell slightly in that poll from a record high of 53 percent in 2011, the first time a majority of Americans favored gay marriage. Opposition was 45 percent in that poll.

Kevin Nix, a spokesman for Marylanders for Marriage Equality, said his group expected opponents to get the required signatures since it was a “low bar” to cross.

“We’re all planning on this going to a referendum,” he said.

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A former Rutgers University student criticized by a judge for refusing to apologize for using a webcam to spy on his male roommate kissing another man days before the roommate killed himself apologized on Tuesday and said he has accepted responsibility for what he did.

"I accept responsibility for and regret my thoughtless, insensitive, immature, stupid and childish choices that I made on Sept. 19, 2010, and Sept. 21, 2010," Dharun Ravi, 20, said in a statement issued through a lawyer. "My behavior and actions, which at no time were motivated by hate, bigotry, prejudice or desire to hurt, humiliate or embarrass anyone, were nonetheless the wrong choices and decisions. I apologize to everyone affected by those choices."

Ravi also said he will begin serving a 30-day jail term on Thursday even though he doesn't have to because the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office is appealing the sentence, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported. "It's the only way I can go on with my life," he said in the statement.

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It was his most contrite public statement in a case that made him a symbol of what his family called an overzealous prosecution and that made his roommate, Tyler Clementi, a prime example of what gay rights advocates said were the consequences of bullying.

After spending two days repeatedly looking at the Twitter feed on which Ravi announced "I saw him making out with a dude. Yay," Clementi threw himself from New York City's George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010.

In March, a jury convicted Ravi of all 15 criminal counts with which he was charged, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. On two of the intimidation counts, he faced up to 10 years in state prison.

Last week, a judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail beginning May 31. The judge's sentence was dramatically more lenient than state sentencing guidelines, The Star-Ledger reported, which call for five to seven years for second-degree crimes. Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman, however, found that this case included "extraordinary circumstances."

Ravi could be released in 20 days for good behavior, according to The Star-Ledger.

Prosecutors, finding the sentence too lenient, said they would appeal. Still, the prosecution was a landmark in New Jersey, according to The Star-Ledger. It was the first time invasion of privacy has been tied to bias intimidation.

Ravi's lawyers have said they expect to appeal the convictions entirely. They say that he was not hateful and that authorities charged him with such serious crimes because of Clementi's suicide even though he was not charged with the 18-year-old's death.

Steven D. Altman, one of his lawyers, did not immediately return a phone call from msnbc.com on Tuesday afternoon.  

The apology comes as a reversal in course for Ravi, whose story inspired hundreds of people to rally at New Jersey's State House calling for no prison time and changes in the state's hate crime laws.

When Ravi was sentenced last month, Judge Glenn Berman chastised him for not apologizing for his actions.

"I heard this jury say 'guilty' 288 times," Berman said, referring to all the sub-parts of the charges Ravi faced repeated 12 times, once for each juror. "And I haven't heard you apologize once."

During the court proceeding, Ravi, who expressed remorse in March in a newspaper interview, chose not to address the judge, though he cried as his mother pleaded for mercy from the judge.

He told The Star-Ledger newspaper in an interview conducted before the sentencing but published afterward that he did not want to say he was sorry during the sentencing because he thought it would sound insincere.

During the sentencing, Clementi's brother James Clementi said that hearing an apology so late from Ravi would not be meaningful to him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Marina Keegan had just graduated from Yale University and was about to begin a dream job at The New Yorker. But Keegan, 22, was killed in a car crash Saturday and is being mourned as "an exceptional person, wildly talented, and with the confidence and character ... to have done fine things."

Keegan wrote her last piece for a special edition of the Yale Daily News, the student newspaper, which distributed it at the Class of 2012’s commencement exercises earlier this month.

The newspaper republished the essay, "Opposite of Loneliness," after her death. It includes these lines: "We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”

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Read Marina Keegan's essay "Opposite of Loneliness"

On Saturday, Keegan and Michael Gocksch, 22, her boyfriend from New York and fellow Yale 2012 alum, were headed to join Keegan’s parents in Cape Cod, Mass., according to the Cape Cod Times. Their road trip was in part to revise a musical that Keegan had written with two collaborators. The production was slated among performances at the New York International Fringe Festival this summer, the Cape Cod Times reported.

Keegan’s parents, Tracy and Kevin Keegan, told the Cape Cod Times that state troopers brought news of the accident. Keegan was a passenger in a 1997 black Lexus that had drifted off the road and into the right guardrail, the Cape Cod Times reported. The car then careened across two lanes, hit a guardrail on the left, and rolled over at least twice, according to the Times.

Keegan died at the scene; Gocksch treated at Cape Cod Hospital and released, a hospital spokesman told the newspaper. 

"My heart's broken," Kevin Keegan told the Cape Cod Times.

Keegan took on Wall Street recruiters on her college campus last year, served as president of the Yale College Democrats and was a member of Yale Occupy Movement, according the Yale Daily News.

This summer, Keegan had been looking forward to moving to Brooklyn: She had been hired at The New Yorker as an editorial assistant. 

“We were saddened to learn of the death of Marina Keegan, who was to start work at The New Yorker on June 11th; she had just graduated from Yale, where, by all accounts, she was an extraordinary presence,” The New Yorker said in a statement Tuesday. “Her colleagues at The New Yorker were eagerly anticipating her return, and their thoughts, as well as those of the wider staff, are with her family and friends.”

Yale College Dean Mary Miller informed the Yale community of the tragedy in an email Sunday. "Marina was an exceptional young woman, an outstanding student and a dear friend and a vibrant member of this community," Miller said in the email, the Yale Daily News reported. "Her death is a tragedy for all who knew her."

“Marina was someone who looked at the world and knew it had to be changed, but at the same time saw there was beauty in it,” Yael Zinkow, a friend, told the Yale Daily News on Sunday.

“She was an exceptional person, wildly talented, and with the confidence and character (and personal modesty) to have done fine things,” English lecturer John Crowley, who advised Keegan on her writing concentration senior project, wrote in an email to the Yale Daily News. “Her loss can’t be expressed — to those who knew her, to her family, to her friends — but the loss also to the world that lay before her."

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A 55-year-old man holding a constable candidate’s campaign sign was shot in the left leg Tuesday outside a San Juan, Texas, polling place, NBC News reported.

The individual was standing next to the curb outside a fire station being used as a polling station when "a suspect in a red pickup truck fired one round," police told NBC News.

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Victim Jose Sanchez was transported to McAllen Medical Center, where his injuries are considered non-life threatening, Police Chief Juan Gonzalez told The Monitor newspaper of McAllen, Texas.

San Juan Police could not immediately say whether the shooter intentionally targeted the victim, the constable candidate he represented or fired at random.

Sanchez was holding a sign for Hector "JoJo" Mendez, whose opponent is in the race is Martin "Marty" Cantu, witnesses told The Monitor.

Watch US News crime videos on msnbc.com

Mendez told the newspaper that Sanchez was a paid campaign worker he did not know very well.

Voting continued at the station with extra security officers on site at the Raul Longoria Road station. Gonzalez, the police chief, said he wants to "make sure no one is afraid to go and vote."

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A mysterious bat-plaguing disease has shown up in a seventh species, the U.S. reported Tuesday, and said even more could succumb as white-nose syndrome makes its way across the nation from the East Coast. That's particularly bad news for farmers who benefit from bat colonies that can devour a ton of insects in a single serving.

Gray bats, a vulnerable species that's been federally protected since 1976, are the latest to get hit, with infections of the white fungus found on bats in two Tennessee counties, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced. 

If trends continue, the syndrome "is likely to continue to spread west and it is probable that other bat species will be impacted," Paul McKenzie, a service staffer who works on endangered species issues, told msnbc.com. 

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The 26 species of hibernating bats across the U.S. are the ones at risk, since the disease thrives in the cool temperatures of caves and mines where those species spend their winters. 

The concern is not just about protecting bats for their sake, or even the ecosystems they create inside caves, but their contribution as a natural pest control saves farmers billions of dollars a year and means fewer chemicals used on our foods. 

"Gray bats eat a lot of moths, beetles, flies" and other insects, Ann Froschauer, a spokeswoman for the service's White-Nose Syndrome program, told msnbc.com. "A colony of 250,000 gray bats can eat about one ton of insects in a night."

"There aren't other animals that can step in and take the place of bats in terms of these pest control services," she added. 

Year after year "gray bats probably consume over a trillion insects" across their Southeast and Midwest habitats, added McKenzie. "The economic impact to agriculture and forestry could be astronomical" if the disease starts a mass die-off.

The disease was first detected in 2006 in New York state. Thought to have come from Europe, it has since spread to 19 states and four Canadian provinces -- killing some 6 million bats.

In some areas, entire colonies have been wiped out.

A recently discovered fungus, Geomyces destructans, is now known to cause the syndrome, but scientists still don't know how to combat the disease. Some bats survive, but others die after losing their fat reserves or leaving their caves before winter is over. 

In the case of gray bats, which number around 4 million, no deaths have been reported. But they are particularly vulnerable to disease because they hang out in dense colonies that can number in the hundreds of thousands.

The species was "well on the way to recovery" before the disease hit, McKenzie noted, but now the fear is it will "expand exponentially" across the bats' habitat.

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NEW YORK -- A Bronx man who runs a fish farm in his 14th-floor apartment is being sued by his landlord in a building where neighbors claim the tanks leak and stink up their homes.

The landlord claims Christopher Toole, 47, is violating his lease at the Riverdale building by illegally breeding fish and running the Society of Aquaponic Values and Education from the home, according to the New York Post.

He has "refused to refrain" from making noises and causing odors, the lawsuit says.

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Read the story at NBCNewYork.com

"He's running a business out of his apartment," Errol Brett, the landlord for Windsor Apts. Inc., told the Post.

Neighbors say Toole is responsible for several large leaks and drags his fish farming materials across the floor through the night.

“It’s irritating because you hear noise all the time. It’s 3:30 in the morning, and you hear him dragging his aquarium or whatever it is across the floor. It has changed my life,”  resident Roch McDowell, who lives directly below Toole, told the paper.

Toole formerly worked at Morgan Stanley and served as a vice president for Sovereign Bank, according to the Post. He now teaches kids about fish farming and sells his tilapia.

He told the Post he was not aware of the suit, but said "any publicity is good publicity."

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A pregnant Detroit woman who police say was kidnapped, set on fire and shot early Saturday has given birth to a baby boy, according to media reports.

NBC station WDIV reported that LaTonya Bowman, 22, gave birth Tuesday morning at a hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

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“She has to be one of the most courageous women I have ever encountered,” Warren Police Deputy Commissioner Louis Galasso said. “She had the will and instinct to live.”

TheGrio.com has more on the arrest of the child's father and his roommate in the case.

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Updated at 6:38 p.m.: The judge in the campaign finance corruption trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards indicated Tuesday that proceedings could stretch well into June after a second closed-door meeting with prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Analysis: John Edwards jury speaks with its silence

For the second straight court day — there was no session Monday because of the Memorial Day holiday — U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles closed the courtroom in Greensboro, N.C., for about 45 minutes Tuesday morning. Court officials told NBC News she was discussing a "juror issue" with attorneys in the case.

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For several days, Eagles has taken extra care to remind jurors that all deliberations must take place in the jury room with all 12 jurors present and only there, raising speculation that one or more of the eight men and four women on the panel may have been discussing the case outside the courthouse. The judge said if jurors talk in small groups it can be divisive and make it more difficult for the group to reach a verdict.

• Full trial coverage on msnbc.com
• Full transcripts of closing arguments
• Analysis by Hampton Dellinger

The original 12 jurors were still in place Tuesday, however, and the strain they were under was obvious, said Hampton Dellinger, a legal analyst for NBC News and msnbc.com.

"They realize they've got a tremendous weight on them, and they don't know what to do with it," Dellinger said on MSNBC-TV's "Hardball."

Before breaking for lunch, Eagles referred to some juror scheduling conflicts, noting that it is "high school graduation season." She asked the jury members to pass along notes with their scheduling needs through the end of next week, suggesting deliberations could drag on well into June, raising the prospect that a trial that started in April could still be in process when summer begins on June 20.

Deliberations resume Wednesday morning.

Edwards, 58 — a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee — is charged with six felony counts of accepting about $1 million in illegal and unreported donations during his 2008 presidential campaign from two wealthy supporters at a time when individual donations were limited to $2,300.

If convicted on all counts, Edwards could face 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines. As he headed for lunch Tuesday, a confident-looking Edwards told Ben Thompson of NBC station WCNC in Charlotte, N.C., "I feel fine."

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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., that they will help shape a more agile, flexible, technologically advanced military that puts an emphasis on Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. 

"One of the key projects that your generation will have to face is sustaining and enhancing American strength across the great maritime region of the Pacific," he said Tuesday.

He told graduates that their work will help strengthen defense ties with China, modernize ties with old allies like Japan and Korea and build new partnerships with countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.

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America's prosperity lies with the ability "to advance peace and security," he said. "That reality is inescapable for our country and for our military, which has already begun broadening and deepening our engagement throughout the Asia Pacific."

During visits to Southeast Asia, India and China, Panetta vowed to speak about America's goal to remain a Pacific power. "And I'll tell them why: because of you," he told the class of 2012. "Because during your careers many of you will be headed across the Pacific. There and across the globe, the Navy and Marine Corps must lead a resurgence of America's enduring maritime presence and power."

Panetta urged the graduates to help strengthen defense ties with China. 

"China's military is growing and modernizing," he said. "We must be vigilant. We must be strong. We must be prepared to confront any challenge. But the key to peace in that region is to develop a new era of defense cooperation between our countries — one in which our militaries share security burdens to advance peace in the Asia-Pacific and around the world." 

Panetta also said the military will protect its investments in cybersecurity, unmanned systems and special operation forces. "We will ensure our military can confront aggression and defeat any opponent anytime, anywhere," Panetta said.

There were a total of 1,099 graduates — 877 men and 222 women. A total of 810 were commissioned as naval officers, including 634 men and 176 women. There were 267 commissioned as officers in the Marine Corps, including 224 men and 43 women. Several graduated as officers in the Air Force and Coast Guard.

Panetta also noted the death last week of retired Lt. Cmdr. Wesley Brown, the first African-American to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1949. He was 85.

The defense secretary cited the academy's diversity, and he noted that some students are gay. This was the first graduating class at the service academy in which gay students could be open about their sexuality after repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in September.

"You are men and women from every state in the union and 12 foreign nations — rich and poor, secular and religious, black, white, Latino, Native American, Asian, straight and gay. Diversity of this class is a tribute to the life and service of retired Lt. Cmdr. Wesley Brown," Panetta said, bringing cheers and applause from the audience. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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We've seen them in the movies, but now we can read the real-life history of America's nuclear warriors, the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, known as NEST. The story of NEST, which would protect the U.S. in the case of an attempt at nuclear extortion or terrorism, is told in declassified documents published Tuesday.

The 69 documents, released under the federal Freedom of Information Act, were published by the National Security Archive, a respected research organization at George Washington University. (More about the National Security Archive.)

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They tell the story of MIGHTY DERRINGER, a training exercise in 1986 in which NEST attempted to find a nuclear device smuggled into Indianapolis. In the training scenario, the device was detonated, destroying 20 blocks of downtown Indianapolis. 

The archive said the documents "offer the first detailed public look at the inner workings of the agencies, military units and other U.S. entities responsible for protecting the country from a terrorist nuclear attack."

And they reveal problems that can arise in coordinating the many organizations that would respond to such an attack: problems of bomb detection, interagency coordination, containment of contamination and general "confusion." 

"While the MIGHTY DERRINGER exercise and resulting documents are over two decades old," the archive said, "the institutions participating in the exercise retain their roles today, and the issues confronting them in 1986 are similar to the ones that they would face in responding to a nuclear threat in 2012 (and beyond)."

 You can read all 69 documents at this page from the National Security Archive.

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Maverick Couch can wear his “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe” T-shirt to school again – without fear of being suspended.

The 16-year-old junior at Waynesville High School in Ohio has won a legal fight to wear the shirt, which was a gift from a friend’s aunt, on school grounds.

“I’m really blessed and happy,” he told msnbc.com on Tuesday, a week after he learned of a court action in his favor. “It’s just really amazing. I never thought it would come out like this.”

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In the judgment entered May 21, U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett ordered school officials to allow Maverick to wear the T-shirt to school whenever he chooses. He also ordered the school district to pay $20,000 in damages and court costs to the teen.

“We’re very happy for Maverick and all LGBT students in Ohio,” Christopher Clark, senior staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which sued on Maverick’s behalf, said in a press release. “If school officials had any doubt before, it’s clear now: First Amendment rights apply to all students on every day of the year, and efforts to silence LGBT youth will not go unchallenged.”

The settlement ends a legal fight that began a little more than a year ago.

According to court documents, Couch wore the T-shirt with a rainbow-colored Ichthys, or “sign of the fish,” and lettering that read “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe” to school in April 2011 in observation of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network’s “Day of Silence.”

The principal, Randy Gebhardt, called Maverick into his office and instructed him to turn the shirt inside-out. Maverick complied. He wore the T-shirt to school again the next day. This time, his mother was called in and he was told to remove the T-shirt or face suspension. Maverick again complied.

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When school resumed in the fall, Maverick asked the principal for permission to wear the T-shirt. Again, he was told he would be suspended if he did so. That’s when he and his mother turned to lawyers.

In January, Lambda Legal sent the school district a letter outlining Maverick’s First Amendment rights and stating he had the right to wear the shirt. The school district responded that “the message communicated by the student’s T-shirt is sexual in nature and therefore indecent and inappropriate in a school setting.”

The school district’s response continued:

“Wayne Local School District Board of Education had the right to limit clothing with sexual slogans, especially in light what was then a highly charged atmosphere, in order to protect its students and enhance the educational environment. Consequently, the high school principal was well within the bounds of his authority to request that the student remove his T-shirt and refrain from wearing the T-shirt in the future.”

Last month Lambda Legal sued the Wayne Local School District on Maverick’s behalf, contending the district was violating the teen’s First Amendment right to free speech.

“I just wanted to wear my shirt,” Maverick was quoted as saying in a Lamda Legal press release last week announcing the court settlement. “The shirt is a statement of pride, and I hope other students like me know that they can be proud, too.”

The $20,000 that the school district has been ordered to pay will be covered by Wayne Local Schools’ insurance policy.

Superintendent Patrick Dubbs didn’t immediately return a phone call for comment on Tuesday. He earlier told the Student Press Law Center that the lawsuit, filed in April, came as a surprise.

“I would even question the tactics used because we were never told we were being sued,” Dubbs was quoted as saying by SPLC. “Our feeling was this never had to go to federal court. All of our actions all along, once we became aware of Lambda Legal, were that we never wanted to go to court.”

As for Maverick, he says he wore the T-shirt to school the day after he learned of the court judgment in his favor.

“I really didn’t get any reaction,” he told msnbc.com. "I had a few friends ask me, ‘Has anything happened?’ It was like any other day. The principal didn’t say a word.”

He says he plans to wear the shirt to school again in the fall when classes resume.

The message, Maverick says, is all about tolerance.

"We need to accept others how they come no matter their religion, sexual orientation, the color of their skin. Everyone is who they are. We all need to come together as a whole and accept everyone.”

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By Gabe Gutierrez, NBC News correspondent 

ESTES PARK, Colo. -- At Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, rangers are seeing more than green this spring. They're also noticing a little more gray.

The average visitor to national parks is getting older.

Cyclist John O'Malley, 61, of Summit County, Colo., has enjoyed the trails for almost half a century.

"You do get close to nature," Malley said.

But apparently, not everyone shares that fondness anymore.

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Back in 1996, at Death Valley National Park, almost a third of visitors were in their 20s. But in the last few years, that number has dropped to just 11 percent at Yosemite and six percent at Yellowstone, according to a University of Idaho analysis of Park Service attendance figures.

At Rocky Mountain National Park, the average age of visitors has risen to 46.  

"Right now, we see a lot of youth not coming to the parks," said Larry Frederick, a park ranger for more than 15 years who has noticed the changing demographics. "I think there a lot of distractions right now for young people."

Frederick said the average age of visitors used to be late 20s and early 30s.

Overall attendance at national parks has dropped only slightly in the last two years. But with fewer young visitors, some conservationists worry about what could happen in the decades to come.

"If we do not do a better job of inviting young people to the national parks and providing the funding to be able to do that the parks will become less relevant," said Tom Kiernan, president of  the National Parks Conservation Association.

So the Park Service is mounting a campaign to attract children and young adults -- the Connecting People and Parks program. On a recent Saturday this spring, dozens of kids toured a park outside Washington, D.C. 

"They get excited [and] they discover things," said Jon Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service. "For them to know that not only they can come back, but they own this place, this is their park."

Back in Colorado, the Schafer family from Cleveland, Ohio, is bucking the trend. Three generations chose to enjoy their family vacation this year at a national park. While they are not part of the Park Service's recent outreach program, they fully support it.

"It's sad to see that the next generation will forget this," Jamie Schafer said, as she looked across a stretch of mountaintops.

She and her husband drove their kids and grandkids all the way from Ohio. Their goal: to leave their family's computers behind and nurture their love of nature for a lifetime.

"You can't capture it on a picture," her 12-year-old son, Tobin, said. "You have to be there to see it."