The leaking of radioactive liquids at the Hanford, Wash., Nuclear Reservation is more extensive than previously reported, with six storage tanks affected, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.

In a conference call with reporters Friday after a meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Inslee disclosed that six of the 177 tanks were leaking at the nuclear facility in Richland, in eastern Washington about 50 miles southeast of Yakima. 

Inslee said Chu told him that evaluation system of the tank levels wasn't used correctly, raising the prospect that there may be even more leaks. But he said he was told that there was no immediate threat, a point the Energy Department reiterated in a statement Friday evening.

Hanford — which houses millions of gallons of radioactive waste left over from plutonium production for nuclear weapons — is already considered one of the most contaminated sites on Earth, the U.S. government says.

Last week, the U.S. Energy Department said that only one tank was leaking at Hanford.

"We need to get to the bottom of this," Inslee said. He called the disclosure "very disturbing news" and contended that the Energy Department needed a new plan to remove liquid from tanks that can't be repaired.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and an outspoken critic of containment efforts at Hanford, toured the site this week — before Friday's announcement — and judged conditions there "an unacceptable threat to the Pacific Northwest for everybody," NBC station KING of Seattle reported.  The Associated Press quoted Tom Towslee, a Wyden spokesman, as saying the senator will be asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program.

An estimated 1 million gallons of waste has seeped out of the underground tanks and reached groundwater that will eventually reach the Columbia River, scientists say. The U.S. plans to build a plant to turn the waste into low-level radioactive glass for safe storage, but that facility is years behind schedule for its projected opening in 2019.

In a statement Friday evening, Inslee warned that the federal budget impasse — which could lead to a "sequestration," or cuts, of $1.2 trillion in federal spending over 10 years — made the Hanford predicament even more alarming.

"Frankly, the state Department of Ecology is not convinced that current storage is adequate to meet legal and regulatory requirements," Inslee said.

"With potential sequestration and federal budget cuts looming, we need to be sure the federal government maintains its commitment and legal obligation to the cleanup of Hanford," he said. "To see Hanford workers furloughed at the exact moment we have additional leakers out there is completely unacceptable."

Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images file

The Hanford site in eastern Washington is considered one of the most contaminated locations on Earth.

Graham Robertson of NBC News contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

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This story was originally published on Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:26 PM EST

Authorities have ordered toxicology tests in the death of Rodney King, but the results won’t be known for several weeks, a sheriff’s spokeswoman told msnbc.com on Monday.

King, the black motorist whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 sparked some of the deadliest race riots in U.S. history, was found dead on Sunday. He was 47.

Police in Rialto, Calif., found King's body in a swimming pool after his fiancee called 911, Rialto Police Capt. Randy DeAnda told NBC News. He was transported to Arrowhead Hospital in Colton, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m. PDT, DeAnda said.

An autopsy was scheduled for Monday, but results won’t be

 released today, San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller said. Authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

Rodney King: 20 years after L.A. riots, 'Can we all get along?'

King was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers on a dark street on March 3, 1991, after he was stopped for speeding. Four officers hit him more than 50 times, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. A bystander videotaped much of the incident from a distance.

A year later, a California jury acquitted three of the four officers. The jury deadlocked on one of the charges for the fourth officer, Laurence Powell. Three of the officers were white and one Hispanic.

The riots that erupted on April 29, 1992, were among the most lethal in U.S. history. By the time order was restored, more than 50 people had died, nearly 3,000 were injured and thousands of businesses were damaged or destroyed.

20 years later: Have race relations improved?

In the two decades after he became the central figure in the riots, King was arrested several times, mostly for alcohol-related crimes. He later became a record company executive and a reality TV star, appearing on shows such as "Celebrity Rehab."

Looking back on that time, King told NBCLosAngeles.com in April, “Some of me wanted to get out there and riot and loot and tear up stuff too, but it just wasn’t the way I was raised.”

When he ventured into the streets during the riots, he wore a reggae hat with dreadlocks so people wouldn’t recognize him.

“It just looked a little bit like the war zone to me, smoke everywhere,” he told the station. “It broke my heart to look at that and to know this is, it’s really all about racial tension, and it’s a man-made problem.”

When King sat down with NBCLosAngeles.com, he was promoting his just-published memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption," which came out around the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots. According to the biography that accompanied his book, King had three children and was engaged to marry Cynthia Kelley, a juror in the civil suit he brought against the city of Los Angeles.

Nearly a year after the riots, a federal jury convicted two of the police officers of a federal charge of violating King’s civil rights and sentenced them to 30 months in prison. Two other officers were acquitted. King eventually received a $3.8 million settlement from the city, and the case led to sweeping changes in LAPD.

King said he was no longer bitter about what had happened.

“I like to be able to wake up and be able to pray for myself and pray for the world, that’s the most important thing,” he told NBCLosAngeles.com.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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KING-TV

Dr. Antoine Johnson claimed in 2009 that he was targeted for prosecution because he was a 'young, successful black man.'

After a manhunt that took federal agents to Madagascar, a Seattle-area doctor known as "the Candy Man" for indiscriminantly writing painkiller prescriptions for hundreds of patients was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday and ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution.

Antoine Johnson was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Wash., south of Seattle, for health care fraud, drug distribution and tax evasion. His mother, Lawanda Johnson, who was his office manager at four western Washington clinics, was sentenced to seven years in prison.

M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

The FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services said Johnson wrote prescriptions for powerful painkillers for hundreds of patients without conducting thorough medical examinations.

Agents raided Johnson's clinics and home in January 2009 after a two-year investigation. Johnson, then 38, fled to the island of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa, but he was detained eight months later because his passport had expired and then turned over to U.S. custody.

Before the raids, two undercover FBI agents visited Johnson's offices posing as patients several times, according to affidavits in the case. Even though they didn't always see Johnson himself and and often weren't given medical exams, the agents walked away with prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers and other controlled drugs.

On one occasion, one of the agents arrived to find about 40 people in the waiting room and 50 to 60 others waiting in line outside. The agent said he overheard a woman talking on a cellphone report that Johnson hadn't yet arrived but that "as soon as he gets here, I will get it and I'll call you and we'll hook up. I got a hold of my people."

The agent also said he overheard some patients refer to Johnson as "the script doc" and others demanding "just give me my scripts so I can go."

A subsequent audit of Johnson's accounts revealed double-billing of Medicare, "upcoding" of diagnoses to allow him to charge Medicare higher rates and notations indicating that as many as two-thirds of the patients under review were being prescribed opioids, with many of them on multiple drugs, according to court records.

The day after the raids in 2009, Johnson told a very different story, however, alleging in an interview with NBC station KING of Seattle that he was the victim of racial profiling.

"Look at me. I'm black. I believe they're doing this because I'm a young, successful black man," he said at the time.

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Updated at 8:35 a.m. ET: SEATTLE – Three men died in an avalanche in an out-of-bounds area near a popular Washington state ski resort on Sunday, authorities said. Several other skiers who had initially been reported missing were later accounted for. 

Sgt. Cindi West of the King County Sheriff's Office confirmed the deaths of three people to msnbc.com. The skiers were believed to be aged in their 30s and 40s.

The tragedy occurred at Stevens Pass ski resort in the Cascade Mountains, about 13 miles east of the town of Skykomish.

Other skiers in the group managed to dig out the men and performed CPR. However, they were later declared dead.

NBC News reported Monday that they had been swept about 2,000 feet down the slope.

According to King5.com, one skier was wearing a safety device if swept up in an avalanche. Elyse Saugstad, a professional skier, survived.

'Flipped and tumbled'
Saugstad told NBC's TODAY that she felt like she was in a "washing machine and being flipped and tumbled" after activating the device and being carried downhill.

"There wasn’t much sound," Saugstad said. "It literally was just trying to figure out within seconds of what exactly was happening and how I was going to deal with this. It was a very long ride and there was a lot of time to think."

Saugstad told TODAY that the avalanche danger wasn't high when the group went out Sunday. She said they were all "experienced back-country skiers."

"I’m just still in shock," she added. "I’m absolutely devastated at the loss of my friends."

Saugstad said that she "will definitely ski again."

In a separate incident in the Cascades on Sunday, a snowboarder died after plunging off a cliff, West said. According to the Seattle Times, the snowboarder, age 41, triggered an avalanche that pushed him over a cliff.

The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center on Sunday issued a warning for high avalanche danger for areas above 5,000 feet. The elevation of the avalanche wasn't immediately clear.

At mid-afternoon, the temperate at the base of the ski resort was 24 degrees, with light winds and good visibility. The temperature at the top of the mountain was 22 degrees, according to the resort's website.

The site also said Sunday was a "popular powder day" at the resort, with 14 inches of fresh snow falling overnight.

Stevens Pass, an 80-mile drive from Seattle, is among the most popular outdoor recreation areas in the state. People flock there to go cross-country, back-country and downhill skiing, as well as snowshoeing and backpacking.

It's been a deadly winter in Washington state's mountains. Four people disappeared in vicious storms while hiking and climbing on Mount Rainier last month.

Across the West, there had been 13 avalanche deaths this season as of Feb. 16, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which tracks avalanche deaths in the U.S.

Avalanche deaths are more common in the backcountry than at ski resorts. Out of about 900 avalanche deaths nationwide since the 1950-1951 winter, 32 were within terrain that was open for riding at ski resorts, according to the Utah Avalanche Center.

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

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Narong Sangnak / EPA

Joe Gordon, 55, looks on from inside a cell at the criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, on Thursday.

BANGKOK - A court in Thailand sentenced a U.S. citizen to two-and-a-half years in prison Thursday for defaming the country's royal family by translating excerpts of a locally banned biography of the king and posting them online.

The verdict is the latest so-called lese majeste punishment handed down in the Southeast Asian kingdom, which has come under increasing pressure at home and abroad to reform harsh legislation that critics say is an affront to freedom of expression.

The 55-year-old Thai-born American, Joe Gordon — also known as Lerpong Wichaikhammat — stood calmly with his ankles shackled in an orange prison uniform as the sentence was read out at a Bangkok criminal court.

"The defendant is found guilty ... The court sentenced him to five years in prison. But he pleaded guilty. That makes the case easier, so the court decided to cut it in half to 2 years and six months," a judge said at the criminal court in Bangkok.

• Story: Thais divided by anti-free speech crackdown

The sentence was relatively light compared to other recent cases. In November, 61-year-old Amphon Tangnoppakul was sentenced to 20 years in jail for sending four text messages deemed offensive to the crown.

Gordon's lawyer, Anon Nampa, said there would be no appeal against the verdict. "One month from now, we'll submit a request for a royal pardon," he added.

Gordon posted links the to banned biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej several years ago while living in the U.S. state of Colorado, and his case has raised questions about the applicability of Thai law to acts committed by foreigners outside Thailand.

Speaking after the verdict, Gordon said, "I am an American citizen, and what happened was in America." 

'This is just the system'
He also said he had no expectation of being let off easy. "This is just the system in Thailand," he said. Speaking later in Thai, he added: "In Thailand, they put people in prison even if they don't have proof."

Gordon had lived in the U.S. for about 30 years. He was detained in late May during a visit to his native country to seek treatment for arthritis and high blood pressure. After being repeatedly denied bail, he pleaded guilty in October in hopes of obtaining a lenient sentence.

Thailand's lese majeste laws are the harshest in the world. They mandate that people found guilty of defaming the monarchy — including the king, the queen and the heir to the throne — face three to 15 years behind bars. The nation's 2007 Computer Crimes Act also contains provisions that have enabled prosecutors to increase lese majeste sentences.

• Story: Man sentenced to 20 years for insulting Thai queen

The U.S. Embassy's consul general, Elizabeth Pratt, told reporters in Bangkok after the ruling that Washington considered Gordon's punishment "severe because he has been sentenced for his right to freedom of expression."

Opponents of the laws say that while the royal family should be protected from defamation, lese majeste laws have often been abused to punish political rivals. That is especially true since the nation suffered a 2006 military coup.

Asked if he would stay in Thailand after serving his time, Gordon said: "I would like to stay and see some positive Thailand. I want to see the real, amazing Thailand, not the messy Thailand."

• Photoblog: Prime minister bows to royalty

Many had hoped that the administration of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, which has some prominent supporters who have been accused of lese majeste, would reform the laws. The issue remains highly sensitive, however, and Yingluck's government has been as aggressive in pursuing the cases as its predecessors.

Last weekend, New York-based Human Rights Watch urged authorities to amend the laws, saying the penalties being meted out were "shocking."

More targets online
The rise of the Internet in recent years has given Thai authorities many more targets to pursue. Last month, Information Minister Anudith Nakornthap said Facebook users who "share" or "like" content that insults the Thai monarchy are committing a crime. Anudith said Thai authorities asked Facebook to remove 86,000 pages between August and November because of alleged lese majeste content.

The Bangkok Post reported that the Thai government said Wednesday it had set up a committee to seek out and clamp down on websites that publish content considered insulting or offensive to the monarchy.

• Story: 'Witch hunt'? Thailand cracks down on king's online critics

Gordon, a former car salesman, is accused of having translated excerpts from the unauthorized biography "The King Never Smiles," published by Yale University Press, into the Thai language and publishing them in a blog. He also provided links to the translation to other two Web forums, prosecutors say.

In the banned book, author Paul M. Handley retraces the king's life, alleging that he has been a major stumbling block to the progress of democracy in Thailand as he consolidated royal power over his long reign.

Bhumibol, the world's longest-reigning monarch, is profoundly revered in Thailand and is widely seen as a stabilizing force. He was feted Monday on his 84th birthday, during which he called on his countrymen to unite in response to the worst floods in more than half a century.

The king is frail and has stayed at a Bangkok hospital for more than two years.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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