(FOX) According to the National Weather Service, one of the deadly tornadoes that struck the southern United States this week was an EF-5, the highest category of tornado and the strongest one in Mississippi since 1966. Smithfield was hit in mid-afternoon, this past Wednesday, causing 14 deaths and 40 injuries.

This preliminar assessment is subject to revision.

Alamaba Received Disaster Designation from Obama

President Barack Obama has signed a disaster declaration for Alabama to help residents clean up the devastation left by killer tornadoes and flooding.

More than 200 people were killed in Wednesday’s twister outbreak and several counties have major destruction.

A Pennsylvania pterosaur has been reported, not a fossil in the Pennsylvanian strata but a living pterosaur.

In the summer of 2006, at about 8:00 p.m., . . . in southwest Greensburg, Pennsylvaniva, a karate teacher and two of his students were talking outside. Above some small trees . . . they saw something that at first could have been mistaken for a large bird. . . . [The karate teacher said:] it caught my eye. Being that far up the “birds” body still appeared to be much larger than my 100 pound dog . . . The wingspan appeared to be at least six feet and although it was a bit away from us you could clearly make out a long “horn” or “cone” type protrusion coming out of the back of its skull . . . [The head] was at the end of an elongated neck.

Eyewitnesses in other America states have reported similar flying creatures, apparent pterosaurs.

American Eyewitnesses of Living Pterosaurs

Reports of living pterosaurs in the United States of America are no longer confined to reports from cowboys in ninteenth-century Arizona or a police officer in twentieth-century San Bernito, Texas. According to one cryptozoologist, Jonathan Whitcomb, there may be 1400 eyewitnesses of living pterosaurs seen in the United States, during the past three decades.

(CNN) In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, Garum Tesfaye is a landlord, of a sort. He rents newspapers.

Surrounded by worn-out copies of old newspapers, stacks of gossip magazines and the crisp print of the latest news, Tesfaye sits attentively, checking his watch every now and then.

Near him, a pedestrian bridge provides shelter from the sun to dozens of avid readers who quickly, albeit meticulously, get their dose of the latest news. For 20 to 30 minutes, these readers can get their hands on a newspaper for a fraction of the price of having to buy it. . . . Among his customers are unemployed university graduates who tend to rent several publications a day as they desperately hunt for work.

How much does it cost to rent a newspaper for a few minutes? Less than the equivalent of one American penny.

Fifty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin, of the U.S.S.R., became the first human to be launched into space, electrifying the world and shocking the Soviet Union’s major competitor, the United States of America. The Russian pilot circled the earth in one orbit, in a Vostok spacecraft, to be precise the Vostok 3KA, which had flown in six unmanned test missions prior to the 1961 historic mission.

The Vostok 3KA was developed for two purposes: as a manned spacecraft and as a platform for spying. Without the spy camera, it would have failed to obtain support from the Communist party, for the Cold War had been warming up for years.

Yuri Gagarin died on 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight in a MiG-15UTI. The plane crashed near the town of Kirzhach. Although conspiracy theories have been suggested, it is generally believed to have been an accident, possibly partially from the use of outdated weather information.

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Child Care in Long Beach, California

Social interaction is important for children, but preschoolers need a safe place to learn early people-skills