THUNDERSTORMS CONTINUE TO POUND MIDWEST STATES

Thunderstorms continueto pound Midwest states
WEATHERBY, Mo. -- Thunderstorms continued battering the Midwest on Sunday, killing one person in a southern Indiana town after three people in Missouri were killed by a tornado the night before.
At least eight people were injured by the weekend's tornadoes, which also ripped through parts of Nebraska and Kansas, where high wind was blamed for two highway deaths.
In Marengo, Ind., about 35 miles northwest of Louisville, Ky., witnesses reported a tornado that toppled trees, making roads impassable. One person was killed in the storm, said Alden Taylor of the Indiana Emergency Management Agency, but he had no further details.
High wind also destroyed homes and businesses in the town of about 1,000 people.
"It's pretty well devastated," said Ralph Seacat, an emergency management director. "Roofs off of houses and trees down everywhere."
A tornado reported in Spencer, about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis, sent about 30 people scrambling to find cover in a gas station bathroom.
The twister "jumped over our store and touched town on the road in front of us. I was freaking out," said Billie Jo Roecker, assistant manager of the Speedway gas station.
Sunday's tornado was not immediately confirmed, but strong winds sent trees and power lines crashing to the ground all over town, Spencer Fire Chief Rick Shields said.
On Saturday night, a tornado hit northwest Missouri near the town of Weatherby, killing two women in a house and a man whose mobile home had been ripped from its base. Two children the man had tucked underneath him survived, Daviess County Sheriff Kevin Heldenbrand said.
Mike Hudson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said tornadoes were reported in six other Missouri counties.
Child's condition upgraded
SALT LAKE CITY -- A toddler who showed signs of life after being mistakenly pronounced dead of drowning was improving Sunday, hospital officials said.
Logan Pinto, 22 months, was upgraded to fair condition at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City. He had been on and off a respirator in critical condition.
"He is improving," hospital spokeswoman Bonnie Midget said.
The Rexburg, Idaho, boy was thought to have drowned after falling in a canal Thursday. He was declared dead an hour before a nurse preparing his body for a funeral noticed his chest was moving slightly. He was then flown to the Utah hospital.
Cleric gunned down
KARACHI, Pakistan -- Thousands of Sunni Muslims rampaged through this volatile southern Pakistani city Sunday, ransacking property and stoning vehicles after unidentified gunmen assassinated an influential pro-Taliban cleric.
Enraged by the drive-by shooting of Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, rioters set fire to banks, shops, a police station and a KFC fast food restaurant, and traded gunfire with security forces, leaving more than a dozen people injured.
Tens of thousands of mourners later gathered for the evening funeral, where police fired warning shots above the crowd.
Shamzai, in his 70s, had met Osama bin Laden and was a strong supporter of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The soft-spoken cleric was shot dead as he traveled in a pickup truck to his Sunni Muslim religious school in the east of the city.
Union soldiers reburied
RICHMOND, Va. -- The remains of six Civil War soldiers, unearthed when Hurricane Isabel struck Virginia last year, were reburied Sunday at Yorktown National Cemetery.
The Union soldiers were reinterred during a ceremony that featured both Union and Confederate re-enactors, who honored the dead with firing volleys and a bugler playing taps.
Each of the six caskets -- handmade by members of the 1st Texas Infantry, a local Confederate re-enactment unit -- had a Confederate and a Union escort. Women dressed in 19th-century apparel placed flowers on each casket as it left the ceremony for the grave site.
"It was a good opportunity to spend their Memorial Day here," park ranger Chris Bryce said of the 300 people who attended the event. "They're getting to see a real tangible reminder of what people have given to this nation."
The soldiers were first buried at Yorktown in 1866. They were unidentified, except for Edmund Ackley, 27, who served with the 85th New York Infantry, Bryce said.
Originally, park officials planned to rebury seven soldiers Sunday, but the number was reduced by one after rangers determined that "a very small percentage" of one soldier's remains was disinterred during the storm.
Associated Press