NEW YORK, May 19 (Reuters) – A tornado half a mile wide
struck near Oklahoma City on Sunday, part of a massive storm
front that hammered the central United States. News reports said
at least one person had died.

By early Sunday evening, 19 tornados had touched down in
parts of Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas, according to the National
Weather Service and local news reports.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A dangerous, half mile-wide hurricane struck near Oklahoma City Sunday afternoon, part of an extreme weather system moving through the central U.S. and stretching from north Texas to Minnesota.

Earlier, a “large tornado” touched down near Wichita, Kansas at 3:45 Central Standard time, the National Weather Service reported.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Columbia University, one of the nation’s Ivy League schools, has joined an effort to have restrictions removed from a decades-old scholarship offered only to white students.

The Lydia C. Roberts Fellowship, established in 1920, requires that Columbia students who receive funding must be from Iowa, must not study law or several other fields, and must return to Iowa for two years after graduation.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has struggled with obesity for much of his adult life, underwent lap band surgery in February to reduce the size of his stomach, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

A prominent Republican seen as a possible 2016 contender for the White House, Christie told the New York Post on Monday that his decision to undergo the procedure – which limits the amount of food the stomach can hold – was motivated by his family’s concern for his health and not political ambition.

NEW YORK, May 6 (Reuters) – A handcuffed teenage fugitive
was captured by New York police on Monday six hours after he
escaped custody by knocking over a detective and fleeing into
the city’s subway system, forcing a partial shutdown of four
train lines, officials said.

What seemed to be a routine arrest turned into a frantic
manhunt when Vincens Vuktilaj, 17, broke free upon being led out
of his Harlem apartment Monday morning.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A handcuffed teenager remained at large on Monday after knocking a New York City police detective to the ground and fleeing into a Manhattan subway station, triggering a manhunt that paralyzed parts of the transit system for 90 minutes, authorities said.

Vincens Vuktilaj, 17, was moving so fast he ran “right out of his shoes” before descending into a Harlem subway station, a New York police official said.