US Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

MOORE, Okla. (AP) , Before residents of Moore can rebuild, they'll have to deal with the debris from the deadly tornado that devastated the Oklahoma City suburb: crushed wood, mangled siding and battered belongings that could make a pile reaching more than a mile into the sky.

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) , Jae Canetti said he screamed "No!" when he learned the National Spelling Bee would be introducing a vocabulary test. He started changing the way he prepared, studying definitions of words on the bus ride to school each day.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) , Firefighters took advantage of a lull in winds on Tuesday to try to gain ground against a forest fire in mountains north of Santa Barbara, as crews elsewhere in Southern California chased a new fire north of Los Angeles and sought to increase containment of a rural San Diego County blaze.

NEW YORK (AP) , A self-described anarchist and "hacktivist" from Chicago pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges he illegally accessed computer systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors. "For each of these hacks, I knew what I was doing was wrong," Jeremy Hammond told a judge in federal court in Manhattan.

Americans gathered at memorials, museums and monuments and the president laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor fallen service members on Memorial Day, as combat in Afghanistan approaches 12 years and the ranks of World War II veterans dwindle.

A pregnant woman and her 3-year-old son were killed on Sunday after their pontoon boat collided with a speed boat on a lake southwest of Greensboro, N.C., WGHP reports. Authorities recovered Melissa Chambers Britt's body from Swearing Creek, a part of High Rock Lake. Her son, William Jaiden Britt, died at a hospital, the station reports.

WASHINGTON (AP) , Of the 85 kids who have won the National Spelling Bee, only one became an instant movie star. For the millions who watched back in 1999, her face is frozen in time. She'll always be the 14-year-old girl from Tampa, Fla., with the glasses and dark shoulder-length hair, her arms raised while leaping for joy.

Rupert Murdoch left some people outraged and others scratching their heads on Sunday when he took to Twitter to quote verses from the Koran. "Get real. Koran says(1) 'whoever killed a human being...it shall be regarded as having killed all mankind...'" the Fox News mogul tweeted.

EPHRATAH, N.Y. (AP) , A crew aboard a helicopter and dozens of other searchers scoured the woods and water in central New York for a third day Monday to look for a brain cancer patient who was on a volunteer medical flight that crashed last week. He is presumed dead.

Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals said Monday that it will pay $8.7 billion to buy Bausch + Lomb, one of the world's best-known makers of contact lenses, in a massive expansion of Valeant's smaller ophthalmology business.

LOS ANGELES (AP) , In a story May 25 about protests against seed developer Monsanto Co., The Associated Press erroneously reported that insecticide resistance is a common trait for genetically modified seeds. Many are modified to resist insects, not insecticides. A corrected version of the story is below: Protesters across globe rally against Monsanto

National Transportation Safety Board investigators are in Missouri looking for the reasons of a highway bridge collapse , the second such structure to give way in the past week. Seven people were injured, The Hill reported. Now transportation officials at both state and federal levels are calling for more funding to revamp American's aging infrastructure, The Hill said.

Al Jazeera America has ditched plans to broadcast 60 percent of its programming in the United States , in favor of 100 percent. The news channel, based in the Middle East, bought Al Gore's Current TV months ago to get a foot in the U.S. market, Newsmax reported.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) , John Q. Hammons, a prominent hotel developer and southwest Missouri philanthropist who rose from a poor Depression-era childhood to build a national real estate empire, has died. He was 94. Hammons, who actively led his company well into his 80s, died peacefully Sunday at a nursing home in Springfield, said Sheri Davidson Smith, a spokeswoman for John Q.

CHAFFEE, Mo. (AP) , Cleanup of the collapsed southeast Missouri highway overpass continued Sunday, more than 24 hours after a cargo train crash led to a chain reaction. The crash, which happened about 2:30 a.m. Saturday near Chaffee, led to the derailment of about two dozen rail cars that smashed into the bridge's support pillars.