Leave it to someone with military training to execute such a successful and well-planned mission.

Maj. Jake Brittingham had been stationed in Africa for the past five months, and he's been badly missed by his daughter Emma. So to surprise her, he showed up at her first gymnastics competition. Luckily, the moment was captured on video.

Dad came home early, arrived at the gym and hid. Operation Surprise Emma was a go.

With mom Kelley and older sister Erin in the audience, the announcer asks 9-year-old Emma, “If you had one wish today, what would it be?”

“That my dad could be here,” she answers.

“Really? How about you turn around?” the announcer says to gasps in the crowd as Emma’s father appears behind her. A joyful Emma gets a huge hug from her dad.

“I just couldn’t even believe he was here,” she says.

Her mom, when she posted a video of the surprise reunion, wrote, "We had NO idea Daddy came home early to surprise Emma at her first Level 7 meet! Thank goodness the news was there to

Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, who leads the exempt organizations division under scrutiny for targeting conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, is refusing to testify before Congress, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Lerner was supposed to appear before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday.

The Times reports that Lerner's attorney, William W. Taylor III, sent a letter to the committee chairman saying she would plead the Fifth:

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell Issa. ... The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Issa, a California Republican, has issued a subpoena, compelling her presence at Wednesday's hearing.

A downed utility pole along May Avenue in South Oklahoma City. (Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

OKLAHOMA CITY—Anthony Connel was sitting in traffic off of South 149th Street, about a mile from his home, when he saw it happen: A dark black cloud, so ominous and wide that it didn’t even look like a tornado, dropped to the ground—and headed straight for his house.

Connel, a sales manager at Anheuser-Busch, had seen tornadoes before. They are a way of life in Oklahoma—a dangerous, yet fascinating phenomenon of nature considered as normal as the state’s rabid devotion to Sooner football. Here, local meteorologists are considered major celebrities, and everyone has been a storm chaser of sorts at least once or twice, curious about how a cloud so eerily beautiful could also be so destructive.

But there was something different about this tornado, Connel recalled in an interview with Yahoo News.

“It was just this big black cloud on the ground. You couldn’t even tell it was a tornado. And it didn’t seem to be moving. It just keep getting bigger and bigger,” he said. Watching the twister take direct aim at his largely rural neighborhood just east of Interstate 44, Connel realized he was about to lose everything. He knew his neighbors were in his storm cellar (his wife, Virginia, was at work) and believed they would be safe, but he also knew that his home probably wouldn’t survive.

“I just felt totally helpless,” Connel said Tuesday, as he stood alongside the large pile of shredded lumber, brick and steel that used to be his home.

“There was nothing I could do,” he added, his voice thick with emotion. “It was too late. If I’d been here, I could have tried to save some things, but I just had to sit back and watch it happen. I was too late.”

Susan and Bob Njoo's destroyed home. They managed to escape from the rubble with minor injuries. (Photo courtesy of Larry Ong)

Yahoo News invited Oklahoma City area residents to share their firsthand experiences and observations from Monday’s tornadoes and rescue efforts, and the cleanup that began Tuesday. Below are excerpts from what they’ve written.

***

Walking away from a destroyed home: Two of our close friends, Susan and Bob Njoo, were affected by the tornado. They hid in their closet as the tornado hit. The closet is no longer standing. They were buried under the rubble. Bobby was able to punch through the sheetrock to get more air. It took the rescuers about 45 minutes to get them out. It's a miracle that they survived. They were able to walk away with only minor injuries. But their house is destroyed.

-- Linda Nowlan, Bethany

***

‘We can't go back, the destruction is so bad’: Shortly after 2 p.m., I headed down the stairwell to my car and over to the high school to check out

President Barack Obama on Tuesday filled out his Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which was created to improve election systems in the United States.

"As I said in my State of the Union Address, when any American, no matter where they live or what their party, is denied that right [to vote] simply because too many obstacles stand in their way, we are betraying our ideals," Obama said in a statement Tuesday. "We have an obligation to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without unwarranted obstructions or unnecessary delay."

Obama, who announced that the commission member limit would change from nine to 10, had previously revealed the names of the commissions' bipartisan co-chairs: Bob Bauer, who served as Obama's counsel, and Republican attorney Ben Ginsberg, who worked for Mitt Romney.

The other appointees—a mix that Steve Croley, deputy White House counsel, explained in April would be people who "run elections for a

Some 3-D printer food made from meal worms (TNO research)

Call it food for thought. Or perhaps thought for food: NASA has given a six-month grant to a company developing what could be the world’s first 3-D food printer. And the project’s developer, reports Quartz, an online digital news site, believes the invention could be used to end world hunger.

Quartz explains that the printer is the brainchild of mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor. Being developed by Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corp., it will use proteins, carbohydrates and sugars to create edible food products.

Contractor says one of his primary motivations is a belief that food will become exponentially more expensive in the near future. The average consumer, he told Quartz, will need a more economically viable option.

Some alternative food source options that may be used with the printer include algae, duckweed, grass, lupine seeds, beet leaves and even insects, according to TNO Research, which is working with Contractor on the project.

“I think, and many

An Icelandic lake. (Thinkstock)

If you're dining on an ice floe, first be sure it's firmly attached to land. If not, you might end up like a group of American tourists who had to be rescued after they floated 10 meters (33 feet) from shore.

The Iceland Review reports that the travelers, who were at the Fjallsárlón glacial lagoon in East Iceland, had set up a table and chairs on the ice floe with plans to eat dinner. But then a strong gust of wind came along and the floe detached. The next thing the tourists knew, they were drifting away.

Luckily, one of the diners was able to jump onto dry land before the ice drifted too far and called an emergency crew, according to the Reykjavik Grapevine. Páll Sigurður Vignisson, a member of the rescue team, spoke to Iceland Review about the unexpected rescue mission.

"When we arrived it was quite comical to see them sitting on chairs and with a table on an iceberg. ... Yes the dinner was over," Vignisson told the paper. He added that the tourists, who were rescued by boat,

[Updated at 3:24 p.m. CT]

MOORE, Okla.—As a hailstorm bore down on the devastated region Tuesday afternoon, first responders continued to sift through debris to try to find survivors and figure out how many people died in the massive tornado that ripped through southern Oklahoma City and other towns a day earlier.

Twenty-four people have been confirmed dead—including 9 children—and 237 were injured by the twister, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said. At a news conference Tuesday, Fallin said officials are trying to find out if other victims might have been taken to local funeral homes and have not yet been counted in the death toll. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service upgraded the tornado to a top-of-the-scale EF5, saying its winds were at least 200 mph. The tornado cut a path of destruction 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

"We're going through that debris, and we're going to keep looking until everybody's found," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said at the news conference. Dozens of