Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)

[Updated at 6:55 p.m. CT]

DALLAS – The Boy Scouts of America, one of the country’s largest and oldest youth organizations, decided on Thursday to break 103 years of tradition by allowing openly gay members into its ranks.

The controversial move was approved by more than 60 percent of the approximate 1,400 votes cast by the BSA’s national council. According to the new resolution, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

“The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting,” the BSA stated in a press release.

Lifting the organization’s ban on gay adult volunteer leaders and paid staff was not considered and remains in place.

Pascal Tessier, a gay Scout from Maryland, told Yahoo News that he was ecstatic with the outcome.

“Proud, happy and on top of

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An anonymous thief has attempted to make up for years of beer theft by leaving a stack of $20 bills and an apology letter. And the owner of the oft-raided beer fridge has a message for the repentant burglar: Come back and have a beer with us, sometime.

Local CBS affiliate WKRC reports that Dee and Leo Samad have maintained a welcoming backyard for years, replete with a 12-foot-bar that includes a beer tap and a fridge full of beer.

The Kentucky residents left the fridge unlocked so that friends and neighbors could help themselves to a drink and repay the favor on the honor system. But eventually, Leo Samad couldn’t help notice that someone was treating a little too much.

"There for awhile my husband kept saying,'I know I put a case of beer in there and there's only 5 or 6 cans left,'" Dee Samad, 69, told the station. “But what are you going to do? We put locks on it."

Eventually, the couple got tired of using the lock and the occasional thefts continued. But then on Monday, the Samads

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President Barack Obama defends his use of drones. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)Saying it's time "to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing," President Barack Obama invited Congress in a speech on Thursday to help him scale back the country's 12-year conflict against al-Qaida and its affiliates.

"America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us," he warned in remarks at National Defense University.

Obama defiantly defended his use of drones to assassinate suspected extremists overseas, including Americans, but he asked lawmakers to join him in setting modest new safeguards. He renewed his call for shuttering the Guantanamo Bay prison for alleged terrorists. And he announced efforts to find a better balance between investigations of national security leaks and the freedom of the press.

"Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end," Obama said in a speech plainly shaped by his awareness of the place drones and Guantanamo Bay could occupy in his legacy.

"Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation-states," he warned.

Obama was heckled at length by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink and a leading (and highly recognizable) critic of the so-called war on terrorism.

"Can you tell the Muslim people their lives are as precious as our lives?" she shouted as she was finally ushered from the hall. "Will you apologize to the thousands of Muslims that you have killed? Will you compensate the innocent family victims? That will make us safer!"

After trying and failing several times to get her to sit quietly, Obama went off script and enlisted her protest to reinforce his message about the need to close the Guantanamo facility.

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Thousands gathered in New York City's Times Square on May 22 to see the world's largest Legos model. Click image to see more photos. (Amy Sussman/AP)

The mad geniuses at Legos have created a full-scale X-wing fighter made from more than 5 million bricks—the most ever used to build a model. It's currently on display in New York City's Times Square.

The X-wing, for those who didn't study under Professor Yoda, was the ship that destroyed the (first) Death Star in the original "Star Wars."

Gizmodo reports that the behemoth 1:1 scale model, based on Legos' $60 X-wing set, is 11 feet tall and 43 feet long with a wingspan of 44 feet.

The X-wing will hang out in New York for a few days before being transported to the West Coast, where it will reside at Legoland in San Diego.

Thirty-two model builders worked on the fighter. It took more than 17,000 hours to complete and weighs approximately 45,980 pounds, according to Wired.

From Wired:

Twenty-three tons is a whole lot of anything, especially

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Security surrounds Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin on May 23. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

President Barack Obama's planned counterterrorism speech was temporarily derailed several times on Thursday when activist Medea Benjamin shouted criticisms of the administration's use of drones and operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Benjamin, co-founder of peace activist group Code Pink, was seated in the audience at National Defense University in Washington, D.C., where Obama gave his speech. She first interrupted him as he announced plans designed to move the U.S. closer to closing the facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"You gotta let me speak. I'm about to address it," the president said in response to the heckling. He asked her to sit down so he could continue and repeatedly thanked her for her comments.

"This is part of free speech, is you being able to speak but also you listening and me being able to speak," Obama said, drawing wide applause from the audience.

After multiple outbursts and back-and-forths with the president, Benjamin was escorted out of the event.

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Is this the Pittsburgh skyline? (AnthonyWeiner.com)

Anthony Weiner's nascent New York City mayoral campaign might have hit a slight snag.

Azi Paybarah at Capital New York notes on Thursday that the skyline featured in a banner on Weiner's campaign site appears to picture the lovely city of Pittsburgh, not New York.

Weiner announced his candidacy in a video posted to the site on Wednesday, but he did not emerge to talk to voters or the media until Thursday morning, when he greeted commuters at a busy Harlem subway stop.

Frank Del Vecchio (left) trains for his run. (Run for Hope Foundation)

The police chief in Fairview, N.J., is running 100 miles to help raise money for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Frank Del Vecchio began his run on Thursday, the New York Daily News reports. If all goes according to plan, he should finish the 100-mile jaunt by Friday. He's been training since Jan. 2.

Del Vecchio told the Daily News that his run was inspired by what people have had to deal with in the aftermath of Sandy. "What they’ve endured for six months, I can endure for them in a 100-mile run," Del Vecchio said.

So far, according to the Daily News, Del Vecchio has raised about $20,000. He expects that figure to rise while he runs. He told the paper he plans to run five-mile stretches followed by one-mile walks. While walking, he'll eat peanut butter sandwiches.

Sandy, which struck the East Coast in October 2012, killed dozens of people and caused billions of dollars in property damage.

This isn't the first time Del Vecchio has gone on an epic run to raise money. According to the Run

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A fire toppled a railroad bridge like it was made of dominoes outside the small town of San Saba, Texas. Members of the Lometa, Texas, volunteer fire department arrived on the scene, but they could only contain the fire and watch as trestle after trestle folded, leaving the train rails suspended in air momentarily like Wile E. Coyote.

Jamie Smart, who shot the video, spends his days as principal of the local high school, but he volunteers his time at the Lometa Volunteer Fire Department. The small group uses donations to maintain vehicles and hoses when the county budget falls short. Responding to a call from a local resident, he found the air too hazy to see much when he got there. But from up close, Smart knew the 900-foot trestle bridge, built in 1910 as a spur of the Sante Fe Railroad, was in flames. "It was quite an engineering marvel, that it stood up that long," Smart said.

Firefighters had only the water they brought in trucks—enough to fight a brush fire, but not enough to

Read More »from Watch: Burning Texas railroad bridge crumples like dominoes