Blog Posts by Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News

"We Survived," read a message on a home in Moore, Okla. (Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)

MOORE, Okla.—Southwest 4th Street used to be known as one of the busiest cruising strips in this growing suburb of Oklahoma City, a street where teenagers for decades killed time just driving around in loops with their friends.

It was a tradition that began long before the population boom that fueled the rapid construction of housing developments west of Santa Fe Avenue, the official dividing line between Moore and Oklahoma City. Back then, the tall blinking antenna towers for what used to be KOMA Radio was the most iconic feature of the city skyline, rising high above 4th Street over what used to be mostly empty farm land to the west.

In recent years, the young have driven their cars elsewhere, attracted to the newer movie theaters and restaurants popping up along Moore’s southern border. But in the aftermath of Monday’s tornado here, which killed at least 24 people, 4th Street has been busy again, packed with cars and people on foot trying to get a glimpse of the damage caused by what weather officials say was the most devastating storm to hit this city in years.

It was a testament to what usually happens to a city in the aftermath of a major natural disaster: It turns into a circus.

On Tuesday, law enforcement officials from all over the state fanned out along 4th Street, guarding entrances to neighborhoods flattened by the tornado and where workers continued to pick through debris looking for more victims. FBI agents were even spotted blocking a path into the city’s oldest cemetery in an attempt to keep people away. But it wasn’t really working.

Dozens of people—teenagers, moms and dads with their kids and even the elderly—strolled in packs down 4th street trying to get close to the damage, walking so casually it seemed as though they were just on an afternoon trip to the mall. They carried their iPhones, meticulously chronicling slivers of lumber and other debris, and talked about footage they’d seen on television of the storm and other tornadoes they’d lived through.

A woman named Ashley, who declined to give her last name, told Yahoo News she’d driven to Moore from Yukon, about 45 minutes away, to see the damage. She was with her two kids, a 4-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and said she’d parked her SUV on a nearby side street and walked over.

“I wanted them to see it,” Ashley said, motioning to her kids. “Everybody remembers their first big storm.”

Confirming the worst-kept secret in politics, former Rep. Anthony Weiner has announced he’s running for New York City mayor—telling voters that he wants a second chance in politics.

"I made some big mistakes, and I know I let a lot of people down, but I also learned some tough lessons," Weiner said in the two-minute YouTube video released on Wednesday. "I'm running for mayor because I've been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance."

The move comes nearly two years after Weiner was forced to resign from Congress after he acknowledged sexting with women who were not his wife. Last month, the ex-lawmaker kicked off a public amends tour, giving his first major interview since the scandal to the New York Times magazine. In the interview, he called the mayoral race a case of “now or maybe never for me.”

In the video, Weiner is shown with his wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to former Secretary of State Hillary

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.”

Olivia and Claudia Poglianich (Photo courtesy Olivia Poglianich)Claudia Poglianich had just one major request when her daughter Olivia began looking at colleges two years ago: that Olivia would pick a school where she had the greatest chance of emerging debt-free.

It was an ask that seemed almost quaint in a world where college costs have reached record highs and students are almost expected to incur major debts to pay for their education. But Claudia, a 45-year-old public relations worker for government agency in Oyster Bay, N.Y., was determined to have her daughter escape the albatross of student loan debt that weighs down many college graduates.

“It’s horrible what these young people are going through, leaving school with all this debt that they struggle to pay back,” Claudia told Yahoo News. “I didn’t want that for my daughter.”

So when she graduates in two years, Olivia, a 20-year old communications major at Cornell University, is aiming to be a rare case in higher education: a graduate from modest means with zero student loan debt.

It’s a

Kevin and Marina Krim with their daughter Lulu in 2012. (via Live Journal)The parents of two young children killed last fall allegedly by their nanny announced on Thursday that they are expecting a baby this fall.

Kevin and Marina Krim broke the news on a Facebook page established in the memory of their children, Lulu, 6, and Leo, 2, who were found stabbed to death in their Manhattan home in October.

“We are very happy to let you know that Marina is expecting a baby in the fall,” the Krims wrote. They added that their surviving daughter, Nessie, 3, “can’t wait to welcome her new baby brother.”

“We are filled with many emotions as we look to the future, but the most important one is hope,” the Krims wrote.

The announcement comes just a month after Yoselyn Ortega, the family’s nanny, was declared fit to stand trial for the murders of Lulu and Leo. Marina Krim has told police she came home from Nessie’s swim practice and found her two other kids dead in a bathtub while Ortega stood nearby stabbing herself in the throat.

Ortega has not entered a plea. She is

Weiner could declare=Former Rep. Anthony Weiner is apparently close to making his run for New York City mayor official.

According to WNBC-TV, the former congressman was spotted filming what appeared to be a campaign ad on the front steps of his childhood home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on Thursday. Weiner was joined by his wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

According to NBC, the entourage quickly packed up and left when reporters approached, and Weiner did not respond to a request for comment.

The apparent ad comes amid speculation that Weiner could announce his bid for mayor as soon as next week. The ex-lawmaker was forced out of Congress nearly two years ago when he was busted sexting with women who were not his wife.

Last month, Weiner kicked off a very public amends tour, giving an interview to The New York Times magazine in which he asked the public for a “second chance” and called the upcoming mayoral race a case of “now or maybe never for me.”

In recent

Workers watch as the Jet Star roller coaster is torn down. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J.—They lined up by the dozens on Tuesday, cameras and iPhones in tow, taking their place along the balcony of a pizzeria recently reopened just off the beach. Nearby, construction workers hammered lumber into place to rebuild the boardwalk destroyed in October by Superstorm Sandy.

But just after noon, all work stopped and silence fell. A giant crane then tore into what has been the star attraction of this Jersey shore community in the six months since it was nearly destroyed by Sandy.

The Jet Star—the roller coaster submerged in the Atlantic Ocean since Oct. 29, when the massive storm surge sucked much of the pier and boardwalk here into the sea—was finally coming down. For many, it has been an icon of the devastation left in Sandy’s wake, a hauntingly beautiful reminder of everything the storm took from this working-class oceanfront community.

As a crane with a giant steel scoop struggled to rip apart the roller coaster's steel frame and tracks, the crowd took

Kevin Lunny of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company is fighting to keep his farm (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

INVERNESS, Calif.—It is coming up on planting season at Drakes Bay Oyster Company, a tiny family-owned oyster farm located on a inlet nestled within the lush grassy cliffs that run along the Pacific Ocean here just north of San Francisco.

For more than 50 years, the modest farm, which looks like nothing more than a cluster of shacks, has been one of California’s leading producers of shellfish. Grown in the clear blue waters of what is known as Drakes Estero, Drakes Bay oysters make up a third of California’s annual shellfish production and are on the menu at some of the Bay Area’s top restaurants.

But the Lunny family, which purchased the farm in 2004, has been reluctant to begin planning cultivation for future seasons because they aren’t sure they will be here for much longer. For months, the Lunnys have been locked in an intense legal fight to keep the Interior Department from closing their farm—a closely watched case that heads before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Tuesday.

At issue is a decision made last November by then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who declined to extend Drakes Bay’s 40-year-lease, which allowed it to operate on public land within the Point Reyes National Seashore that was created decades after the oyster farm’s inception.

The Lunnys, who had been pressing for an extension of their lease for years, sued—arguing Salazar based his decision on flawed environmental impact studies produced by the National Park Service, which oversees the land. They also contend he ignored a 2009 bill championed by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and approved by Congress that would allow the farm’s lease to be extended by another 10 years.

Kevin Lunny, who owns the farm with his brothers, casts the fight as a battle between his family and an overzealous federal agency that is bowing to pressure from a powerful lobby of environmentalists who refuse to see benefits of farming on federal land. He says the government is ignoring the concerns from local residents who see his farm an important local sustainable food source.

“We are a part of a working landscape, the agriculture which is a key part of the fabric, the history and the culture that was always expected to be preserved here on the seashore,” Lunny said in an interview with Yahoo News. “What we are doing is fighting for our business, our employees and our community against a federal bureaucracy that seems to want to ignore the will of the people.”

But his opponents argue it’s more important to restore the land to protected wilderness and that extending the Drakes Bay oyster lease would set a dangerous national precedent that would allow commercial operations on other federal park lands.

“It’s a contract issue, a deal’s a deal,” said Amy Trainer, head of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, one of the farm’s most outspoken opponents. “If (Lunny) is allowed to stay, then we think that hurts the integrity of all our national parks and wilderness areas.”