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Fears rise that more than 14 died in Washington state mudslide as dozens still missing
• OSO, Wash. (AP) -- First there was a "whoosh." Elaine Young said she thought it might be a chimney fire, a rush of air that lasted about 45 seconds. But when she stepped outside there was ominous silence. Something felt very, very wrong.
• And then she saw it. Behind the house, a suffocating wall of heavy mud had crashed through the neighborhood.
• Dark and sticky, the mile-long flow Saturday heaved houses off their foundations, toppled trees and left a gaping cavity on what had been a tree-covered hillside. In the frantic rescue, searchers spotted mud-covered survivors by the whites of their waving palms.
• Now, days into the search, the scale of the mudslide's devastation in a rural village north of Seattle is becoming apparent. At least 14 people are confirmed dead, dozens more are thought to be unaccounted for or missing, and about 30 homes are destroyed.
• "We found a guy right here," shouted a rescuer Monday afternoon behind Young's home, after a golden retriever search dog found a corpse pinned under a pile of fallen trees. Searchers put a bag over the body, tied an orange ribbon on a branch to mark the site, and the crew moved on.
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Obama to propose ending NSA's systematic sweep of telephone records
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House wants the National Security Agency to get out of the business of sweeping up and storing vast amounts of data on Americans' phone calls.
• The Obama administration this week is expected to propose that Congress overhaul the electronic surveillance program by having phone companies hold onto the call records as they do now, according to a government official briefed on the proposal. The New York Times first reported the details of the proposal Monday night. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the plan.
• The White House proposal would end the government's practice of sweeping up the phone records of millions of Americans and holding onto those records for five years so the numbers can be searched for national security purposes. Instead, the (Continued on page 34)
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