The Scouts’ longstanding ban on gay adults remains in force, and many liberal Scout leaders — as well as gay-rights groups — plan to continue pressing for an end to that exclusion even though the BSA’s top officials aren’t ready for that step.

Meanwhile, many conservatives within the Scouts are distraught at the outcome of the vote and some are threatening to defect. A meeting is planned for next month to discuss the formation of a new organization for boys.

The vote was conducted by secret ballot Thursday during the National Council’s annual meeting at conference center not far from Boy Scout headquarters in suburban Dallas. Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.

“This has been a challenging chapter in our history,” the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. “While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they’re in Scouting.”

However, the outcome will not end the membership policy debate, as was evident in the reactions of leaders of some of the conservative religious denominations that sponsor Scout units.

“We are deeply saddened,” said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee. “Homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout oath and Scout law.”

The Assemblies of God said the policy change “will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program.” It also warned that the change would make the BSA vulnerable to lawsuits seeking to end the ban on gay adults.

John Stembeger, a conservative activist and former Scout from Florida, founded a group called OnMyHonor.net to oppose the policy change. He assailed the BSA executive committee for its role in gaining a “Yes” vote.

“What kind of a message are we sending to young people about being brave when its top adult leaders don’t even have the courage to stand up to the pressure of a militant lobby when the bullies in Washington D.C., Hollywood or even some of their own renegade councils start pressuring and harassing them?” he asked.

He said OnMyHonor.Net and other like-minded organizations and individuals would meet in Louisville, Ky., next month to discuss the creation of “a new character development organization for boys.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also expressed dismay.

“While I will always cherish my time as a Scout and the life lessons I learned, I am greatly disappointed with this decision,” he said.

The result was welcomed by many liberal members of the Scouting community and by gay-rights activists, though most of the praise was coupled with calls for ending the ban on gay adults.

“I’m so proud of how far we’ve come, but until there’s a place for everyone in Scouting, my work will continue,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, whose ouster as a Cub Scout den leader in Ohio because she is lesbian launched a national protest movement.

Tyrrell recalled having to tell her son she had been forced out as den mother.

“He doesn’t deserve to be told that we’re not good enough,” she said. “We’re not going to stop until this is over.”

Pascal Tessier, an openly gay 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland, had mixed emotions after the vote.

“I was thinking that today could be my last day as a Boy Scout,” he said. “Obviously, for gay Scouts like me, this vote is life-changing.”

Tessier is on track to receive his Eagle Scout award — he only needs to complete his final project — but said he is troubled that on his 18th birthday he could transform from someone holding Scouting’s highest rank to someone unfit to be a part of the organization.

“That one couple hours (between 17 and 18) will make me not a good person,” he said.

James Dale, 42, who was the first person to challenge the Boy Scouts gay ban in court, agreed, calling the decision “a bit of a step backward” for gay youth.

“It sends a very convoluted, mixed message to gay kids. It says that being gay is a youthful indiscretion, and that there’s no future for you,” Dale, of New Jersey, told The Star-Ledger.

Dale sued the Boy Scouts in 1990 after he was removed as an assistant scoutmaster because of his sexual orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the organization was within its rights to ban gays.

Tessier has indeed been an exception — an openly gay Scout whose presence was quietly accepted by local Scout leaders. In general, the Scouts’ policy has been to avoid any questioning of would-be Scouts as to their sexual orientation, but to dismiss boys who did speak openly about being gay.

For example, Scout officials refused to grant the Eagle Scout rank to Ryan Andresen, an 18-year-old Californian, after he came out as gay last year.

The vote followed what the BSA described as “the most comprehensive listening exercise in Scouting’s history” to gauge opinions, including a survey sent out starting in February to members of the Scouting community.

Of the more than 200,000 leaders, parents and youth members who responded, 61 percent supported the current policy of excluding gays, while 34 percent opposed it. Most parents of young Scouts, as well as youth members themselves, opposed the ban.

The proposal approved Thursday was seen as a compromise, and the Scouts stressed that they would not condone sexual conduct by any Scout — gay or straight.

“The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive and unresolved societal issue,” the BSA said in a statement.

Among those voting for the proposal to accept openly gay youth was Thomas Roberts, of Dawsonville, Ga., who serves on the board of a Scout council in northeast Georgia.

“It was a very hard decision for this organization,” he said. “I think ultimately it will be viewed as the right thing.”

The BSA’s overall “traditional youth membership” — Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Venturers — is now about 2.6 million, compared with more than 4 million in peak years of the past. It also has about 1 million adult leaders and volunteers.

Of the more than 100,000 Scouting units in the U.S., 70 percent are chartered by religious institutions.

Those include liberal churches opposed to any ban on gays, but some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative denominations that have previously supported the broad ban — notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.

While the Southern Baptists were clearly upset by the vote to accept openly gay youth, the Utah-based Mormon church — which has more Scouting troops than any other religious denomination — reacted positively.

“We trust that BSA will implement and administer the approved policy in an appropriate and effective manner,” an LDS statement said.

Utah’s largest Boy Scout councils supported the change.

“This is a win for youth and a win for the community,” said John Gailey, spokesman for the Utah National Parks Council, which covers central and southern Utah. “It gives all youth the opportunity to take advantage of the values instilled by Scouting.”

The National Catholic Committee on Scouting responded cautiously, saying it would assess the possible impact of the change on Catholic-sponsored Scout units

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Crary reported from New York. Associated Press writer Brady McCombs also contributed to this report from Salt Lake City.

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Should residential storm shelters be mandatory in the midst of Tornado Alley? Absolutely, says Sherry Wells, “it’s the best thing ever.”

But not a single state currently requires them in homes. And not many communities do so either, though officials in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore are now considering it.

Despite the life-saving potential of personal storm shelters, the cost remains a deterrent. So, too, does a general resistance to government mandates in politically conservative states such as Oklahoma, where tornadoes are most prevalent. Even the director of an association of storm shelter manufacturers, based in Texas, is opposed to a storm shelter mandate for new homes.

“Any time a governmental entity says ‘thou shalt’ and tries to take an individual decision into the public domain, it’s going to get pushback, and you’re also going to raise the cost of things,” said Ernst Kiesling, executive director of the National Storm Shelter Association and a retired civil engineering professor Texas Tech University.

The science of storm shelters has advanced considerably since Dorothy failed to make it to the tornado cellar at Aunty Em’s Kansas farm in the 1938 movie the Wizard of Oz. Some shelters still are dug underground in the backyard. But they are increasingly made with specially fabricated concrete and steel doors to meet Federal Emergency Management Agency specifications. And they aren’t necessarily underground. In some cases, closets or bathrooms are being fortified to double as “safe rooms” that can withstand furious winds even if the rest of the house is blown away.

In 2011, Oklahoma announced the SoonerSafe incentive program, offering federally financed rebates of up to $2,000 to residents who install storm shelters. The state uses a lottery-style drawing to select rebate winners from among the thousands of online applications. Sherry Wells said she won this year. She and her husband decided to get the biggest shelter available— a vault-like box with wooden benches — at a cost of $4,800. The project was so freshly finished that the Wells hadn’t even submitted their rebate forms when the tornado hit on Monday.

“If it wasn’t for the hand of God and the cellar, we wouldn’t be here,” Wells said as she sorted through the rubble of her home Thursday.

A little over 3,000 residential storm shelters are registered in Moore, a city of about 56,000, said community development director Elizabeth Jones.

Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis wants to propose a city ordinance requiring all new homes to have storm shelters. But realistically, he said, city officials may be able to require them only in new assisted living facilities and apartment complexes because of cost concerns. Contractors will be part of the conversation with the City Council to see whether a broader requirement is possible, Lewis said.

“We want to be competitive,” he said. “We don’t want to price them out of the market.”

Asked at a news conference if a similar mandate might be considered statewide, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin quickly shot down the suggestion.

“We aren’t going to require people to do anything, but if someone chooses to do that, we certainly encourage it,” Fallin said.

In the aftermath of a devastating tornado two years ago, the Joplin City Council in southwest Missouri considered several code and policy changes for homes but ultimately decided against a safe room requirement, City Manager Mark Rohr said.

“I think there’s a viewpoint that that’s a personal determination to make,” Rohr said.

About 7,500 homes were damaged or destroyed in the May 2011 Joplin tornado. Rohr said 84 percent of homes have been rebuilt, fixed or have permits pending. While the city doesn’t require safe rooms, it recommends that people “shelter in place” in the event of a storm — either in a basement, an interior closet or a safe room — rather than leaving to try to make it to one of several community storm shelters being built at Joplin schools.

Some local governments have taken a partial step toward a residential storm shelter mandate. A Wichita, Kan., ordinance adopted in 1994 requires storm shelters in existing mobile home parks with at least 20 homes and in new parks with at least 10 mobile homes. A 2000 ordinance adopted in Wichita’s home of Sedgwick County also required storm shelters for all new mobile home parks with space for at least 10 homes.

Alabama is the only state that requires new schools to be built with safe rooms, according to the National Storm Shelter Association. But similar mandates could come in the future. Kiesling said a draft of the 2015 update for the International Building Code calls for new schools to have storm-safe areas. Many states and cities incorporate those building standards into their own laws.

Although several schools in the Oklahoma City area already have safe rooms, the two elementary schools that were destroyed by Monday’s tornado did not have them. Seven children died in one of those schools.

Yet the question remains. If the government were to mandate safe rooms in schools or homes, would people actually use them?

With a tornado visibly approaching their Moore home, 20-year-old Maritza Marin fled by vehicle with her mother, father and a younger sister. They drove several blocks away, then returned to see a neighbor’s red car dumped onto what once was her bedroom. Marin said their home had no storm shelter. She likes the mayor’s proposed requirement, but she’s not sure she would use a storm shelter if she again found herself facing a tornado.

“I think it would be good to have a shelter, but if you can run away from one, it’s better,” Marin said.

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Associated Press writers Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Moore and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.

“I hit the brakes and we went off,” Sligh told reporters from a hospital, adding he “saw the water approaching … you hold on as tight as you can.”

Sligh, his wife and another man in a different vehicle were dumped into the chilly waters of the Skagit River when the span collapsed Thursday evening. They were injured, but miraculously, authorities said it appeared nobody was killed in the bridge failure that raised the question about the safety of aging spans and cut off the main route between Seattle and Canada.

“We don’t think anyone else went into the water,” said Marcus Deyerin, a spokesman for the Northwest Washington Incident Management Team. “At this point we’re optimistic.”

Sligh and his wife were taken to Skagit Valley Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The other man was reported in stable condition at United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, hospital CEO Greg Reed said.

Authorities are trying to determine what caused the bridge to collapse about 60 miles north of Seattle in Skagit County.

State Patrol detectives and the patrol’s commercial vehicle enforcement bureau troopers spoke to a commercial truck driver whose rig struck the structure.

“We do have the truck driver who remained at the scene. We’ve had initial conversations with him to get an indication as to what occurred,” said State Patrol Chief John Batiste.

Sligh said his shoulder was dislocated in the drop into the water, and he found himself “belly deep in water in the truck.” He said he popped his shoulder back in and called out to his wife, who he described as being in shock initially as they waited for rescuers to arrive in boats.

Traffic along the heavily travelled route could be affected for some time.

“The I-5 corridor is totally disrupted,” said Gov. Jay Inslee, who went to the scene Thursday night.

He said work has already started to design detours, but state Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson asked people to avoid I-5 in the area for the next several days.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending an investigative team.

Trooper Francis said a portion of the four-lane bridge over the Skagit River collapsed about 7 p.m.

Jeremiah Thomas, a volunteer firefighter, said he was driving nearby when he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look.

“The bridge just went down, it crashed through the water,” he said. “It was really surreal.”

The bridge was about 50 feet above the water. Deyerin said it appeared that two vehicles – a car and the pickup with the travel trailer attached – fell into the river. He said the water depth was about 15 feet, and the vehicles half-visible in the water likely were resting on portions of the collapsed bridge.

Crowds of people lined the river to watch the scene unfold.

“It’s not something you see every day,” said Jimmy O’Connor, the owner of two local pizza restaurants who was driving on another bridge parallel to the one that collapsed. “People were starting to crawl out of their cars.”

He said he and his girlfriend were about 400 yards away on the Burlington Bridge when they heard “just a loud bang.”

“Then we looked over and saw the bridge was down in the water,” he said.

He pulled over and saw three vehicles in the water, including the camping trailer that landed upside-down, he said.

The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database listed it as being “functionally obsolete” — a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.

The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.

According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department report, 42 of the county’s 108 bridges are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.

Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state’s bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington’s 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Democratic Rep. Judy Clibborn, who leads the transportation committee in the state House, said the bridge wasn’t one that has been a focus for lawmakers.

“It is shocking that I-5 would have something happen like this,” she said.

Clibborn said the collapse will call attention to the issues facing bridges — especially the old bridge over the Columbia River that connects Vancouver and Portland, Ore.

Sligh said his wife was “doing OK” and that he had “lots of cuts.”

“You’re kind of pinching yourself and realize you’re lucky to be alive.”

___

Baker reported from Olympia, Wash. Associated Press writers Chris Grygiel in Seattle and Terry Tang in Phoenix also contributed to this report.

The 42-year-old Grammy winner, who is launching a summer tour where most tickets are priced at $20, said he’s scalping about 1,000 tickets from each show to make up for the cheaper regular price.

“I’m in the scalping business, but you know what? We told everyone. A lot of artists have been doing this for years behind fans’ backs, taking all these backdoor deals,” he said. “We look at StubHub and other places and see what they’re selling them for and we just undercut them.”

Kid Rock’s “$20 Best Night Ever Tour” kicks off June 28 in Bristow, Va., and the Detroit native, who released his debut album in 1990, said he likely scalped secretly on past tours.

“I’m sure we have,” he said. “I can’t say for sure, but I’m not going to say that we haven’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did.”

Kid Rock’s discount ticket pricing is leading a change in tours where scalpers play a major role as the marketplace for secondary sources for tickets continues to grow, especially in a summer when key acts like The Rolling Stones, Beyonce, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z are on the road.

“If I see a scalper, I’ll scalp him,” the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards said, laughing.

He said he would like to play free shows to balance the high cost for tickets; The Rolling Stones’ “50 & Counting Tour” has a range of ticket prices, and Pollstar reported that the average price of a ticket among the tour’s seven shows was $355.14.

“I’d do some free shows. I’d work my butt off and I don’t care how much. But these are set up above my head, man,” Richards said in a recent interview. “You’re kind of locked in a thing here whether you like it or not. I wish it was five bucks a ticket.”

The Rolling Stones did play a secret show at the Echoplex club in Los Angeles last month, where fans got in by winning a lottery and had to be ID’d and given photo bracelets to eliminate the chance of scalping the tickets, which were just $20.

But Mick Jagger said there isn’t much the artists can do about scalping and secondary sources for tickets.

“The artist is totally powerless in this. People have made a lot of fuss about it before, but on the other side, some people are like, ‘We might as well participate in it.’ And you can’t really blame the artist for participating in it because why shouldn’t they in a way?” he said. “I know we don’t participate in it, but nevertheless, I don’t blame people if they wanted to do it.”

“You can look at it like, ‘Well, no one’s making any money except these secondary ticket selling companies and they’re making more money than anyone,’” Jagger continued. “It’s completely legal so until it’s illegal, there’s nothing much anyone can do about that.”

Ticketmaster’s North American President Jared Smith said Kid Rock’s deal, which he completed with Ticketmaster partner Live Nation, is a first of more to come, though they might not be as risky as Kid Rock’s plan, which also includes $4 draft beers and $20 T-shirts.

“I absolutely believe that we’re starting to see the real acceleration of some really healthy things in pricing that are going to create new opportunities for fans to come and experience it in a really special way,” Smith said.

A small way that artists have been able to control scalping is through paperless tickets, which only allows the buyers of the tickets to use them at shows and are not allowed to resell them. Smith said paperless tickets, which launched five years ago, accounts for “about 1 percent” of the tickets at Ticketmaster.

“It hasn’t grown necessarily as a percentage of the total tickets that we sell, but we certainly see more artists employing it,” Smith said. “When it really first started, it was kind of looked at as a tool to use across the entire seats in the arena, but it’s really become a tool for the best seats in the house. Increasingly we see artists using it very, very targeted for like the top 500 seats in the house or the top 1,000 seats.”

Bruce Springsteen, Keith Urban, New Kids on the Block, Radiohead, Rascal Flatts, Selena Gomez, Muse, Miley Cryus, Iron Maiden, Atoms for Peace and Eric Church are among the acts using paperless tickets.

On his “Wrecking Ball World Tour” last year, Springsteen used paperless tickets for 20 percent of the seats, and Ticketmaster said its data showed that Springsteen’s decision helped reduce scalping by 75 percent. (New York is the only state where Springsteen couldn’t offer paperless tickets because the state does not allow nontransferable tickets).

StubHub, the largest reseller of tickets, said business is booming thanks to the top acts on the road as well as summer festivals. But the company, which has a partnership with AEG, knows the idea of paperless tickets hurts their business.

“That limits a person’s right to resell or transfer or to just give away their ticket. We do not support that because we believe in a fan’s right to do whatever they want with their tickets,” said Alison Salcedo, the head of U.S. Communications for StubHub. Fan Freedom, an organization that supports the rights of ticket holders, echoed StubHub’s thoughts on paperless tickets.

“I don’t see any reason why nontransferable tickets need to be the solution,” said Joe Potter, the CEO of Fan Freedom, which is financially supported by StubHub. “Scalpers get tickets through pre-sale and fan club memberships.”

Ticketmaster isn’t against the idea of reselling tickets, in fact they resell concert tickets online.

“More often or not tickets are underpriced, that’s why you see so much resell activity,” Smith said. “What we try to do is make sure it’s done very transparently.”

Ticket holders are allowed to sell tickets at any price on sites like StubHub and ticketsnow.com, that’s why Kid Rock isn’t selling tickets for the first two rows at his shows. He’s randomly pulling fans from the nose bleed sections to enjoy his concert from the venue’s best view. And the first 20 rows at his shows are seats offered through paperless ticketing.

“We really don’t know what we’re going to make yet. We were doing estimates on it and they’re already going through a lot of these numbers, and it looks like it’s going to be a good summer,” he said of what his potential tour earnings.

Kid Rock, whose tour openers include ZZ Top, Uncle Kracker and Kool and the Gang, is playing the same venues he’s performed at in the past, but he said he’s filling up more seats and selling tickets faster. Even scalpers have approached the performer to cut deals.

“I’ve had people in the scalping business come at me already and try to make side deals like, ‘I can make you thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash if you’ll just flip a few of these tickets our way for certain shows,’” he recalled.

_____

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The magnitude-5.7 quake broke dishes and shook mirrors when it struck at 8:47 p.m. Thursday, officials said.

It was centered near Greenville, about 25 miles southwest of Susanville in far northeastern California, said Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Center in Golden, Colo.

There have been several aftershocks, including a magnitude 4.9 that struck early Friday morning.

Slight damage has been reported including objects falling from shelves and dishes rattled or broken, according to a report from the National Weather Service.

Susan Shephard and her husband Alan Shephard, who run the Quail Lodge at Lake Almanor near Greenville very close to the epicenter, said they were watching “The Hunger Games” on TV when the whole building started shaking.

“All of a sudden things started falling off the shelves, mirrors fell off the wall, vases fell down to the floor, everything started crashing,” Shephard told the Redding Record-Searchlight. “It felt like the end of our world.”

The Susanville Fire Department said it had received no reports of damage, and a Plumas County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher said calls were flooding into its office but no reports of damage.

Thousands of people reported feeling the quake, as far away as the San Francisco Bay area and across the borders into Oregon and Nevada, according to the USGS website.

KCRA-TV in Sacramento reported that the Plumas County temblor was felt in downtown Sacramento, about 145 miles south of the epicenter.

People in Yuba and Sutter Counties, south of Plumas, said they felt a rolling quake, according to the Marysville Appeal-Democrat.

“People in the area felt a strong jolt, but it was not enough to generate serious damage, based on early field reports,” Abreu said.

Each year cleanup crews throughout the U.S. collect millions of pounds of plastic trash from beaches and coastal waterways, with the biggest numbers coming from California’s 1,100-mile coastline.

Once in the ocean, plastic takes ages to decompose. The manmade junk either collects into floating trash islands called “garbage patches,” or it breaks into smaller pieces that harm and kill sea creatures throughout the food chain.

It’s a complex problem with no easy fix, but two California legislators have introduced an “extended producer responsibility” bill that would require manufacturers to figure out how to keep the most common plastic junk out of state waterways. The proposal, Assembly Bill 521, aims to reduce 95 percent of plastic pollution along the state’s coastline by 2024.

The Assembly Appropriations Committee will vote on the bill Friday. If it passes, the measure will go before the full chamber next week and would face several other legislative hurdles before it could become law.

But supporters say the idea is to influence the private sector to make more environmentally friendly packaging and have businesses pick up the cost of collecting and disposing plastic trash, shifting that burden away from local governments.

“Cities and counties spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year cleaning up plastic trash that is on its way into the ocean,” said state Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay, one of the bill’s sponsors.

“Isn’t an increased cost tied to a making a new product that is causing a problem better than a taxpayer paying for it after it becomes a problem?” he asked.

If a plastic manufacturer doesn’t comply with the reduction targets mandated by the proposal, each violation could cost up to $1,000 per day. For “intentional, knowing or negligent” violations, companies could be fined up to $10,000 per violation per day.

The regulation is just the latest California legislation seeking to address some of the world’s toughest environmental problems, often at the expense of private business, critics say.

The state’s large economy and population has already influenced automakers to produce cleaner burning cars, forced warning labels for toxic chemicals on a range of consumer products and put a price on heat-trapping carbon emissions from industrial sources.

“With nearly 40 million people in the state, what happens here matters whether it is cap-and-trade and renewable energy portfolio standards, solid waste reduction, water conservation,” said Mark Gold, associate director of the University of California, Los Angeles Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

“What happens in California matters both nationally and globally,” he added.

Gold said the legislation won’t solve the plastic pollution problem, but it could have a wide-ranging effect and would be the first significant proposal to try to reduce the amount of plastic junk in the ocean that makes up trash formations such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, known as the world’s largest landfill.

The plastic industry, California Chamber of Commerce and other business have lined up in opposition to the bill, saying they already fund recycling and other programs to reduce marine plastic pollution. Plus, they say, the bill asks manufacturers to develop new products or other ways to reduce trash, but it doesn’t say how.

“This bill would establish responsibility for manufacturers alone to somehow reduce litter, and it’s unclear how the manufacturers might do that,” said Keith Christman of the Washington DC-based American Chemistry Council, a plastic manufacturing industry group.

“This is something that traditionally was a function of government working with the private sector — but this bill seeks to put all the responsibility on manufacturers,” he said.

These types of extended producer responsibility laws have already taken root in more than two dozen European countries.

In France, nearly 90 percent of consumer products are part of the “Green Dot” program, requiring manufacturers to pay into a program that recovers and recycles packaging materials. It has successfully influenced manufacturers there to cut down on packaging or use alternative materials.

Environmental groups have lined up in support of the bill, applauding California’s leadership on such regulations.

Proponents say the proposal is a good first step from a big market, adding that if the problem goes unchecked, the islands of plastic junk in the world’s oceans will continue to grow.

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The silent gesture offered a glimpse into what was likely a tense few days inside the deliberations room as the jury finally determined it could not agree on whether to sentence Arias to life in prison or execution for murdering her boyfriend.

After about 13 hours of deliberations over three days, the panel gave up.

Judge Sherry Stephens gave a heavy sigh as she announced a mistrial in the penalty phase of the case Thursday. A conference with the judge and attorneys was set for June 20 to determine how both sides want to proceed. In the interim, Stephens set a July 18 retrial date, sending prosecutors back to the drawing board to rehash the shocking case and details of sex and lies to another 12 people.

“This was not your typical trial,” Stephens told jurors. “You were asked to perform some very difficult duties.”

The jurors declined to comment and left the courthouse.

The mistrial set the stage for a whole new proceeding to determine whether the 32-year-old former waitress should get a life sentence or the death penalty for murdering Travis Alexander five years ago. Arias stabbed and slashed him nearly 30 times, slit his throat slit from ear to ear and shot him in the forehead in what prosecutors described as a jealous rage after the victim wanted to end their affair and planned to head off on a trip to Mexico with another woman.

Prosecutors have the option to take the death penalty off the table, in which case a new trial wouldn’t be necessary and the judge would determine whether to sentence Arias to spend her entire life behind bars or life with the possibility of release after 25 years. Should the state decide to seek death again, jury selection alone could take weeks, given the difficulty of seating an impartial panel in a case that has attracted global attention.

The guilty verdict of first-degree murder would stand, leaving the new panel only tasked with sentencing Arias. However, former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said the case could drag on for several months as the new jury reviews evidence and hears opening statements, closing arguments and witness testimony in a “Cliffs Notes” version of the trial.

If the second jury cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge would then sentence Arias to one of the life-in-prison options. The judge cannot sentence Arias to death.

Arias, who first said she wanted to die but later changed her mind and pleaded with the jury for mercy, looked visibly upset about the mistrial and sobbed in the courtroom before it was announced. Her family didn’t attend Thursday but has been present for much of the trial.

Alexander’s family member cried as they left the courtroom without commenting.

Jurors began deliberating Arias’ sentence Tuesday and first reported they had failed to reach a unanimous decision the next day. Stephens instructed them to keep trying.

The same jury on May 8 found Arias guilty of murder in Alexander’s June 4, 2008 death at his suburban Phoenix home.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery thanked the panel in a statement after the mistrial was announced, and noted prosecutor Juan Martinez would have no comment given the pending proceedings ahead.

“We will assess, based upon available information, what the next steps will be,” Montgomery said, “and we will proceed with the intent to retry the penalty phase.”

For now, Arias will remain in the Maricopa County jail system, where she has spent the past five years. Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday she will be confined to her cell 23 hours a day and not be allowed to give anymore media interviews.

The mistrial came two days after Arias spoke to jurors and pleaded for her life. She said she “lacked perspective” when she told a local reporter after her conviction that she preferred execution to spending the rest of her days in prison.

That same night, Arias gave a series of media interviews from jail, telling reporters about her many fights with her legal team and her belief that she “deserves a second chance at freedom someday.”

Arias contends she killed Alexander in self-defense when he became enraged after a day of sex, forcing her to fight for her life.

Her case became a sensation from the beginning as she gave a series of jailhouse interviews following her 2008 arrest in which first she blamed the killing on armed, masked intruders.

Testimony in the trial began in January as the case soon provided endless amounts of cable TV and tabloid fodder, including a recorded phone sex call between Arias and the victim, nude photos, bloody crime-scene pictures and a defendant who described her life story in intimate detail over 18 days on the witness stand.

Arias told jurors of an abusive childhood, cheating boyfriends, dead-end jobs, her sexual relationship with Alexander, and her contention that he had grown physically violent, yet no evidence was offered to prove her allegations. Her defense largely hung on her words alone.

The trial’s penalty phase featured dramatic statements from Alexander’s sister and brother as they described how their lives were shattered by the loss of their sibling. Arias’ attorneys had planned to call several witnesses on her behalf to convince the jury her life was worth saving but after the judge denied their repeated motions for mistrials and efforts to quit the case, just one person spoke to the jury — Arias herself.

Alexander, 30, overcame a tough upbringing in Southern California to become a successful businessman at a legal insurance company and a source of inspiration to his colleagues, his friends at his Mormon church and his family.

Arias found it difficult to resist the spotlight. She spoke to a Fox affiliate minutes after her conviction, and did a series of jailhouse interviews just hours after the jury got the case in the penalty phase.

“The prosecutor has accused me of wanting to be famous, which is not true,” Arias told the AP on Tuesday as she sat beneath bright lights before TV cameras, her hair makeup done and her hair combed perfectly.

Simply put, storm surge is the abnormal rise of sea water. Predicting it is far more complicated and explaining it is tricky, too, as forecasters at the National Hurricane Center discovered, again, during a review of Superstorm Sandy.

This hurricane season, forecasters hope to offer easy-to-understand color-coded maps and they are changing the way they talk to emergency officials, the media and the public.

“Scientists by their very nature use very sophisticated language, technical language,” said Jamie Rhome, leader of the hurricane center’s storm surge team. “It turns out that nobody else understands what we’re talking about. So once we figured that out, we started using more plain language.”

Forecasts during Sandy were exceptionally accurate, but often confusing. Perhaps because so many things contribute to storm surge: intensity, pressure, forward speed, size, where it makes landfall and other factors.

Most people believe storm surge is a wall of water, similar to a tsunami, but it’s actually just sea water being pushed toward the shore by winds. It can happen quickly and move miles inland, flooding areas not accustomed to being inundated with sea water.

Large death tolls have been blamed storm surge. At least 1,500 people died during Hurricane Katrina either directly or indirectly because of storm surge, the hurricane center said.

To better explain the danger, forecasters talked to focus groups consisting of local and state officials, law enforcement and hospital associations and other people from Maine to New Orleans. One thing they found out is that when they talk about storm surge, they should say “height” instead of “depth” when explaining how water levels might change.

“We were using ‘depth,’ thinking this was very clear. It turns out that nobody else does,” Rhome said. “They’re waiting for height, how high it is, and I would never have guessed in a million years that one word — one word — makes a difference in how people interpret something.”

Forecasters also will try to stress that the storm surge isn’t just from the ocean and can come from other bodies of water such as sounds, bays and lakes, sometimes well inland.

The hurricane center also plans to show people where to expect storm surge with high resolution, color-coded maps, much like a radar map on the local news showing rain and severe weather. If they can’t post the maps on the hurricane center’s website this storm season, which begins June 1, the plan is to have the maps ready in 2014.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration evaluation of the weather service’s performance during Sandy also recommended increasing the number of storm surge forecasters at the hurricane center, and providing potential storm surge hazards at least 48 hours before the onset of tropical storm or gale-force winds.

Miami-Dade Emergency Management Director Curt Sommerhoff said his priority is getting the public to understand that the county’s evacuation zones are based on storm surge, not hurricane winds.

New data from the hurricane center’s storm surge models prompted the county to redraw its storm surge planning zones to include inland areas along canals and rivers that previously weren’t identified as being at risk for storm surge.

“That’s the new message, the surge danger well inland, well in from the coast,” Sommerhoff said.

Separate storm surge warnings, similar to current tropical storm or hurricane warnings, will be rolled out in 2015.

The hurricane center dropped estimates for storm surge and inland flooding from its wind scale three years ago because the predictions often didn’t match what actually happened. For example, Hurricane Ike was a Category 2 with winds of at least 96 mph when it hit the Texas coast in 2008, but its storm surges was much greater than a typical Category 2 storm.

“Storm surges can behave so differently from storm to storm that you can’t just apply a single number or use a scale like you can with the wind. That’s been tough, trying to get people to understand that every storm is different,” Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist who has taken the lead on social science at the hurricane center.

Berg said Hurricane Irene didn’t produce the storm surge in 2011 that some expected, and the following year, many people were surprised by Sandy’s extreme tides and flooding.

Still, the advisories for Sandy were dramatically improved from the ones for Ike, explaining storm surge in layman’s terms and easy-to-read bullet points instead of long pages of jargon that required meteorologists and emergency officials to make their own calculations.

The progress may seem subtle, but Berg believes it’s helping emergency managers make better decisions about whether to order evacuations.

“For as bad as Sandy was, it almost makes you wonder what would have happened had we not made some of these changes since Ike,” Berg said. “I would hope that because of these new changes, they’re more educated and they’re more prepared to make those evacuation decisions when needed.”

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Richard J. Curl, who last year was banned for life from the sport by USA Swimming, apologized for abusing the girl over a four-year period in the 1980s. The abuse started when she was 13 and took place in their respective homes, inside his private school office and at hotels where they stayed for swim meets. He was charged last year after the allegations of abuse against the woman, Kelley Davies Currin, became public.

Curl turned to the woman inside a courtroom packed with his supporters, apologized, and told her, “Every day of my life has been spent thinking and feeling awful about my behavior.”

Sentencing guidelines called for a punishment of up to 15 years, though Curl’s lawyers argued that he had reformed himself and should receive probation. Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Marielsa Bernard imposed a 15-year sentence, with all but seven years suspended, and directed him to have no contact with Currin.

The sentencing capped a precipitous fall for a man who was once one of the nation’s most prominent swim coaches, responsible for building up a well-known swim club in the Washington area and training pupils including 1996 and 2000 Olympic gold medalist Tom Dolan.

The now-43-year-old victim told media after the sentencing that Congress should investigate USA Swimming for protecting “predator coaches” and allowing them to keep their jobs despite sex abuse allegations. She called Curl’s abuse of her “the worst-kept secret in Washington, D.C., and, indeed, in the swimming world.”

The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of sexual abuse, but Currin has told her story publicly and agreed to allow her name to be used.

Curl, 63, of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty in February to abusing Currin over four years starting when she was 13, though they had first met years earlier.

Prosecutors say he manipulated and groomed the girl, telling her repeatedly that he loved her and would ultimately marry her even while he became engaged — and then married — to a woman. Currin, who recounted to a judge her adult struggles with alcoholism, an eating disorder and bouts of therapy, recalled how she craved Curl’s attention as a child, dancing with him at his wedding and going with her parents to the hospital to meet his newborn baby. She said Curl even promised her that he’d name a child after her.

“I loved, trusted and cherished him as much as a young girl’s heart and mind could,” she said.

Her parents discovered the abuse by reading her diary. They confronted Curl but did not pursue criminal charges. Instead, late in the 1980s, they reached a financial settlement that kept the allegations private — a decision Currin said she now regrets.

Curl’s lawyers pleaded for leniency, saying he admitted to the abuse decades ago in a letter to the victim’s parents and in the legal settlement. They said he had pleaded guilty, instead of contesting the allegations, had never committed another act of child sexual abuse and successfully kicked an alcohol habit.

“Mr. Curl didn’t deny it, he didn’t take it to trial, he hasn’t misled anyone in the courtroom,” said one of his lawyers, Thomas Kelly.

“This case really is a tale of two lives,” said another defense lawyer, Bruce Marcus.

Bernard, the judge, said that while she was confident Curl would not reoffend, she thought it was important to send a message that criminals will be held accountable no matter when they’re caught. Prosecutors said Curl and his attorneys had tried to minimize the abuse by referring to it as a “mistake” and by suggesting that the two had a relationship.

“This is a case about child sex abuse. This is a case about a man who met a girl at the age of 9 who had aspirations of being an Olympic swimmer,” prosecutor Debbie Feinstein said, adding, “This is a case of justice delayed, not justice denied.”

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Follow Eric Tucker at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

And so she raced against the storm. She had 30 miles to cover from her job in Edmond to Plaza Towers Elementary School, where her 8-year-old daughter Jazmin Rodriguez is a third grader.

She lost.

The tornado got there first, and the destruction kept her from driving the final few hundred yards. And so she got out of her car and ran, arriving to find little left of the school and almost nothing of the neighborhood.

Panic set in.

Survivors of the storm were frantic, pulling children from the twisted metal and piles of concrete rubble that remained of what was once a school. She knew her three youngest children were safe at their daycare, but Jazmin was somewhere inside the rubble.

Terror came next.

“Right when I ran up to ask if I could start pulling people out or try to help, some guy just handed her to me,” Garcia said. “I only recognized her from her clothes. My mind was in so many different places, I couldn’t even remember what she wore that day.”

Finally, relief.

The emotion seared on her face, she scooped her daughter into her arms and set off across the now barren landscape away from the place where seven of Jazmin’s schoolmates had died.

An Associated Press photographer, Sue Ogrocki, captured the moment: Mother and daughter, clutching each other, making their way to safety through a decimated neighborhood. All that stood behind them was a tree stripped of its limbs and bark, brutally wrapped in sheet metal by the storm.

“It was a long way toward the end of the parking lot,” Garcia, 28, recalled. “And she’s a heavy girl. There were times I didn’t think I was going to make it. But I did.”

The picture was published on hundreds of front pages around the world, becoming one of the enduring images from the storm.

Garcia was exhausted after carrying her daughter to the parking lot, where a paramedic placed her on a backboard and rushed her to a nearby hospital. As they pulled into the parking lot of the medical center, emotions flooded over her again as she realized that building also had been decimated by the twister.

“It was kind of overwhelming seeing the hospital was hit too,” she said, her voice quivering. “It made me feel more helpless than I already felt.”

She also was gripped by what her daughter shared about the frightening moments inside the school as she and her classmates took shelter in a hallway as the storm approached.

“We heard lots of banging, and then everything started flying because we felt it,” Jazmin said. “I think I passed out, and when I woke up lots of bricks were on top of me, and sand and dirt … and my friend kept on screaming.

“And then when we heard lots of voices getting closer to us, I had to push so they could see us, that we’re still alive.”

Firefighters and other rescuers pulled her and her friends out from under the bricks. She said her mom ran up as a man was holding her because it was hard for her to walk.

But she wasn’t surprised to see her mom. “I know she’s always there for me,” she said.

Jazmin ended up with bumps and bruises, but no long lasting injuries from the ordeal. And although Garcia’s home a few blocks from the school was reduced to a pile of rubble, she’s thankful Jazmin and her three younger children all survived.

“She’s just pretty banged up. The pain in her back and the soreness is just from her trying to push the bricks off of her,” Garcia said. “I know she definitely had God’s arms around her to walk out of there.”

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Sean Murphy can be reached at