100 'AK-style' rifles stolen from Atlanta boxcar

By Jeff Martin, The Associated Press Federal authorities were hunting Friday for more than 100 rifles stolen from a boxcar parked in an Atlanta train yard. The weapons were taken from a CSX rail yard on the city's northwest side in mid-November, said Richard Coes, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The weapons include assault rifles that Coes described as "AK-style." He declined to discuss other aspects of the case.  Gary Sease, a spokesman for rail line CSX Corp., said the Jacksonville, Fla.-based company is cooperating with law enforcement to recover the weapons and investigate the theft.  The rifles were stolen on or around Nov. 12, authorities said. The boxcar was parked at the CSX Tilford Yard about four miles northwest of downtown Atlanta.  The Tilford Yard is one of the company's major rail yards in Georgia, according to the company's website.  More content from NBCNews.com: Missouri Powerball jackpot winners revealed: 'We're still stunned by what's happened' Mystery man claims winning Powerball ticket ... in Maryland? For Salvation Army, there's gold in them thar kettles Dozens hospitalized after train derails near Philadelphia, spilling hazardous chemical Video: Sinkhole the size of four football fields stops traffic in Ohio Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Bandits kidnap 20 Iraq army recruits

Kidnappers surround bus in SUVs, abduct 20 New Iraqi Army recruits The kidnapped men are mostly Sunnis from Mosul, heading to Baghdad for administrative work Iraqi security forces are looking for the abducted men Baghdad (CNN) -- In a brazen afternoon ambush, gunmen snatched 20 young New Iraqi Army recruits on Friday, Iraqi police told CNN. The abducted men, mostly Sunnis from Mosul, were traveling in a bus from Mosul to Baghdad to finish their paperwork, medical tests and security checks, according to police. After the bus stopped for lunch on a highway near Baiji, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Baghdad, at least six SUVs carrying more than 15 gunmen surrounded the bus and forced the driver to head for an unknown location, police said. Iraqi security forces were searching nearby areas for the missing men.

50 Grades of Grey: Harvard approves BDSM club

University of Chicago A poster promotes the Nov. 1 meeting of RACK, the BDSM club at the University of Chicago. Click the image for the full-size version. By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News It's a club where you might, in fact, use a club: Harvard University has joined the small but growing roster of U.S. colleges that have approved official student organizations devoted to kinky sex. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook. Harvard administrators were to formally approve the group, Harvard College Munch, on Friday, The Harvard Crimson reported. The recognition means the group, which has grown to 30 members since its informal founding earlier this year, can officially meet on campus to discuss issues related to the bondage-discipline, dominant-submission, and sadism-masochism communities, known collectively as BDSM. More important, its founder told the newspaper, speaking under the pseudonym "Michael," is that the move bestows "the fact of legitimacy." While Harvard's club drew widespread attention this week, it's far from the only BDSM club officially recognized by, or at least tolerated at, U.S. colleges. At the University of Minnesota, Kinky U is Student Organization No. 2370. It meets weekly — after office hours "for maximum safety and confidentiality" — to discuss "topics related to kink and the kinky community." At Tufts University in Medford, Mass., Tufts Kink started meeting this semester. "I think there's a number of students who feel sort of isolated and alienated, and I think it's very powerful for them to have just a place where they can express themselves and a place where they can make friends," co-founder Anschel Schaffer-Cohen told The Tufts Daily. There's no national registry of campus BDSM groups, but consensus is that the oldest is at Columbia University, in New York, where Conversio Virium meets on campus every Monday night at 9. "Conversio virium" is Latin for "conversion of forces," and the group says it dedicates itself to 'the full exploration of BDSM, both in its sexual and spiritual aspects." "We encourage acceptance and communication between members," its charter says. "We urge them to learn from each other's play styles and experiences and to set aside any assumptions they may have about who people are and what they do."  Actual sex isn't allowed at such on-campus gatherings, which usually host discussions or the occasional live demonstration of safe and consensual kinky sex. The point is to "raise general awareness of kink and to promote acceptance and understanding of BDSM," according to the bylaws of Risk-Aware Consensual Kink, or RACK, at the University of Chicago. RACK is an intellectual group, it says, not a play group. It provides "resources to students who are interested in or curious about BDSM" and demonstrations that "give students an opportunity to learn from experienced members of the BDSM community about safely practicing kink." More content from NBCNews.com: Missouri Powerball jackpot winners revealed: 'We're still stunned by what's happened' Mystery man claims winning Powerball ticket ... in Maryland? For Salvation Army, there's gold in them thar kettles Dozens hospitalized after train derails near Philadelphia, spilling hazardous chemical Video: Sinkhole the size of four football fields stops traffic in Ohio Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

3 dead after bow-and-arrow attack at Wyo. college

Casper College Casper College posted this alert Friday, Nov. 30, ordering students, faculty and staff to stay away from the campus. By NBC News staff New in this version: Police say three dead, one of them off-campus Updated at 1:57 p.m. ET: Three people were killed Friday in an attack involving a bow and arrow-type weapon at Casper College in Casper, Wyo., police and college officials said. The attack occurred before 9 a.m. (7 a.m. ET) at the physical science center, said Rich Fujita, a spokesman for the college. Police indicated that the weapon on campus was a "bow and arrow type," Fujita told NBC News. Police told NBC station KCWY of Casper that two of the bodies were found on campus. One appeared to be a male faculty member, and the other appeared to be of "student age," Fujita said. The third body was found off campus. The campus was locked down temporarily while police checked for other suspects, but the lockdown was later lifted. An alert on the community college's website said that all classes and activities had been canceled and that counselors were being provided for the colleges faculty, students and staff. Casper College is a two-year community college of 4,400 students in Wyoming's second-largest city. The school has a small security team on campus, but they're not armed.   "It's such a small town that Casper police is very close," Fujita said. More content from NBCNews.com: Missouri Powerball jackpot winners revealed: 'We're still stunned by what's happened' Mystery man claims winning Powerball ticket ... in Maryland? For Salvation Army, there's gold in them thar kettles Dozens hospitalized after train derails near Philadelphia, spilling hazardous chemical Video: Sinkhole the size of four football fields stops traffic in Ohio Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Bow and arrow attack kills 1 at Wyoming college

By NBC News staff One person was killed and another seriously wounded Friday in an attack with a bow and arrow-type weapon on the campus of Casper College in Casper, Wyo., a college spokesman told NBC News. The attack occurred before 9 a.m. local time at the physical science center on campus, according to Casper College's Rich Fujita. He said police found a male faculty member dead and a second person seriously injured. That person was taken into custody and may be a suspect.  Police indicated the weapon was a "bow and arrow type," Fujita said. The campus was locked down temporarily while police checked for any other suspects, but the lockdown was later lifted. An alert on the community college's website said all classes and activities had been canceled. Casper College is a two-year community college of 4,400 students in Wyoming's second-largest city. The school has a small security team on campus, but they're not armed.   "It's such a small town that Casper police is very close," Fujita said. More content from NBCNews.com: Missouri Powerball jackpot winners revealed: 'We're still stunned by what's happened' Mystery man claims winning Powerball ticket ... in Maryland? For Salvation Army, there's gold in them thar kettles Dozens hospitalized after train derails near Philadelphia, spilling hazardous chemical Video: Sinkhole the size of four football fields stops traffic in Ohio Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Powerball winners introduced to nation: We're 'stunned'

NBC News The Hill family of Dearborn, Mo., is introduced at a press conference in Missouri after winning their millions. By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News A six-year-old girl from Dearborn, Mo., may get the pony she has dreamed of having, thanks to the record Powerball jackpot that her family just won. The Hill family of Dearborn, Mo., who won half of the record Powerball jackpot worth $587.5 million, appeared at a press conference on Friday, with six-year-old Jayden clutching a stuffed horse as her parents were handed an oversized check made out for their half of the pot: $293,750,000. "We're still stunned by what's happened. It's surreal and people keep asking us, 'What are you going to buy with it?' I just want to go home and be back to normal," Cindy Hill, 51, said at the press conference in which she, her husband Mark, and their three adult sons and adopted daughter were introduced to the nation.  After hearing on Thursday morning that one of the winning tickets was sold in Missouri -- the other was sold in Arizona -- Cindy dropped her daughter Jayden off at school, went to a convenience store for a winning numbers report, and checked her tickets in her car. Upon seeing that one of the five tickets she bought had the winning combination, Cindy said she headed straight to her mother-in-law's house and asked her to double-check the ticket. Husband Mark, 52,  joined her there to see for himself.  "You know it's the Show Me State, so he said, 'Show me,'" Cindy said, according to a Missouri Lottery press release. With the odds of any single ticket winning the jackpot at 1 in 175 million, the Hills said they hardly gave a thought to winning. "I was just telling my daughter the night before, 'Honey, that probably never happens (people winning),'" Cindy said. The Hills said they have just begun dreaming of how to spend their $293.7 million share of the pot. Cindy was an office manager until she was laid off in 2010; Mark works as a mechanic for Hillshire Brands, according to the Missouri Lottery. The couple has three adult sons and a 6-year-old Jayden, who they adopted from China, a friend of theirs, David Troutman, said on TODAY before the couple's identity was confirmed by lottery officials. Since winning, they have considered adopting again, the lottery press release said. Mark has spoken of getting a red Camaro; they also would like to take their 6-year-old to the beach, since she's never been to one.  Their daughter also wants a horse, according to Cindy, so "in a couple of years, I'd say yes." They are looking forward to not working and traveling together as a family using their winnings, she added. Troutman, a former high school classmate of the winning couple, said they first posted the news on Facebook. "I was on Facebook and I saw that his wife had posted, 'Thank you God, we won the lottery.' Of course everybody in town, all his friends, gave all thumbs up. It couldn't have happened to a better guy,'' Troutman said. The Hills are high school sweethearts, he said. In the tiny town of Dearborn -- population, 496 -- their identity didn't stay secret for long.  "Word spread that he won so fast,'' Troutman said. "I heard that it was a winner from Dearborn, and by the time I walked in the door my mom was on the phone, and she said, 'He won. It was him.' Who knows what the impact will be on Dearborn.'' Dearborn is about 35 miles north of Kansas City, the home of the Royals baseball team. No one has come forward yet to claim the winning ticket in Arizona, but on Thursday, a mystery man showed up at a gas station in Upper Marlboro, Md., claiming to hold the big winner. Surveillance video showed a man in a yellow construction suit slowly amble up to the counter, where he pulled out some lottery tickets. After confirming that the numbers on one of the tickets matched, he can be seen in the video repeatedly pumping his fists. It's unclear what the man was doing in Maryland with a ticket ostensibly from Arizona. NBC's Kerry Sanders reports from Dearborn, Mo., where the town is celebrating one family's luck of winning half the record Powerball jackpot. A family friend of the couple, expected to be named by lottery officials Friday, tells TODAY's Savannah Guthrie "it couldn't have happened to a better guy."

Dad's mean letter to kids goes viral

Should parents confide their disappointment in their children? Dr. Gail Saltz says honesty is necessary to a degree. Father Nick Crews wrote a scathing e-mail to his children about their failings When the e-mail became public, many people praised Crews for his bravery and honesty Others said he was too harsh and a parent should never speak to children so viciously CNN's Ronni Berke said that though the letter was harsh, parents could learn from it (CNN) -- They're calling it the "Crews missile." Fired from the keyboard of 67-year-old Nick Crews, the missive blew the lid off his dysfunctional family. In an e-mail titled "Dear All Three," published in U.K. newspaper The Telegraph, Crews excoriates his three grown children for their professional and personal failures and for the "bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out" to him and his wife. Crews, a retired British naval officer, was fed up with his children's unsuccessful marriages and inability to earn a living that, as he said, measures up to their potential. "I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children's underachievement and domestic ineptitudes." In the e-mail, made public with his permission by his daughter Emily, Crews describes his concern for his grandchildren. "It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven and then helplessly to see these lovely people being so woefully let down by you, their parents." And then this ultimatum: "I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about." Whoa. This is beyond disappointment. This sounds just plain mean. Yet, the story, and support for Crews, has gone viral. It "struck a cord," wrote Telegraph reporter Cristina Odone. Sure, what parent doesn't fear raising a bum? But as the mother of two young adult children, I had to wonder whether a withering e-mail attack was the best way to go about getting the kids to shape up. I asked Dr. Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine, whether the former submarine captain took the right tack. For a parent fed up with his child's behavior, "It can be useful to do something shocking to get someone to take it to heart," said Saltz. But, she added, one must pave the way long before the children became adults, with a warm, communicative relationship. Although two of his children haven't spoken to him since receiving the note, "Crews has been swamped with encouraging messages," writes Odone. Many are applauding Crews for "telling it like it is." But does he? In the e-mail, he alludes to his own mistakes: "Having done our best, probably misguidedly, to provide for our children..." He describes his envy when hearing his friends brag about their children, and seems deeply wounded by the fact that his children don't consult him or his wife before making life decisions. Perhaps he played a larger role than he would admit, or even knows, in how his children turned out. He did acknowledge to Odone that due to his naval career, he was pretty much an absentee father. The Crews story may sound frighteningly familiar to baby boomer parents. In the wake of the Great Recession, many parents have resigned themselves to the fact that their college-graduate children may not be moving out anytime soon and may not even have a job. A U.S. 2010 policy brief sponsored by Brown University showed that 43% of those under 25 live with their parents, up from 32% in 1980. But is the economy alone to blame for what I fondly call "Deadbeat Kid Syndrome?" "Not everything is parenting and not everything is biology," said Saltz. "There's a combination here." And sometimes, she added, families just have bad luck. Saltz said although Crews obviously loves his children, "he ended up missing the mark" with the e-mail. Still, the fact that so many are rallying to his defense can be a positive thing, Saltz said, especially in a world full of "overly indulgent parents," who aren't teaching children life skills. Everyone's tweeting and boasting about their kids' successes, but missing an important point, failure is important too. "If you don't teach your kids any resilience, you fail them out of everything," Saltz said. "They need to fall down, say I fell down before but got back up, and I know I can do that." I'm guilty of this sort of thing. Growing up, I never once called my mother at work. Yet I allowed my own kids to call me all the time. It just took that much longer to wean them off the "workday quickie advice call." Perhaps I should have let them figure out mundane daily jams on their own. Many parents have blinders on. If you don't want your kids to end up with an entitled attitude, why lambast their teachers for giving them bad grades, which they likely deserve, or for failing them for cheating? Timothy Law Snyder is vice president for academic affairs at Loyola University Maryland and lectures nationally about generational differences. Snyder says some parents blame the school or the professor, rather than the student, for bad grades, even when their child is caught plagiarizing. "It's at its worst when the parent is living through their child," he said. "The parents' successes, even life accomplishments, are identified entirely with those of their child." "It used to be parents would go to the school and care that (their) kid has a moral compass and understands right and wrong," Saltz said. Nowadays, the concept of right and wrong isn't as clear. "They're more concerned that the kid gets an A than be a kind person, a moral person." Saltz said parents are under pressure for things to look good and feel good. "They love their children. .... But they've got tunnel vision." Case in point: when everyone who plays soccer gets a trophy no matter how well, or poorly, they've played. "Children come out and experience nothing but success, not necessarily done by them but enabled by their parents, intervening all the time," Saltz said. Such intervention also creates a shortcut to adulthood, and that's not a good thing. Nor is having too many choices too soon. Take the beauty salon. How young is too young for a manicure? In my salon, there's a 4-year-old girl who's been getting "mani-peds" for two years. She loves the pedicure bath," the manicurist told me. What happens to that little girl when she grows up and can't afford manicures? And think, does your 6-year-old really need a cellphone? As for the Crews saga, Saltz said she hopes it makes a lot of people think about being more honest with their children. "Someday they'll have to frustrate their child, disappoint their child, point out their child's mistakes. By doing those things earlier rather than later, they'll help their children to be better people." Would you write a letter like Crews' to your children? Do you think such a message would be effective in changing behavior? Leave your opinion in the comments section below. Like CNN Living on Facebook