US Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

An "outpouring of feedback" led to Boy Scouts of America officials' proposing a change to its membership standards for youth , but to maintain a strict ban on openly gay adults serving as troop leaders.

Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs: On Oct. 23, 2002, members of the battalion, along with two other Chechen groups seized more than 800 hostages at Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in a dramatic debut for the previously unknown group. The attackers wired the theater with explosives, threatening to blow it up, killing themselves along with the hostages.

The Maryland uncle for the two brothers suspected in Monday's Boston Marathon bombing angrily denounced his nephews as "losers" who failed to assimilate into American society, while saying it was a "fraud" to suggest their Islamic faith was to blame the attack.

Anzor Tsarnaev, the father of the two suspects in the Boston bombings, called on his 19-year-old son, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to give up peacefully. He also said, in an ABC report, that "all hell will break loose" in the United States if police kill him. He did not specify further in the ABC report.

As police comb the city for the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, speculation is now turning to whether the surviving suspect might already be in custody if surveillance drones were blanketing the sky overhead.

WEST, Texas (AP) , Rescuers searched the smoking remnants of a Texas farm town Thursday for survivors of a thunderous fertilizer plant explosion, gingerly checking smashed houses and apartments for anyone still trapped in debris while the community awaited word on the number of dead.

California State University's Los Angeles campus was evacuated Thursday after a bomb threat, a local television station reported. ABC affiliate KABC tweeted shorty before 4 p.m., "#BREAKINGNEWS Campus of @CalStateLA has been evacuated due to bomb threat, according to Cal State Office of Regents."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department and sent a letter to Detroit police demanding they end the "disturbing practice" of removing homeless people from downtown and dropping them off miles away.

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jonathan Papelbon, a World Series-winning right-hander with the Boston Red Sox in 2007, stole headlines Thursday , not for his earned run average, but rather for his political views. "Today's day and age has gotten so crazy," he said, as Politico reported. "Shoot man, Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything. You got all this stuff going on.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano dismissed a question "not worthy of an answer" by Rep. Jeff Duncan during a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, who asked about the alleged deportation of a Saudi national who was questioned as a witness in the Boston bombings.

Federal authorities officially charged Paul Kevin Curtis on Thursday with threatening the life of President Obama and a U.S. senator, saying he's the person who tried to send letters laced with the poison ricin to the White House and the Capitol.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the sleeping lion in a list of possible Republican candidates for president in 2016, surging to the top of some politicos' lists who see his scandal-free past as a big boon. Mr. Walker stands above even "first tier" Republican candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov.

BOSTON (AP) , In a story April 17 on the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing, The Associated Press erroneously reported, citing a law enforcement official who insisted on anonymity, that a suspect was in custody and was expected at the federal courthouse. The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Boston said shortly after the AP report that no arrests had been made.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday he is declaring McLennan County a disaster area and calling for federal relief from President Obama in the wake of a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant that killed up to 15 people and injured scores more.

At an interfaith prayer service for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama said Thursday the terrorists who carried out the attack failed to crush the spirit of the city or the nation. "If they sought to intimidate us, terrorize us ... it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it," Mr. Obama said. "Not here in Boston."