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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

During a tornado, the safest place to protect yourself is usually underground, but that's not an option for the large majority of people in southern Oklahoma. If you look just at new construction, fewer than 1 percent of homes in the area hit by the tornado have basements. Here to help explain why is NPR's Scott Neuman, who's written about this for our Two-Way blog.

And Scott, where I come from, a basement is a really common thing to have under the house. Not so in Oklahoma. Why not?

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On this day, two years ago, just after 5:30 p.m., a tornado roared into Joplin, Missouri. It cut a nearly straight line through town, splintering everything in its path. About 160 people were killed. Some 7,500 homes were damaged or destroyed.

Mike Woolston was the mayor at the time. He's now a city councilor in Joplin, and he joins us from Joplin to talk about his experience two years ago and how it might inform the task ahead for Moore, Oklahoma. Mike Woolston, welcome to the program.

COUNCILMEMBER MIKE WOOLSTON: Thank you.

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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News, I'm Melissa Block.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel. In Moore, Okla., today, details about some of the people killed in the massive tornado began to emerge. Ten of them are children. They include a 4-month-old girl whose mother also died, an infant and her 4-year-old sister, and seven third-graders who were trapped in the Plaza Towers Elementary School.

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The race is over for Eric Garcetti but it's just beginning for Anthony Weiner. The former New York congressman, who left office in 2011 after a series of raunchy tweets, says that he will run for mayor of New York City. The announcement came with an online video after a month of interviews and articles in which Weiner sought redemption.

NPR's Margot Adler reports.

MARGOT ADLER, BYLINE: Anthony Weiner's campaign video is well made and compelling. As a middle-class kid growing up in Brooklyn, he says, I thought we had it all.

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There has been an unexpected turn in the Boston Marathon bombing case. A man who was thought to have ties with one of the bombing suspects was shot dead early this morning by authorities in Florida. He allegedly tried to attack an FBI agent who was interviewing him. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has been following the story and is here with the latest. Hi, Dina.

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: Hi there.

Los Angeles has elected a new mayor: Eric Garcetti, a longtime city council member and the son of the district attorney who prosecuted O.J. Simpson. The election Tuesday had a record-low voter turnout. Both Garcetti and his opponent, Wendy Gruel, had trouble getting voters excited.

The sergeant worked at West Point. The story, first reported by The New York Times, is the latest in a series of embarrassing cases for the military, which has acknowledged it has a significant problem of sexual assault and harassment in the ranks.