Four Are Killed in Massachusetts Tornado

Residents of Springfield, Mass., sought cover Wednesday after a warning about another possible tornado. An earlier storm damaged buildings, toppled trees and caused numerous injuries.

BOSTON — At least four people were killed when tornadoes touched down Wednesday in Springfield, Mass., and a number of nearby towns. The twisters flipped vehicles, collapsed buildings and stunned residents who are not used to such violent storms.

A child ran for cover as bad weather moved back into the area following a tornado touchdown in the south end of Springfield, Mass., on Wednesday.

Gov. Deval Patrick activated the National Guard and declared a state of emergency. He said that at least two tornadoes had hit and that serious damage had been reported in 19 communities, many of them small towns along the Massachusetts Turnpike.

One man was killed when his car overturned in West Springfield, Mr. Patrick said. Two other deaths were reported in Westfield and one in Brimfield, he said, though he had no details.

With storms continuing into the night, Mr. Patrick found himself in the unusual position of instructing New Englanders more accustomed to blizzards to take shelter in basements and bathrooms if necessary.

The scope of the damage was still unclear, but photos and videos showed buildings with roofs and sides sheared off. The police were going door to door in some neighborhoods to make sure residents were unharmed.

“There’s just total destruction,” said Michael Day, a plumbing inspector from Agawam who was driving through West Springfield shortly after the first tornado struck around 4:30 p.m. “All I can hear is ambulances. There’s a lot of police sirens around and fire trucks.”

Tornado warnings had been issued for much of the state earlier Wednesday. One of the confirmed tornadoes traveled east from Westfield to Douglas, Mr. Patrick said, and the other traveled east from North Springfield to Sturbridge.

Mr. Patrick said 1,000 members of the Massachusetts National Guard were being dispatched to help with debris removal and, if necessary, search-and-rescue efforts.

He said that State Senator Stephen Brewer had told him that Monson, a town of about 9,000 east of Springfield, appeared to have suffered some of the worst damage.

“He said, ‘You have to see Monson to believe it,’ ” Mr. Patrick said. “I think he made a reference to ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ”

While tornadoes are relatively rare in New England, one that hit Worcester in 1953, known as the Worcester Twister, killed 94 people and injured more than 1,000.

At least 48,000 customers lost power in the storms, Mr. Patrick said, and school was to be canceled Thursday in the affected communities to allow for debris to be cleared. Amtrak reported some service disruptions.

“We are hoping and praying and working as hard as possible to keep the fatalities limited,” the governor said.

Katie Zezima contributed reporting.

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Retroactive Reductions Sought in Crack Penalties

WASHINGTON — In a proposal that could allow as many as 5,500 federal inmates to apply for reduced prison terms, the Obama administration on Wednesday backed retroactively lightening some sentences for past crack cocaine convictions.

Testifying before the United States Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. cited the Fair Sentencing Act, a 2010 law that increased the volume of crack cocaine necessary to result in a mandatory minimum prison term.

The panel, which advises federal judges on how much prison time they should hand down for particular offenses, revised its crack cocaine sentencing guidelines last fall in response to the 2010 law. Mr. Holder said that it should make those changes retroactive for certain offenders, allowing them to seek a reduction in their prison terms.

“Because of the Fair Sentencing Act, our nation is now closer to fulfilling its fundamental, and founding, promise of equal treatment under law,” Mr. Holder said. “But I am here today because I believe — and the administration’s viewpoint is — that we have more to do.”

At the same time, citing public safety concerns, Mr. Holder urged the commission to make an exception for inmates who had significant criminal histories or who had possessed or used a gun at the time of their drug offense. Because such inmates could be more dangerous, he argued, they should not be eligible to seek reduced sentences.

The administration’s position prompted some political criticism. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, issued a statement on Wednesday accusing the administration of “supporting the release of dangerous drug dealers,” saying the proposal “shows that they are more concerned with well-being of criminals than with the safety of our communities.”

But Julie Stewart, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group that advocates for judicial discretion in sentencing decisions, contended that the commission should make its crack cocaine guidelines retroactive without any exceptions because criminal histories and any gun possession were already factored into sentences under a separate part of the guidelines.

“I think it’s political,” Ms. Stewart said of the Obama administration’s stance. Interviewed by phone, she characterized the Justice Department’s position as “splitting the baby.”

Congress established the sentencing commission in an effort to make federal prison sentences more uniform. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that its guidelines could not be binding, but many judges still follow them.

Several sitting federal judges are members of the commission, which is expected to decide by November whether to make the new guidelines retroactive.

The commission recently released a study showing that about 12,040 federal inmates would be eligible to apply to a judge for a reduction, without the carve-out suggested by Mr. Holder. The study said the inmates would potentially be eligible to have their sentences cut by an average of 37 months.

The study showed that about 513 of those inmates were convicted in one of the four federal districts in the State of New York. The vast majority of the overall group consists of black men, and their average age is 36, the study said.

The commission has also released a study of what happened to inmates who won early release after 2007, when it made retroactive a related set of changes to its crack cocaine guidelines. The study found no statistically significant disparity in the recidivism rate of that group when compared with a control group.

The panel’s deliberations are the latest chapter in a long-running, racially charged debate over severe mandatory minimum penalties for crack cocaine offenses enacted by Congress during the crack epidemic in the 1980s, amid a crime wave fueled by addicts and rival drug traffickers.

Under those laws, a drug dealer selling crack cocaine was subject to the same sentence as one selling 100 times as much powder cocaine. Crack cocaine was disproportionately prevalent in impoverished black communities, while powder cocaine was disproportionately favored by more affluent white users.

Mr. Holder had long argued that the crack-powder sentencing disparity was an injustice, and lobbied Congress earlier in his tenure as attorney general to enact the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the disparity to 18-to-1 by raising the volumes of crack that result in mandatory minimum sentence levels.

But Congress did not make the mandatory minimum changes retroactive. As a result, the commission is considering a proposal that would allow judges to remove prison time in excess of the old statutory minimum sentences, but such inmates would still not be eligible for a reduction to the new minimum sentences established by the 2010 law.

For example, under the old law, a person convicted of selling 75 grams of crack cocaine faced a sentence of 10 years to life in prison, while today he would instead face 5 to 20 years in prison. If the guidelines become retroactive, such an offender who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison several years ago could ask a judge to reduce his sentence to 10 years, the old statutory minimum term.

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Two FIFA Officials Are Suspended; Blatter Is Cleared

But in a hearing Sunday, an ethics panel found no wrongdoing by the FIFA president Sepp Blatter, clearing him to run unopposed for a fourth term. The vote is scheduled for Wednesday.

Suspended on Sunday were Mohamed Bin Hammam of Qatar, who sought to challenge Blatter for the FIFA presidency, and Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, a longtime power broker in the soccer federation.

Bin Hammam and Warner were accused of offering cash gifts of $40,000 apiece to about two dozen officials representing soccer federations in the Caribbean at a meeting held in Trinidad on May 10 and May 11. In return for the cash, the officials were expected to vote for Bin Hammam as FIFA president.

Accusations against the two officials were made by Chuck Blazer, an American who is also on the FIFA executive committee and had been a longtime ally of Warner’s.

Bin Hammam and Warner could eventually be expelled from FIFA if a further inquiry finds them guilty of the bribery charges. Warner has previously been accused of offering to sell his vote for the 2018 World Cup, which he denied.

“We are satisfied that there is a case to be answered,” Petrus Damaseb, deputy chairman of FIFA’s executive committee, told reporters at a news conference in Zurich, where FIFA is based.

Bim Hammam, who withdrew his presidential bid on Saturday, has claimed that Blatter knew about the cash offers and approved them, perhaps as a kind of development fund to be paid to the Caribbean nations. Blatter was cleared of wrongdoing Sunday.

Still, Blatter’s credibility has suffered greatly, given that his 13-year presidency has faced a number of corruption crises within FIFA. Eight of the 24 members of FIFA’s executive committee have been accused of selling or offering to sell their votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded last fall to Russia and Qatar, respectively.

And there is a chance that more tawdry revelations could undermine Blatter’s presidency ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

In cryptic remarks, Warner, who is also president of soccer’s North American, Central American and Caribbean region, known as Concacaf, said that a “football tsunami” would strike FIFA in the coming days “that will shock you.”

The situation is so chaotic within FIFA that Blatter has not ruled out a re-vote to award the 2022 World Cup. The United States finished second to Qatar in a vote that was compromised by charges of vote-trading and bribery.

Sunil Gulati, president of the United States soccer federation, has been tight-lipped in comments about the FIFA scandals, wanting to keep the United States in the best standing possible in case there is a re-vote for the World Cup.

He would not comment on a potential re-vote in an interview last week, referring instead to recent remarks to Sports Illustrated, in which Gulati said, “Any of us who participate as bidders or anyone watching this from the outside knows that the process needs to be reviewed and reformed.”

Even with a stirring 3-1 victory by Barcelona over Manchester United on Saturday in the European Champions League final, a match that displayed why soccer is known as the beautiful game, the sport finds itself covered by dark clouds of corruption.

Franz Beckenbauer, the former German great who is soon to retire from FIFA’s executive committee, told the BBC on Sunday that the crises were “a disaster for football.”

Hugh Robertson, the British sports minister, has called on FIFA to suspend its presidential election, telling reporters, “I think the process is fast descending into farce.”

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Hollywood Starts to Worry as 3-D Fizzles in U.S.

Ripples of fear spread across Hollywood last week after “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” which cost Walt Disney Studios an estimated $400 million to make and market, did poor 3-D business in North America. While event movies have typically done 60 percent of their business in 3-D, “Stranger Tides” sold just 47 percent in 3-D. “The American consumer is rejecting 3-D,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote of the “Stranger Tides” results.

One movie does not make a trend, but the Memorial Day weekend did not give studio chiefs much comfort in the 3-D department. “Kung Fu Panda 2,” a Paramount Pictures release of a DreamWorks Animation film, sold $53.8 million in tickets from Thursday to Sunday, a soft total, and 3-D was 45 percent of the business, according to Paramount.

Consumer rebellion over high 3-D ticket prices plays a role, and the novelty of putting on the funny glasses is wearing off, analysts say. But there is also a deeper problem: 3-D has provided an enormous boost to the strongest films, including “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland,” but has actually undercut middling movies that are trying to milk the format for extra dollars.

“Audiences are very smart,” said Greg Foster, the president of Imax Filmed Entertainment. “When they smell something aspiring to be more than it is, they catch on very quickly.”

Muddying the picture is a contrast between the performance of 3-D movies in North America and overseas. If results are troubling domestically, they are the exact opposite internationally, where the genre is a far newer phenomenon. Indeed, 3-D screenings powered “Stranger Tides” to about $256 million on its first weekend abroad; Disney trumpeted the figure as the biggest international debut of all time.

With results like that at a time when movies make 70 percent of their total box office income outside North America, do tastes at home even matter?

After a disappointing first half of the year, Hollywood is counting on a parade of 3-D films to dig itself out of a hole. From May to September, the typical summer season, studios will unleash 16 movies in the format, more than double the number last year. Among the most anticipated releases are “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” due from Paramount on July 1, and Part 2 of Part 7 of the “Harry Potter” series, arriving two weeks later from Warner Brothers.

The need is urgent. The box-office performance in the first six months of 2011 was soft — revenue fell about 9 percent compared with last year, while attendance was down 10 percent — and that comes amid decay in home-entertainment sales. In all formats, including paid streaming and DVDs, home entertainment revenue fell almost 10 percent, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.

The first part of the year held a near collapse in video store rentals, which fell 36 percent to about $440 million, offsetting gains from cut-price rental kiosks and subscriptions. In addition, the sale of packaged discs fell about 20 percent, to about $2.2 billion, while video-on-demand, though growing, delivered total sales of less than a quarter of that amount.

At the box office, animated films, which have recently been Hollywood’s most reliable genre, have fallen into a deep trough, as the category’s top three performers combined— “Rio,” from Fox; “Rango,” from Paramount; and “Hop,” from Universal — have had fewer ticket buyers than did “Shrek the Third,” from DreamWorks Animation, after its release in mid-May four years ago.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” appears poised to become the biggest animated hit of the year so far; but it would have to stretch well past its own predecessor to beat “Shrek Forever After,” another May release, which took in $238.7 million last year.

For the weekend, “The Hangover: Part II” sold $118 million from Thursday to Sunday, easily enough for No. 1. “Kung Fu Panda 2” was second. Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” was third with $39.3 million for a new total of $152.9 million. “Bridesmaids” (Universal Pictures) was fourth with $16.4 million for a new total of about $85 million. “Thor” (Marvel Studios) rounded out the top five with $9.4 million for a new total of $160 million.Studio chiefs acknowledge that the industry needs to sort out its 3-D strategy. Despite the soft results for “Kung Fu Panda 2,” animated releases have continued to perform well in the format, overcoming early problems with glasses that didn’t fit little faces. But general-audience movies like “Stranger Tides” may be better off the old-fashioned way.

“With a blockbuster-filled holiday weekend skewing heavily toward 2-D, and 3-D ticket sales dramatically underperforming relative to screen allocation, major studios will hopefully begin to rethink their 3-D rollout plans for the rest of the year and 2012,” Mr. Greenfield said on Friday.

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