Twister

Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms with winds up to 70 mph blew across Michigan, overturning vehicles, damaging homes and uprooting trees. At least a dozen tornadoes were reported, and three were confirmed by the National Weather Service. No serious injuries were reported. Two twisters also were reported in Ohio as storms knocked down trees and power lines. Mount Pleasant, Mich., elementary schools sheltered children until tornado warnings were lifted.

A tornado damaged or destroyed eight houses and mobile homes in this beach community, but no one was seriously injured, authorities said Friday. The twister and high winds hit late Thursday night.

Most of New England was under a tornado watch today and Rhode Island was belted by a second twister as another round of severe thunderstorms roared through the region. Still reeling from a tornado which inflicted heavy damage in Providence Thursday night, Rhode Island was hit with a new twister in North Smithfield, just south of the Massachusetts border.

JOPLIN, Mo. - Arielle Speer started to cry. She was having a panic attack, and the movie hadn't even started. Speer is a Joplin tornado survivor, and she had come to remember. Almost a year ago, the 28-year-old was standing on the side of Connecticut Avenue looking at the pile of rubble that used to be her apartment building. It had since been cleared away, and now Speer was sitting in a local university auditorium, waiting to watch a documentary about the storm that destroyed it. A lot has happened since May 22, 2011, when a massive tornado erased nearly a third of Joplin and killed about 160 people.

The Deaf Entertainment Foundation is sponsoring a closed-caption screening of the current blockbuster movie "Twister" on June 24 at 8 p.m. at the AMC Cecchi Gori Fine Arts Theatre, 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Admission is $7.50 for adults and $4.50 for seniors and children under 12. Advance tickets are available at the theater box office or by phone at (310) 652-5944.

A tornado had just destroyed a house in the hit film "Twister" when a chunk of plaster fell from a theater ceiling, the cinema's owner said Tuesday. More than 200 people had to leave the building. One man was slightly injured after the shoebox-sized chunk of plaster fell Sunday at Circle Cinema. It raised a cloud of dust just as a tornado in the movie ripped through a house on the screen, owner Sam Dettra said. "The timing was impeccable.

"Twister" obliterated the competition at the box office over the weekend, bringing in more than $41 million to launch the summer movie season. "I was hoping it would do in the mid-to-high-20s," said Rob Friedman, Warners' president of worldwide advertising and publicity.

A rare New England tornado swept through downtown Providence, R.I., during the evening rush hour, tossing cars into the air and injuring 20 people. "Right in a ball of clouds, I saw balls of . . . green light. I could see the funnel cloud. I just kept taking pictures until I realized I should call someone," said Franklin Meglio, a clinic supervisor at Rhode Island Hospital. The tornado, the first in Rhode Island since 1974, damaged buildings and knocked out power to 4,800 homes.

A tornado blasted through this north Florida town before dawn today, destroying homes and a college library, blowing off rooftops, flipping cars and leaving four people dead and 15 injured, officials said. The tornado touched down at 4:30 a.m. just west of Madison, about 50 miles east of Tallahassee, and cut a 12-mile swath of destruction, authorities said.

Tornadoes swept across the Midwest and South late Tuesday and early Wednesday, killing two people in Illinois and battering a region still trying to recover from deadly weekend twisters. A junior high gymnasium in this community 35 miles southwest of St. Louis was destroyed in Tuesday night's twister but 25 young track athletes and their coaches were spared because they had fled the gym. "Chairs started flying. Everything started shaking.