2 dead, 2 missing in central US floods

By PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press Writer
DALLAS - Airlines prepared for passenger backlogs Wednesday from hundreds of flights grounded by storms that chased people from flooded homes and deluged roads in the nation's midsection, killing at least two people in Missouri and sweeping a teen down a drainage pipe in Texas.
The National Weather Service posted flood and flash flood warnings from Texas to Ohio, with tornado watches in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Emergency officials in Mesquite, Texas, searched for a 14-year-old boy apparently swept away by floodwaters as he and a friend played in a creek. The friend was able to swim to safety, authorities said.
In northern Arkansas, rescuers searched for a man whose truck was believed to have been swept from a low-water bridge in West Fork. Authorities found only the vehicle.
Heavy rain began falling Monday and just kept coming. Forecasters said parts of Missouri could get 10 inches or more. The storms were expected to finally stop Wednesday.
Cape Girardeau County had received nearly 8 inches of rain by Tuesday afternoon, trapping some residents in their homes. About 50 roads were closed in Christian County after 7 inches of rain fell.
More than 6 inches of rain drenched areas around Dallas, including record rainfall at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where more than half of the 950 scheduled flights Tuesday were canceled.
Winds of more than 100 mph were briefly reported at the airport, which received a single-day record of 2.35 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. The previous high of 1.52 inches was set in 1984, the weather service said.
By early Wednesday morning, the airport had opened all security checkpoint lanes in preparation for an early rush of stranded passengers. Airport officials said the backlog of flights would take most of Wednesday to unwind.
"Everybody did a great job overnight of hanging in there and trying to get some rest," airport spokesman Ken Capps said. "The airlines will be working the lines early to try to get as many people rebooked and out of here as quickly as possible."
Cots and blankets were given to stranded travelers overnight. The airport early Wednesday also received several hundred new passengers who were bussed from airports as far as Louisiana, after they were unable to make flights to DFW the day before.
Federal Aviation Administration officials evacuated the airport's west tower for about 15 minutes Tuesday morning after seeing a funnel cloud. By Tuesday night, the airport was accepting about 50 arrivals and departures an hour — less than half the usual 120 flights that use the airport's seven runways every hour, officials said.
Hundreds of people in Lancaster, south of Dallas, were advised to evacuate their homes as the Ten Mile Creek rose. By evening, the creek waters had receded. One woman was rescued from her yard and four people were rescued from their vehicles, city spokeswoman Ciciely Hickmon said.
In Arkansas, residents in parts of Baxter, Madison, and Sharp counties were evacuated because of rising floodwaters, said Tommy Jackson, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.
The Spring River was rising at a rate of 6 inches per hour Tuesday, and debris flowing in it included full-size trees. Officials said dangerous flows were occurring in Mammoth Spring and Salem, where the river was out of its banks.
To the north, Gov. Matt Blunt activated the Missouri National Guard on Tuesday as high water closed hundreds of roads.
About 300 of the 900 homes in Piedmont, Mo., were evacuated when the McKenzie Creek flowed over its banks and caused flooding 2 to 3 feet deep in the center of the town, about 125 miles south of St. Louis. Dozens of people were rescued in about 15 to 20 boat trips.
Up to 30 homes were evacuated in Winona, and some residents of Cape Girardeau were trapped in their homes, according to the State Emergency Management Agency. In Ellington, as many as 50 homes and half the businesses were evacuated, officials said.
The body of an 81-year-old man was found in the water at Ellington, said Missouri State Water Patrol Lt. Nicholas Humphrey. A 21-year-old state Department of Transportation worker was killed near Springfield when his dump truck was hit by a tractor-trailer as he helped out in a flooded area, officials said.
Scott and Marilyne Peterson and their 25-year-old son, Scott Jr., scurried out of their mobile home in Piedmont after watching the water rise 3 feet in five minutes. The family had just enough time to grab some essentials, a few clothes and the family dog.
"You didn't have time to worry," Scott Peterson Sr. said. "You just grab what you can and go and you're glad the people are OK."
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Associated Press writers Betsy Taylor in Piedmont, Mo., and Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.

McCain, Cheney: US in Iraq long-term

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD - Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain vowed in meetings with Iraq's prime minister Monday that the U.S. would maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq until al-Qaida is defeated there.
Explosions went off near the heavily fortified Green Zone shortly after Cheney arrived. Helicopter gunships circled central Baghdad, but no details were immediately available on the cause of the explosions.
The presumptive Republican candidate for president, who has linked his political future to military success in Iraq, met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shortly before the Iraqi leader began separate talks with Cheney.
Al-Maliki said he and the vice president discussed ongoing negotiations over a long-term security agreement between the two countries that would replace the U.N. mandate for foreign troops set to expire at the end of the year.
"This visit is very important. It is about the nature of the relations between the two countries, the future of those relations and the agreement in this respect," the prime minister told reporters. "We also discussed the security in Iraq, the development of the economy and reconstruction and terrorism."
McCain stressed that it was important to maintain the U.S. commitment in Iraq, where a U.S.-Iraq military operation is under way to clear al-Qaida from its last urban stronghold of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
"We recognize that al-Qaida is on the run, but they are not defeated," McCain said after meeting al-Maliki. "Al-Qaida continues to pose a great threat to the security and very existence of Iraq as a democracy. So we know there's still a lot more of work to be done."
McCain, who arrived in Iraq on Sunday, told reporters that he also discussed with the Shiite leader the need for progress on political reforms, including laws on holding provincial elections and the equitable distribution of Iraq's oil riches.
Cheney arrived at Baghdad International Airport, then flew by helicopter for talks with U.S. and Iraqi officials. It is Cheney's third vice-presidential trip to Iraq, where 160,000 American troops are deployed and the U.S. death toll is nearing 4,000.
Violence has dropped throughout the capital with an influx of some 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers as well as a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and a cease-fire by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
The U.S. military has said attacks have fallen by about 60 percent since last February.
McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Republican Lindsey Graham, two top supporters of his presidential ambitions. The weeklong trip will take McCain to Israel, Britain and France.
Police said they found the bodies of three members of a U.S.-allied group fighting al-Qaida in Udaim, 70 miles north of Baghdad. Members of the mostly Sunni groups have been increasingly targeted by suspected al-Qaida members seeking to derail the recent security gains.
A bomb in a parked car in Baghdad's central Karradah neighborhood killed three civilian bystanders and wounded nine, police said, while a separate roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad killed one and wounded three others.
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Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.