More than 18,000 new United States citizens take their citizenship oaths during naturalization ceremonies at the Los Angeles Convention Center Thursday. New citizens hailed from some 100 countries, with the largest number, 7,770, from Mexico, followed by 1,882 from El Salvador and 1,477 from the Philippines. Immigration officials could not immediately say whether the number of new citizens set a record nationally.

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WINDSOR — A large tornado skipped through several northern Colorado towns on Thursday, destroying dozens of homes, flipping tractor-trailers and freight rail cars, and killing at least one person.

The National Weather Service said the tornado touched down just before noon near Platteville, about 50 miles north of Denver.

Over the next hour, it moved northward past several towns along 35-mile-long track toward Wyoming.

In Windsor, Colo., a farming town of 16,000 that was hardest hit, dazed residents retrieved what they could from their homes.

Nine people were hospitalized with various injuries at the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, said spokesman Alex Stuessie.

In Greeley, four people were treated for minor injuries at North Colorado Medical Center, said administrative representative Laurie Hamit.

Crews removed downed power lines and poles from Windsor's streets Thursday evening and bulldozers cleared debris.

Gov. Bill Ritter declared a state of emergency for Weld County and toured the area.

NEW YORK — It was so singular a marvel, so ambitious a feat, that its opening drew the president and a crowd of thousands.

A leading national magazine said it stood poised to become "our most durable monument."

About 125 years later, the Brooklyn Bridge remains a powerful symbol of engineering might and imagination, and a revered fixture in the landscape of the nation's largest city.

And it can still attract a crowd, as it did the one at the bridge's 125th-birthday blowout Thursday night, which featured fireworks, a Navy flyover, a colorful new lighting scheme, a musical tribute to honor the storied span, and even a birthday cake in the shape of the bridge.

The 6,000-foot-long landmark is one of the nation's oldest suspension bridges and among its most treasured. It opened on May 24, 1883.

JEFFERSON CITY — The state will extend its control over the struggling St. Louis public schools for three additional years.

The decision by the State Board of Education means Missouri's largest school district is to remain under state supervision until June 30, 2011.

The state took over the district a year ago because of academic and financial problems.

A three-person Governing Board, instead of the locally elected board, was appointed to run it.

That appointed board needs more time to turn things around, state education officials decided.

CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA's final visit to the Hubble Space Telescope is now set for Oct. 8.

Atlantis and a crew of seven were supposed to fly to Hubble at the end of August, but the mission was delayed because of extra time needed to build the shuttle fuel tanks required for the flight and a potential rescue mission.

NASA on Thursday set the new launch date for Atlantis, and also pushed back space shuttle Endeavour's supply mission to the international space station from Oct. 16 to Nov. 10.

The Atlantis crew will repair and upgrade the 18-year-old Hubble telescope.

Under the Hubble mission plan, NASA needs a second shuttle waiting to launch at Kennedy Space Center in case of an emergency.

ATLANTA — A former city police officer was sentenced Thursday to 4 1/2 years in prison for lying to investigators about a botched drug raid that ended in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman.

Arthur Tesler, 42, was the only officer to face trial in the raid, which led to an outcry from civil-rights activists and to a shake-up of the Police Department.

Tesler also was sentenced to serve six months of probation and 450 hours of community service.

Kathryn Johnston died in a hail of police bullets after narcotics officers burst into her northwest Atlanta home the night of Nov. 21, 2006, using a special no-knock warrant to search for drugs.

Testimony showed that Tesler was in Johnston's back yard when other officers went in through the front door.

Johnston fired a single shot at the intruders, and officers returned a volley of 39, striking her five or six times.

Police originally said they had gone to the woman's house after an informant bought drugs there.

After searching the house and finding no drugs, the officers tried to cover up the mistake, planting three baggies of marijuana, prosecutors said.

ATLANTA — The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles commuted the death sentence of a convicted killer about two hours before his scheduled execution.

The board did not explain its decision Thursday to commute Samuel David Crowe's sentence to life without parole.

He pleaded guilty to the 1988 killing of lumber-store manager Joseph Pala, who was shot, beaten with a crowbar and struck with a can of white paint that spilled on his face.

Douglas County District Attorney David McDade said Pala's family was upset by the decision.

Crowe, 47, would have become the third inmate to die since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection.

SAN FRANCISCO — A conservative legal group asked the California Supreme Court on Thursday to put off finalization of its decision legalizing same-sex marriage until voters got a chance to weigh in.

The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund wants the ruling stayed until November, when voters will probably encounter a ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. That amendment would overturn the justices' ruling.

In court papers submitted late Thursday, the group warned that the state would suffer "great public harm and mischief" if it began allowing same-sex marriages on June 16, when the court's decision would ordinarily become final.

Defense Fund attorneys also said implementing the ruling in the meantime would be an unnecessary expense for the state and cause unneeded confusion for couples.

A cloud of uncertainty lingers over the pending unions, however.

A coalition of religious and social conservative groups is in the process of putting a measure on the November ballot that would write a gay-marriage ban into the state constitution.

County clerks have until June 18 to verify the signatures needed to qualify the amendment for the election, according to the Defense Fund.

A preliminary count by 37 counties indicates that the initiative has a high chance of being put to voters, the group said in its petition.

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday defended tough interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects approved by the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, saying they were necessary to protect America from new attacks.

In her most extensive public comments about how the administration dealt with detainee interrogations in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks that followed, Rice insisted the methods of questioning complied with both U.S. law and treaty obligations.

But she acknowledged that those rules had since changed and that the United States was a "different place" then, adding that the administration's top priority at the time had been preventing new attacks and not necessarily observing fine legal points.

"The fact is that after Sept. 11, whatever was legal in the face of not just the attacks of Sept. 11, but the anthrax attacks that happened, we were in an environment in which saving America from the next attack was paramount," Rice said to an audience at the headquarters of Google Inc.