EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) — Two women were married on a sidewalk outside a county courthouse in Arkansas on Saturday, breaking a barrier that state voters put in place with a constitutional amendment 10 years ago.

A day after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza said the ban was "an unconstitutional attempt to narrow the definition of equality," Kristin Seaton, 27, and Jennifer Rambo, 26, exchanged vows at an impromptu ceremony, officiated by a woman in a rainbow-colored dress.

The couple had spent the night in their Ford Focus after traveling to Eureka Springs from their home at Fort Smith, and was the first of about 10 couples to line up outside of the courthouse before it opened.

"Thank God," Rambo said after Carroll County Deputy Clerk Jane Osborn issued them a license, ending a brief period of uncertainty when a different deputy county clerk said she wasn't authorized to grant one and questioned whether Piazza's order in a courtroom 150 miles away had any bearing in Eureka Springs.

Piazza ruled Friday that Arkansas' 2004 voter-approved amendment to the state constitution violates the rights of gay couples, clearing the way for the first same-sex marriage in a traditional southern state. He didn't put his ruling on hold as some judges in other states have done.

That caused confusion among the state's 75 county clerks, said Association of Arkansas Counties executive director Chris Villines. He said Piazza should have issued a stay, just to avoid Saturday's scramble.

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Jennifer Rambo, right, of Fort Smith, Ark., kisses her partner Kristin Seaton, left, of Jacksonville …

"The court didn't give us any time to get the kinks worked out," Villines said.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said he would appeal the ruling and asked it be suspended during that process. No appeal had been filed as of Saturday morning when the license was issued.

Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council, which promoted the gay-marriage ban in 2004, said Piazza's decision to not suspend his ruling will create confusion if a stay is issued later.

"Are these people married? Are they unmarried?" Cox said. "Judge Piazza did a tremendous disservice to the people of Arkansas by leaving this in limbo."

Arkansas' amendment was passed in 2004 with the overwhelming support of Arkansas voters. Piazza's ruling also overturned a 1997 state law banning gay marriage.

Arkansas Judge Strikes Down State's Ban On Gay …Play Video

"The exclusion of a minority for no rational reason is a dangerous precedent," he wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that a law forbidding the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. Since then, lower-court judges have repeatedly cited the decision when striking down some of the same-sex marriage bans that were enacted after Massachusetts started recognizing gay marriages in 2004.

Federal judges have ruled against marriage bans in Michigan, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Texas, and ordered Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

In all, according to gay-rights groups, more than 70 lawsuits seeking marriage equality are pending in about 30 states. Democratic attorneys general in several states — including Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Oregon and Kentucky — have declined to defend same-sex marriage bans.

Arkansas' ruling came a week after McDaniel became the first statewide elected official to announce he personally supports gay marriage rights. But he said he would continue to defend the constitutional ban in court.

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FILE - In this Thursday, April 17, 2014, file photo, Circuit Judge Chris Piazza presides at a hearin …

Aaron Sadler, McDaniel's spokesman, said Friday the attorney general sought the stay because "we know that questions about validity of certain actions will arise absent a stay."

Gay marriage is legal in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. Though technically considered southern states by the U.S. Census, they were not part of the old Confederacy, like Arkansas.

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Associated Press writers Kurt Voigt in Eureka Springs and Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock contributed to this report.

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Follow Christina Huynh on Twitter at —www.twitter.com/ckhuynh

A Carroll County clerk issues a license to a lesbian couple after a judge strikes down the state's 2004 ban.
Delay requested

APATZINGAN, Mexico (AP) — Mexico's government plans on Saturday to begin demobilizing a vigilante movement of assault rifle-wielding ranchers and farmers that formed in the western state of Michoacan and succeeded in largely expelling the Knights Templar cartel when state and local authorities couldn't.

The ceremony in the town of Tepalcatepec, where the movement began in February 2013, will involve the registration of thousands of guns by the federal government and an agreement that the so-called "self-defense" groups will either join a new official rural police force or return to their normal lives and acts as voluntary reserves when called on.

The government will go town by town to organize and recruit the new rural forces.

"This is a process of giving legal standing to the self-defense forces," said vigilante leader Estanislao Beltran.

But tension remained on Friday in the coastal part of the state outside the port of Lazaro Cardenas, where other "self-defense" groups plan to continue as they are, defending their territory without registering their arms. Vigilantes against the demobilization have set up roadblocks in the coastal town of Caleta.

"We don't want them to come, we don't recognize them," vigilante Melquir Sauceda said of the government and the new rural police forces. "Here we can maintain our own security. We don't need anyone bringing it from outside."

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Armed men belonging to the Self-Defense Council of Michoacan (CAM) check the documents of people in …

With Saturday's ceremony, a federal commissioner now in charge of the violence-plagued state hopes to end the "wild west" chapter of the movement, in which civilians built roadblocks and battled cartel members for towns in the rich farming area called the "Tierra Caliente," or "Hot Land."

The new rural forces are designed to be a way out of an embarrassing situation, in which elected leaders and law enforcement agencies lost control of the entire state to the pseudo-religious Knights Templar drug cartel. Efforts to retake control with federal police and military failed. Eventually government forces had to rely on the vigilantes because of their knowledge of where to find the cartel gunmen.

Since the commissioner, Alfredo Castillo, was named in January, federal forces have arrested or killed three of the main leaders of the Knights Templar. The fourth, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez, is in hiding and rumored to be in the rugged hills outside his hometown of Arteaga.

But the vigilante movement has been plagued by divisions, and its general council dismissed one of the founders, Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles, as its spokesman earlier this week because of an unauthorized video he released directed at President Enrique Pena Nieto. Another founder, Hipolito Mora, is in jail accused of the murder of two alleged rivals. Castillo told Mexico's Radio Formula on Friday that he is also investigating claims that Mireles was involved in the killing of five vigilantes near Lazaro Cardenas on April 27.

Meanwhile, no one is giving up their guns, even assault weapons prohibited under Mexican law.

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Armed men belonging to the Self-Defense Council of Michoacan (CAM) look out toward the sea as they g …

Vigilante Irineo Mendoza, 44, drove down from his mountain hometown of Aguililla to register his gun with authorities this week. He plans to take the weapon back home with him because, he says, the Knights Templar remain hidden in the mountains.

"These are the guns we are going to fight them with," Mendoza said.

Many predict little will change after Saturday.

"This (demobilization) agreement is just something to please the government," said Rene Sanchez, 22, a vigilante from the self-defense stronghold of Buenavista. "With them or without them, we are going to keep at it."

Related video

Mexico to legalize vigilantes battling drug cartel

The government wants local "self-defense" groups to register their weapons and join a new official police force.
Cynicism about program

State Dept.: Americans killed 2 Yemenis last month

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two officers at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen shot and killed a pair of armed Yemeni civilians during an attempted abduction of the Americans at a Sanaa business last month, the State Department said Friday.

The officers have left Yemen, Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said in a statement. No other details were provided.

Citing unidentified U.S. officials, The New York Times reported that the Americans were a CIA officer and a lieutenant colonel with the elite Joint Special Operations Command who were visiting a barber shop in an upscale district in Yemen's capital.

Within days of the shooting both Americans left Yemen with the approval of the Yemeni government, the newspaper reported. It said the shooting occurred on April 24.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa closed temporarily because of attacks on Westerners. A day before Tuesday's closure, gunmen opened fire on three French security guards working with the European Union mission in the Yemeni capital, killing one and wounding another.

The U.S. has waged a heavy campaign of drone strikes in Yemen against the group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. This month the Yemeni government has been waging an offensive against the militant group, and violence around the country has been on an upswing.

On Friday, gunmen believed to be al-Qaida militants ambushed the motorcade of Yemen's defense minister in the Mahfad region, officials said. The assassination attempt failed.

Later in the day, a security checkpoint near the presidential palace in Sanaa came under attack and at least two policemen died. A night earlier in Sanaa, two al-Qaida militants from Marib province were killed in clashes with security men, the Interior Ministry said.

U.S. officers killed armed civilians in Yemen

Two Americans shot and killed a pair of Yemenis during an attempted abduction in April, the State Department says.
Tensions rise

This handout picture taken by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) on April 13, 2014 shows leakage of radioactive water from a plastic tank (yellow) at TEPCO's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant at Okuma in Fukushima prefecture. (AFP Photo)

The amount of Cesium-137 leaked from the Fukushima nuclear power plant could be worse than expected, a Japanese research team has concluded. They believe 50 percent more of the radioactive material could have escaped into the atmosphere and seawater.

The original estimate of 13,600 terabecquerels was made by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the power station. However, a new report by Japanese researchers estimates that between 17,500 and 20,500 terabecquerels have been released, which is 50 percent higher than originally thought.

Michio Aoyama, a professor at Fukushima University’s Institute of Environmental Radioactivity who is part of the team, told Kyodo News that TEPCO is “underestimating” the amount of Cesium-137 that was released into the atmosphere and later fell into the sea.

Cesium-137 is a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission. However, it is problematic due to its ability to spread easily as it is highly soluble. It is also very harmful to humans and can cause cancer, while it has a half-life of around 30 years.

The team announced its findings at a conference in Vienna and it will come as another blow concerning their handling of the accident, which happened in 2011 after being triggered by a tsunami, following an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean off the Japanese coast.

AFP Photo / Toru Hanai

Three weeks ago, the manager of the plant, Akira Ono, said attempts to plug the leaks of radioactive water had failed.

“It's embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of the site where we don't have full control,” Ono told Reuters. Last year, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe attempted to assure the world that the situation at the stricken nuclear power plant was under control.

The Fukushima plant contains radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago. The main task now is to try and limit the fallout from the disaster, with Aoyama saying, “the release of radioactive cesium-137 has a big impact on the ocean,”since the Fukushima nuclear complex is near the coast.

TEPCO has consistently faced contaminated water leaks at the Fukushima plant. Water has to be pumped over the facilities’ stricken reactors to keep them from overheating, but this process creates large quantities of contaminated water which has to be stored in tanks on the site.

Ono acknowledged to the media that in TEPCO’s rush to deal with the stricken facility following the earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2011, the company may have made mistakes.

“It may sound odd, but this is the bill we have to pay for what we have done in the past three years,” he said. “But we were pressed to build tanks in a rush and may have not paid enough attention to quality. We need to improve quality from here.”

TEPCO will have to improve the quality of the tanks so the plant can survive the next 30 to 40 years of the decommissioning process, Ono said.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The president of Nigeria for weeks refused international help to search for more than 300 girls abducted from a school by Islamic extremists, one in a series of missteps that have led to growing international outrage against the government.

The United Kingdom, Nigeria's former colonizer, first said it was ready to help in a news release the day after the mass abduction on April 15, and made a formal offer of assistance on April 18, according to the British Foreign Office. And the U.S. has said its embassy and staff agencies offered help and were in touch with Nigeria "from day one" of the crisis, according to Secretary of State John Kerry.

Yet it was only on Tuesday and Wednesday, almost a month later, that President Goodluck Jonathan accepted help from the United States, Britain, France and China.

The delay underlines what has been a major problem in the attempt to find the girls: an apparent lack of urgency on the part of the government and military, for reasons that include a reluctance to bring in outsiders as well as possible infiltration by the extremists.

Jonathan bristled last week when he said U.S. President Barack Obama, in a telephone conversation about aid, had brought up alleged human rights abuses by Nigerian security forces. Jonathan also acknowledged that his government might be penetrated by insurgents from Boko Haram, the extremist group that kidnapped the girls. Last year, he said he suspected Boko Haram terrorists might be in the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of government along with the police and armed forces.

The waiting has left parents in agony, especially since they fear some of their daughters have been forced into marriage with their abductors for a nominal bride price of $12. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau called the girls slaves in a video this week and vowed to sell them.

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Activist Dr. Delois Blakely chants while holding a flower and the flag of Nigeria during a rally in …

"For a good 11 days, our daughters were sitting in one place," said Enoch Mark, the anguished father of two girls abducted from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School. "They camped them near Chibok, not more than 30 kilometers, and no help in hand. For a good 11 days."

The military has denied that it ignored warnings of the impending attacks. Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told The Associated Press the major challenge has been that some of the information given turned out to be misleading.

And Reuben Abati, one of Jonathan's presidential advisers, denied that Nigeria had turned down offers of help.

"That information cannot be correct," he said. "What John Kerry said is that this is the first time Nigeria is seeking assistance on the issue of the abducted girls."

In fact, Kerry has said Nigeria did not welcome U.S. help earlier because it wanted to pursue its own strategy. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons said Friday that it took "far too long" for Jonathan to accept U.S. offers of aid, and he is holding a hearing next week to examine what happened. A senior State Department official also said Friday that the U.S. offered help "back in April, more or less right away."

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Shehu Haruna reads a local newspaper with headlines declaring that the Military were alerted before …

"We didn't go public about it because the consensus was that doing so would make the Nigerians less likely to accept our help," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue concerns internal discussions between governments.

Nigeria is a country of 170 million in West Africa that receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid from the U.S. every year to address a rising insurgency in the north and growing tensions between Christians and Muslims. The northeast, where the girls were kidnapped, is remote and sparsely populated, far from the southern oil fields that help to power Africa's biggest economy.

The abductions came hours after a massive explosion in the Nigerian capital of Abuja killed at least 75 people, just a 15-minute drive away from Jonathan's residence and office. Chibok government official Bana Lawal told the AP that at about 11 p.m. on April 15, he received a warning via cell phone that about 200 heavily armed militants were on their way to the town.

Lawal alerted the 15 soldiers guarding Chibok, who sent an SOS to the nearest barracks about 30 miles away, an hour's drive on a dirt road. But help never came. The military says its reinforcements ran into an ambush.

The soldiers in Chibok fought valiantly but were outmanned and outgunned by the extremists. They then made their way to the Chibok girls school, where they captured dozens of girls. Police say 53 escaped on their own and 276 remain captive.

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Vendors sell local newspapers, with headlines stating the military was alerted four hours before abd …

The following day, Jonathan was photographed dancing at a political party rally in northern Kano city, and newspapers asked what their leader was doing partying when the country was in shock over the kidnappings. The Defense Ministry also announced that all but eight of the kidnapped girls had been freed, quoting the school principal. When the principal objected and demanded the military produce the rescued girls, it retracted its statement.

Frantic, some Chibok fathers made their way into the dangerous Sambisa Forest themselves, where the girls were last seen. But they turned back when villagers in the forest warned that Boko Haram would kill both them and their daughters.

The parents said the forest dwellers did not see any soldiers looking for the girls. And a state senator said that every time he gave the military information from people who had caught sight of the girls, the insurgents moved camp.

The military denied any collusion with the extremists and said it had been pursuing every lead. On May 1, it handed over responsibility for all information about the girls to Borno state officials.

For two weeks, Jonathan did not discuss the abducted girls in public. In his Easter Day message, he said only that his thoughts were with the families of those killed by insurgents and the dozens wounded by the Abuja bombing.

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Nigerian student Caleb Udeoha writes out a placard in support of the campaign for the release of the …

Last week, angry Nigerian women, including at least two mothers of abducted girls, took to the streets in Abuja to protest the government's failure to rescue the girls. Jonathan did not meet with them. Instead, he cancelled the weekly executive council meeting to offer condolences to his vice president, whose brother had died in a car crash.

His wife, Patience Jonathan, that night called a meeting to "investigate" what happened at Chibok, and said the kidnappings were engineered to hurt the name of her husband and his government. She accused the leader of the protests of being a Boko Haram member, detained her and released her after several hours.

Finally, at a Labor Day rally, Jonathan made a public pronouncement that "the cruel abduction of some innocent girls, our future mothers and leaders, in a very horrific and despicable situation in Borno state, is quite regrettable." He pledged, "We must find our girls."

On May 2, he set up a "largely fact-finding" committee to put together a strategy for rescuing the girls. Last Sunday, he raised eyebrows by saying on TV that he was "happy" the missing girls were "unharmed," but then admitting that the government had no new information from the abductors.

Jonathan also hinted Sunday at why, apart from national pride, initial offers of help may have been ignored. Even before the kidnappings, he complained, he had asked Obama in two telephone calls for help with intelligence on the extremists but received questions about alleged military abuses. Jonathan said he responded that the U.S. leader should "send someone to see what we are doing" on the ground, and "don't just say there is some matter of alleged abuses."

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Nigerian student Caleb Udeoha writes out a placard in support of the campaign for the release of the …

The Nigerian military is accused of widespread killings that go beyond members of Boko Haram. The Associated Press documented last year how thousands of people are dying in military detention, through the mortuary records of a Maiduguri hospital. And Amnesty International reported in October that hundreds of detainees were killed, tortured and starved, or even asphyxiated in overcrowded cells.

On May 4, Boko Haram abducted at least 11 more girls, aged 12 to 15, from two villages in the northeast. One of them managed to escape. And the Chibok girls are still missing, in a conservative society where girls who are raped can be stigmatized.

"It is very painful. I know my daughter, very obedient and very religious ... she wanted to be a doctor," Mark said. "I was eager to see my daughter with such a hope. Now....I don't know what I can explain to the world."

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Associated Press writers Lekan Oyekanmi and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report along with Lara Jakes and Darlene Superville in Washington and Gregory Katz in London.

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Nigeria refused help in hunt for kidnapped girls

Both the U.S. and Great Britain say they offered assistance to the country shortly after the crisis began.
Growing outrage