BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- First lady Michelle Obama and actress Kerry Washington stopped by Savoy Elementary School in southeast Washington, D.C., Friday to watch a song-and dance performance that included “Who Put the Bop” and a few other numbers.

Washington has adopted the school in the capital’s Anacostia neighborhood as part of the Turnaround Arts Initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, which will give grants to low-income schools, seeking to improve students’ overall performance through arts education. Besides the Scandal star, actor Forest Whitaker and actress Sarah Jessica Parker also adopted schools last month.

The first lady visited teacher Jacqueline Lyons’ pre-K class and freeze-danced with the students to James Brown’s “Gonna Have a Funky Good Time.” (Lyons reportedly asked the children who James Brown was; they responded, “The Godfather of Soul.”)

Obama delivered remarks from an auditorium stage before the song-and-dance performance, praising Washington for her involvement in the program and offering her up as an inspiration for the students.

“Kerry is a big-time star right now.  Big time. I mean, there is no bigger star right now than Kerry,” the first lady said. “She’s not just a beautiful, fashionable, talented woman, but she’s real inside, and there is beauty deep inside.  The fact that she is flying all over the country, but she comes to spend time with you guys and she does it for real … it shows more her love for all of you.  So, Kerry, love you, girl.  Keep it going.  Very proud of you."

“Kerry got a lot of rejections,” Obama added. “She spent a lot of time developing her craft.  She spent a lot of time practicing and working and trying out for things and having people tell her. ‘No,’ ‘No thank you,’ ‘You’re not good enough,’ ‘You’re not pretty enough.’  Could you imagine somebody telling Kerry that she wasn’t pretty enough, she wasn’t tall enough, she was too short?  That’s all performing is, is rejection. … But when you work hard and you invest thousands of hours in anything, you get better.  And that’s what you guys are learning here at Savoy.”

After the performance, Washington and the first lady greeted and congratulated the students and teachers.

In a pull-aside interview, Washington praised the Turnaround Arts program.

“It opens them up,” Washington said. “It helps them be front and center, not just on the stage but in their lives and in the classroom.”

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Glenn DePriest/Getty Images(MOSCOW) -- Just over a month after Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during a standoff with police, investigators said they have begun to piece together a picture of what he did during a six-month visit last year to Dagestan, a volatile region in southern Russia that is home to Tsarneav's parents as well as a violent struggle with Islamist insurgency.

American investigators believe Tsarnaev traveled to Dagestan seeking to make contact with militant groups, but for reasons that remain unclear, he was either unable or unwilling to join their ranks.

As they peel back the layers of the man accused of working with his younger brother to set off a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon April 15, investigators said they are finding a frustrated young man who felt out of place in the United States.

They said Tsarnaev appears to have been largely self-radicalized before arriving in Dagestan in search of a lifestyle that may not have met his expectations either, according to U.S. officials close to or briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The officials described Tsarnaev as a typical lone wolf.

While Tsarnaev's radicalization appears to have deepened during his time in Dagestan, investigators have not found a particular contact there or a "manifesto" on his computer or elsewhere that would explain why he and his younger brother Dzhokhar allegedly placed bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the officials said. Hours after Tamerlan was killed in the police shootout, Dzhokhar was apprehended and remains in custody.

While officials stressed the investigation is still ongoing, they have also found no signs that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was affiliated with an international terror organization like al Qaeda. Similarly, they have found no evidence to suggest he was directed to strike the U.S. by anyone he met in Dagestan. They have not found any signs of suspicious contacts during Tsarnaev's trips to visit his father's family in Chechnya, which has also battled an Islamist insurgency, and probes into Tsarnaev's father's rumored ties to Chechen security officials have also not revealed anything of concern, the officials said.

Tsarnev's closest known militant contact in Dagestan appears to have been a young man named Mahmud Mansur Nidal, officials said. The two were often seen together leaving a Salafist mosque, popular with fighters, in Makhachkala.

But while Nidal eventually went off to join a militant group -- what locals call going "into the forest" -- investigators say they have uncovered no evidence that Tsarnaev joined him. Nidal would eventually be killed in a police raid after returning to visit family.

Tsarnaev had also been in touch over the internet with a Russian-Canadian convert to Islam and suspected militant named William Plotnikov, but officials say they have no evidence to suggest the two ever met in person. Contrary to previous reporting, investigators say they do not believe Tsarnaev dropped off the map after Plotnikov was killed by police in July, shortly before Tsarnaev left Russia to return to the United States.

Investigators have also taken a hard look at Magomed Kartashov, Tsarnaev's distant cousin and the founder and leader of a Islamist group called the Union of the Just. The group is anti-American and campaigns for the application of Sharia, or Islamic law.

The cousins met several times during Tsarnaev's stay in Dagestan. Kartashov's lawyer, Patimat Abdullaeva, told ABC News by phone that the two did discuss religion, but she insisted Tsarnaev was the one with extremist views. Kartashov is in prison for an unrelated matter -- waving an Islamist flag during a wedding procession -- but his lawyer says Russian investigators have interviewed him there about his interactions with Tsarnaev.

Magomed Magomedov, another member of Union for the Just, told ABC News he also saw Tsarnaev several times last year, at the mosque and around Makhachkala, but could not remember their discussions about religion. He described Tsarnaev as being aloof and out of place in Dagestan.

"He was sticking out, it was obvious he is not local. He liked to draw attention with his expensive and fancy clothes. His haircut was something no one has seen before," he said.

That description matches the picture that investigators are painting of Tsarnaev. They said when Tsarnaev arrived in Dagestan, his flashy appearance and demeanor immediately set him apart.

He also apparently drew attention to himself by claiming to know more about Islam than he really did. According to investigators, Tsarnaev would often recite things he had read or seen on the Internet, often confusing those he was trying to impress.

"He was driving people crazy," one official said.

The officials said he was not as strict a practitioner of Islam as he claimed to be.

While his younger brother and alleged co-conspirator Dzhokhar has been described as the family pothead, one official said Tamerlan was also fond of marijuana, spending hours high on the couch in Massachusetts where he did not have a steady job.

The FBI has met with Tsarnaev's parents at least once. Officials said they are still planning to meet with nine or 10 other individuals, including with Tsarnaev's extended family, childhood friends, and contacts at the mosque. Those meetings were described as "tying up loose ends" rather than suspicious leads.

The American officials praised the unusual level of cooperation they've received from their Russian counterparts.

Often that relationship is plagued by lingering Cold War-era mistrust, but officials described how both sides have poured over linkage maps together, with the Russians sharing their knowledge and analysis, even suggesting individuals that the American side may want to interview. That, they say, is different from the past when the Russians offered little more than terse responses to American requests for information.

Indeed, that mistrust may have hindered early attempts to investigate Tsarnaev in 2011, when Russia asked the United States to look into what it suspected were Tsarnaev's plans to join extremist groups abroad. The FBI found nothing to support those claims, but said Russia did not follow up when the bureau asked for more information. That communication gap has become a target for a group of American lawmakers who plan to visit Russia next week to investigate the bombing.

"If there was a distrust, or lack of cooperation because of that distrust, between the Russian intelligence and the FBI, then that needs to be fixed and we will be talking about that," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats who is leading the Congressional delegation, told ABC News by telephone.

While the officials described their cooperation with the Russians as "unprecedented," they grumbled privately that they have been unable to do a methodical step-by-step investigation like they are used to doing in the U.S., or even in other countries where they have long-standing cooperation. American investigators from the FBI have been unable to travel to Dagestan without permission from the Russian authorities.

Still, they insist they have been able to confirm much of what they have been told by Russian government officials from what one official vaguely described as "other channels."

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Pennsylvania State Police(PHILADELPHIA) -- Missing University of Rhode Island student Matthew Royer has been located unharmed in North Carolina, according to authorities and his family, but how he got there remains a mystery.

Royer, 21, had been last seen on May 16 on the University of Rhode Island campus. The college junior had moved out of his apartment and returned the keys, according to ABC News' Philadelphia station WPVI.

Royer was on his way home to Skippack Township, Pa., for the summer where his family was waiting for him. He was supposed to report for work at a golf course the day after he returned home, but when he did not show up, his family reported him missing.

Royer was located on Thursday but details about what took him to North Carolina have not been released.

"The family requests that the media not contact them nor reveal his location as they wish to consider this a private and closed matter," Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement.

Royer was reunited with family members at an undisclosed location, according to ABC station WPVI.

"I had figured someone took him prisoner or something," Royer's grandfather Thomas Scully told ABC News Friday. "We were searching for him. We were afraid."

Scully, 91, said he did not know why Royer went to North Carolina or how he got there, but called his grandson a "bright kid."

"His mother knows where he is and he's alright," a relieved Scully said. "We don't know what he's doing now. He's making his own world."

After Royer was reported missing, authorities determined that he made it within about 30 miles of his Pennsylvania home before falling off the grid.

Royer sent a text message to his mother, Janet Royer, at around 6 p.m. on Thursday to say that he had overslept and was "about to leave."

From there, surveillance footage, debit card use and cell phone tower pings showed Royer stopping at a gas station in Rhode Island at 6:30 p.m., and near Allentown, Pa., at 2 a.m. on Friday and stopping at a gas station about 35 miles from his home a short time later, according to his family and authorities.

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ABC News(PHOENIX) -- The man in charge of the jury that convicted Jodi Arias of murder, but could not reach agreement on whether her life should be spared, described the process as "gut-wrenching" and said he and his fellow jurors struggled to contain their emotions.

"We couldn't allow ourselves to be emotional on the stand," jury foreman William Zervakos said Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America. "We couldn't allow ourselves to show emotion [but] it was a different story when we got back into the jury room."

Some of the most emotional moments during the five-month trial came over the 18 days when Arias, 32, took the stand and described her relationship with Travis Alexander, the ex-boyfriend whom she was convicted last week of stabbing and shooting to death in 2008.

Arias pled for her life also during the sentencing phase of the trial, but Zervakos says her long stint on the stand didn't help her case, especially when she was cross-examined by the prosecutor.

"I think 18 days hurt her. I think she was not a good witness...I think the way the prosecutor was with her, he's known for an aggressive style. I think it'd be difficult for anybody," Zervakos said. "I don't think I want to sit on the stand for 18 days."

"We're charged with going in presuming innocence, right, but she was on the stand for so long. I don't think it did her any good," Zervakos added. "There were so many contradicting stories."

Arias had been branded a liar by the prosecution because she initially denied killing Alexander, then claimed two years later that she killed him in self-defense, citing Alexander's physical and emotional abuse.

Zervakos, for one, believed Arias' story that she was abused in the relationship, but not that she killed Alexander in self-defense.

"I'm very sure in my own mind that she was mentally and verbally abused," he said. "Now is that an excuse? Of course not. Does it factor into the decisions that we make? It has to."

Arias' appearance -- from her blonde bombshell look while she was dating Alexander, to the more subdued look she presented in the courtroom with glasses, bangs and dark hair -- that captivated the media and the public throughout the trial, seemed to captivate the jurors inside the courtroom as well.

"When I looked in the courtroom for the first time and looked who the defendant was, it's hard to put that in perspective when you look at a young woman and think of the crime and then think of the brutality of the crime," Zervakos said. "It just doesn't wash so it's very difficult to divest yourself from the personal, from the emotional part of it."

After the jury's hung verdict was read Thursday, leaving the case still open, one juror mouthed, "I'm so sorry," toward Alexander's family and prosecutors.

Zervakos says he and other jurors struggled greatly with seeing Alexander's family every day in the courtroom.

"Until you're face-to-face with people that have gone through something like that, it's something you really can't put into words," he said on GMA. "I'm six feet away from somebody talking about a horrendous loss. If you can't feel that, then you have no emotion, no soul."

Arias' fate is now left up to the prosecutor, who will decide whether to retry the penalty phase. If he decides to try again for the death penalty, a new jury will be selected and both the prosecution and defense will present evidence and arguments over what sentence Arias should receive.

The retrial, in which Arias can either be sentenced to death or to life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole, would begin July 18.

The prosecutor's office has not yet decided what it plans to do.

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ISAF via Getty Images(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) -- The woman at the center of the sex scandal that led to David Petraeus' resignation from the CIA has spoken publicly for the first time about the affair and apologized for the "harm" she caused to the families involved.

"I have remorse for the harm that this has caused, the sadness this has caused in my family and other families," Paula Broadwell said in her first interview with ABC News' affiliate WSOC in Charlotte, N.C., since news of the extramarital affair broke last November.

Broadwell met Petraeus, 60, while she was a graduate student at Harvard University and working on a dissertation about Petraeus. Broadwell wrote the biography on Petraeus titled All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. As Petraeus' personal biographer, she enjoyed tremendous access to the decorated war hero and former four-star general.

"I 'm the first to admit I've made mistakes, and I'm regretful for the pain I've caused, but at some point again you pick yourself up face forward and keep moving," Broadwell said.

Broadwell said it was support from loved ones that got her through the public scrutiny she faced in the aftermath of the affair. Broadwell, who lives in Charlotte with her husband and two kids, spends her time supporting veterans and wounded warriors.

"I'm blessed with family, community. That's been a great part of my rehabilitation ... and wonderful organizations that realize that even if you've made mistakes in life you can still contribute and pick up, dust off and move on," she said.

The extramarital affair was uncovered when Florida socialite Jill Kelley told an FBI agent that she received harassing emails from an unknown source. The emails eventually traced back to Broadwell and ultimately uncovered evidence of her affair with Petraeus.

Broadwell was stripped of her military security clearance after a federal probe alleged she was storing classified military material at her home.

"I'm not focused on the past," Broadwell said. "It was a devastating period for our family. We still have some healing to do. We're very focused on how can we continue to contribute and use this for the greater good to do something good in the next chapter."

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intl. Inst. for Species Exploration at Arizona State Univ.(PHOENIX) -- What's new in animal species? Plenty, according to the sixth annual Top 10 list by the Institute at Arizona State University that includes everything from a glow-in-the-dark cockroach to an "Old World" monkey with a bright blue buttocks.

"Through the top 10, we are really just trying to raise awareness about how many species there are on the planet," Quentin Wheeler, founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE), told ABC News. "On average, 18,000 species a year are discovered. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't."

Wheeler said there are an estimated 10 to 12 million living species, but only about 2 million have been discovered. This year's top 10 list was whittled down from more than 140 nominees.

While the institute simply compiles a list, "These discoveries are actually made by professionals and amateurs around the world," he said.

The 2013 release by the IISE showcases, among many impressive things, the discovery of the world's smallest vertebrate -- a tiny, 7 millimeter frog found in Papua, New Guinea. An image released by the institute shows the frog taking up about a third of the space on the face of a U.S. dime. The largest known vertebrate in the world is the blue whale, measuring 85 feet long.

A new type of luminescent (or glow-in-the-dark) cockroach specimen was discovered in Ecuador. Though the species may have already been extinct for some time, Wheeler said it's believed that the cockroach would mimic the toxic luminescent clicking beetle to ward off predators. This cockroach is one of more than a dozen species of luminescent cockroaches discovered since 1999.

Another fascinating finding was a new species of monkey, the lesula, only the second new species of monkey to be discovered in Africa in the last 28 years. The IISE said the lesula has been known to the people of Congo, where it was discovered by scientists, but the species was never recorded. This species of monkey has eyes that observers say look human, with brown coloring, and males have large, bare patches of skin on the buttocks and testicles that is a brilliant blue.

But the most interesting discovery may be that of the Semachrysa jade -- a green lacewing. What is believed to be the first ever photo of the insect was taken by Malaysian photographer Hock Ping Guek, though unbeknownst to him at the time. A California scientist happened upon the image of the lacewing on Guek's Flickr and asked him to mail the specimen to London's Natural History Museum where it was eventually identified registered as a new species.

Wheeler explained to ABC News that some scientists are predicting half of the world's species could be gone by the end of the century (a type of extinction that last happened at the time of the dinosaurs), so furthering these discoveries and spreading interest through the yearly top 10 list is important.

In a statement attached to this year's list of species, Wheeler pressed the urgency of exploring now: "We are calling for a NASA-like mission to discover 10 million species in the next 50 years. This would lead to discovering countless options for a more sustainable future while securing evidence of the origins of the biosphere."

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A portion of the Interstate 5 freeway over the Skagit River in Skagit County, Wash., collapsed May 23, 2013, sending cars and people into the water, authorities said. (Tiffany Matson)(SKAGIT COUNTY, Wash.) -- A portion of an interstate highway bridge in Washington state collapsed Thursday night, sending cars and people into the water, authorities said.

The collapse occurred on the Interstate 5 freeway over the Skagit River in Skagit County, Wash., about two hours north of Seattle.

"N/B and S/B lanes of I-5 Skagit River Bridge collapsed," Washington State Trooper Mark Francis posted on Twitter, shortly after the 7 p.m. collapse. "People and cars in water."

Three people were injured during the collapse. Two people rescued from the water, who were taken to Skagit Valley Hospital in Mount Vernon, Wash., were suffering from hypothermia.

Officials were looking into reports of an oversized load "immediately" causing the collapse, said Travis Phelps of the Washington State Department of Transportation and Washington State Patrol.

"We're looking at the cause being an oversized, over-height vehicle, striking critical portions of this bridge, causing it to collapse," he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said they will send a team to investigate the collapse.

Clean up efforts will take several days to weeks, according to Phelps. The bridge sees 77,000 cars per day, and Phelps said they are expecting significant congestion until the bridge is fixed.

"We inspect our bridge every two years. We're not going to let anybody drive on a bridge that is deemed unsafe," Phelps said.

The bridge was last inspected in November 2012 and deemed safe, Washington State Department of Transportation spokesman Bart Treece told ABC News.

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Win McNamee/Getty Images(DALLAS) -- The Boy Scouts of America Thursday voted to lift its longtime ban on admitting gay Scouts but will continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership roles.

The vote by its 1,400 national membership came as no surprise to gay rights advocates, who hailed it as a first step to ending discriminatory practices in the 103-year-old organization.

The ruling by secret ballot at a national convention in Dallas means that mothers like Jennifer Tyrrell, who is a lesbian, will still be excluded from the Boy Scouts.

Tyrrell was let go as an Ohio den leader of her 8-year-old son Cruz's Cub Scout pack last year because she was gay, but she applauds what she sees as a "temporary" policy.

"It's a great first step, and the fact that they've gone to the Supreme Court to defend the right to discriminate shows the progress we've made," the 33-year-old mother of four told ABC News.

"I am encouraged because we definitely are in it for the long haul," said Tyrrell. "Once the ban is lifted on youth, they will see their fears are unfounded. There are going to be [gay] boys who want to continue as leaders. It's just a matter of time."

She said she would continue to fight for other gay families who wanted to be part of the Scouts.

But others, such as former Eagle Scout James Dale, who brought the lawsuit against the Boy Scouts that made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2000, said the partial lifting of the ban was "unacceptable."

In 1991, he was fired as an assistant Scoutmaster of a New Jersey troop when he came out of the closet in college. He lost the Supreme Court case by one vote.

Growing up, Dale said he found the Boy Scouts to be "one of the organizations that were the most welcoming and accepting."

But today, he sees it as an "anti-gay organization" that is out of step with a culture that is rapidly accepting same-sex families.

"You can have gay Scouts, [but] you can't have gay Scout leaders or anyone over the age of 18," said Dale, who's now 42 and works in advertising in New York City.

"It's still a damning and destructive message that they're going to send to young people. They will go from celebrated Eagle Scout when they're 17 years old to basically not being welcome anymore once the clock strikes 12 and they're 18 years old."

"It's kind of fascinating that the Boy Scouts of America are still so stuck," he said. "They're willing to destroy the organization. Over some...small-minded values."

About 70 percent of all local troops are supported by religious groups, according to the Boy Scouts, and in recent months, some have backed away from their opposition, according to the gay advocacy group GLAAD.

The Mormon church, which sponsors most of the troops, has now endorsed allowing gay Scouts. The Roman Catholic Church has taken no official position. The National Jewish Committee on Scouting, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Metropolitan Community Church all urged full repeal of the ban.

But many other Christian groups stood firm in protest, citing religious freedom and the previous Supreme Court decision.

Nearly 19,000 past or current members of the Scouts signed a petition from Alliance Defending Freedom, which was delivered to the Boy Scouts this week, urging it to keep the ban.

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