The measles outbreak got so bad in Manila, Philippines, that San Lazaro Hospital had to set up tents in the parking lot, the courtyard and even the landing at the top of the stairs outside the pediatric ward to house patients.

"This ward would only accommodate 50 patients," says Dr. Ferdinand de Guzman, the head of family medicine at the hospital. "But at the height of the outbreak, [there were] 300 patients per ward."

Brittany Smith grew up mostly in Detroit, earning a master's degree in public health from the University of Michigan. But when she and her then-boyfriend, Sam, began their careers, they ran into roadblocks. It was 2013, and Detroit was still struggling from the effects of the Great Recession. Sam Smith couldn't find full-time work. His job as a college career counselor wrapped when the campus where he worked shut down.

They began looking for an out.

National attention is turning to issues that have been central to Kirsten Gillibrand's years of public service: equality and reproductive rights.

There comes a moment in almost any performance by vibraphonist Joel Ross when he seems to slip free of standard cognitive functions and into a bodacious flow state. Invariably, he's in the midst of a heated improvisation. Maybe he's bouncing on his heels, or bobbing like a marionette. His mallets form a blur, in contrast to the clarity of the notes they produce. The deft precision of his hammering inspires a visual comparison to some tournament-level version of Whac-A-Mole.

Songs about small towns are plentiful. Some of the best ones — Dolly Parton's "My Tennessee Mountain Home," John Prine's "Paradise," Kacey Musgraves' "Merry Go 'Round" and Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown" — are powerful triggers of memory, often rich in storytelling detail with a wide lens to tough truths and deep secrets.

Central American migrants who were detained in a Border Patrol holding facility in McAllen, Texas, described atrocious living conditions and widespread sickness.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection shut down its largest migrant processing center in South Texas for 24 hours on Tuesday after 32 detainees got sick with the flu. This is the same location where a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy became sick, and died Monday at another Border Patrol station.

A devastating series of storms late Wednesday spawned multiple tornadoes that caused extensive damage to several buildings and led to at least three deaths in Missouri.

The National Weather Service confirmed that Missouri's capital, Jefferson City, was hit by a "violent tornado." The tornado prompted an unrelenting stream of 911 calls, with some reporting serious injuries.

At least three people were killed earlier outside Joplin, in the southwest of the state.

Nearly 300 coal-fired power plants have been "retired" since 2010 according to the Sierra Club, a trend that continues despite President Trump's support for coal. That's left many communities worried those now idled places will simply be mothballed.