Adam Mayes, the Tennessee fugitive charged with kidnapping two young girls and suspected of killing their mother and older sister killed himself Thursday as a SWAT team approached the location he was holding the two girls at, the FBI confirmed. The girls, Alexandria Bain, 12, and Kyliyah Bain, 8, were said to be safe in en route to a local emergency room, a Mississippi’s Union County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards told local media. Mayes was last seen two weeks ago and was said to have believed that the Bain girls were his daughters. The girl’s mother and sister were confirmed dead late last week, having been shot outside of Mayes’s home in Guntown, Miss.

It’s not like the vice president had never spoken out of turn before. But Joe Biden still apologized to President Obama for his candid statements about his comfort level with gay marriage three days before the president made his own statement saying he supported it. The apology took place in the Oval Office, moments before the president voiced his views on ABC. Obama said Biden was, “a little bit over his skis,” but made the comments “out of generosity of spirit.”

JPMorgan Chase has disclosed $2 billion in losses from a trading group’s credit investments, causing the bank’s share price to plummet in after-hours trading. On a conference call, CEO Jamie Dimon blamed the losses on “egregious mistakes” in betting on the investments. These losses are expected to take a toll on the bank’s larger earnings, with the corporate group expected to lose $800 million in the second quarter, the company said today in its quarterly securities filings. JPMorgan had previously estimated that it would report a net income of roughly $200 million. The final report will depend on whether the company can recover, though Dimon said things could “easily get worse.”

Little is known about the man who infiltrated al Qaeda in Yemen and ultimately foiled an underwear bomb plot targeting a U.S.-bound plane. But a few details have emerged about the agent in recent days. He is of Arab descent, has lived in the United Kingdom for many years, and holds a British passport. He was originally recruited by Saudi counterterrorism agencies because he had fallen in with a group of jihadists, which gave him the background to fit in with the terror network.

It’s not a new drug, but Truvada may help stop the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and an FDA panel is urging that it be approved for use as a preventative medication. Truvada is currently used as part of a cocktail of drugs to treat HIV, but studies have shown that it can also reduce infection rates. Doctors are hailing the research as a “huge milestone,” saying it could lead to the end of the AIDS epidemic, which has claimed more than 30 million lives worldwide. The FDA is expected to make a decision by June 15.

Republican leaders have been largely silent on gay marriage following President Obama’s support of the issue Wednesday. Neither Mitt Romney nor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell mentioned it on Thursday. House Speaker John Boehner said, “The president can talk about it all he wants. I’m going to stay focused on what the American people want us to stay focused on, and that’s jobs,” he said. But while most Republicans remained muted on the topic, right-wing organizations had their say. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said, “The missing piece for Mitt Romney was the intensity of the core conservative voter. The president handed him that piece yesterday if he wants to take it and put it in place.”

Looks as though the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops got a bad batch of Girl Scouts cookies. The Catholic group announced Thursday that it was launching an official inquiry into the group, saying that some of the program materials used are offensive and that some of the organization's stances directly conflict with the church teachings. The Girls Scouts are denying such claims, though many of their troops are church-sponsored. Specifically, the church has noted a tie to Planned Parenthood and the use of a play that it says mocks Catholics. A Girl Scouts spokeswoman said that said complaints have been raised before, saying the “distortions get repeated over and over” again.

A lesbian seeking a marriage license for herself and her partner in Winston-Salem, N.C., was rejected Thursday because of the state’s law banning same-sex marriage. She and another person were arrested when they refused to leave the government office that hands out licenses. The arrest marked a day of civil disobedience as several other gay couples joined the women there two days after North Carolina voted to ban gay marriage. “Hopefully one day you’ll be able to say yes,” a woman told the clerks who were forced to turn the couples—nine of them in total—away. Campaign for Southern Equality organized the push for licenses by same-sex couples following President Obama’s revelation Wednesday that he supported such marriages.

It was always highly unlikely Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio was going down without a fight. The prickly Arpaio lambasted the Department of Justice for filing a civil lawsuit against him, calling it a political move and a witch hunt. The DOJ released a report in December stating that Arpaio had violated the civil rights of Latinos in his jurisdiction by racially profiling them and unlawfully detaining them during raids. Federal officials tried to negotiate a settlement with Arpaio, but the talks fizzled after he refused to accept an independent monitor.

Will Liz Lemon get married? NBC is renewing 30 Rock for a seventh and final season, according to TV Fanatic, and is also bringing back Parenthood, another popular comedy, for a fourth season. And despite threatening to leave the network, Alec Baldwin will indeed return as Jack Donaghy for the seventh season. The network will announce its full 2012-13 schedule on Monday and picked up a bunch of pilots in recent weeks, including Go On starring Matthew Perry and the Jimmy Fallon-produced Guys With Kids.

Actress and comedienne Anna Faris is getting to work on her goal to “populate” the world: she announced that she and her husband, Parks & Recreation’s Chris Pratt, are expecting their first child in the fall. Faris, 35, has said she would “love to have eight kids” and said she was eager to get started. Faris and Pratt have been married for three years, since they met on the set of Take Me Home Tonight. She co-stars in Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming comedy The Dictator.

Although most of Athens remained riveted by the political upheaval, the city hosted one of its oldest traditions: the lighting of the Olympic torch for the 2012 games. The torch was lit Thursday in Olympia, before it will travel 8,000 miles—most of it throughout Britain—before arriving in London on July 27. As per tradition, the torch was lit by solar power, using a parabolic mirror to redirect the sunlight and therefore lighting the flame with the purest light available.

A man who is suspected to have killed a Tennessee woman and her eldest daughter before kidnapping her two younger daughters apparently believed the younger sisters were his daughters, a relative said on Thursday. Adam Mayes, last seen two weeks ago, and his wife, Teresa, have been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jo Ann Bains, 31, and her daughter, Adrienne, 14, whose bodies were found outside Mayes’s home in Guntown, Mississippi. Mayes’s wife told investigators that he killed Jo Ann and Adrienne so he could kidnap Alexandria, 12, and Kyliyah, 8, who are still missing.

An Indonesian air force official has reportedly located the wreckage of a Russian plane that went missing Wednesday morning. The Sukhoi SuperJet-100, with 48 people on board, left Jarkata during a commercial exercise with reporters, potential buyers, and engineers. The plane was Russia’s newest commercial jetliner. Wreckage from the plane was located on the side of a cliff on Mount Salak in West Java province, where the elevation is around 5,000 feet. The plane fell off the radar 21 minutes after taking off, the pilot requesting to drop from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet, though inclement weather was not believed to be a factor.

Charlotte seemed like a good convention idea in 2010. Democrats, angry over the passage of the controversial anti-gay marriage “Amendment One,” have begun petitioning to move the 2012 convention from Charlotte, although Democratic officials insisted on Wednesday that there won’t be change in location. Nearly 20,000 people have signed a petition called “Move the Convention” from the New York-based Gay Marriage USA, calling for the convention to be in a “state that upholds equality and liberty, and treats ALL citizens equally.”

Pop star Rihanna was reportedly rushed to the hospital early Wednesday morning following the Met Gala in New York. The star was treated for "exhaustion" and "dehydration," which have been known to be Hollywood-speak for something far more serious. The singer was reportedly released after a short stay and cleared to fly home to Los Angeles Wednesday afternoon. Rihanna had said she wasn't feeling well a few weeks ago, when she hosted Saturday Night Live, though others worry her partying might be getting out of control. Usually an active Twitter user, Rihanna didn’t post for much of Wednesday before tweeting out an image of her arm hooked up to an IV to her followers confirming she had been hospitalized.

German chancellor Angela Merkel insisted Thursday that the only option for the European Union is to implement the austerity measures passed last year, and growth can only come through debt reduction, not more borrowing. “Growth through debt would throw us back to the beginning of the crisis,” Merkel said at the Bundestag. While a Guardian poll shows that a majority of Brits think it’s inevitable Greece will leave the euro, French bank BNP Paribus calculated that a Greek exit from the euro will immediately wipe 20 percent out of Greek GDP and send inflation soaring 40 to 50 percent. But things were looking brighter in another troubled EU country: Spain, whose stocks rose Thursday on the news that the government planned to nationalize the country’s fourth-largest bank, Bankia SA.

Federal prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case on Thursday against John Edwards, but one person in particular is missing from the witness list: Rielle Hunter, the woman at the center of the case. Legal experts have said prosecutors should not call Edwards’s former mistress, who is the mother of his four-year-old daughter, unless she can directly link the money Edwards gave her to donations from two wealthy donors, Fred Baron and Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. Defense attorneys are expected to ask Judge Catherine Eagles to dismiss the charges after the government wraps up its case.

President Obama's big announcement yesterday has seemingly inspired other politicians around the world to speak out about gay marriage. In a statement Thursday, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he's "not personally opposed to gay marriage," having previously declined to publicly state his opinion on the subject. Same-sex couples in New Zealand can currently form civil unions. 

Escaped Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng said Thursday that local officials are “going crazy with reprisals” against his family—and his sister-in-law and nephew have both been detained. “They’ve started taking revenge,” said Chen, who is being treated at a Beijing hospital for injuries suffered during his escaped. Chen said he has recently spoken with his elderly mother, but otherwise communication with his family has been unreliable. Meanwhile, the University of Washington offered a fellowship to Chen, as did New York University, as he awaits for approval to travel to the U.S.  Chen, who is blind, escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the U.S. embassy, greatly embarrassing Chinese officials and possibly causing a diplomatic standoff between the U.S. and China.

Andy Coulson, the former communications director for British prime minister David Cameron, took the stand Thursday in the Leveson Inquiry, the government’s investigation into the illegal wiretapping at several top News. Corp tabloids in London. Coulson was the editor of the News of the World when it hired the investigative reporters who hacked the phones of aides to Prince Harry and Prince William, and continued to receive payments from Murdoch after he went to work for Cameron. In the hearing Thursday, Coulson was grilled about his connections to various political figures and his severance pay.

Looks like there’s no hard feelings between POTUS and VPOTUS. President Obama said Thursday that he was not upset that Vice President Biden’s “jumped the gun” by endorsing gay marriage before Obama had planned. “He probably got out a little bit over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” Obama said. Obama said “sure” he would have liked to have made the announcement on his own terms, but “all’s well that ends well.” Obama said his hesitation on the issue was because he didn’t want to “nationalize the issue,” and he admitted that supporting gay marriage could be risky for the 2012 election.

Mitt Romney apologized Thursday for his behavior during his teenage years after a report came out in The Washington Post that painted him as a bully during his prep-school days. According to several former classmates, Mitt, so distressed by one quiet, oft-teased, presumed gay student’s unconventional hairdo, led a mission to capture the boy and cut his hair as the boy “his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help.” Romney said he does not recall the specific incident, but he said that he “participated in a lot of dumb hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far.”

Within 90 minutes of the impromptu announcement that he thinks "same-sex couples should be able to get married,' President Obama raised $1 million. Now he's on his way to George Clooney's Hollywood home for "the biggest fundraiser so far to date—ever," which is expected to bring in $15 million for Obama's reelection campaign. 

With Mother's Day around the corner, Time magazine posted the provocative cover of its latest issue on Twitter Thursday morning, which features an attractive 26-year-old mother breastfeeding her 3-year-old son and reads, “Are You Mom Enough?” The cover immediately went viral, with some critics expressing shock about the concept of “attachment parenting” that the breastfeeding mothers photographed in the magazine subscribe to, and others berating the sensationalist nature of the pictures for effectively exploiting, rather than advocating, the concept. Both mother and child are standing on the cover photo, a position that photographer Martin Schoeller hoped would “underline the point that this was an uncommon situation.”

Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s Radical Left Coalition, said Thursday that Greece must stay in the euro and that an exit would cause problems for both his country and the whole of Europe. Tsipras, who is struggling to put together a coalition to lead Greece, also argued that the austerity measures put in place by international creditors are far too intense and will eventually destroy the euro if they are not revised. He also warned that stopping European financial assistance to Greece would damage social cohesion in Europe.

Julian White announced Thursday through his lawyer that he is retiring from his post as the director of the Florida A&M band. White and the band have been scrutinized since the November 2011 death of drum major Robert Champion after a hazing incident. White was temporarily suspended but was allowed to return to work by December. Eleven band members are charged with felony hazing, while two others were slapped with misdemeanors relating to Champion’s death. The band is also under investigation for its finances.

Twin explosions rocked Damascus on Thursday, killing at least 55 people and injuring 300, according to Syrian state television. The blasts occurred near an intelligence building for the security forces, and they ripped the façade off the building although the structure of the building remained intact. There were reports of bodies strewn in the streets, and the explosions could be heard throughout the capital city. The Syrian government blamed “terrorists” for the attack, but the leading opposition group said the Syrian government itself is to blame, but a retired Lebanese army general suggested al Qaeda or a satellite group may be to blame.