USA

Federal investigators have identified a design flaw in the steel plates of the Interstate 35W Minneapolis bridge as the cause of its collapse last year, according to an unnamed congressional official with access to an investigation. The Aug. 1 collapse killed 13 people.

Meat and milk from cloned animals is safe for human consumption, according to a 900-page safety report released Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration. Even so, foods from cloned animals aren't expected on store shelves anytime soon because of the higher cost of the cloned livestock, which can be as much as $20,000 per head.

MySpace, the leading social-networking website, pledged Monday to take steps to protect young people from sexual predators who lie about their age to young victims and from cyberbullies who send threatening messages. The initiative calls for creating a task force of industry professionals to oversee the effort.

To fix roads and bridges and expand the national rail network the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission recommended Tuesday raising

federal gasoline taxes by as much as 40 cents per gallon over five years. The current tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. The commission, formed by Congress in 2005, concluded that simply patching aging infrastructure is "no longer acceptable."

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has stepped up efforts to find immigrants behind bars and expects to deport more than 200,000 people serving sentences this year, according to The New York Times. Many have lost their legal-resident status because of criminal convictions.

The US intercepted 210 metric tons of Latin American cocaine last year, down from 262 tons in 2006, American officials said Monday, expressing concern that drug cartels were finding new ways to elude detection, especially at sea.

Purdue University researchers have announced plans to collaborate this summer with Chrysler LLC on an innovative tree-planting project to clean up a polluted oil-storage site near Kokomo, Ind. Transgenic poplars have been developed in the lab to absorb trichloroethylene, the most common groundwater pollutant on Superfund sites. The engineered trees are expected to break down the toxic substance.