AP Top News at 3:16 a.m. EDT

Associated Press

MOKPO, South Korea (AP) — The confirmed death toll from South Korea's ferry disaster rose past 50 on Sunday as divers finally found a way inside the sunken vessel, quickly discovering more than a dozen bodies in what almost certainly is just the beginning of a massive and grim recovery effort. About 250 people are still missing from the ship, the vast majority of them high school students who had been on a holiday trip. Anguished families, waiting on a nearby island and fearful they might be left without even their loved ones' bodies, have vented their fury, blocking the prime minister's car during a visit and attempting a long protest march to the presidential Blue House.

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal's authorities temporarily halted climbing on Mount Everest while search teams dug through snow and ice Sunday for three Sherpa guides missing in the deadliest avalanche on the world's highest peak that killed 13 others. A section of the route over the dreaded Khumbu Icefall, a climbing pass where the avalanche swept a group of guides early Friday, has totally collapsed and a new trail has to be dug, ropes fixed and aluminum ladders laid over the crevasses before climbing can resume, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — What's happening in this Wyoming resort town might be better described as a land creep than a landslide, but the lack of speed has not hindered the sheer power of the moving earth. Over the past two weeks, a piece of East Gros Ventre Butte has slowly collapsed toward the west side of Jackson — shearing one hillside home in half, threatening to devour several others and looming ever more ominously over a cluster of businesses below.

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors waited years to recall nearly 335,000 Saturn Ions for power steering failures despite getting thousands of consumer complaints and more than 30,000 warranty repair claims, according to government documents released Saturday. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government's auto safety watchdog, also didn't seek a recall of the compact car from the 2004 through 2007 model years even though it opened an investigation more than two years ago and found 12 crashes and two injuries caused by the problem.

PERTH, Australia (AP) — A robotic submarine looking for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane continued to dive Sunday after completing about half of its search on the bottom of the Indian Ocean with no luck, prompting an official to express the urgent need to find something that can help solve the mysterious disappearance six weeks ago. The Bluefin 21 unmanned sub began its eighth trip into the depths off the coast of western Australia. Its search area forms a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) circle around the location of an underwater signal that was believed to have come from the aircraft's black boxes before their batteries died. The sonar scan of the seafloor in that area is expected to be completed in five to seven days, the search center said.

SCARBOROUGH, Maine (AP) — John C. Houbolt, an engineer whose contributions to the U.S. space program were vital to NASA's successful moon landing in 1969, has died. He was 95. Houbolt died Tuesday at a nursing home in Scarborough, Maine, of complications from Parkinson's disease, his son-in-law Tucker Withington, of Plymouth, Mass., confirmed Saturday.

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine on Saturday prepared to celebrate Orthodox Easter at barricades outside government offices seized in nearly a dozen cities, despite an international agreement to disarm and free the premises. In Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, a co-chairman of the self-appointed Donetsk People's Republic, which is demanding broader regional powers and closer ties to Russia, vowed that insurgents will continue occupying government offices until the new pro-Western Kiev government is dismissed.

JENKINTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The mayor of a small town in the Philadelphia suburbs can offer a guarantee to his constituents: He won't be going to bed hungry. Jenkintown Mayor Ed Foley, in a gut-busting campaign to draw attention to the tiny borough's varied restaurant scene, set out to visit all 24 of them on Saturday, starting with a pre-dawn visit to IHOP.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Kevin Durant put a dazzling end to Memphis' gritty comeback. The Grizzlies erased most of a 25-point deficit before Durant, the league's scoring champion, got hot. He scored 13 of his 33 points in the fourth quarter to help the Oklahoma City Thunder defeat Memphis 100-86 on Saturday night in the opening game of their first-round playoff series.

TRES RIOS, Costa Rica (AP) — On a warm spring day, Floribeth Mora was in her bed waiting to die from a seemingly inoperable brain aneurysm when her gaze fell upon a photograph of Pope John Paul II in a newspaper. "Stand up," Mora recalls the image of the pope saying to her. "Don't be afraid."