Title: Tennessee crash
1Tennessee crash
2A church bus involved in a deadly three-vehicle
collision in eastern Tennessee was carrying a
group of seniors on their way back home from a
religious conference. The Wednesday crash, which
occurred at about 2 p.m., may have been caused
when the bus blew a front tire, crossed a grassy
median of Interstate 40, clipped an SUV and
collided with a tractor-trailer. Eight people
were killed Six on the eastbound bus one of
three occupants of the SUV, and the
tractor-trailer driver.
3In Other News
- A small but growing group of House Republicans is
increasingly worried about the fallout from the
government shutdown and say it's time for Speaker
John Boehner to allow a simple vote on a spending
bill. There were no apparent breakthroughs during
a midweek meeting at the White House between
congressional leaders and President Barack Obama.
Descriptions of the meeting ran the gamut. Obama
called the session "useful" House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi said it was "worthwhile" and
Boehner cast it as a "polite conversation."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, however,
called it "unproductive. - At least 88 people, including a pregnant woman
and two children, died when a boat capsized and
caught fire off the island of Lampedusa in Italy.
Coast guards were able to save at least 163
people, and the rescue operation is ongoing. The
boat is thought to have been carrying up to 500
people aboard. Lampedusa is just 113 kilometers
(70 miles) from Tunisia and has been the first
point of entry to Europe for more than 200,000
refugees and irregular migrants who have passed
through the island since 1999. In recent years,
the Italian Coast Guard says it has been involved
in the rescue of more than 30,000 refugees around
the island. - In Canada this week a backhoe uncovered an
extremely rare find, the fossil of a dinosaur
millions of years old. A construction worker hit
it while clearing a site for an oil pipeline.
Paleontologists usually find fossils jumbled up,
broken apart, crushed and spread out over a large
area, not in one piece like this one.