At least 13 killed when church bus and truck crash

At least 13 killed when church bus and truck crash

UVALDE, Texas

A small shuttle bus carrying Texas church members home from a retreat collided head-on with a pickup truck, killing 13 people and injuring two others Wednesday on a two-lane highway in southwestern Texas, officials said.

All of the victims who died were senior adults who attended First Baptist Church of New Braunfels, Texas. A total of 14 senior adults were on the bus and the driver was the only person in the pickup when the vehicles collided on U.S. 83 outside Garner State Park in northern Uvalde County, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Conrad Hein and a church statement. The area is about 75 miles west of San Antonio.

Hein said one other bus passenger and the pickup driver were injured and hospitalized. It was not immediately clear what caused the collision about 120 miles from the church, where the members were headed.

Man swallowed by python, villagers and reports say

JAKARTA, Indonesia

A 25-year-old Indonesian man has been swallowed whole by a python on the island of Sulawesi, villagers and news reports said.

A six-minute video on the website of the Tribun Timur publication shows villagers slicing open the python’s carcass to reveal the legs and torso of the dead victim, named Akbar.

Junaedi, the secretary of Salubiro village in West Sulawesi province, told The Associated Press that villagers began searching for Akbar on Monday night after realizing he hadn’t returned from working on his palm oil crops the previous day.

Junaedi said Wednesday that the search party found scattered palm oil fruit, a picking tool and a boot, and then spotted the engorged 23-foot-long reticulated python.

Administration seeks delay on climate-plan ruling

WASHINGTON

Hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to undo his predecessor’s efforts to curb climate change, his administration has asked a federal appeals court to postpone ruling on lawsuits over Obama-era restrictions on carbon emissions.

The regulations – known as the Clean Power Plan – have been the subject of long-running legal challenges by about two dozen mostly Republican-led states and industry groups that profit from burning coal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments in the case last year and could issue a ruling any time.

Zinke: Border wall ‘complex,’ faces challenges

WASHINGTON

Geographic and physical challenges – including the Rio Grande and threatened wildlife – will make it difficult to build the “big, beautiful wall” that President Donald Trump has promised on the U.S.-Mexico border, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Wednesday.

Building a wall “is complex in some areas,” including Big Bend National Park and along the river, which twists through nearly half of the 2,000-mile border, Zinke said.

Hundreds of species live within 30 miles of the border, including threatened jaguars and Mexican gray wolves. The Trump administration is poised to relax protections for the jaguars, which live in northern Mexico and parts of the southwestern United States, to make it easier to build the wall.

Associated Press