Puzzling signs cited in fatal bus plunge

July 9, 2008

The National Transportation Safety Board said confusing highway signs led to a bus crash last year that killed five college baseball players in Atlanta. In addition to criticizing the Georgia Department of Transportation for the signs, the board cited driver error and a lack of safety features such as seat belts as contributing factors. Investigators said the bus driver in the March 2 accident thought he was staying in an high-occupancy vehicle lane when he drove onto an elevated exit ramp, plowing through a stop sign at highway speed and hurtling from an overpass onto the interstate below. Five members of Ohio's Bluffton University team, along with the driver and his wife, were killed. (AP)

MIAMI - Forecasters say Hurricane Bertha has weakened to a Category 1 storm. At 5 p.m. yesterday, the center of the storm was about 900 miles southeast of Bermuda. Maximum sustained winds decreased to 85 miles per hour. The storm is expected to continue weakening over the next couple of days. The Atlantic season's first hurricane is headed to the northwest toward Bermuda. Large swells and high surfs could affect portions of Bermuda late tomorrow. (AP)

PONTIAC - Assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian has collected enough signatures to be on the November ballot as a congressional candidate in Michigan. Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County, said Kevorkian had about 3,200 valid signatures. Kevorkian needed to collect 3,000. The 80-year-old announced in March plans to run as an independent for the Ninth Congressional District seat held by Republican Joe Knollenberg. Democrat Gary Peters, a former state lottery commissioner, also is in the race. Kevorkian was released from prison last year after serving eight years for helping an Oakland County man with Lou Gehrig's disease die in 1998. (AP)

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE - US military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay resume this week even as new legal challenges could further rattle the system. Five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are to appear today and tomorrow for pretrial hearings in the Bush administration's special tribunal for terrorism suspects. Their trials have not yet been scheduled. The suspects could get the death penalty if convicted of charges that include murder. (AP)