MIAMI, Okla. — At least eight people died Friday when a tractor-trailer slammed into a line of cars stopped on a northeast Oklahoma turnpike by an earlier accident, leaving twisted metal and debris strewn about the highway and stranding miles of traffic in scorching heat for hours. Emergency crews worked well into the evening to untangle the wreckage and determine whether there were additional victims. “It looks like a war zone,” an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer said. “There’s mangled metal everywhere. There’s debris, fluids, dead bodies.”
Maryland: Emergency landing
Officials say a Southwest flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Philadelphia landed safely at Baltimore’s airport after flight attendants saw smoke in the cabin. A spokesman for Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport said the Boeing 737 landed safely about 10 p.m. Friday. He said airport fire and rescue crews met the plane as a precaution. No one was hurt.
Nevada: Jackson at auction
A crystal-studded shirt worn onstage by Michael Jackson: $52,500. A young Jackson’s painting of Mickey Mouse: $25,000. Owning a piece of a pop icon who died before his time: Priceless. Twenty-one items once owned by Jackson sold at auction at the Las Vegas Planet Hollywood hotel-casino Friday for a total of $205,000, dwarfing the auction house’s early conservative estimate of $6,000 for the collection. The items for sale Friday came from a collection owned by David Gest, the producer and promoter once married to Liza Minnelli.
Miss Nevada will have crown
Miss Nevada will have a crown at her coronation Saturday after all. An apologetic volunteer, not a thief, was to blame for the disappearance of the $400 crown, which turned up late Friday afternoon at a Reno alteration shop, a pageant organizer said. Unbeknownst to pageant organizers, the volunteer misplaced the crown in a small box that accompanied other boxes and hanging bags of clothes to the shop on Thursday. Organizers originally thought the crown, almost identical to the one worn by Miss America, was stolen.
Iran: Opponents threatened
A senior cleric on Friday urged Iran’s protest leaders to be punished “without mercy” and said some should face execution — harsh calls that signal a nasty new turn in the regime’s crackdown on demonstrators two weeks after its disputed election. Hard-liners have ordered long sentences and hangings before, and some fear those awaiting trial by a judiciary whose verdicts reflect the will of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could face the most severe punishments the Islamic system can dish out. “Anyone who takes up arms to fight with the people, they are worthy of execution,” Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a ranking cleric, said in a sermon at Tehran University.
Brazil: Hunt for black boxes
The search for the black boxes of the Air France Airbus A330 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean will likely continue for at least another 16 days, even though their audio beacons are likely fading away, an American officer said Friday. Brazilian and French searchers have recovered large chunks of debris and 51 bodies from Air France Flight 447, which disappeared with 228 people on board late May 31. Brazil on Friday said it was calling off its search for bodies and debris but that the hunt for the black boxes would continue.
Argentina: Flu infects pigs
Swine flu has been detected in farm pigs, but the virus has not shown itself to be any deadlier to the animals than a normal flu, the government said Friday. The discovery comes as Argentina is experiencing a human swine flu outbreak during the South American winter. The Health Ministry confirmed three new deaths — raising the country’s toll to 26, more than any other nation on the continent. A health official said about a quarter of pigs at the unidentified farm in Buenos Aires province were found to be infected.
Netherlands: Hells Angels
The Dutch Supreme Court refused Friday to outlaw a local branch of the Hells Angles in the motorcycle club’s latest legal victory. The country’s highest judicial panel said prosecutors failed to prove their claim that the Harlingen Hells Angels chapter in the northern Netherlands is a threat to public order and should be disbanded. It said the club may be involved in undesirable and possibly criminal activities, but they are not serious enough to merit a total ban.
From Herald news services
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