Truck driver’s license
had been suspended
A 22-year-old semitrailer driver had a suspended license when his rig jackknifed and was struck by a bus carrying a high school band, killing five people and injuring 29, authorities said Monday.
Michael Kozlowski’s driver’s license was suspended Sept. 21 for failing to pay a speeding ticket issued in Indiana in April. Kozlowski, of Highland, Ind., received his commercial driver’s license in February.
A bus carrying the Chippewa Falls High School marching band struck Kozlowski’s tractor-trailer, which had jackknifed early Sunday on Interstate 94 northwest of Osseo.
Senators should forgo
pay raise, says Kyl
Senators should do their part in reducing federal spending by turning down a pay raise, Sen. Jon Kyl said Monday.
Under Kyl’s amendment to a spending bill covering federal workers, senators would forgo the estimated 1.9 percent cost-of-living increase that will automatically go into effect unless the Senate votes to reject it. The pay increase, also applicable to House members, would boost the salary for rank-and-file lawmakers by $3,100 to $165,200.
The $2 million in savings would take care of about three minutes of the year’s deficit.
Party plans appeal
to migrants’ relatives
Mexico’s most-organized political party will try to win absentee votes from migrants in the United States by appealing to their relatives at home in Mexico, officials said Monday.
“Mexicans who are in the United States are intimately linked to their relatives here in Mexico,” said Roberta Lajous, international affairs coordinator for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed Mexico from 1929 until 2000.
The July 2006 presidential vote will be the first in which Mexicans can vote from abroad. But parties are banned from campaigning beyond Mexico’s borders.
Transit unions join
teachers’ protest
Transit workers joined protests in support of 38,000 illegally striking public school teachers in British Columbia on Monday, bringing transportation services in at least two Vancouver Island cities to a halt.
Pickets appeared before dawn at bus yards in Greater Victoria and Nanaimo, preventing drivers from reporting to work.
The teachers are demanding a 15 percent wage increase of their $36,000 salary, smaller class sizes and better classroom supplies and working conditions.
2 die in stampede
after ship collision
An Egyptian passenger cruiser carrying more than 1,300 Muslim pilgrims collided with a cargo ship at the entrance to the Suez Canal late Monday, causing a stampede among passengers that killed two people.
Another 40 people were injured in the stampede to flee the Salam 95, which began sinking after it was struck near Port Tawfiq, at the canal’s southern entrance about 80 miles east of the Egyptian capital.
At least 12 rescue boats rescued the bulk of the 1,350 passengers from the Salam 95 before the vessel sank three hours later.
