Nashville, Tenn. – A heat wave continued to bake parts of the South on Tuesday, raising the number of heat- linked deaths in Tennessee to at least five and buckling roads in Mississippi.
Memphis hit 105 degrees Tuesday, the fifth consecutive day of triple-digit highs.
The heat-related deaths have involved people in homes with no air conditioning or those who had been active outdoors.
Temperatures were in the 90s at midday Tuesday from the western plains to the East Coast, with scattered readings of 100.
Excessive-heat warnings were issued for southwestern Tennessee, northern Mississippi, parts of western Arkansas and most of Missouri.
Additional nation/world news briefs:
NEW YORK
Manhattan toll plan wins federal funding
Mayor Michael Bloomberg was promised $354 million in federal funds Tuesday to help launch his ambitious plan to reduce traffic and pollution by charging extra tolls for driving into the busiest parts of Manhattan.
The catch: He gets the money only if he can persuade the state Legislature to back the effort, called congestion pricing. New York’s would be the first such toll program in the U.S.
Bloomberg has touted the toll plan to reduce gridlock and pollution.
Nine cities were competing for a pot of money targeted toward innovative local traffic solutions. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced the funding Tuesday for New York along with San Francisco, Miami, Seattle and Minneapolis.
JERUSALEM
Netanyahu wins vote to lead hard-liners
Benjamin Netanyahu easily defeated a radical Jewish settler in the race to lead Israel’s hard-line Likud Party on Tuesday, a party official said, boosting his ambitions to reclaim the country’s premiership.
With more than 80 percent of the primary votes tallied, Netanyahu was way ahead with 73 percent to challenger Moshe Feiglin’s 22 percent, party executive director Gad Arieli said. Final results were expected early today.
A telegenic politician and self- described hawk, the MIT-educated Netanyahu is tough on defense issues and hands-off on the economy, but in recent months he has been trying to position himself in the political center to lure moderate voters.
Israeli general elections are scheduled for 2010 but could be earlier if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s fractious coalition government falls apart, or if Olmert – facing low poll numbers and a series of legal woes – leaves office.
Current polls show Netanyahu’s main rival would be the Labor Party’s Ehud Barak, who unseated Netanyahu as prime minister in 1999.
TOKYO
Motorcyclist drove on after crash cut off leg
A Japanese motorcyclist collided with a highway crash barrier, losing half his right leg in the crash, but carried on driving for over a mile before noticing the damage, police in Hamamatsu said.
Kazuo Nagata, 54, was driving from Hamamatsu to Gifu with a group of 10 friends early Monday morning. He lost control while turning his bike and veered at high speed onto a median strip, grazing a crash barrier.
Nagata struggled to maintain control of his vehicle and kept driving despite the agony. He did not look down at his ripped leg until the group stopped at a junction a mile down the road.
A friend drove back to retrieve the leg, severed a few inches below the knee.
The bikers took Nagata to hospital, but doctors said the limb was irreparably damaged and could not be reattached.
