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A deadly road crash in New Brunswick, Canada has claimed the lives of eight people near the city of Bathurst on Saturday. A van carrying 12 people was returning from a school basketball game in Moncton when it slid on an icy highway and collided with a semi-trailer truck. Of the dead, seven were members of the Bathurst High School boys basketball team and the other was a teacher, the van driver's wife. The survivors are three teammates and a coach who was driving the van, all of whom were hospitalised at Chaleur Regional Hospital in Bathurst.

Astronomers say that in approximately 20 to 40 million years, a giant cloud of hydrogen gas, known as Smith's Cloud, will slam into the Milky Way galaxy, resulting in the formation of countless stars, which could make for the biggest fireworks display in the Local Group. The front edge of the cloud has already begun to hit the galaxy. "The leading edge of this cloud is already interacting with gas from our Galaxy. This is most likely a gas cloud left over from the formation of the Milky Way or gas stripped from a neighbor galaxy. When it hits,

The bodies of two of the four Alabama children allegedly thrown off a bridge by their father have been found. On Saturday, Danny Luong, the youngest of the children at four months old, was discovered by a duck hunter in a marshy area near Bayou la Batre, about 5 miles west of the 80 foot high Dauphin Island Bridge. A second child, 3-year-old Ryan Phan, was found near Barton Bay by a search and rescue team today at 10:30 am local time. Barton Bay is about 10 miles northwest of the bridge. The father, Lam Luong, a 37 year old shrimp fisherman, h

Former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has again created media speculation of a Liberal leadership challenge with reports claiming he is weighing up challenging for the leadership of the Liberal party against a position outside of politics with the Macquarie Bank. Costello is reported to have told friends that opposition leader Dr Brendon Nelson will not last out the year as Liberal leader, and that he believes Prime Minister Kevin Rudd can be beaten at the next election. The Syney Morning Herald article notes that, at 50, even if Costello

Recipients of 2007's Darwin Awards were announced last week, representing the stories of people who are killed or otherwise rendered sterile after committing an "astounding misapplication of judgement." One of this year's top winners was "What Goes Up Must Come Down" which received an 8.0 rating and 8929 votes. The tale concerns a couple in South Carolina who died in hospital after being discovered naked and critically injured on a roadway. Authorities discovered the couple's clothing on a rooftop and concluded that they fell from that locatio

In response to higher than expected mortgage rate increases last week, Australian treasurer Wayne Swan flagged changes to banking regulations to increase competition between lenders on home mortgages. Swan announced yesterday he had sought a Treasury report on the banking sector ahead of talks over the next fortnight on reforms to make it easier for bank customers to move mortgages between lenders by forcing banks to reduce exit fees, to "make the market more competitive". "Everybody knows we've been impacted upon by the U.S. sub-prime mortg

In a speech in Abu Dhabi today, George W. Bush said that he considered Iran a threat to the stability in the Middle East. He said that he believes the government of Iran is supporting extremism. In the speech he also addressed the people of other countries in the Middle East in a speech that appears to be designed to persuade leaders in the Middle East to support his negotiations. He also said that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, listing Tehran's support for extremists in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.

The Lakota Freedom Delegation, which in December declared that the Lakota people were withdrawing from their treaties with the United States and reasserting their sovereignty as an independent state, is acting without the support of the Treaty Council, the traditional government of the Lakota, Wikinews has learned. Wikinews spoke with Floyd Looks-For-Buffalo Hand, an Oglala Lakota Treaty Delegate and Elder, also an author and a spiritual leader in the indigenous Lakota religion, and who is also blood uncle to Lakota Freedom Delegation member C

One hundred and thirty three people were injured, nineteen of them seriously, when two high-speed ferries travelling between Hong Kong and Macau collided in heavy fog on Friday. Ten crew members were also injured but no deaths have been reported. The two high-speed Boeing 929 - 100 Jetfoil hydrofoil ferries, Funchal and Santa Maria operated by Hong Kong-based ShunTak-China Travel Ship Management Limited (under the brand name TurboJet), collided five nautical miles away from Macau at around 8:30 p.m. local time. The incident has been confirmed

Schools in the United Kingdom have been advised not to upgrade to the newest Microsoft products, Vista and Office 2007, according to a report by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA). Becta said that there were no "appropriate benefit" that would offset the additional cost and possible compatibility issues created by upgrading. An agency of the UK department for education and skills, Becta oversees the procurement of all IT equipment and e-learning solutions for schools. One of the main reasons given is also c

US President George W. Bush says the so-called "surge" strategy in Iraq is working. The President was speaking in Kuwait during one of several stops on a tour of the Middle East to build support for his administration's efforts to stabilize Iraq and to contain Iran's growing influence in the region. President Bush said the United States' change of strategy in Iraq has sharply reduced violence there and should allow the military to withdraw 20,000 troops on schedule by July this year. After meeting with his top military commander in Iraq, Ge

The Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as Kuomintang (KMT, traditional Chinese:中國國民黨), has won today's elections in Taiwan against President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP had previously ended half a century of Kuomintang rule in 2000 when President Chen was elected and won more seats than any other party in the 2001 election. The election can only be described as a landslide win for the KMT, winning more than 70% of all the seats in the 113 seats parliament while the DPP only managed to gain just under 25%. R