School bus crash kills 19 in China

Nineteen people, including 17 children, were killed early Wednesday when their overcrowded school bus crashed head-on into a truck in north-western China early Wednesday, a news report said. The small bus operated by a local kindergarten was fitted with nine benches, and was overloaded with 64 passengers at the time of the accident, a county spokesman was reported as saying. Forty-five people, mostly children, had been hospitalized, 13 of them with serious injuries, authorities of Zhengning County, Gansu province, were quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.