Two people died and more than 80 were hurt when at least 140 vehicles collided on a Texas highway in dense fog.
The carnage left lorries twisted on top of each other and authorities rushing to pull survivors from the wreckage.
“It is catastrophic,” said Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputy Rod Carroll. “I’ve got cars on top of cars.”
He said 80 to 90 people were taken to hospital, with 10 to 12 of those in serious to critical condition. He said 140 to 150 vehicles were involved in the pile-up.
The Thanksgiving holiday morning crash happened on Interstate 10 about 80 miles east of Houston. (PA)
Stumped by war pigeon message
British intelligence officials are baffled by a secret World War II message that was discovered attached to the leg of a dead pigeon, they admitted yesterday.
The message, consisting of 27 hand-written blocks of five letters, was with a pigeon skeleton that was found by retired probation officer David Martin when he was renovating his house in Surrey, southeast England.
Martin handed the piece of paper to intelligence experts at GCHQ at the start of November, and they have been scratching their heads ever since.
Codebreakers said the message, which did not include a date, was impossible to crack without its codebook.
Written on a small sheet of paper headed Pigeon Service, the code was found in a small red canister and listed the sender as Sjt W Stot. The recipient is named as X02.
A GCHQ spokesman said: “Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was indecipherable both then and now.”
Britain used some 250,000 pigeons as military messengers during World War II. (AFP)
British lawmaker swaps jungles
Politicians have done many things over the years to win votes, but none more so than British lawmaker Nadine Dorries, who spent 12 days in the Australian jungle eating ostrich anus and watched on national television.
The feisty 55-year-old has been catapulted into the public eye by her appearance on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, a reality TV show where C-list celebrities compete to outdo each other at a string of stomach-churning tasks.
Dorries defended her involvement as a way to reach out to voters, but it has attracted widespread criticism, which she must face when she returns home after becoming the first person to be voted off the show this week.
She has already been suspended by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party for taking a month off from Parliament, while many voters in her central English constituency of Mid-Bedfordshire are reportedly fuming about her. (AFP)
Cross-dressing grandfather is famous
A 72-year-old Chinese man who became an internet sensation after his granddaughter used him as a cross-dressing model to promote her clothing store was delighted at his new-found fame, she said.
Lu Qing, who lives in southern China’s Guangdong province, posted pictures of her grandfather dressed in an array of pink skirts, red tights and fur-lined women’s jackets to promote her online fashion outlet Yuekou.
The images of Liu Xianping have since gone viral and seen him branded the “world’s coolest” grandfather by internet users for his slender legs and modelling poise. They have also boosted his granddaughter’s bottom line.
“Since the pictures came out, we’ve had a huge number of website visitors, and are selling five times as many clothes as before,” Lu told AFP.
“Previously, we sometimes sold less than 10 items a day, and were feeling depressed about the business.”
Lu said her grandfather was “surprised” by the reaction to the photographs and at least three other stores had asked him to pose for them, but he was unlikely to accept. (AFP)