June (Web-only) 2002

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Five killed in church bus crash
Yesterday morning, a bus chartered by Metro Church of Garland, Texas, on its way to a youth camp crashed into an I-20 bridge support. The bus driver and four youths—ages 12, 13, 14, and 16—were killed. Thirty-six others aboard were injured.

"I thought it was a movie," 16-year-old Kristan Grubbs told The Dallas Morning News. "I was talking to my friends, and I turned around and I saw this big pillar … coming toward us."

Exactly how the crash happened is a mystery.

The church, which calls itself "Southern Baptist charismatic," has been in the news before: it used to be the home church of Operation Rescue's Flip Benham.

Bologna church targeted by Muslim militants, says Italian paper
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera says Muslims planned to destroy the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna. Paramilitary police, the paper said, intercepted phone conversations among Tunisians and Moroccans tied to the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat; leader Hassan Hattab had ordered the church's destruction.

It's not just any church. San Petronio has a 600-year-old fresco depicting Muhammad being devoured by demons in Hell. Muslims have long protested the artwork, reports the Associated Press.

Gracia Burnham continues her recovery Rescued but widowed, missionary Gracia Burnham continues to heal physically and emotionally, The Wichita Eagle reports today. "Sometimes at night, Gracia Burnham's children sleep on blankets spread on the floor of her bedroom," says the Eagle's Alex Branch. Gracia Burnham isn't giving any media interviews, speaking engagements "or anything that would take her from her family," says her mother-in-law and fellow missionary Oreta Burnham. She and her three children are, however, ...