Tara Reid gets engaged and married in 1 night

Talk about a quickie.

"American Pie" actress Tara Reid is now a married woman! Reid married Michael Lillelund, a Danish businessman, in Greece on Saturday, E! News confirms.

Wait, you didn't know she was engaged? Neither did we!

Reid, 35, decided to break the news herself via her Twitter account, writing, "Just got married in greece I love being a wife."

The same night, Reid also broke the news that she was engaged. "I got engaged!," she tweeted, followed up by, "Greece married!" Short and sweet, just like their engagement.

The couple met in Saint-Tropez in November.

Reid was previously engaged to businessman (are you sensing a pattern here?) Michael Axtmann, but called it off in April 2010.

Deaths from NYC bus crash rise to 15

NEW YORK — A 70-year-old man yesterday became the 15th fatality from the gruesome weekend crash of a tour bus returning to New York’s Chinatown from a Connecticut casino.
The driver, Ophadell Williams of Brooklyn, 40, survived the crash and was released from St. Barnabas Hospital on Sunday. He has not been charged.
Williams told police that his bus was clipped by a tractor-trailer just as it crossed the New York City line on Interstate 95 early Saturday. But survivors and other witnesses have told investigators that Williams swerved to the right at times before the accident.
The state Department of Correctional Services said yesterday that Williams was convicted of manslaughter for his role in a 1990 stabbing and served just more than two years. He also served about three years for grand larceny.
The National Transportation Safety Board and State Police are investigating Saturday’s crash, studying a data recorder and looking into the drivers’ actions before the deadly trip.
Police said the latest victim died yesterday morning at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx.
The New York City medical examiner’s office said Sunday that the other fatalities — eight men and six women — all died of blunt force trauma. The bus scraped along a guardrail, toppled, and slid into a sign pole that sheared it end to end in a horrific scene of blood, jumbled bodies, and shattered glass. Some of the dead were tangled up with the living.
At City Hall yesterday, two Democratic politicians — Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Nydia Velazquez — asked the NTSB to go beyond its investigation and examine the regulations governing low-cost tour buses in general.

State Department urges Americans to avoid Bahrain

The State Department urged U.S. citizens on Tuesday to defer travel to Bahrain and suggested Americans there should leave due to ongoing political and civil unrest.
The State Department also said family members of U.S. embassy staff were authorized to leave voluntarily.
The department said in a statement that Bahrain has experienced a "breakdown in law and order," with demonstrations degenerating into violent clashes between police and protesters.
It said that while protests have not been directed toward Westerners, U.S. citizens should "avoid all demonstrations, as even peaceful ones can quickly become unruly and a foreigner could become a target of harassment or worse."
Saudi Arabia sent 1,000 Saudi troops to Bahrain at the request of Bahrain's Sunni royal family, prompting Washington on Monday to urge Riyadh to show restraint.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the island kingdom last week and pressed its rulers to implement political reforms to defuse tensions with the Shi'ite Muslim majority.

US condemns killing of five Israelis in Itamar attack

White House calls on Palestinian Authority "to unequivocally condemn this terrorist attack and for the perpetrators of this heinous crime to be held accountable."
WASHINGTON - The United States on Saturday called the stabbing deaths of five Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Itamar a terrorist attack and urged the Palestinian Authority to "unequivocally" condemn the killings.
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the murder of five Israelis in a terrorist attack in the northern West Bank, and we offer our condolences to their loved ones and to the Israeli people," the White House said in a statement.
A Jewish couple and three of their children were stabbed to death in Itamar on Saturday in what Israeli officials said was an attack by a Palestinian who broke into their home in the early hours.
"There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home," The White House said.
"We call on the Palestinian Authority to unequivocally condemn this terrorist attack and for the perpetrators of this heinous crime to be held accountable."

13 killed in New York tour bus accident

Officials say the tour bus, reportedly from an area casino, flipped on its side on a highway and hit a pole, shearing off most of the top of the vehicle. At least 6 of the injured passengers are listed in critical condition.
Reporting from New York
Thirteen people died early Saturday morning in the Bronx when a tour bus flipped on its side on a highway and slid into a pole, the New York City Fire Department said. The metal pole for an overhanging sign ripped through the windshield and sheared off most of the top of the bus, according to media reports.
About 20 passengers were taken to hospitals; at least six were listed in critical condition, the Fire Department said.
Firefighters said they had to cut out parts of the bus to rescue several passengers trapped in the mangled vehicle, which was carrying about 33 passengers.
The bus left the Mohegan Sun Casino, a southern Connecticut gambling complex, at about 3:45 a.m. and was headed to Chinatown in Manhattan, according to media reports.
The large casino is about two hours from the city and has become a popular destination for brief excursions for many New Yorkers, including those from the immigrant communities of Chinatown.
The Fire Department responded to an alert about the crash at 5:37 a.m. and rushed to the scene on Interstate 95 where it intersects the Hutchinson River Parkway.
The roads in the area were shut down while emergency workers responded to the accident.
The New York Daily News reported that police are searching for a tractor-trailer truck that may have made contact with the bus moments before the crash.

Damage at two Japan nuclear plants prompts evacuations

After the tsunami damages the cooling systems at five reactors in northeastern Japan, officials take steps to avert the possibility of a meltdown.
Japanese officials struggled Saturday to avert the possibility of a meltdown at two major nuclear power plants whose emergency cooling systems were damaged by Friday's earthquake and tsunami.
Emergency officials ordered the evacuation Saturday of all civilians within a six-mile radius of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which is about 150 miles northeast of Tokyo, after its normal backup cooling systems failed and it became necessary to release radioactive steam to relieve pressure that could cause an explosion.
Several hours later, authorities revealed that cooling systems at the Fukushima No. 2 plant, a few miles south, had also failed, and evacuations were ordered around that plant as well.
In all, five reactors at the two plants were damaged.
Radiation levels in the control room at Fukushima No. 1 were reported to be as high as 1,000 times normal, while levels outside the plant were said to be about eight to nine times normal, indicating some leakage of radiation had already occurred.
Shaking from the magnitude-8.9 earthquake triggered an automatic safety procedure at 11 of Japan's 55 commercial nuclear reactors. At those plants, control rods were plunged into the cores, where the radioactive fuel rods are kept, to bring electricity production to a halt.
But the cores continued to produce massive amounts of heat that needed to be cooled.
The cooling system must continually pump water from a large pond that surrounds the core through a set of towers that keep the water at a safe temperature. Otherwise, the water will boil off, the fuel rods will melt, and there is a possibility that radioactive material will escape from the reactor's containment dome — a so-called meltdown.
"If they can't get adequate cooling to the core, it could be a Three Mile Island or worse," said nuclear physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is working to improve the safety of nuclear power. The loss of coolant at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania for only 30 minutes led to a 50% meltdown of the core in that 1979 accident.
The pumps normally obtain electricity from the grid. But the Fukushima prefecture's grid was badly damaged by the tsunami, cutting power needed to cool the fuel rods. Though reactors have diesel emergency generators to provide backup electricity, those at Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 also were apparently damaged by the tsunami.
The reactors have backup batteries, and operators used them to restore the flow of coolant at the No. 1 plant. But those batteries have a life of no more than about eight hours, experts said.
Officials of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday they had obtained more batteries and may use military helicopters to fly them to the site.
Authorities said that pressure had already built up inside the containment building at the No. 1 plant to about 50% above normal and that they had begun venting radioactive gas into the atmosphere, although they said there was no danger from the release.
"Rising containment pressure is not a good sign that they have things under control," Lyman said. "We need to get better information from the Japanese about what is going on, but the few things that are coming out are very worrisome."
The reactors at the two plants use some of the oldest nuclear technology, dating to the 1960s. "These first-generation boiling-water reactors have the least margin of safety of any reactor design," said Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton University physicist and former White House advisor.
Without electrical power to circulate water inside the core, the cooling water would begin to boil off, he said.
But despite the dangers, some experts said the nuclear plant operators should be able to add new cooling water and keep the core fully immersed while it cools down.
"It doesn't sound like we are in meltdown mode," Von Hippel said.
Jim Walsh of MIT's Center of International Studies agreed that these reactors will probably be OK. But there are other facilities in Japan that produce enriched fuel for reactors and manage highly radioactive waste, some of which are in remote areas in the north, "and no one has said 'boo' about them," he said. "It's not inconceivable that some of them have had problems. The story may continue to unfold in the next few weeks."
Long before the problems created by the tsunami, a series of serious incidents in Japan's ambitious civilian nuclear power industry over the last decade have raised concerns about its attention to safety and the role of government regulators.
The history of Japan's nuclear incidents includes a pattern of problems being kept secret or passed off as far less serious than they actually were.
In 2007, several electric utilities admitted covering up accidents, including one that experienced an uncontrolled nuclear reaction inside a reactor while it was shut down for maintenance. The same year, Tokyo Electric Power Co. — which operates the two Fukushima plants — apologized for a radiation leak caused by an earthquake at a plant that had not been built to withstand a quake of that magnitude.
In 2004, five workers at a nuclear plant in western Japan were killed when a corroded pipe burst and sprayed them with boiling water and steam, revealing flaws in safety procedures.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday that American nuclear reactors are not vulnerable to the sequence of events that overtook the Japanese reactors because regulations here take into account the specific vulnerabilities at each plant under the most extreme conditions possible.
In the case of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, operated by Edison International in northwestern San Diego County, a 30-foot seawall protects the plant and its emergency generators from the maximum theoretical tsunami that could hit the site, said regulatory commission spokesman Scott Burnell.
Edison International spokesman Chris Abel said the seawall is just one of several redundant systems meant to ensure power for an orderly shutdown in the event of an emergency.
In Japan, the shutdown of the 11 nuclear reactors affects perhaps 8% of the country's electrical generating capacity. Most of those plants should be able to go back on line within a few days, though it may be longer before repairs can be made to damaged power lines that carry electricity from the plants to consumers.

Police: Victims inside burned Indiana house had been shot

Three children and their mother who were found dead inside their partially burned house in southern Indiana had all been shot in the head, police said Saturday, with an internet rant tied to the woman drawing investigators' attention.
Results of a preliminary autopsy, conducted by the Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office, released Saturday revealed that Amanda Bennett, 30, had died from a gunshot wound to her head and smoke inhalation.
The same causes of death were listed for her 9-year-old daughter, Katelynn Bennett. Jasmine Abbott -- 14 and also Amanda's biological daughter -- was killed by a gunshot wound to the head, as was the woman's 4-year-old son, Ryan Bennett.
Shortly after 4:20 p.m. Friday, Austin, Indiana, police forced their way into the victims' residence after getting a request from a relative to check on them.
The police officer that went inside noticed that parts of the home had been burned and, after a "quick search," found the four bodies, according to a statement from Indiana State Police.
"This is a very, very tragic situation -- a very sad situation," Indiana State Police Sgt. Jerry Goodin said after the discovery, according to CNN affiliate WAVE.
Authorities subsequently opened what they're calling a "death investigation." They sent the bodies to Louisville, Kentucky, about 36 miles to the south, where the nearest medical examiner is located. They have not named any suspects in the killings.
"We have no reason to believe at this time that the public at large should be scared for their safety," Indiana State Police Sgt. Jerry Goodin told reporters Saturday.
Police are looking at an internet posting on the "Crothersville Forum," referring to a town near Austin, that mentions the late Amanda Bennett's husband by name. Two posts, both under the heading "Gone Forever," were published online Friday and contained urgent, heated language.
One of the posts reads, in part: "it's time to take the pain away ... you got what u wanted no wife an no kids."
Responding to a query about whether the post may have been written by Amanda Bennett, Goodin said state police detectives are aware of the post and other online posts that might be relevant to the case.
"That is something that has been brought to our attention -- absolutely, it has been," he said.
Deborah Davidson, who works at an elementary school that the two youngest victims attended, described Amanda Bennett as consistently friendly and warm, according to CNN affiliate WLKY.
TamRa Stidham, a high school classmate of Jasmine Abbott's, described Amanda Bennett as an unselfish mother, telling CNN affiliate WAVE, "Anything (her children) wanted, they got if she had the money."
Stidham said, too, that "everybody loved" Jasmine Abbott at Austin High School.
Meanwhile, friends and neighbors in the tight-knit community were distraught at the news.
"I was devastated, and I'm still devastated," Lula Davidson, who knew Amanda Bennett, told WAVE. "It wasn't meant for me to understand, but I would like to understand."