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15 injured as school bus overturns on New Jersey highway

(NYT) — A school bus with 31 passengers on board overturned on the Garden State Parkway near Montvale, New Jersey, on Monday evening, injuring 15 people, mostly children, the authorities said.

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The bus, which was coming from Lakewood, New Jersey, overturned on the northbound lanes north of Exit 171 at around 7:40 p.m., according to the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

Video taken by CBS News New York showed the yellow bus resting on its side next to the road, surrounded by fire trucks and emergency responders.

No fatalities were reported, but 15 people had been injured and hospitalized, the New Jersey State Police said. One child had serious injuries and 13 other children had minor injuries, police said. The bus driver, Joseph Itzkowitz, 44, from Lakewood, had moderate injuries.

Police did not say if the bus and its passengers were associated with any particular institution or group.

It was not clear what caused the crash. The State Police said the bus was traveling north when it went off the right side of the road and overturned.

Pakistan separatists hijack train with 400 onboard

KARACHI, Pakistan (NYT) — Separatist militants hijacked a train carrying more than 400 people in an isolated mountainous area of southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday.

A militant group known as the Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was holding scores of security personnel who had been on the train, and it threatened to kill them if the Pakistani government did not agree to a prisoner exchange.

The fate of the rest of the passengers was not immediately clear, though security officials said that at least 104 of them, mostly women and children, had been rescued and that 17 injured passengers had been taken to the hospital for treatment.

The militants, Baloch ethnic fighters, forced the train to stop in the Bolan district of Balochistan province after opening fire on it, according to railway and police officials.

Education Department fires 1,300 workers, gutting its staff

WASHINGTON (NYT) — The Education Department announced Tuesday that it was firing more than 1,300 workers, effectively gutting the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.

The layoffs mean that the department, which started the year with 4,133 employees, will now have a workforce of about half that size after less than two months with President Donald Trump in office. In addition to the 1,315 workers who were fired Tuesday, 572 employees accepted separation packages offered in recent weeks, and 63 probationary workers were terminated last month.

The cuts could portend an additional move by Trump to essentially dismantle the department, as he has said he wants to do, even though it cannot be closed without the approval of Congress.

Linda McMahon, the education secretary, described the layoffs as part of an effort to deliver services more efficiently and said the changes would not affect student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students or competitive grant making.