In brief: Prison bus skids, hits train, killing 10

ODESSA, Texas – A prison bus skidded off an icy Texas highway, slid down an embankment and collided with a passing freight train Wednesday, killing eight inmates and two corrections officers, including the bus driver, authorities said.

The overpass on Interstate 20 was slick with ice Wednesday morning when the Texas Department of Criminal Justice bus left the roadway in Penwell, just west of Odessa, according to Ector County Sheriff Mark Donaldson.

The prisoners, who did not have seat belts, were handcuffed together in pairs, officials said. Some of them were ejected from the bus after it struck the train, said Trooper Elizabeth Barney of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Four prisoners and one corrections officer were also injured.

Ohio man held on terror plot charges

WASHINGTON – An Ohio man who claimed solidarity with the Islamic State militant group was arrested Wednesday after allegedly plotting to bomb the U.S. Capitol and shoot federal officials, prosecutors announced in Washington and Ohio.

The man, identified as Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, near Cincinnati, was charged in a criminal complaint and arrested by federal anti-terrorism agents and Ohio police. The complaint was filed in federal court, where Cornell had not yet entered a plea.

In court documents, FBI Special Agent T.A. Staderman said Cornell came to the attention of authorities after he began posting online statements in support of Islamic State last summer under the alias Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah.

Staderman said Cornell purchased two semiautomatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition Wednesday, and was promptly arrested.

He was charged with attempting to kill a U.S. government officer and possession of a firearm in furtherance of an attempted crime of violence.

Board: CIA search of Senate data was OK

WASHINGTON – An independent board says CIA officers acted reasonably when they searched Senate computers last year over concerns that Senate aides had removed classified documents related to the torture investigation.

The board, which was led by former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, disputes the conclusions of the CIA’s inspector general. The IG said in July that five CIA employees “improperly accessed” a Senate portion of a shared computer network.

The Bayh board said the five CIA employees did not deserve to be punished.

The CIA accessed five emails of Senate aides, but the board concluded the access was a mistake and did not reflect malfeasance or bad faith.

Judge denies trial delay request

BOSTON – A U.S. District judge Wednesday denied a request from lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who had asked that jury selection in his Boston Marathon bombing trial be delayed for a month due to anger and publicity over last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

In a filing late Tuesday, Miriam Conrad, the chief federal public defender in Boston, told the judge that potential jurors might be inflamed against her client because of the similarities between the 2013 attacks in Boston and those last week in Paris.