College Park Police Sgt. Keith Stanley says the department received a call around 10 a.m. Friday about the crash on a road that loops around the world’s busiest airport. Stanley says it appears the shuttle struck the side of a tractor-trailer that was attempting a U-turn on the divided road.

All 16 people in the crash were taken to area hospitals. Originally, a fire official said it was 18. The driver of the bus suffered multiple broken bones. Stanley says none of the injuries are believed to be life-threatening.

Police weren’t immediately releasing the names of the drivers or passengers.

Stanley says it wasn’t immediately clear whether any traffic laws were violated.

(Photo: AP)

But how is threatening to shoot the first lady funny? Especially since the cop is responsible for escorting motorcades for President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Christopher Picciano, a 17-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department, “maintains that he made a sarcastic quip while inadvertently displaying an image of a gun on his smartphone,” according to his attorney.

“There was no threat,” the attorney said. “The officer made a sarcastic comment in response to a question made to him.”

So while Picciano claims this was all a big misunderstanding, one of Picciano’s colleagues, Office Leslie Clark, believed that Picciano planned to make good on his threat. The woman said Picciano showed her a picture of a gun, and, referring to Michelle Obama, said:

“This is the gun I plan to do it with.”

Clark said she waited several hours before reporting it because she feared retribution from fellow officers.

Meanwhile, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said she’s taking Picciano’s situation seriously.

At least one person was pulled from the water,

State Patrol Trooper Mark Francis said;

It’s not clear how many were in the water or the extent of the injuries.”

Said Rita Miller who was at the Riverbend RV Park,

“We heard the terrible noise and thought, ‘What in the world was that? “There were only two people alive that we could see.”

Reportedly, a  crowd of about 1,000 people are gathered at the bridge to watch the search and rescue proceed.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) staff is there on the scene and further information should be released about the cause of the collapse in the coming hours.

The Scouts’ longstanding ban on gay adults remains in force, and many liberal Scout leaders — as well as gay-rights groups — plan to continue pressing for an end to that exclusion even though the BSA’s top officials aren’t ready for that step.

Meanwhile, many conservatives within the Scouts are distraught at the outcome of the vote and some are threatening to defect. A meeting is planned for next month to discuss formation of a new organization for boys.

The vote was conducted by secret ballot Thursday during the National Council’s annual meeting at conference center not far from Boy Scout headquarters in suburban Dallas. Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.

“This has been a challenging chapter in our history,” the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. “While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they’re in Scouting.”

However, the outcome will not end the membership policy debate, as was evident in the reactions of leaders of some of the conservative religious denominations that sponsor Scout units.

“We are deeply saddened,” said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee. “Homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout oath and Scout law.”

The Assemblies of God said the policy change “will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program.” It also warned that the change would make the BSA vulnerable to lawsuits seeking to end the ban on gay adults.

John Stembeger, a conservative activist and former Scout from Florida, founded a group called OnMyHonor.net to oppose the policy change. He assailed the BSA executive committee for its role in gaining a “Yes” vote.

“What kind of a message are we sending to young people about being brave when its top adult leaders don’t even have the courage to stand up to the pressure of a militant lobby when the bullies in Washington D.C., Hollywood or even some of their own renegade councils start pressuring and harassing them?” he asked.

He said OnMyHonor.Net and other like-minded organizations and individuals would meet in Louisville, Ky., next month to discuss the creation of “a new character development organization for boys.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also expressed dismay.

“While I will always cherish my time as a Scout and the life lessons I learned, I am greatly disappointed with this decision,” he said.

The result was welcomed by many liberal members of the Scouting community and by gay-rights activists, though most of the praise was coupled with calls for ending the ban on gay adults.

“I’m so proud of how far we’ve come, but until there’s a place for everyone in Scouting, my work will continue,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, whose ouster as a Cub Scout den leader in Ohio because she is lesbian launched a national protest movement.

Tyrrell recalled having to tell her son she had been forced out as den mother.

“He doesn’t deserve to be told that we’re not good enough,” she said. “We’re not going to stop until this is over.”

Pascal Tessier, an openly gay 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland, had mixed emotions after the vote.

“I was thinking that today could be my last day as a Boy Scout,” he said. “Obviously, for gay Scouts like me, this vote is life-changing.”

Darla and Jon Crocker have been married for a little over two years, on top of that, they dated for 14-months prior where they abstained as well.

According to Lark News, Mr. and Mrs. Crocker plan on holding out on sex indefinitely and they say that they plan to hold-out indefinitely.

The couple explained that their relationship has not been strained over not having sex. Adding, that they lead normal lives otherwise working, spending time with friends etc.

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett got off a bus and tried to reason with the two attackers after she tried to help the man lying on the street but found he had no pulse and was already dead.

The 48-year-old mother kept talking to the two bloody attackers before police came, trying to keep them calm.

Loyau-Kennett, who lives in Cornwall in southwest England, told several British media outlets Wednesday night and Thursday morning that she was returning from a trip to France and was visiting her children in London when the bus she was on stopped because of the melee.

She said she saw a crashed car and the victim lying on the street and tried to help him since she had been trained in first aid. She had determined the man was dead by the time the attackers confronted her.

She said a man “with a black hat and a revolver in one hand and a cleaver in the other came over” and excitedly warned her to stay away from the body.

“I asked him why he had done what he had done,” The Guardian quoted her as saying. “He said he had killed the man because he (the victim) was a British soldier who killed Muslim women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was furious about the British Army being over there.”

When the man told her he was going to kill police when they arrived, she asked him if that was reasonable and tried to keep him engaged.

All states but West Virginia and North Dakota showed significant drops over five years. But the Mountain States of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Utah saw rates fall by 30 percent or more.

In 22 states, teen Hispanic birth rates plunged at least 40 percent, which was described as “just amazing,” by the report’s lead author, Brady Hamilton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What’s driving the declines? No one can say for sure. Experts believe the explanation is complicated and probably varies a bit from state to state. The national figure has been falling since 1991, aside from a brief interruption in 2006 and 2007.

The CDC report released Thursday is based on birth certificates for 2007 through 2011. Last year, the CDC announced the overall improvement in teen births: a record low of 31 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19. That compares with 42 births per 1,000 five years earlier.

The new report focuses on state figures in 2011:

— Lowest rates are in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont, each with rates under 17 per 1,000.

— Highest rates overall continue to be in the South, led by Arkansas and Mississippi, each with rates of about 50 per 1,000. In Arkansas, the majority of teen births are to white moms. In Mississippi, the majority are black.

— White teens continue to have the lowest birth rate nationally — about 22 births per 1,000. Black teens saw a larger improvement, but their rate was still more than twice the white rate, at 47 per 1,000.

— Overall, the Hispanic rate plummeted from 75 to 49 per 1,000, now virtually a tie with the black rate.

It’s been a long time coming, but change is coming to Mississippi.

Former Ward 2 Councilman and Chokwe Lumumba, 65, (pronounced SHOW-kway Lu-MOOM-bah) is the winner of the mayoral primary runoff election in Jackson, Miss., reports WAPT.com.

Lumumba defeated business Jonathan Lee, 35, 54 percent to 46 percent with 100 percent of the vote reporting.

“I think we just had a very difficult fight in order to win this office and we came out successful,” Lumumba said from his victory party at the Clarion Hotel. “I’m very proud of all of the people in my campaign who worked so diligently and I’m very proud of the people of Jackson because I think the people of Jackson have spoken and spoken very clearly.”

Lumumba served four years on the Jackson City Council before running for mayor. He spent part of the ’70s and ’80s as vice-president of  the Republic of New Afrika, an organization which advocated for “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States and reparations for slavery.

“The provisional government of Republic of New Afrika was always a group that believed in human rights for human beings,” Lumumba told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “I think it has been miscast in many ways. It has never been any kind of racist group or ‘hate white’ group in any way…. It was a group which was fighting for human rights for black people in this country and at the same time supporting the human rights around the globe.”

Read more from the Associated Press:

In a statement released by the White House, President Obama’s trip to Africa will be filled with lots of work on strategic partnerships on bilateral and global issues. With China tightening their link with Africa, it’s becoming imperative that President Obama make this trip. Stephen Hayes, president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa has commented that China’s top five leaders are in Africa every year and “as are the leaders of many other countries such as France, Brazil, Turkey and India, all of whom are investing actively in Africa.”

The first lady commented as American Express announced its donation of $1 million to the White House Historical Association to preserve Decatur House and pay for education programs for children. The nearly 200-year-old house is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and operated by the association.

Most of the money will be spent to preserve the building’s former slave quarters, where about 20 men and women “spent their days serving those who came and went from this house” and their nights “jammed together on the second floor of the slave quarters, all the while holding onto a quiet hope, a quiet prayer that they, too, and perhaps their children, would someday be free,” Mrs. Obama said.

The red-brick, three-story townhouse built in 1818 has been home to many, including several secretaries of state.

Mrs. Obama, briefly invoking her ancestry as a descendant of a South Carolina slave, said even more history came from the back of Decatur House, where the slave quarters were located, “the kind of stories that too often get lost, the kinds of stories that are a part of so many of our families’ histories, including my own.”

“These stories of toil, and sweat, and quiet, unrelenting dignity — these stories are as vital to our national memory as any other,” she said. “And so it is our responsibility as a nation to ensure that these stories are told.”