Tour Bus

Twenty-five to 30 people were treated for minor injuries early yesterday morning after their tour bus ran off the Garden State Parkway and struck several trees, police said. The double-decker bus, which was carrying about 75 passengers from New York to the Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City, was traveling south along the parkway about 2:30 a.m. when it left the road, said John Tomasello, a spokesman for the State Police Department. The bus, driven by Paul Dunham, 58, of Staten Island, N.Y., was about 20 miles north of its destination.

Twelve people were killed, including Americans, when a tour bus plunged off a highway in southeast England today, police said. Witnesses said the 53-seat coach veered off the M2 motorway in Kent, slid down an embankment and overturned. "I can confirm that we have 12 fatalities," said a police spokeswoman. Police said the passengers were American tourists on their way to the coast from London on the single-deck bus. "It was taking a party of 44 American tourists to the coast with two Britons, the guide and the driver," said the spokeswoman.

A Montgomery County Common Pleas Court jury yesterday convicted Alvin Lester "Buddy" Bowers on three criminal charges related to the operation of a now-defunct tour bus company, but was unable to decide whether Bowers actually intended to steal money from his customers. After deliberating for nearly five hours, the 12-member jury returned late yesterday afternoon with guilty verdicts on charges of failure to make required disposition of funds, acting as an insurance agent without a license and acting as an insurance broker without a license.

A 20-YEAR-OLD MAN has been charged with murder and a slew of related offenses for allegedly shooting one man to death and wounding another outside a rapper's tour bus late last week. Police say 20-year-old Frank Briggs, of Shedaker Street near Baynton in East Germantown, pulled up in a car and opened fire on a crowd gathered outside rap artist French Montana's tour bus late Thursday night, after the bus stopped near a Holiday Inn Express on Columbus Boulevard. Fatally wounded in the drive-by shooting was Jowann King, 26, of New York.

POLICE WERE STILL sorting out details Friday of an overnight shooting in Old City outside rapper French Montana's tour bus that killed one man and injured another. But one thing was clear: The rapper, although not believed to be a target in the shooting, is no angel. In a 2008 interview with entertainment website VladTV, the 28-year-old New York-based rapper, whose online bio touts him as chief executive of Cocaine City Records, talks about being shot in the head and about beating a murder charge.

A tour bus carrying only its stricken driver veered off Route 130 Thursday afternoon and crashed into a used-car lot, leaving the driver dead and 11 cars destroyed. David Fennell, 62, of Delanco, suffered a medical problem as he was driving south on Route 130 in a N.J. Southern Coachways bus, township police said. The bus, a 1982 Prevost, jumped onto the shoulder, over a grass median and into the southbound lanes of Route 206 before plowing into the cars on display at Town Ford.

A tour bus headed to Atlantic City from Washington crashed into a tractor- trailer in Salem County yesterday morning, injuring 40 people, seven of whom were hospitalized. Rescue workers from a dozen ambulances worked for up to two hours extricating the victims from the bus, as the access door had been crushed in the crash, according to Lester Denny 2d, assistant fire chief in Carneys Point. The accident occurred at 11:21 a.m. on Interstate 295 about five miles from the Delaware Memorial Bridge in Carneys Point.

NEW YORK - Police say that a tour bus in New York City ran over and killed a Philadelphia man and that the driver has been charged with driving while intoxicated and vehicular manslaughter. Timothy White, 29, was found unconscious and severely injured under the tour bus in Manhattan just before 10 p.m. Saturday. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died. Police said none of the bus passengers was injured. According to a preliminary investigation, the bus was on West 47th Street, turning onto Ninth Avenue, when it struck the victim.

Rapper Nelly had some 'splainin' to do Friday. First of all, realize! You do not drive anywhere near the Sierra Blanca border patrol down in Texas. Police there will jack you up if their superschnozz dogs detect a whiff of contraband. Fiona Apple got done there last month, and Willie Nelson , Armie Hammer , and Snoop Dogg all have experienced this fine service. When the zealous fuzz inspected Nelly's tour bus, they found - whoa! - 36 small bags of heroin, 10 pounds of pot, and a .45 pistol.

G OV. CORBETT has been in office for just 10 weeks and, like many politicians who inherit a financial mess, he likes to blame the man he replaced. It's fair game: Gov. Ed Rendell was the top guy in the state for eight years, while the deficit grew to troubling proportions. But Corbett yesterday took what looks like a cheap shot - $66,462 in savings! - when you consider that the state's proposed budget is $27.3 billion. Corbett's staff emailed reporters to announce that the "defunct tour bus," known as "Commonwealth One" when Rendell took office, will be auctioned off in May or June.

When the members of the alt-metal band Baroness woke up on their tour bus en route to Southampton, England, one day last August, they had plenty of reasons to feel good about themselves. The quartet, led by Philadelphian John Baizley, had just released its third album, Yellow & Green . The double LP, recorded at the band's rehearsal space in North Wales, had been praised lavishly in the media. With its melodic sound, the album was poised to help the band break through to a mainstream rock audience.

Credited to Steve Earle & the Dukes (& Duchesses), The Low Highway is the first album in 23 years on which Earle has shared billing with his backing ensemble, a measure of his affection for what he called "the best band I've ever had" on the stage of the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville Friday night. That band, featuring husband and wife multi-instrumentalists Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore - who played a brief opening set as the Mastersons - alongside longtime rhythm section Kelley Looney and Will Rigby, lived up to the compliment during a two-and-a-half-hour show that mixed the entirety of The Low Highway with songs from Earle's long and varied career.

In this, our civilization's winter of discontent, art has become nothing but commerce and commerce the highest form of art. So it is. Just ask Beyoncé . The diva's PR machine has so hyped her upcoming album that fans are desperate for any crumbs of music. She has obliged by releasing a snippet of the new song "Standing on the Sun" in a 90-second video. Mind you, it's not a music video, but a TV ad for H&M. (Fact, it's a double advert: for the retail clothing company, and of course, for B's LP.)

AFTER ALL the police reports from shows like "Jersey Shore," "Buckwild" and "Teen Mom," MTV is putting a few more dollars into scripted television. The network that once played music - hard to believe, kids - is prepping a pilot for a summer 2014 series based on the movie "Scream. " The network says the series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels. The films' original director, Wes Craven , is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot.

When composer Eric Whitacre launched his East Coast tour Monday, he received such a rock-star greeting that he wondered whether he should have a stack of amplifiers and a mean-sounding Stratocaster. "I felt a little guilty," he says. "I wanted to have something to meet that young energy. " Instead, he conducted 30-plus singers in Monteverdi and his own trademark ethereal tones, which many listeners drove considerable distances to hear at the Strathmore concert hall near Baltimore.

A Philadelphia man was arrested Tuesday in the fatal shooting Thursday night outside the tour bus of the rapper French Montana along Columbus Boulevard near the Ben Franklin Bridge. Frank Briggs, 20, of the 300 block of East Shedaker Street in East Germantown, was charged with murder, attempted murder, and related offenses in the shooting death of Jowann King, 26, of New York City, police said. A 28-year-old man also was shot but survived. Briggs allegedly fired into a crowd near Montana's tour at the Holiday Inn Express shortly before midnight.

A 20-YEAR-OLD MAN has been charged with murder and a slew of related offenses for allegedly shooting one man to death and wounding another outside a rapper's tour bus late last week. Police say 20-year-old Frank Briggs, of Shedaker Street near Baynton in East Germantown, pulled up in a car and opened fire on a crowd gathered outside rap artist French Montana's tour bus late Thursday night, after the bus stopped near a Holiday Inn Express on Columbus Boulevard. Fatally wounded in the drive-by shooting was Jowann King, 26, of New York.

POLICE WERE STILL sorting out details Friday of an overnight shooting in Old City outside rapper French Montana's tour bus that killed one man and injured another. But one thing was clear: The rapper, although not believed to be a target in the shooting, is no angel. In a 2008 interview with entertainment website VladTV, the 28-year-old New York-based rapper, whose online bio touts him as chief executive of Cocaine City Records, talks about being shot in the head and about beating a murder charge.

The rapper French Montana and his entourage left Philadelphia on Friday afternoon after a day spent answering questions from detectives about a late-night shootout that erupted near Montana's tour bus, leaving one man dead and another injured. After Montana's sold-out show Thursday night at South Street's Theater of Living Arts, the rapper's bus was parked near the Holiday Inn Express on Columbus Boulevard around midnight, surrounded by hundreds of friends and fans, when a car with tinted windows drove up and shots were fired from a rolled-down passenger-side window.

The rapper French Montana and his entourage left Philadelphia on Friday afternoon after a day spent answering questions from detectives about a late-night shootout that erupted near Montana's tour bus, leaving one man dead and another injured. After Montana's sold-out show Thursday night at South Street's Theater of Living Arts, the rapper's bus was parked near the Holiday Inn Express on Columbus Boulevard around midnight, surrounded by hundreds of friends and fans, when a car with tinted windows drove up and shots were fired from a rolled-down passenger-side window.