Nation in brief

Teacher, former student free to meet

SEATTLE - A judge on Friday agreed to lift an order barring Mary Kay Letourneau from contacting Vili Fualaau, the former sixth-grade student she was convicted of having sex with when he was a minor.

Fualaau, now 21, had challenged the court order, saying he is an adult and can pick his own friends, especially the mother of his two children.

Letourneau was a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in suburban Des Moines and an unhappily married mother of four in 1996, when she began having sex with Fualaau.

When Letourneau was arrested in 1997, she was already pregnant with Fualaau's daughter. Though Letourneau professed her love for the boy, a judge sentenced her to six months in jail for second-degree child rape, and ordered her to stay away from him.

A month after Letourneau was released, she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car. She was sent to prison for 71/2 years, and gave birth to Fualaau's second daughter behind bars.

Letourneau was released Wednesday. The King County Prosecutor's Office did not object to Fualaau's motion.

PORT ALLEN, La. - A man suspected of seven killings in south Louisiana interrupted testimony in his first murder trial Friday to ask a judge to fire his court-appointed lawyer.

Derrick Todd Lee met with the judge and his defense lawyer on Thursday to speak in private about the quality of Lee's defense. He brought it up in court Friday.

"My life (is) on the line here," Lee said, animatedly pointing to the family of Geralyn DeSoto, the 21-year-old woman he is accused of stabbing to death. "I want those people to find out the truth about what happened to their daughter."

Judge Robin Free told him he could not fire a public defender, and suggested Lee work out a solution over the weekend with lawyers on the defense team.

With the jury out of the courtroom, Lee claimed his lead attorney, Tommy Thompson, lied to him, was not trying to find people who could prove his innocence and was not properly representing him.

JACKSON, Tenn. - A Greyhound bus rammed into a tractor-trailer as the truck pulled back onto Interstate 40 early Friday, killing the bus driver and two passengers, authorities said.

Seventeen other bus passengers were sent to hospitals, including two passengers with serious injuries.

The bus driver was Thomas Dickerson, 48, of Memphis. Two women passengers, Charlotte Thompson, 76, of Cincinnati and Willie Walker, about 60, of Detroit also died.

No charges have been filed, and officials said the investigation into what caused the wreck will take several weeks.

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