A meteor shower Sunday night resulted in frantic phone calls to police departments all over New England. Calls were made from people who mistook the bright lights of the shower for crashing planes. The lights came from the Lyrid Meteor Shower, which was scheduled to be visible to the naked eye between April 20 and April 25. Reports indicate the shower was seen as far north as Portland, Maine and far south as Long Island. "Some witnesses apparently mistook the meteor shower for a plane crashing in Connecticut," the FAA's Holly Baker said. Firefighters in Branford, Conn., responded to several reports of a possible plane crash in Long Island Sound in the Thimble Island area, but a search did not turn up anything and was called off a short while later.

A woman grabbed the steering wheel of a bus after its driver passed out on a packed motorway. The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, was traveling on a double-decker bus from Manchester to Colne in Lancashire, northern England, on Friday when she saw the driver collapse as he drove along the M60. She grabbed the wheel and managed to steer the bus safely into the nearside barrier, where it came to a stop. No one was injured and the 61-year-old driver, who works for the bus company Burnley and Pendle Travel, was taken to hospital with a suspected viral infection, according to police. "If this woman had not seen the bus driver collapse then it could have resulted in a major accident in which I fear many people would have been seriously injured, or worse," said a spokesman for Greater Manchester Police.