A truck carrying coal slammed into a overcrowded bus this morning in the Northwest Chinese township of Yulinzi, killing 18 children and two adults. According to China's official news agency Xinhua, 44 other children were injured. Xinhua reports that "a van with nine seats was carrying 64 people."

Reuters reports that the accident has prompted anger toward the government:

Many of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's citizens may be signing petitions for his recall in reaction to the battle he led earlier in the year to weaken his state's public-employee unions.

But Walker doesn't appear to be backing off one inch from his stance that he did what was right for his state.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is fighting back opponents who want him out of office. If organizers gather more than 500,000 signatures in 60 days, a new election will be held in 2012. Host Michel Martin speaks with Gov. Walker, who defends his record and criticizes the recall effort that began Tuesday.

Everything's big in Texas. Even health insurance mandates, it seems.

The Center for Public Integrity is out with a story about a Texas law that made it mandatory for health insurers to reimburse patients up to $200 for CT scans and ultrasound tests to look for heart trouble.

(New top to this post added at 2:20 p.m. ET)

The U.S. Secret Service just confirmed that Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez has been arrested in connection with the gunshots fired Friday night in Washington — one of which apparently hit a window at the White House.

In a statement sent to reporters, the agency says:

Though the U.S. economy faces lots of problems, as we said yesterday, there are some encouraging signs out there too.

"Syrian activists say that army defectors have attacked an intelligence complex in the Damascus suburbs in what appears to be one of their boldest assaults so far against government security forces," al-Jazeera reports.

There was a scant 0.1 percent dip in the consumer price index in October from September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported.

The major reason for the dip: "The energy index turned down in October after increasing in each of the three previous months as the gasoline and household energy indexes declined after a series of seasonally adjusted increases."

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- 'Murmurings' Of A Deal On Taxes And Deficit Reduction.

-- Penn State Scandal: Key Witness Says He Did Talk With University Police.

After yesterday's drama — the move by police to clear lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who had been camping there for nearly two months — things are much different today.