(CNN) - A truck carrying an unarmed missile booster tipped over in North Dakota on Thursday, the latest in a string of Air Force mishaps and at least the second public mistake since the force's top leaders were fired in June for a "pattern of poor performance" involving the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The vehicle, which was carrying a Minuteman III rocket booster, tipped on its side on a gravel road about 70 miles southwest of Minot Air Force Base. The crew received only minor injuries.

Last week, the Air Force announced that three officers fell asleep July 12 while in control of a classified electronic part that contained old launch codes for intercontinental nuclear missiles. It happened during the changing out of electronic parts used to communicate with Minot Air Force Base.

The two incidents came after a high-profile error last August, when a B-52 bomber flew from Minot to Louisiana with the crew unaware that six nuclear-tipped missiles were onboard, and a 2006 accidental shipment to Taiwan of components that arm and fuse nuclear warheads.

(CNN) - President Hugo Chavez ordered Thursday the nationalization of the Banco de Venezuela "to put it at the service of Venezuela."

The leftist president said in a televised address to the nation that he heard "a few months ago" that the bank's Spanish owner - Grupo de Santander - was planning to sell the bank, which was privatized a few years ago, to a Venezuelan banker.

The banker has asked the Venezuelan government for permission needed to complete the deal, Chavez said. "I sent a message to the Spaniards - No. And to the Venezuelan banker - No. Now the government wants to buy the bank," he said. "Wants to recover it, because it's called the Bank of Venezuela, to put it at the service of Venezuela."

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The U.S. Navy has decided to cut short plans to build a new class of futuristic destroyers and build more of an existing type better suited for anti-aircraft and missile defenses, a top admiral said Thursday.

The Navy will build two of the planned DDG-1000 guided-missile destroyers, not the planned seven, Vice Adm. Barry McCullough told a House defense subcommittee. Instead, the service will build more of the existing Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, known as DDG-51s, dozens of which are already in service.

"The demand from combatant commanders is for ballistic missile defense, integrated air and missile defense and anti-submarine warfare best provided by DDG-51s, and not the surface fire support optimized in DDG-1000," McCullough said.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Officials in Minnesota said the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) did not check with them before hiring Sonia Pitt, a top Minnesota transportation official who was fired last year for unprofessional conduct following the collapse of the Interstate 35-West bridge.

Pitt, 44, was fired last November in a swirl of controversy after Minneapolis media outlets disclosed she failed to return to Minnesota immediately after the tragedy, and instead finished a conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and made an unauthorized trip to Washington. State officials confirmed that, and said she also had misspent $26,000 in state money.

In May, seven months after Pitt was fired from her $84,600-a-year job in Minnesota, the TSA hired her at $89,900 a year, TSA officials confirmed Thursday.

TSA officials acknowledged the agency hired Pitt in May but said they could not say if Pitt disclosed her firing, nor could they discuss Pitt's hiring process, because of employee privacy laws - and an on-going investigation, the nature of which they declined to disclose.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Bush this week ordered the most sweeping changes to the structure of the U.S. intelligence community in decades, the White House announced Thursday.

The amendments to the Reagan-era Executive Order 12333 clarify and strengthen the powers of the director of national intelligence, a position that was created in 2004. The current DNI, Mike McConnell, had sought the changes, which include giving him access to all national security intelligence and information no matter what department or agency it might come from. Agencies have been criticized by the 9/11 commission, among others, for holding on to valued information.

The new rules lay out guidelines for how information will be used and shared within the intelligence community, as the constellation of 16 different agencies reporting to the director of national intelligence is known.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - A Minnesota official fired for unprofessional conduct in the aftermath of last year's Interstate 35-West bridge collapse is now working in an $89,000-a-year job for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, the agency confirmed Thursday.

Sonia Pitt was fired in a swirl of controversy last fall after Minneapolis media outlets disclosed that Pitt, a top official with the state's Department of Transportation, failed to return to Minnesota immediately after the tragedy, and instead finished a conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and made an unauthorized trip to Washington.

State officials called Pitt's conduct unprofessional, saying that she was expected to respond to transportation emergencies. And in a subsequent investigation, state auditors said Pitt had misspent $11,500 of state money, and had charged the state for more than $14,500 of work time that should have been recorded as personal leave.

(CNN) - All eight people aboard a Raytheon Hawker aircraft died Thursday when the plane crashed at a regional airport in Owatonna, Minnesota, authorities said Thursday.

Police Chief Shaun LaDue said the victims were six passengers and two crew members. One person died after being transported to a hospital.

The plane left Atlantic City, New Jersey, Thursday morning and crashed off runway 30 at Owatonna, said Elizabeth Cory, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. It was attempting to land when it crashed.
–CNN Radio's Ninette Sosa contributed to this report.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) - The number of Iraqi civilian deaths in Iraq continues to decline, according to figures supplied to CNN by the Iraqi government.

A count of civilian deaths shows that 387 Iraqis were killed in conflict-related violence in July compared with 448 in June and 504 in May. The figures - based on data collected by Iraq's Health, Defense and Interior ministries - reflect what American and Iraqi officials say has been a dramatic drop in violence in the country.

But the number of Iraqi police and soldier casualties in July rose from June. In July, 45 Iraqi police officers were killed and 83 were wounded. In June, 41 police were killed and 110 were wounded. In July, 33 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 63 were wounded. In June, 21 soldiers were killed and 47 were wounded.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - A Federal Emergency Management Agency official Thursday defended the agency's handling of millions of dollars worth of supplies meant for survivors of the 2005 hurricanes, but pledged to check with states before any future giveaways.

"We will give them notice prior to going to the proper process to get it into their hands," Eric Smith, FEMA's assistant administrator for logistics management, said at a congressional hearing.

Officials from FEMA and the General Services Administration came in for sharp questions from Gulf Coast lawmakers during a rare joint hearing held by the members of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - John McCain's campaign manager charged Thursday that Barack Obama falsely accused the McCain campaign of injecting race into the presidential contest.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong," McCain campaign manger Rick Davis said in a prepared statement sent to reporters one day after Obama alluded to his own race during several stops in Missouri.

An Obama spokesman immediately denied the assertion. "This is a race about big challenges - a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy, and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said. "Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they're using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he'll continue to talk about."