I work for Mercury Intermedia, the company who built the USA TODAY app. We are aware of the crashing issue with iPhone OS 3.0 beta 3. We have already resolved the issue and will be including the fix with an update we are pushing out soon.
Also, if you have any issues with the application in the future or feature requests, you can contact us using the email links at the bottom of this page http://www.usatoday.com/iphone/.