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Study: Kids get little exercise

WASHINGTON - America's kids are even more deeply rooted couch potatoes than experts initially thought.

Roughly 3 out of 5 kids ages 9 to 13 report they don't participate in sports or other coached physical activities outside school, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of children and their parents to be released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

About 1 in 4 kids in that age group had gotten no exercise outside school the previous week.

Health experts said the inactivity was greater than expected. Lack of exercise is a likely contributor to obesity and type II diabetes among American children.

The CDC surveyed more than 3,500 families - parents and children - and found that 39 percent of the kids had been involved in organized physical activity outside school in the past week and 77 percent had done some kind of physical activity that "got your body moving" in the past week.

For the fourth consecutive year, Princeton University has topped the U.S. News & World Report annual ranking of "America's Best Colleges," sharing the top spot with Harvard University, which was second last year.

The University of California-Berkeley and the University of Virginia, tied at No. 21, are the top-rated public universities. Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., is rated the country's best liberal arts college.

U.S. News uses a formula that includes graduation and retention rates, faculty resources and other factors to determine the rankings, which are both popular and controversial. Critics have long contended that parents and high school students rely far too heavily on U.S. News in choosing schools, and that colleges gear some of their efforts - such as admissions - toward getting high rankings.

The results will be published in Monday's edition of the magazine.

MEXICO CITY - An actor in a low-budget action movie shot and killed a colleague after apparently being handed a gun with real bullets instead of blanks, authorities said Thursday.

Flavio Peniche, the brother of soap opera star Arturo Peniche, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and then released on nearly $40,000 bail Wednesday, according to the attorney general's office of Morelos state, just south of Mexico City.

The shooting occurred Saturday during filming of Juana the Scorpion at a hotel in Cuernavaca.

According to a police report faxed to the Associated Press, the scene called for Peniche to shoot six people. After firing what were supposed to be two blanks, he realized actor Antonio Velasco had been wounded, and the crew ran for help.

Velasco died shortly afterward at a Cuernavaca hospital.

Police said they were still seeking producer Eduardo Martinez Sanchez and a props manager who disappeared after the incident.