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Five children drown at church outing in Missouri

BALLWIN, Mo. - Five children - four of them siblings - drowned during a church outing when they were caught in a river's current, apparently while trying to help a sixth child who was rescued, authorities and the victims' relatives said Monday.

The six were among about 50 youths with the St. Louis Dream Center, an interdenominational church that was celebrating a volunteer appreciation day at Castlewood State Park southwest of St. Louis.

Witnesses said the children, ages 10 to 17, were swept away as they played in the Meramec River on Sunday evening, said Tracy Panus, a St. Louis County police spokeswoman.

The victims were four boys, Ryan Mason, 14; Damon Johnson, 17; Bryant Barnes, 10; Deandra Sherman, 16; and a 13-year-old girl, Dana Johnson, said Terry Ledbetter, chief investigator for the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office.

All the children except Sherman had the same mother, Edris Moore, and all are from St. Louis.

Moore, who worked at the Dream Center as a cook, said none of her four children had ever taken swimming lessons. She said the children "went on to be with the Lord."

Health officials: Tobacco toll will soar this century

WASHINGTON - Tobacco will kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, if current trends hold, health officials said Monday.

"In all of world history, this is the largest train wreck not waiting to happen," said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

Today, tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4-million deaths worldwide each year, according to two new reference guides that chart global tobacco use and cancer. When deaths from tobacco-related cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases are included, the yearly death toll rises to nearly 5-million and it's expected to keep going up.

An estimated 1.25-billion men and women currently smoke cigarettes, and more than half of them will die from the habit, according to the newly revised Tobacco Atlas, released Monday with the new Cancer Atlas.

Lung cancer remains the major illness among the 10.9-million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according to the Cancer Atlas.

Reducing tobacco use would have the single largest effect on global cancer rates, health officials said.

Studies show eating fish helps fight blindness

CHICAGO - Two new studies give one more reason to eat a diet rich in fish: prevention of age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in old age.

The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish such as salmon are already known to help the heart and brain stay healthy. The new studies, appearing Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology, add to evidence that eating fish also protect the eyes.

A study of 681 elderly American men showed that those who ate fish twice a week had a 36 percent lower risk of macular degeneration. In the other study, which followed 2,335 Australian men and women over five years, people who ate fish just once a week reduced their risk by 40 percent.

Ethanol from sugar not a long-range solution

WASHINGTON - Making ethanol from sugar could be profitable with the current high demand for the gasoline substitute, but it probably won't be for long, the Agriculture Department said Monday.

At current market prices for ethanol, converting sugarcane, sugar beets, raw sugar and refined sugar to ethanol would be profitable, the department said. However, the report added that those market prices are expected to drop as more ethanol is produced, mostly from corn.

"At this high, unusual price, I can conclude that it's economically feasible to produce ethanol from sugarcane and sugar beets," said the USDA's chief economist, Keith Collins. "However, I would not want to pour concrete based on $3-a-gallon ethanol prices" because the futures market predicts ethanol will drop to $2.50 by next year.

At that price, sugar to ethanol would not be economically feasible, Collins said.

The report concluded that sugarcane and sugar beets were nearly 2½ times as expensive to turn into ethanol as corn.

Officials: N.Y. terror suspect linked to al-Qaida

The Lebanese man arrested in an alleged plot to bomb New York transit tunnels under the Hudson River had been recruited by al-Qaida three years ago and members of his cell had been attempting to seek help from the organization for the attack, U.S. and Lebanese officials said Monday.

Authorities announced the arrest of Assem Hammound, 31, on Friday. They said he had been held in Beirut since April 27 and had been planning an assault on PATH commuter trains this fall, though the alleged conspiracy never reached the point of the suspects beginning to gather intelligence and explosives.

In addition to Hammoud, U.S. officials say two suspects are being held overseas without charges, five others are at least partly identified, and six foreign governments are cooperating.

Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces, said one suspect left Syria for Libya, where he has been arrested. Authorities would not say where the third suspect in custody is being held.

Durham district attorney faces possible challenge

DURHAM, N.C. - A county official has collected enough signatures to get on the November ballot opposite the embattled prosecutor of the Duke University lacrosse team rape case, election officials said Monday.

Mike Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, won the Democratic primary in May. With no Republican in the race, County Commissioner Lewis Cheek said voters deserved a choice in the November election.

Cheek, also a lawyer, has yet to commit to running and has said the number of signatures would factor into his decision. He scheduled a news conference for today.

Also, Collin Finnerty, one of the defendants in the rape case, went to trial Monday in Washington on a separate assault charge stemming from a November altercation.

Finnerty, a Duke sophomore, faces one count of simple assault in the case, which is being tried in U.S. Superior Court in Washington. Prosecutors say Finnerty instigated an attack in which he and friends taunted, intimidated and threatened two men, hurling homophobic slurs and fake punches.

The prosecution rested Monday.

In Durham, Finnerty and two co-defendants are accused of raping an exotic dancer at a lacrosse team party in March.

[Last modified July 11, 2006, 01:13:48]