Marine helicopter goes down in ocean; two die

BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- A Marine Corps helicopter went down in the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday while trying to rescue passengers from another helicopter crash. Two people died, and one Marine crew member was missing.

The civilian helicopter, carrying two workers on a Marine Corps project, crashed Friday after 8 p.m. The Coast Guard rescued one man Friday night, but he died later at a hospital.

The Marine helicopter, based in Beaufort, S.C., was searching for the second occupant when it went down about 9:30 a.m. A Coast Guard cutter rescued four of the five crewmembers.

"One Marine was holding on to the base of a Navy radar tower about 34 miles from the coast," said Lt. Dean Milne, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter Yellowfin, which rescued the Marines.

Terrorism alert system ready to be unveiled

WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge will soon make public a new terrorism alert system to grade threats by their seriousness and give states and cities more specific information.

The new system is said to have several alert levels, with the highest meaning an attack is considered imminent.

The system is described as a response to complaints that the four broad terror alerts issued by the federal government in the months since the Sept. 11 attacks alarmed the public while providing little or no useful information.

The White House confirmed published reports that Ridge and his staff are working with federal, state and local officials, police chiefs and sheriffs with the aim of making the alerts more useful.

Pathologist: Yates' five children died slowly

HOUSTON -- Andrea Yates' five children died slowly, each struggling and gasping for air as she drowned them one by one in the family bathtub, a pediatric pathologist testified Saturday.

It would have taken each child three minutes to lose consciousness, and another three minutes to die, the pathologist said. In each case, he said, Yates would have had time to resuscitate the child afterward but didn't.

"Each of these children did not want to die, and they fought their deaths," Dr. Harry Wilson, a pathologist at Texas Tech University School of Medicine, said during the third week of testimony in Yates' capital murder trial.

Yates, 37, has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

Bond set at $250,000 for Texas hit-and-run suspect

FORT WORTH, Texas -- The suspect in what authorities say is one of the most inhumane crimes they have ever seen was a Girl Scout who cared for babies at her church and took nursing classes in college, her family says.

But authorities say Chante J. Mallard's relatives don't truly know the woman, charged with murder after a homeless man she hit died in her garage, his body lodged in her car's windshield.

After some of her family testified at a bond hearing Friday, state District Judge James R. Wilson raised Mallard' bond to $250,000.

McDonald's nearing end of lawsuits over fries

CHICAGO -- McDonald's is close to paying more than $12 million to settle lawsuits filed by vegetarians who accused the chain of concealing the use of beef flavoring in its french fries, according to a published report.

Citing a confidential draft of the proposed settlement, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday that McDonald's will pay $10 million to charities that support vegetarianism and $2.4 million to plaintiffs' attorneys. The fast-food chain would also publicly apologize and form a board to advise the company about vegetarian dietary issues.

The lawsuits were filed on behalf of any vegetarian who ate McDonald's fries after 1990. That was the year the company announced its restaurants would no longer use beef fat to cook fries and that only pure vegetable oil would be used. But McDonald's continued to add a small amount of beef tallow to its fries for flavoring.

--From wire reports