Florida

Miami student youngest U.S. Rhodes scholar

At the tender age of 18, Devi Sridhar speaks five languages, earns straight A’s, plays the violin and has co-written a book on Indian mythology.

Now the University of Miami student can add another accolade to her impressive resume: She’s the youngest U.S. Rhodes scholar in the organization’s 100-year history.

Sridhar was named one of 32 Americans to receive the prestigious scholarship to Oxford University.

The daughter of two doctors, Sridhar entered the University of Miami at age 16 in a fast-track program to medical school.

Baltimore

NASA will send teacher to space station

NASA will send teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan into space next year to carry on the educational mission of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher killed in the 1986 Challenger disaster.

NASA announced earlier this year that Morgan would fly on the space shuttle in 2004, but Administrator Sean O’Keefe said Thursday that Morgan was now scheduled for a flight in November 2003 to the international space station.

Morgan will fly on the space shuttle Columbia, scheduled to lift off Nov. 13 for an 11-day mission.

Washington, D.C.

Hospitals to release quality data online

Americans may soon be able to check the quality of care at hospitals by simply going to a Web site under a plan outlined by hospital associations Thursday and backed by the federal government.

The effort seeks to streamline the reporting of information many hospitals already collect, and to translate the data for the public.

Hospitals will be asked to answer specific questions to assess the treatment of patients of heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia.

Responses from hospitals on the three medical conditions will be available beginning next summer on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Web site.

Dallas

Stepfather gets life for locking girl in closet

A man was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for abusing his 8-year-old stepdaughter by locking her in a squalid closet in the family’s trailer for months at a time.

The same jury Tuesday had convicted Kenneth Atkinson, 35, on a charge of serious bodily injury to a child, which carries a penalty range of five years to life in prison.

The girl’s mother, Barbara Atkinson, received a life sentence in January.

Prosecutors asked jurors to remember the disturbing photos of the nearly starved child. “There cannot be a worse injury to a child than this,” prosecutor Mark Moffitt said.

Defense attorney Malcolm Dade said his client should be credited with eventually seeking help by telling a neighbor about the girl, who weighed 25 pounds when rescued from the filthy closet in June 2001.

The girl, now 9, has been adopted by a couple who tried to adopt her at birth but were forced to return her because of a technicality.