Pennsylvania: 3 in Amish family die after truck hits buggy

A truck rear-ended an Amish family’s horse-drawn buggy Sunday, killing the mother and two children and injuring the father and one other child, state police said.

The driver of the truck was not injured.

Sadie Hertzler, 27, and Mary Hertzler, 5, were dead at the scene near Millville, state police said. Malinda Hertzler, 3, died later at Geisinger Medical Center.

The Hertzlers were riding on Route 42 in Greenwood Township in north-central Pennsylvania when the buggy was struck and plunged over an embankment, police said.

Amos Hertzler was treated at Geisinger and released, and 2-year-old Henry Hertzler was not injured. Another child, Jacob Hertzler, whose age hadn’t been determined, was reported in fair condition, officials said.

The truck driver, Todd Trivelpiece, 28, was not injured; police said an investigation was continuing and no charges had been filed.

San Francisco: Pair plan to return 1 million AOL CDs

Two California men rebelling against a sea of America Online promotional compact discs have got mail like never before.

People around the world have sent Jim McKenna and John Lieberman more than 80,000 CDs offering trial subscriptions to AOL’s Internet services. They say when they collect a million, they’ll go to the company’s front door in Virginia to say, “You’ve got mail.”

Promotional CDs offering Internet service are common in the industry, but AOL, the largest Internet service provider, uses them most pervasively. Their discs appear in magazines, at the post office, at movie theaters and, of course, in mailboxes.

McKenna and Lieberman have requested the CDs through a Web site, www.nomoreaolcds.com, devoted to complaining about the discs.

California: Suburb residents vote which services to fund

Facing a projected $50 million budget shortfall, Long Beach city officials have decided to ask residents to rank their priorities for municipal services.

Through December, the 500,000 residents of the Los Angeles suburb can decide which of the more than 50 services listed on an online survey are “essential,” “important,” “nice to have” or “not important.”

Among the services are: gang prevention, youth sports, pothole repair, weekly street sweeping, tourism promotion and park rangers. There’s also a section where residents can offer their own ideas on ways to fix the city’s budget problem.

“We’re doing it in a language they’re comfortable with,” said Acting Deputy City Manager Suzanne Mason, who helped prepare the survey.

The city council decides the budget in January.

St. Louis: Farm study finds reduced sperm quality

A study has found the quality of semen significantly poorer in men from rural mid-Missouri than in males from urban areas, and its authors believe agricultural chemicals might explain the difference.

The University of Missouri researchers said their study offered the first convincing evidence that semen quality measured by the count, shape and movement of sperm varies significantly among regions of the United States.

The study appeared in today’s online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives, a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, at www.ehponline.org/swan2002.

Dr. Shanna Swan of the University of Missouri-Columbia, the lead researcher, said she and her collaborators believe that environmental factors such as the use of agricultural chemicals might contribute to the difference