California

Pickup truck plunges into canal, killing four

A pickup truck veered off a Mojave Desert highway and plunged into the California Aqueduct near Pearblossom on Wednesday, killing four people, including three children. Another child was in critical condition after being pulled out of the murky water without a pulse.

At least five people were in the truck when it sank in about 15 feet of water. Divers were searching for other possible victims in the aqueduct, which carries water to Southern California.

Three of the victims — 1, 5 and 10 years old — died after being submerged for 20 to 30 minutes. The fourth victim was a 30-year-old woman who died at Antelope Valley Hospital.

A 14-year-old girl remained on life support at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. No names were released.

Michigan

Anti-Bush T-shirt banned at school

School officials in Dearborn ordered a 16-year-old student to either take off a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “International Terrorist” and a picture of President Bush and/or go home, saying they worried it would inflame passions at the school where a majority of students are Arab-American.

The student, Bretton Barber, chose to go home. He said he wore the shirt Monday to express his anti-war position and for a class assignment in which he wrote a compare-contrast essay on Bush and Iraq President Saddam Hussein.

Dearborn is the center of an Arab-American community of about 300,000 in southeastern Michigan. About 55 percent of the district’s 17,600 students are Arab-American.

California

Four Marines held in rape investigation

Four Marines were being held Wednesday on suspicion of raping an unconscious 17-year-old girl at a Mojave Desert motel, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies went to a Motel 6 early Monday on a report of a rape. Investigators then went to the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, and on Tuesday detectives arrested the Marines, ages 18 and 19.

The girl was staying with friends at the motel and the Marines were staying in another room, said Chip Patterson, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman. The Marines had never met the girl before and it was unclear what they were doing at the motel, he said.

They were jailed on $100,000 bail each. It could not be immediately determined Wednesday if they were represented by attorneys.

St. Louis

Popular reporter slain; husband arrested

The host of St. Louis radio’s top-rated radio morning show was found shot to death, and her husband was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder.

Nan Wyatt, 44, was found Tuesday evening in a bedroom of her home in the St. Louis suburb of Twin Oaks. Police said she had been shot several times with a .357-caliber Magnum handgun.

Thomas Erbland, 43, was jailed without bail.

The couple’s 7-year-old son was home at the time of the shooting but was not injured.

Washington, D.C.

Flooding feared in wake of Northeast blizzard

Rain and rising temperatures in the forecast over the next few days threaten to melt this week’s mammoth snowfall in the East and cause disastrous floods.

In Pennsylvania, emergency management officials urged people to prepare for high water by selecting an evacuation route, clearing snow from flat roofs and stocking up on supplies.

“With all of this snow on the ground, the potential is there for serious flooding,” said David Sanko, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. “We’re hoping that the snow melts slowly, but as history has shown us over and over again, warming temperatures can lead to disaster.”

Nationally, the death toll from the storm rose to at least 59 Wednesday after a preliminary autopsy showed a woman whose body was found Sunday in Newark, Ohio, about 30 miles east of Columbus, died of exposure.