Washington, D.C.

Summer reading list to undergo revision

The Education Department pulled its summer reading list from its Web site after learning the list misspelled and misidentified book titles and authors. Librarians also said the list was outdated.

The list included children’s classics such as Beverly Cleary’s “Ramona the Brave,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” But librarians say it recommends few titles from the last decade.

“I don’t know if someone pulled out a really old bibliography from a file cabinet somewhere,” Nancy Margolin, a media specialist at McDougle Elementary School in Chapel Hill, N.C., said Wednesday. “These don’t seem like the kinds of lists that would be provided by librarians.”

The department is working to put a corrected list back on the Web site, www.ed.gov, but spokesman Dan Langan said he did not know when that would happen or whether the content would be updated.

Washington, D.C.

U.S. Naval Academy’s superintendent resigns

The superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy has resigned in response to findings by Navy investigators that he had grabbed the wrist of a Marine sentry who had asked for his identification.

The Navy said in an announcement Wednesday that Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton submitted his resignation Tuesday during a meeting with the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Vern Clark, and Clark accepted it.

Naughton, who had been in the job only one year, was accused of improper contact with a Marine sentry at the Naval Academy after he grabbed the sentry’s wrist. An investigation by the Navy’s inspector general substantiated the allegation as well as a “general failure to promote good morale.”

Naughton will be temporarily replaced by Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr. until a successor can be nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

Atlanta

Emergency room visits put strain on resources

More people are seeking care in U.S. hospital emergency departments in the last decade but there are fewer departments to treat those in need, federal officials said Wednesday.

Emergency department visits increased by 20 percent in 2001 (107.5 million visits) compared to 1992 (89.8 million visits), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Yet emergency departments have shrunk by 15 percent during the same time period because of hospital closures, mergers or lack of profitability, said study author Linda McCaig, a CDC health scientist.

As a result, more patients have sought help in the remaining emergency rooms still open. That’s resulted in longer waits for nonurgent care, McCaig said.

Frustration with health insurance policies may be prompting some visits. “It seems that people may have more trouble with scheduling appointments with a primary care provider in a timely fashion,” McCaig said. “They might find it more convenient to go to the emergency department where they can get same-day service.”

Washington, D.C.

Postal food drive nets 61.7 million pounds

The letter carriers’ annual food drive collected more than 61 million pounds of food for the nation’s needy this year.

The May 10 effort involved carriers in 10,000 cities and towns in every state.

The National Association of Letter Carriers said 61,680,790 pounds of food was collected and turned over to local food banks and pantries for distribution to the needy.

The total included 1 million pounds of food donated by Campbell Soup Co.

Collections in the food drive have declined since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, with peak years topping 70 million pounds before that.