Washington

Amtrak train derails, injuring 26 passengers

The engine of an Amtrak train derailed Sunday along the Columbia River, sending at least 26 passengers to hospitals with mostly minor injuries, officials said.

The Portland, Ore.-bound train was carrying 115 people when the locomotive’s wheels left the track, leaving four passenger cars leaning upright against an embankment in the Columbia River Gorge, about 45 miles east of Portland, Ore., Amtrak spokeswoman Marcie Golgoski said.

Three people remained in hospitals Sunday afternoon, including a pregnant woman who was admitted for observation. Seven others, including a man with a shoulder injury, were treated and released.

Rail crews were clearing the track, but it was not expected to reopen until Monday, said Gus Melonas, a spokesman for BNSF Railway Co., which owns and operates the track.

By midday, passengers who could travel were loaded onto school buses and taken to Vancouver, Wash., and Portland.

The National Transportation Safety Board and BNSF were investigating the cause of the accident.

Chicago

Group condemns steroid use by young athletes

Doctors, parents and coaches should take a stand against young athletes using steroids and other performance-enhancing substances, the American Academy of Pediatrics says.

But drug testing with stiff penalties isn’t likely to work, the group says in a new policy statement. Instead, schools and coaches should promote fair competition.

“We’re creating a society of kids who just take a pill to improve performance and to gain an unfair advantage,” said Dr. Eric Small, chairman of the AAP committee that wrote the statement.

Little is known about the safety of the substances in adolescents, Small said, and their use diminishes the value of good nutrition, training and coaching.

Seven percent of ninth-graders say they’ve taken steroids without a doctor’s prescription, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2003 survey.

Use of creatine, a nutritional supplement, may be more widespread. A study of suburban New York students, co-authored by Small, found that 44 percent of 12th-grade athletes admitted using creatine.

Washington

Privacy groups criticize plan to embed ID chips

A government plan to embed U.S. passports with radio frequency chips starting this summer is being met by resistance from travel and privacy groups who say the technology is untested and could create a security risk for travelers.

The embedded chips are designed to make passports work more like employee ID cards that can be passed over an electronic reader to gain access to a building. The passports are to be issued to diplomats starting in August, and then the program would expand to applicants for new passports over the next year.

State Department officials said the chips were part of a global effort to prevent passport fraud. Each chip will contain a digital record of all information printed on the passport, including the holder’s name, photograph and document number.

Groups representing travel-related businesses and privacy advocates say the chips would do more harm than good. Each chip has a built-in antenna that uses radio waves to transmit information to a machine reader. Critics contend that terrorists or thieves could use hand-held chip readers to identify U.S. citizens anywhere they travel. Such readers are available for $500 to several thousand dollars, depending on the level of sophistication.