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EUGENE, Ore. — A seat belt saved a driver, police say, but not in the usual way. Steven Earp, 48, was eating a fast-food sandwich Wednesday morning, said police Sgt. Doug Mozan. Earp choked and blacked out. His 1997 Honda sedan hit a parked car. After the wreck, Earp came to. Mozan attributed his revival to a "seat-belt-induced Heimlich maneuver."

For a year, Jim Rosapepe has loomed as Maryland Sen. John Giannetti's biggest political threat, taking public jabs at him and raising an imposing sum for what could become one of the year's most bitter and negative legislative campaigns. So wouldn't fate have it that Giannetti was sitting in the bar of an Italian restaurant in Annapolis when the former delegate stumbled in from the dining room, doubled over, eyes bulging and gesticulating as though he were trying to cough -- choking.

Updated: April 1st, 2004 10:46:30 AM New Jersey Teacher Charged With Choking Second-Grader ............ NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- A substitute teacher is accused of using a string to choke a 7-year-old student who had not done his homework. Albert Coleman, 59, is accused of slipping a string around the child's neck and drawing it tight, police said. He was fired by the Newark school district, and police charged him with aggravated assault following Monday's incident at the Elliott Street School. A Newark Public Schools spokeswoman said the incident happened to the second-grader at an after-school program and said the teacher...

VANCOUVER (CP) - The excitement that Nikolai Kulemin felt regarding what his team had just accomplished was tempered by the anticipation of the task that lay ahead. Kulemin scored two goals, the second a great individual effort on a power play, as Russia defeated the United States 5-1 on Tuesday night to advance to the gold medal game at the world junior hockey championship. Russia will play Canada in Thursday's final (TSN, 7 p.m. ET). "It's a huge responsibility," Kulemin said through an interpreter. "We have to prepare very seriously for that game and we will play to win." The...

THOMPSON FALLS - An alleged “choking game” incident in an unsupervised locker room at Thompson Falls Junior High School seriously injured one student and is being investigated as a possible assault, school officials acknowledged this week. It also has caused an uproar among some parents who say other youths have been threatened, bullied and physically abused at or near the school in recent months.

By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago A 10-year-old boy who died after hanging himself from a tree is apparently the second Idaho youth killed while playing a choking game. The Fremont County sheriff's office said Dalton Eby apparently was playing a game known as the "pass-out game," trying to cut off the oxygen supply to his brain to achieve a type of "high." The boy's mother reported him missing last Thursday night when he failed to return home after visiting a friend. Search and rescue crews found his body Friday, hanging from a tree near his Island...

Note: The following commentary contains graphic descriptions of human-rights abuses that may not be suitable for some readers. The story was reminiscent of the horrors of Auschwitz. Kwon Hyuk, who recently defected from North Korea, was telling a British journalist what it was like to work at Camp 22, North’s Korea’s infamous concentration camp. As Hyuk recalled, “I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.” Above the glass chamber, scientists...

<p>A San Mateo County judge on Friday ordered a Taiwanese candy manufacturer to pay $50 million to a Texas couple whose 21-month-old son died after choking on the company's gel candy.</p> <p>The judgment came just two months after the same manufacturer, Sheng Hsiang Jen Foods Co., was hit with a $16.7 million judgment by a Santa Clara jury following the death of an 11-year-old San Jose girl.</p>