CHICAGO (Reuters) - Childhood obesity in the United States appears to be causing girls to reach puberty at an earlier age, for reasons that are not clear, a study said on Monday.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Pediatricians in the United States on Monday warned that new high-deductible health plans risk compromising patient care, especially among poorer children, with the unintended consequence of increasing medical costs.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Subjecting children to drug testing is usually a bad idea for a host of reasons, including often inaccurate results and loss of the child's trust, a leading pediatricians' group said on Monday.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. youngsters aged 14 to 18 who work at retail and service jobs during the school year put in an average of 16 hours a week, often at jobs that are dangerous and unsupervised, a study said on Monday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A woman who weighs more than 400 pounds (180 kg) said on Sunday she did not know she was pregnant until two days before giving birth this week to a healthy baby boy.

AP - NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon said Sunday he is leaving the civil rights organization after just 19 months at the helm, citing clashes with board members over management style and the organization's mission as the reasons.

AP - The first national study to interview teenagers about on-the-job dangers found many violations of federal laws, including sizable numbers performing risky tasks or working too late on school nights.

AP - Being forced to vacate his FEMA trailer — even to safeguard his health — struck Allsee Tobias as yet another failure of the federal government to help Hurricane Katrina victims.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Pediatricians in the United States on Monday warned that new high-deductible health plans risk compromising patient care, especially among poorer children, with the unintended consequence of increasing medical costs.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Subjecting children to drug testing is usually a bad idea for a host of reasons, including often inaccurate results and loss of the child's trust, a leading pediatricians' group said on Monday.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. youngsters aged 14 to 18 who work at retail and service jobs during the school year put in an average of 16 hours a week, often at jobs that are dangerous and unsupervised, a study said on Monday.

AP - The mother of a 19-year-old arrested in a bank theft scheme said Monday that her daughter isn't a bandit, she just fell in with the wrong crowd and made a bad choice.

AP - Attorneys for a 29-year-old sex offender accused of tricking four charter schools into allowing him on campus as a student said they will try to prevent the release of his psychological evaluation.

AP - Perhaps no other area of the city has experienced a convergence of money, power and history quite like lower Manhattan.

AP - Lorenzo Gilyard, a former trash company supervisor, was described by some neighbors as mild-mannered and friendly. Then he was charged with killing 13 women.

AP - A security guard at a FEMA trailer park was shot and killed Monday in the latest violence to wrack the city, still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Police said.

AP - Fairleigh Dickinson University's Florham Park campus was recovering Monday from a norovirus outbreak that sickened more than 100 students last week, school officials said.

AP - Officials have tried poison, gassing and euthanasia to control a breeding frenzy among squirrels in a city park here. Now, they plan to give birth control a shot.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Monday that it rejected an appeal by former WorldCom Inc. Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers, who was convicted of orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud that led to the largest U.S. bankruptcy.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is relying on a 'dysfunctional' computer system for tracking drug safety as it struggles to upgrade its technology, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing a report commissioned by the FDA.

AP - A man authorities tracked down in the snow of a wilderness area confessed to killing and dismembering his wife, and described the 'horrific' details surrounding her death, a sheriff said Monday.

AP - Dozens of families evacuated from a FEMA trailer park that had been plagued by sewage leaks and power outages were in temporary homes Monday, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had requested work permits to dismantle the site this week.

AP - Jon Betts returned home to Ohio wearing the baseball cap his son was wearing when the young man and three Bluffton University teammates died in a bus crash.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A jury resumed deliberations in the perjury trial of former vice presidential aide Lewis 'Scooter' Libby on Monday after the judge declined to answer their question about the burden of proof needed to find him guilty.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - US Airways Group on Monday said it sent 20 extra workers to its Charlotte, North Carolina, hub after a glitch in its self-service reservation system on Sunday forced thousands to wait in lines for up to three hours.

ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey (Reuters) - A New Jersey judge backed a jury's verdict that Merck & Co. properly warned doctors of the safety risks associated with its Vioxx painkiller prior to a Vioxx user's fatal heart attack, a court official said on Monday.

AP - A shooting at a menu printing plant killed one person and critically wounded three others Monday, authorities said.

AP - A small plane crashed into a home near a southern Indiana airport Monday, killing both people aboard, authorities said.

AP - Lorenzo Gilyard, a former trash company supervisor described by neighbors as mild-mannered and friendly, went on trial Monday in the serial killings of women and girls in the Kansas City area, most of them prostitutes.

AP - A judge agreed Monday to seal a court-appointed psychologist's evaluation of a 29-year-old sex offender accused of tricking four schools into allowing him on campus as a student.

AP - The bodies of two children and an adult were found Monday in a car that was set on fire, authorities said.

AP - Jury selection started Monday for the trial of a deaf woman accused of kidnapping, killing and dismembering another deaf woman, South Dakota's first capital punishment case with a female defendant.

BOSTON (Reuters) - A Massachusetts state agency has ruled that a complaint by four Arab-American men that they were harassed by managers at FedEx Corp. -- who called at least two of them 'terrorists' -- may proceed.

BOSTON (Reuters) - A prominent hedge fund manager who was experienced in investing money for charities is expected to be arraigned on charges of attempted kidnapping and sexual assault on Monday, police in Connecticut said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration defended the Medicare prescription drug benefit program on Monday as being cheaper than initially forecast, challenging the U.S. government's top accountant who called it 'fiscally irresponsible.'

AP - A disgruntled employee shot and seriously wounded three co-workers at a menu printing plant Monday before killing himself as a SWAT team entered the building, authorities said.

AP - Four months into his job, a police officer in Mississippi holds a gun to the head of an unarmed teenager and puts him in a chokehold. A rookie officer in Illinois gets into a car chase that kills a driver. And a new campus policeman in Indiana shoots an unarmed student to death.

AP - At a hearing Monday just blocks from the World Trade Center site, the mayor and other New York politicians and real estate developers urged Congress to continue a law that provides insurance against terrorism.

AP - Police arrested three people early Monday during a protest of Iraq-bound Army vehicles at a Washington state port.

AP - A transit bus and a pickup truck collided Monday, injuring seven people, one critically, authorities said.

AP - A helicopter is not necessarily a match for an angry moose. Instead of lying down after being shot with a tranquilizer dart, a moose charged a hovering helicopter used by a wildlife biologist, damaging the aircraft's tail rotor and forcing it to the ground.

AP - A man accused of driving an SUV into a crowded plaza at the University of North Carolina, injuring nine people, was sent for a mental evaluation Monday after an outburst in court.

DALLAS (Reuters) - Texas police said on Monday they were shocked by the video recording of a pair of toddlers aged two and five being encouraged to smoke marijuana by their uncle and a friend of his.

AP - A disgruntled employee firing a pistol seriously wounded three co-workers at a menu printing plant Monday before killing himself as a SWAT team entered the building, authorities said.

AP - Habitat for Humanity International has built homes all over the world. But now it has some work to do in its own backyard: A twister cut a devastating path through the organization's hometown last week.

AP - On a cool July morning in 1972, Robert S. Boyd and I paced outside a small cabin in the woods near Custer, S.D. Inside, Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, his running mate, Tom Eagleton, and their advisers were huddling over a big problem — us.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The use of surgery to treat obesity has increased greatly among U.S. adolescents in recent years, with the number of operations tripling from 2000 to 2003, according to a study published on Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sacramento Kings basketball player Ron Artest, who was involved in one of the most notorious brawls in U.S. sports history in 2004, was arrested on Monday on domestic violence charges, officials said.

BOSTON (Reuters) - A Massachusetts state agency has ruled that complaints by four Arab-American men they were harassed by managers at FedEx Corp. -- who called at least two of them 'terrorists' -- may proceed.

AP - A pilot and his 8-year-old daughter were killed Monday when their small plane crashed into one of his in-laws' house near a southern Indiana airport, authorities said.

ALBANY, New York (Reuters) - Nine people pleaded innocent on Monday to charges related to a suspected steroid ring accused of distributing anti-aging treatments to celebrities and muscle-building drugs to pro athletes.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. federal agents have begun training Arizona police to enforce immigration laws in a pioneering move to combat violent smuggling networks from Mexico, police said on Monday.

AP - A pilot and his 8-year-old daughter were killed Monday when their small plane crashed into an in-law's house near a southern Indiana airport, authorities said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sean 'Diddy' Combs is being sued by a man who says the hip-hop impresario punched him in the face outside a Hollywood nightclub last week, according to court documents.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Deep South Republican lawmaker with financial market clout said excessive corporate executive pay reflects U.S. ethical and moral decline and warned that most Americans will not put up with it for very long.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A raccoon and an opossum separately set off electrical power disruptions at two Los Angeles-area refineries on Sunday night and Monday morning, boosting gasoline prices on the U.S. West Coast.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sacramento Kings basketball player Ron Artest, who was involved in one of the most notorious brawls in U.S. sports history in 2004, was arrested on Monday on domestic violence charges, officials said.

AP - DNA evidence from a stained mattress and fingerprints from a pizza box link 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford to the man accused of abducting and killing her, forensics experts testified Monday.

AP - DNA evidence links a former trash company supervisor to a series of murdered women whose strangled, shoeless bodies were found in secluded spots around the city, a prosecutor said Monday as the man's trial began.

AP - A nurse charged with shooting her husband, hacking his body to pieces and stuffing his remains in suitcases meticulously planned the killing, a prosecutor said Monday.

AP - Bandaged and bruised teenagers wiped at tears Monday as a southeast Alabama community began burying the eight students killed when a tornado tore apart their high school.