Girl, 14, is charged in her baby's death

BAYTOWN - A 14-year-old girl who secretly gave birth in a school bathroom was charged with capital murder yesterday by police, who said she killed the newborn by choking and flushing him in the toilet. The girl gave birth April 2 in a bathroom at Cedar Bayou Junior High. Police said she stuffed toilet paper in the infant's throat and submerged him in a toilet. The girl's lawyer, Gerald Yoakum, said the teen didn't realize she was giving birth. She was 35 to 36 weeks' pregnant. School officials learned of her pregnancy when another student who was in the restroom while she was in labor asked the school nurse for help. The nurse and an assistant principal ran to the bathroom, discovered the girl had given birth, and called 911. (AP)

LOS ANGELES - A man who said he was attempting suicide when he triggered a 2005 rail disaster was convicted yesterday of 11 counts of first-degree murder and could face the death penalty. Two commuter trains collided into a tangled mass of smoking wreckage after Juan Alvarez left a gasoline-drenched sport utility vehicle on railroad tracks in Glendale, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Alvarez, 29, looked on stolidly as the Superior Court jury returned its guilty verdicts for the murders and one count of arson. The jury also agreed there was a special circumstance of multiple murders - making Alvarez eligible for the death penalty - but it acquitted him of a charge called train wrecking. Jurors were ordered to return for the start of the penalty phase on July 7. (AP)

The chairman of the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents and his wife announced a $15 million gift yesterday to support the new Ocean Hall at the National Museum of Natural History. Roger and Vicki Sant will become the largest donors in the museum's 100-year history with a total contribution of $26.25 million for the major initiative on the world's oceans. The gift will fund education and maintenance of the exhibit. Previous gifts totaling more than $11 million funded an endowed research post dedicated to marine science and video production for the exhibit. The exhibit will be named the Sant Ocean Hall in their honor. (AP)

ATLANTA - A Mississippi businessman born in India was convicted yesterday of plotting to have his black daughter-in-law killed weeks after she wed his son because, prosecutors said, he believed she would bring down the family stock. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Chiman Rai, 68, on charges that he masterminded the murder of Sparkle Michelle Rai. The 22-year-old was found strangled with a vacuum cord and stabbed more than a dozen times weeks after her March 2000 wedding to Rai's son, Ricky. Prosecutors sought to portray Chiman Rai as a racist who was so upset that Ricky married and fathered a child with Sparkle Michelle Rai that he paid $10,000 to have her killed. (AP)