Workers burn feet at company retreat

MIAMI -- About a dozen Burger King marketing-department workers burned their feet when they walked over white-hot coals at a meeting intended to promote bonding.

One woman was taken to a hospital emergency room, and Burger King brought in a doctor to treat others whose feet were blistered. Some workers used wheelchairs the next day when they went to the airport to leave for another company retreat.

More than 100 employees at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo participated Wednesday in the firewalking, a ritual with origins in religions of the Far East.

The Burger King workers had to sign a waiver acknowledging they might get hurt. The injured employees suffered first- and second-degree burns.

Church, day care worker charged in heat death

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A church corporation and one of its day care workers have been charged in the death of a toddler who was left for three hours in a hot van.

Zaniyah Hinson, 2, was left in a locked van at the Abundant Life Academy of Learning day care center on Aug. 10, police said. Temperatures inside the van likely reached 140 degrees.

The state attorney's office filed a felony manslaughter charge Friday against Abundant Life Ministries, which owns the day care center.

"The corporation's being held accountable for a series of reckless acts that endangered all the children and took the life of Zaniyah Hinson," prosecutor Phillip Havens said.

If the church is found guilty, Rev. Marcus Triplett, its president, could face up to 30 years in prison.

Day care worker Gail Besemer, 40, was arrested and charged with felony neglect. She was being held on $2,500 bail. According to police, Besemer said she forgot to do a head count of the children after returning from a trip to a local park.

Women, all 60 plus, bare themselves for charity

AIKEN, S.C. -- Wearing little more than pearls and smiles, more than two dozen women, all older than 60, have brought new meaning to dropping everything to help charity.

Their 18-month "Still Magnolia" calendar is less graphic than it is revealing about how the group came together to raise money for local programs for older residents, including Meals on Wheels.

"When I learned of the problems our Council on Aging was having, I couldn't say no," said 64-year-old Dorothy Ridley, a Meals on Wheels volunteer. In the calendar, she appears on a private tennis court wearing pearls and tennis shoes with her otherwise private parts covered by a loosely held towel and the top of the net.

Scott Murphy, executive director of the Aiken Area Council on Aging, said the program will be expanded and include better meals with some of the $125,000 raised by calendar sales.

Betty Ryberg, who helped organize the project, said the Still Magnolias name was picked because the women are still as beautiful as the magnolia flower.

Man loses citizenship for being Nazi guard

WASHINGTON -- A retired Ohio factory worker has been stripped of his U.S. citizenship for working as a guard at a Nazi slave labor camp during World War II, the Justice Department said Friday.

Wasyl Krysa, 76, of Brooklyn, Ohio, served as an armed guard of civilian prisoners at the Poniatowa labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland from July to November 1943, according to the department's Office of Special Investigations.

Krysa has admitted he was a guard during the war but said he never hurt anyone and served the Nazis against his will, according to a brief filed earlier this year with the U.S. District Court in Cleveland.

U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Gaughan wrote in Friday's ruling that just by serving as an armed guard, Krysa ensured that prisoners could not escape persecution "because of their race, religion or national origin."

-- From wire reports