Nation briefs

WASHINGTON

Updating 'No Child Left'

Congress is pressing ahead with efforts to update the much-criticized No Child Left Behind education law. A bipartisan conference committee met yesterday to work on compromise legislation merging two education bills that passed the House and Senate in July, years after the Bush-era law was supposed to be reauthorized. Some progress has been made since in developing a framework for a new bill. It would maintain the federally required annual tests in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. But it would dramatically lessen the federal role, returning to the states the power to determine whether and how to use those tests to assess performance.

MISSOURI

Charged in fatal injection

A Dallas woman has been charged with manslaughter, accused of recklessly causing a woman's death in July by performing an illegal cosmetic injection in her buttocks. St. Louis County prosecutors charged Nitica Deonte Lee, 44, with first-degree involuntary manslaughter, saying she injected a silicone substance into Daysha Phillips, 22. Phillips, from Florissant, died four days later of a silicone pulmonary embolism. Lee's bond was set at $200,000 cash on the manslaughter count, punishable by up to 7 years in prison.

TEXAS

Suspect drank with victims

The lone survivor of an attack that left six dead Saturday at an East Texas campsite told authorities the suspect had drinks with the victims before producing a gun and firing on them, according to an arrest warrant released yesterday. William Hudson, 33, went with four of the group, including a 6-year-old boy, into woods, the warrant provided by the Anderson County Sheriff's Office said. Cynthia Johnson said she heard gunshots before Hudson returned alone, then chased her husband, Carl, and daughter, Hannah, into a travel camper. She said she hid in the woods but saw her husband shot at the camper. The woman made her way to a road and eventually called 911, the document said.