In the Nation

SAN DIEGO - A college student picked up in a drug sweep in California was never arrested, never charged, and should have been released. Instead he was forgotten in a holding cell for four days and says he had to drink his own urine to stay alive. Without food, water, or access to a toilet, Daniel Chong began hallucinating on the third day.

Four days later, DEA agents opened the door on a fluke and found him covered in his own feces, said Chong, 23, an engineering student at the University of California, San Diego.

The top Drug Enforcement Administration agent in San Diego apologized Wednesday for Chong's treatment and promised an investigation into how his agents could have forgotten about him. Chong's lawyer said he intends to seek damages from the DEA and may file a lawsuit against the government. - AP

SAN FRANCISCO - An appeals court on Wednesday tossed out a convicted terrorist's lawsuit accusing a high-ranking Bush administration lawyer who wrote the so-called torture memos of authorizing illegally harsh treatment.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo is protected from such lawsuits because the law defining torture and the treatment of enemy combatants was unsettled in the two years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when the memos were written, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said.

The unanimous ruling of the three-judge panel reversed a lower-court decision allowing Jose Padilla's lawsuit to go forward. Padilla is serving a 17-year sentence on terror charges. - AP

BEEBE, Ark. - When she plucked a winning lottery ticket out of the trash, Sharon Jones' luck changed instantly. The $1 million prize let the Arkansas woman pay off debts, give thousands of dollars to her children, and buy a gleaming new pickup truck.

Now her jackpot is in jeopardy. A judge ruled this week that the money belongs to another woman, who says she threw the ticket away after a lottery machine incorrectly told her it was a loser. The Arkansas Lottery Commission is trying to stay out of the fray, insisting it did nothing wrong.

Jones claimed the prize in July, turning in a scratch-off ticket that the other woman, Sharon Duncan, had purchased moments earlier at a convenience store. - AP

By the end of Wednesday, 6,000 Facebook users signed up to be organ donors, thanks to a new feature on the social-networking site announced Tuesday by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  

High-wire artist Nik Wallenda, a seventh-generation circus performer, will make his walk over Niagara Falls on June 15, nearly a year after New York state lawmakers passed legislation to permit the event. 

A man fatally shot five people, including a toddler, at a home in a Phoenix suburb Wednesday before being found dead, police said. They said they weren't sure yet whether he committed suicide.