Looks like you need an SQL join:

select a.id,a.body,b.count(*)
from news a,
     comments b
where a.id = b.id(+)
group by a.id,a.body
[download]

it'll work faster, and there's no bind params or overwriting the statement handle to worry about.

note: the (+) is the outer join operator in Oracle, change it to whatever's required in the RDBMS you use

rdfield