Christopher Dorner sees himself as a crusader, a 6-foot, 270-pound guardian angel who battles racism and helps those in need.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A report of a burned pickup truck on a Southern California mountain road is being investigated amid a manhunt for a fired Los Angeles police officer suspected in three murders.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Professional football players were on the verge of tears when a group of 26 children who escaped the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School joined Jennifer Hudson at the Super Bowl to sing "America the Beautiful."
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Police say bandits are hitting up Albuquerque public restrooms and running off with metal pipes that automatically flush toilets.
SEATTLE (AP) - Workers using a tower crane to build a 304-unit apartment complex in Seattle have run into a complication: two raccoons climbed 150 feet up the crane and made a home behind the crane's cab.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - An asteroid measuring 150 feet will zip past Earth next week.
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - A new report says more than half of California's population relies on a drinking water supply contaminated by arsenic, nitrates and other contaminants, though most communities blend or treat their water to make it safe.
Within hours after an armed, angry man shot a school bus driver and kidnapped a 5-year-old boy, workers feverishly unloaded boxes packed with percussive grenades, military C-4 explosives and an array of guns from a windowless DC-9 that had landed just miles from the suspect's isolated compound.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is cutting its aircraft carrier presence in the Persian Gulf region from two carriers to one, the Defense Department said Wednesday, in a move that represents one of the most significant effects of budget cuts on the U.S. military presence overseas. The decision comes as Washington struggles to find a way to avoid sharp automatic spending cuts set to strike the Pentagon and domestic programs next month.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's choice for interior secretary is a lifelong outdoors enthusiast who likes to bike, ski and climb mountains.
PHOENIX (AP) - A woman charged with killing her lover in the shower of his Arizona home described in graphic detail Wednesday how he made repeated sexual advances all while converting her into the Mormon faith during their heated initial courtship.
ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) - The tourism world turned its eyes on Mexico after six Spanish women were raped by masked gunmen during a vacation in the long-troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a leading proponent of overhauling the immigration system who has gained attention in GOP circles, will deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday.
SYDNEY (AP) - Six bodies, including a child's, have been found in the sodden wreckage left by a tsunami that smashed into villages in the Solomon Islands, flattening dozens of homes in the South Pacific island chain.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Saturday mail may soon go the way of the Pony Express and penny postcards. The Postal Service said Wednesday that it plans to cut back to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages to stem its financial losses in a world radically re-ordered by the Internet.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Immigration officials briefly detained the Palestinian director of the Oscar-nominated documentary "5 Broken Cameras" on his way into town for Sunday's Academy Awards.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Federal officials on Wednesday blamed unsafe working conditions and poor training for the death of a young Veterans Affairs medical center researcher in San Francisco who died after handling bacteria that causes meningitis.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Lawyers for an Oregon hunter who killed a man he mistook for a bear say they concede their client shot the Marine reservist, but they maintain the death in a field near Silver Falls State Park was an accident.
GROSSE POINTE SHORES, Mich. (AP) - Marguerite Joseph can be forgiven for lying about her age on Facebook.
NEW YORK (AP) - A World Trade Center developer asked a judge Wednesday to disqualify American Airlines from using an "act of war" defense to dodge property liability resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., holding back tears, entered a guilty plea Wednesday in federal court to criminal charges that he engaged in a scheme to spend $750,000 in campaign funds on personal items. He faces 46 to 57 months in prison, and a fine of $10,000 to $100,000, under a plea deal with prosecutors.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that if automatic government spending cuts kick in on March 1 he may have to shorten the workweek for the "vast majority" of the Defense Department's 800,000 civilian workers.
CHICAGO (AP) - Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3-D glasses can do all that and more.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the growing mobile market.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Confidence among U.S. homebuilders slipped this month from the 6½ year high it reached in January, with many builders reporting less traffic by prospective customers before the critical spring home-buying season.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The mayor of Kansas City says search crews have found a body in the rubble of a Kansas City restaurant destroyed by an explosion.
NEW YORK (AP) - The scene: Tehran's Mehrabad airport, January 1980. Six U.S. diplomats, disguised as a fake sci-fi film crew, are about to fly to freedom with their CIA escorts. But suddenly there's a moment of panic in what had been a smooth trip through the airport.
WASHINGTON (AP) - As public evidence mounts that the Chinese military is responsible for stealing massive amounts of U.S. government data and corporate trade secrets, the Obama administration is eyeing fines and other trade actions it may take against Beijing or any other country guilty of cyberespionage.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A gas explosion that sparked a massive, block-engulfing blaze in an upscale Kansas City shopping district injured 14 people, a city official said Tuesday evening, adding it is believed that an accident by a utility contractor may have caused the blast.