The first of three people killed in a gunman’s rampage was identified Wednesday as a 20-year-old woman.
Police did not know why she was in the home of the shooter, who lived with his parents and was described by authorities as a video game-playing loner.
Courtney Aoki, 20, of Buena Park was shot multiple times early Tuesday in the home where gunman Ali Syed, 20, lived, said Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.
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.
Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.
“The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.
We often hear of the phrase “daddy’s little girl” as if fathers and daughters share a special bond unlike any other. A study at Baylor shows that this father-daughter dynamic may be linked to sports.
Dr. Mark Morman, director of graduate studies in the communication department, has released a study showing that fathers and daughters are fostering relationships through shared activities. He performed this study with alumna Elizabeth Barrett, who now works in the Texas House of Representatives. Barrett could not be reached for comment.
Dell’s fiscal fourth-quarter report is expected to show why the struggling personal computer maker wants to end its 25-year history as a public company.
National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre renewed his call Thursday for armed guards in schools and urged gun owners to “stand and fight” for the Second Amendment.
In a speech billed as the NRA response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union call for new gun regulations, LaPierre noted in remarks to the National Wild Turkey Federation in Nashville that the speech didn’t mention school security.
The Florida prisoner who stabbed a detective and escaped near Dallas while being transported to Nevada is “a schizophrenic” who vowed not to return to prison, according to authorities and a 911 call released Wednesday.
Alberto Morales, 42, escaped Monday after using a piece from his eyeglasses to stab Miami-Dade Detective Jaime Pardinas, one of two officers transferring the prisoner by car to Nevada.
Since just after World War II, a portrait of Jesus has hung in a Jackson City Schools building, attracting little discussion and no controversy that anyone seems to recall.
But that changed recently after a complaint, and this small city in mostly rural Appalachian Ohio has now found itself as the latest battleground in a national debate over what displays of religion are constitutional.
The manhunt for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected of going on a killing spree converged Tuesday on a mountain cabin where authorities believe he barricaded himself inside, engaged in a shootout that killed a deputy and then never emerged as the home went up in flames.
A single gunshot was heard from within, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press late Tuesday that officials had found a charred body.
President Obama’s state of the Union speech was met with mixed reactions Tuesday night as he laid out his goals for the next four years.
While the president spoke on a range of topics, the President’s statements on economic reform, budget issues and the gun control debate stood out. Among some of the president’s stated goals for the next four years were a $9 federal minimum wage, a $2.5 trillion budget reduction and comprehensive immigration reform. The president’s overall message was upbeat.
A Texas lawmaker has introduced a bill that would make it more difficult to use unmanned aerial drones in Texas.
Terrill Republican Lance Gooden wants to make it illegal to use a drone to monitor private property without express permission or a search warrant.
CIA Director-designate John Brennan strongly defended anti-terror attacks by unmanned drones Thursday under close questioning at a protest-disrupted confirmation hearing. On a second controversial topic, he said that after years of reading classified intelligence reports, he still does not know if waterboarding has yielded useful information.
Weeks after New York enacted the nation’s toughest gun laws, California lawmakers said Thursday they want their state to do even more in response to recent mass shootings, particularly the Connecticut school massacre.
Democrats who control the state Legislature revealed 10 proposals that they said would make California the most restrictive state for possessing firearms.
WASHINGTON — 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.
“Our financial condition is urgent,” declared Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe. But Congress has voted in the past to bar the idea of eliminating Saturday delivery, and his announcement immediately drew protests from some lawmakers. The plan, which is to take effect in August, also brought vigorous objections from farmers, the letter carriers’ union and others.
IRVING, Texas — Caught in an ideological crossfire, the Boy Scouts of America is putting off until May a decision on whether to ease its policy of excluding gays. Whatever the organization eventually does, it’s likely to anger major constituencies and worsen schisms within Scouting.
The delay, which the Scouts attributed to “the complexity of this issue,” was announced Wednesday after closed-door deliberations by the BSA’s national executive board. Under consideration was a proposal to ease the longstanding ban on gays by allowing sponsors of local troops to decide for themselves on the membership of gay Scouts and adult leaders.
IRVINE, Calif. — Police said Wednesday night they are looking for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected in the shootings of a Cal State Fullerton basketball coach and her fiancé, and they say the man is armed and dangerous.
Former LAPD officer and U.S. Navy reservist Christopher Jordan Dorner is a suspect in the killings of Monica Quan, 28, and Keith Lawrence, 27, who were found shot to death in their car at a parking structure Sunday night, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference.
AUSTIN, Texas — Lance Armstrong on Wednesday was given more time to think about whether he wants to cooperate with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Separately, he learned that he’s about to be sued.
USADA, the agency that investigated the cyclist’s performance-enhancing drug use and banned him for life from sports, has given him an extra two weeks to decide if he’ll speak with investigators under oath. The agency has said cooperating in its cleanup effort is the only path to Armstrong getting his ban reduced. The agency extended its original Wednesday deadline to Feb. 20.
The Alabama man who held a 5-year-old boy captive for nearly a week engaged in a firefight with SWAT agents storming his underground bunker before he was killed during the rescue operation, the FBI said Tuesday night. Also, bomb technicians scouring his rural property found two explosive devices, one in the bunker, one in a plastic pipe that negotiators used to communicate with the man.
A gunman opened fire at a Phoenix office complex on Wednesday, killing one person, wounding two others and setting off a manhunt. Police warned the public that he was “armed and dangerous.”
Millions of people will plant themselves on their couches on Sunday and stuff their faces with nachos and pizza for one of the best traditions that the United States has to offer.
As an avid sports fan, my heart races with excitement at the thought of watching championship football, but the Super Bowl isn’t the only event circled on my calendar on Sunday.
Mother’s Day has come early at CBS: Its veteran comedy “How I Met Your Mother” will indeed return next season —and it will be the final one for the series.
The entire gang is set to return for the show’s swan song. And patient viewers of the long-running comedy will finally learn the identity of the enigmatic mother in the title.
In the course of his travels as a Foreign Service officer, photographer and professor, Dr. Colbert Held has taken photos in every country in the Middle East.
Out of the 19,000 individual Kodachrome slides he personally took, 175 pictures will be spread across different displays in all of the Baylor libraries starting Feb. 7.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned Tuesday against a rush to judgment in a New York gun ownership dispute, citing the recent killings of 20 Connecticut schoolchildren and six educators.
Private landowners are reaping billions of dollars in royalties each year from the boom in natural gas drilling, transforming lives and livelihoods even as the windfall provides only a modest boost to the broader economy.
In Pennsylvania alone, royalty payments could top $1.2 billion for 2012, according to an Associated Press analysis that looked at state tax information, production records and estimates from the National Association of Royalty Owners.
The Mayborn Museum Complex brings together man and machine with the new “Robots + Us” traveling exhibit.
The exhibit, rented from the Science Museum of Minnesota, was displayed in Amarillo last fall and arrived at Mayborn for the exhibit’s grand opening last Saturday.
The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed President Barack Obama’s choice of five-term Sen. John Kerry to be secretary of state, with Republicans and Democrats praising him as the ideal successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The vote Tuesday was 94-3. One senator — Kerry — voted present and accepted congratulations from colleagues on the Senate floor. The roll call came just hours after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved the man who has led the panel for the past four years.
Declaring “now is the time” to fix the nation’s broken immigration system, President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined broad proposals for putting millions of illegal immigrants on a clear path to citizenship while cracking down on businesses that employ people illegally and tightening security at the borders. He hailed a bipartisan Senate group on a similar track but left unresolved key details that could derail the complex and emotional effort.
The Boy Scouts of America may soon give sponsors of troops the authority to decide whether to accept gays as scouts and leaders – a potentially dramatic retreat from a nationwide no-gays policy that has provoked relentless protests.
Under the change now being discussed, the different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units would be able to decide for themselves how to address the issue — either maintaining an exclusion of gays, as is now required of all units, or opening up their membership.
Experts say the stretch of Mississippi River where vessel traffic was halted after a barge hit a railroad bridge on Sunday is one of the most dangerous along the 2,500-mile-long river.
North Korea’s plan to conduct a third nuclear test is “needlessly provocative” and will only increase its isolation, the White House said Thursday, as the U.S. expanded its financial sanctions against the north Asian country.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he’s seen no outward sign that North Korea will follow through soon on its plan to conduct a test — following its underground atomic explosions in 2006 and 2009.
