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Jan. 13, 2013 Associate Press

SAN DIEGO — Police shot and critically wounded a gunman Saturday in a San Diego movie theater as more than a dozen moviegoers ducked for cover on the floor.

No moviegoers or officers were hurt in the shooting inside Reading Cinemas Carmel Mountain in northern San Diego, officer David Stafford said.

The suspect, whose name was not immediately released, was taken to a hospital with several gunshot wounds and was expected to survive, Capt. Terry McManus told U-T San Diego. He became the target of an intense police search after witnesses reported seeing him confront his 19-year-old girlfriend at a parking lot across the street from a shopping plaza where the Cineplex is located.

Witnesses tried to intervene, but he threatened them with a gun and ran to the shopping plaza.

The owner of a business next to the Cineplex said police shut down the shopping center's parking lot and stopped every car to look for the man. Officers with dogs checked each store, while a police helicopter hovered above.

"There were 20 police cars blocking the entrance, then the fire truck and the ambulance rushed in," Steve Krongard, the owner of the Nickel City arcade, said. "Then we saw seven cops with what looked like rifles, then paramedics went into the theater."

McManus said police turned their attention to the Cineplex when two women told officers the suspect they were looking for matched the description of someone they saw inside the Cineplex. Police searched theater by theater and evacuated moviegoers until two officers spotted him in a theater with about 15 others.

Jan 12, 2013 Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Evo Morales' global crusade to decriminalize the coca leaf, launched in 2006 after the coca growers' union leader was first elected president of Bolivia, has finally attained a partial, if largely, symbolic victory.

A year ago, Bolivia temporarily withdrew from the 1961 U.N. convention on narcotic drugs because it classifies coca leaf, the raw material of cocaine, as an illicit drug.

It has now rejoined, with one important caveat: The centuries-old Andean practice of chewing or otherwise ingesting coca leaves, a mild stimulant in its natural form, will now be universally recognized as legal within Bolivia.

To press for coca's decriminalization, Bolivia's first indigenous president has chewed it at international forums, bestowed coca-leaf art on such figures as former U.S. Secretary of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and promoted the leaf as a "nutritional" ingredient fit for school lunches.

Bolivia's condition for rejoining the convention met resistance from 15 countries, including the United States and the rest of the G8 group of industrial nations, according to U.N. spokeswoman Arancha Hinojal. But the objections received by the United Nations ahead of Thursday's midnight deadline fell far short.

Jan. 12, 2013 Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."

Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president's death.

Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas. Five years later, their father was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel while celebrating his win in the California Democratic presidential primary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his father spent a year trying to come to grips with his brother's death, reading the work of Greek philosophers, Catholic scholars, Henry David Thoreau, poets and others "trying to figure out kind of the existential implications of why a just God would allow injustice to happen of the magnitude he was seeing."

He said his father thought the Warren Commission, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship." He said that he, too, questioned the report.

Jan. 11, 2013 SFGate

The media have fallen victim to crime in Oakland once again.

Jan 11, 2013 CNN

The teacher stood in the classroom, face-to-face with his 16-year-old student, who was holding a shotgun.

Jan. 10, 2013 Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Richard Wayne Landers Jr. was just 5 years old when he and his paternal grandparents, who were upset over custody arrangements, disappeared from Wolcottville, a town about 30 miles north of Fort Wayne.

Nineteen years later, news that he has been found living under an assumed name in Minnesota left his mother overjoyed and "jumping up and down," her husband said Thursday shortly after police announced the break in the case.

Indiana State Police said the now 24-year-old Landers was found in Long Prairie, Minn., thanks in part to his Social Security number. His grandparents were living under aliases in a nearby town and confirmed his identity, investigators said.

Police declined to say whether the grandparents will face charges, citing the ongoing investigation.

Jan. 10, 2013 Baltimore Sun

For more than a decade, Priscilla Lollar struggled to face the realization that her son had been killed in a brawl outside an Atlanta nightclub.

But these days, her emotions are raw again, as one of the men charged in the slaying — Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis — attracts national attention for his impending retirement and the team's playoff run.

The brawl in the early morning hours of Jan. 31, 2000, left two young men from Akron, Ohio, dead from stab wounds. Lewis and two acquaintances were charged with murder, but the charge against Lewis was reduced to a less serious one in a plea deal, and his co-defendants were acquitted.

Lewis, who might be playing his last game Saturday, will retire after the playoffs as the most popular Raven in team history. But his legacy — Super Bowl MVP, one of the National Football League's best linebackers, two-time defensive player of the year — will include the footnote of the murder charges. Fans of opposing teams have taunted him by calling him a murderer, and some in the news media are discussing the case again.