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WEST CHESTER, Pa. - (AP) -- A man accused of killing a suburban Philadelphia teenager and dismembering his body with a chain saw in a drug dispute four years ago has been convicted of first-degree murder and could face the death penalty.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, partially blind, her right arm paralyzed and limp, came face to face Thursday with the man who tried to kill her last year, standing beside her husband as he spoke of her struggles to recover from being shot in the head.

"Her life has been forever changed. Plans she had for our family and her career have been immeasurably altered," said astronaut Mark Kelly, both he and his wife staring at the shooter inside a packed courtroom. "Every day is a continuous struggle to do those things she once was so good at."

Jared Lee Loughner, 24, was then ordered to serve seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years in federal prison for the January 2011 shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Giffords, outside a grocery store in Tucson, Ariz.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California voters reined in the nation's harshest three strikes law Tuesday with the passage of a ballot measure that allows for shorter sentences for some third-time offenders.

With 26 percent of precincts reporting, Proposition 36 passed with a commanding 68 percent of the vote total.

Mike Riggs |Nov. 7, 2012 Reason.com

HOUSTON -- A refrigerator, not a stove, might be to blame for causing a fire at a Texas home day care that killed four children and injured three others, an engineering expert told jurors Wednesday during the owner's murder trial.

 Mercury News

FRESNO -- A parolee who worked at a California chicken processing plant opened fire at the business on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding two others before taking his own life, authorities said.

By GENE JOHNSON | Associated Press – Nov. 5, 2012

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) — The caped figure on the surveillance video came running out of the darkness to the edge of a remote Army outpost in southern Afghanistan. Blood was smeared on his face, prosecutors said, and soaked into his clothes.

Less than a mile away, 16 Afghans, including nine children, were dead, some of their bodies on fire in two villages.

As fellow soldiers stopped him at the base's gate, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was incredulous, prosecutors said. Then, as he was taken into custody, Bales said, "I thought I was doing the right thing."

The details, from a prosecutor as well as Bales' comrades, emerged Monday as a preliminary hearing in his case opened, offering the clearest picture yet of one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.