AP - Church members watching the steeple being raised on their new building looked on in horror Thursday as a crane holding the structure toppled, crushing a car and killing a 79-year-old man who had been watching from inside the vehicle, firefighters said.

AP - Hate crimes in Los Angeles County soared last year to their highest mark in five years even as overall crime dropped across the region, according to a report released Thursday.

AP - One of two men accused of killing four people aboard a fishing charter last year pleaded guilty Thursday in exchange for an agreement that prosecutors will not seek the death penalty.

AP - The operator of a collapsed Utah mine violated safety protocols by cutting coal pillars that should have been left standing to prevent cave-ins, federal regulators said Thursday.

AP - Dozens of cargo ships, petrochemical tankers and smaller vessels stacked up Thursday near a closed stretch of the Mississippi River, a day after a collision between a barge and tanker spilled more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the nation's busy shipping waterway.

AP - Authorities are investigating whether a veteran state lawmaker possessed child pornography on his office computer, two assemblymen who share an office with him said Thursday.

AP - The grandmother of a missing 2-year-old Orlando girl told an emergency dispatcher that a car driven by the girl's mother smelled like there had been a dead body inside, according to recordings of 911 calls released Thursday.

AP - A former student shot three people Thursday in a computer room at a Phoenix community college, injuring one of them critically, authorities said. The gunman fled but a suspect was arrested nearby.

AP - It started as a bar fight in a college town in upstate New York. Police say a hulking basketball player from Serbia beat a fellow college student to a bloody pulp and fled to his home country, setting off a diplomatic crisis.

AP - It's a political oddity: a TV commercial extolling the public safety record of a sitting mayor, except the spot isn't soliciting votes and the politician's name isn't scheduled to appear on the November ballot.