Assaults

Rapper and actor Coolio was charged Tuesday with battery and possession of cocaine after a run-in at Los Angeles International Airport. The entertainer, whose real name is Artis Leon Ivey, 45, was arrested Friday at LAX after authorities searched his luggage and allegedly found rock cocaine. Coolio grabbed a screener's arm to prevent the search, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said.

Four animal activists have been arrested for their alleged roles in attacking and harassing animal researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz over the last 18 months, the FBI announced Friday. The arrests are a breakthrough in the investigation of attacks against a number of University of California animal researchers that have long frustrated police and school officials.

A vehicle carrying Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was attacked by anti-government protesters Tuesday as turmoil intensified in Thailand days ahead of a key regional summit. A group of 50 protesters smashed the rear window and pummeled Abhisit's driver and bodyguards while the vehicle was stopped at a red light, according to local media reports and witnesses.

A woman stabbed her two young daughters, critically wounding one, before trying to kill herself Wednesday morning while staying at a relative's Westminster home, police said. Thuy Le, 38, and her 3- and 5-year-old daughters were spending the night at her cousin's quaint, one-story home on Starsia Street, police said. Le and the girls slept on a spare mattress in the living room, said her cousin, Toan Pham, 51. Shortly before 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, Pham said he was awoken by children screaming.

Eight people were arrested at the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance over the weekend after a crowd of 300 to 400 people gathered outside a movie theater to watch a fight between two women. When police arrived to break up the brawl at about 9:15 p.m. Saturday, friends of the combatants began fighting with officers, Torrance police Sgt. Bernard Anderson said. The vast majority of the onlookers, who had come out of the theaters to watch the fight, did not participate in the brawl, Anderson said.

A young man with a gruesomely painted black-and-white face went on a rampage Friday at a day-care center, stabbing two babies and a worker to death and seriously wounding 12 people. Sobbing, frantic parents rushed to the scene and to nearby hospitals. Shocked rescue workers spoke of finding crying, bleeding toddlers in the center. The seriously injured -- 10 children and two adults -- were taken to six hospitals, where they underwent emergency surgery.

There was a bit of a street brawl outside a pub, nothing too unusual on the face of it, except for what happened next. After pushing a few men out of the way, the 40 or so attackers revealed what they were really after: young women at the bar, whom they slapped, pummeled and yanked by the hair, in what they later justified as a bid to safeguard traditional Indian culture.

Several weeks ago, Rianne Celine Theriault-Odom applied for a job at Babes & Beer, a sports bar in Tarzana that offers full-contact lap dances along with a wide selection of wine and beer. She wasn't hired. On Thursday, Theriault-Odom, 27, and Nathaniel Marquis Petrillo, 22, were being sought by police in connection with an attack on one of the bar's exotic dancers. Authorities say the pair doused her with a flammable liquid and set her on fire, leaving the mother of two in critical condition.

A Montana man has been acquitted of assault charges by a federal appeals court because he doesn't meet the definition of an Indian, never having joined the Blackfeet tribe from which his mother descended or accepted federal benefits to which Native Americans are entitled. Tuesday's ruling by the 9th U.S.

Police were searching Saturday for a group of youths who attacked a longtime Fullerton minister and his sons, chasing them into their church and pelting them with rocks. The Rev. Willie Holmes, president and founder of Majesty Christian Fellowship, said he was driving his two sons and another passenger back to the church from a Fullerton Union High School concert about 10:20 p.m. Friday when they were attacked near Valencia Drive and Highland Avenue.