Gas Station

MILWAUKEE  - Mitt Romney edged closer to capturing the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday as he beat back a challenge from rival Rick Santorum in Wisconsin and swept the field in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Santorum had counted on an improbable upset in Wisconsin to stop the party from coalescing, if reluctantly, around Romney, whose wins in the other two primaries were all but a foregone conclusion. But with Romney and President Obama clashing anew on Tuesday, Santorum was also fighting the widening perception that the race for the White House was transforming quickly into a two-man general-election contest.

Want to watch a car take flight? You are in luck. Terrafugia, makers of Transition -- the world's first flying car -- has released video of a production-type prototype flying over Plattsburgh, N.Y. today. The flight was the first successful test of the two-seat personal aircraft that you can park in your garage, drive on the road and fill up at a gas station. "This is a very exciting time for Terrafugia," said Carl Dietrich, the company's CEO and CTO. "We are on our way up -- literally and figuratively!"

Hollywood can thank “The Hunger Games” for raking in the bucks - more than $250 million overall, with $61 million over the weekend - but word lovers can thank the movie for something else: the spread of "dystopia" and "dystopian. " The words seem to be everywhere, popping up in news articles and opinion pieces on young adult fiction, visual arts, motion pictures (and not just “The Hunger Games”), hate-crime laws, video games, a trip to the gas station and an anti-President Obama ad by Rick Santorum.

Eleven Los Angeles police officers fired more than 60 shots, police sources said Friday, in the fatal wounding of an armed carjacking suspect in Koreatown at the end of a televised slow-speed pursuit. Authorities said police fired Thursday night after the suspect pointed his handgun at customers at a gas station, endangering people there. "When he pulled out his revolver and pointed it at people inside the store, the officers took action, fired their rounds, and the suspect expired at the scene," Cmdr.

A woman gave away her newborn baby because she wanted to conceal the birth from her female romantic partner, Long Beach police said. After giving birth to a girl at a home Monday, Paloma Espinoza, 28, of Long Beach handed off the infant to her mother, Sonia Hernandez. Hernandez called 911 and gave a false report that she found an abandoned baby in the parking lot of a nearby gas station and took the girl home, police said. In fact, the baby was never at the gas station, said Sgt. Rico Fernandez.

How do you make a Costco beautiful? It's been a thorny topic in the west San Fernando Valley for more than a year, ever since Westfield Group, owner of the landmark Topanga and Promenade malls, announced plans for a 30-acre development between the two shopping centers. Many residents were expecting a Bloomingdale's, high-rise towers, upscale dining. What they got was a Costco. "It's just a box with a parking lot," said Shirley Blessing, a 41-year resident. Plans to include a 20-pump gas station didn't help matters.

They spoke just twice. The first time was 10 years ago when Mark Stroman, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, pushed through the door of a Dallas gas station and furiously asked the dark-skinned clerk, Rais Bhuiyan, "Where are you from?" The second was a brief phone call this summer before Stroman was about to be executed. "I forgive you and I do not hate you," Bhuiyan told the man who had shot him in the face, blinding him in his right eye. "Thank you from my heart," Stroman said.

The houses and manicured lawns slope up the artificial hill edged by unbroken sidewalks and white picket fences, as children play and residents exchange pleasantries. This sprawling subdivision called Bahria Town — "Come home to exclusivity," it boasts — operates its own garbage trucks, schools, firehouse, mosques, water supply and rapid-response force — a kind of functioning state within a nonfunctioning one. And all supplied without the bribes you'd pay on the outside, residents say. "I like living here," said Abdul Rashid, a sixtysomething retired government worker.

The FBI agents wore swimsuits — the better to ensure they were unarmed as they delivered $1 million in cash to the hijackers. The criminals wore beatific looks, traveled with young children and were "polite as possible," a passenger on the ill-fated Delta flight recalled at the time. For one man, it was the perfect crime — for nearly 40 years. But on Tuesday, the FBI said it had caught up with the last hijacker, a convicted killer named George Wright who had escaped from prison in 1970 and resurfaced two years later when he joined members of a radical black nationalist group in forcing the jet to fly to Algeria.

The massive power outage was apparently good for slots, but not so good for tacos. In the small town of Alpine, just east of San Diego, residents converged like moths on the neon lights of Viejas Casino, one of the only businesses not rendered pitch black by Thursday's power outage. Rowina Johnson, a cashier working the graveyard shift, said that as long as darkness reigned elsewhere, the casino was hopping. "While the power was out, they were pretty busy," she said of the casino's workers.