Killed

WASHINGTON - Minutes after Greg Hicks learned that the perimeter of the U.S. mission in Benghazi had been breached by men with guns, he punched a cellphone number to reach Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, his immediate boss, who was at the scene. "Greg, we're under attack," Stevens told Hicks, the deputy chief of the mission, Hicks testified to Congress on Wednesday. Then the connection was lost. Hicks never spoke to his boss again. Stevens died soon afterward, as the Benghazi mission went up in flames around him. Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were universal in their praise of the gripping, soft-spoken, minute-by-minute account they heard Wednesday from Hicks, the first public testimony from a government official who was in Libya during the assault that killed four Americans in September.

A 16-year-old girl charged with murdering her mother and stepfather tearfully told a Compton jury on Monday that she did not kill them but admitted writing incriminating notes to her boyfriend and handing him a knife during one of the slayings. Cynthia Alvarez testified that she kicked away a folding knife that her stepfather carried while her boyfriend, Giovanni Gallardo, attacked him with a baseball bat in her family's Compton mobile home on Oct. 12, 2011. She said Gallardo used another knife she gave him to stab the victim multiple times.

For the fourth time in the last two weeks -- and the third in Orange County -- a pedestrian was killed after ending up in the path of an oncoming Metrolink train. The latest incident happened about 8:55 a.m. Tuesday when a person ran up to a rail crossing between the Anaheim and Orange stations at Eckhoff Street in Orange, stopped and then appeared to jump in front of the train, said Jeff Lustgarten, a Metrolink spokesman. Lustgarten said he did not yet know the person's gender.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Two bomb blasts killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 on Tuesday at campaign rallies in northwest Pakistan, authorities said, the latest in a wave of attacks in recent weeks aimed at derailing parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. [Updated 9:09 a.m. May 7: Also on Tuesday, former cricketer Imran Khan suffered minor head injuries after falling from a forklift platform that was lifting him up to a stage at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore.

SAN FRANCISCO - The night started out on a high note with nine women, including a newlywed, out celebrating Saturday in the Bay Area. A limousine driver with LimoStop Inc. picked up the women in Oakland and was going to drop them off about 40 miles away at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City. But as the white 1999 Lincoln Town Car crossed the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, the passengers noticed smoke coming from the back of the vehicle, said San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. - Army Sgt. John Russell opened fire on U.S. mental health workers at a combat stress center in Iraq out of revenge after doctors said he was not eligible to leave the Army, prosecutors said Monday at the opening of Russell's court-martial on charges of premeditated murder. Five U.S. servicemen were shot to death at the Camp Liberty clinic in 2009. The defense claims that Russell suffered from chronic stress and mental illness that flamed into a psychotic fury.

OAKLAND - Grief and disbelief reverberated from the Bay Area to the Central Valley on Monday as questions multiplied about a limousine fire that killed five women and injured four on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. Although officials said they had yet to review the limousine's maintenance record or examine its burned-out shell, California Highway Patrol Capt. Mike Maskarich said the 1999 Lincoln Town Car was licensed to carry only eight passengers, though nine were inside. The Saturday night inferno trapped the women as they headed for what was to be a celebratory bridal party at a hotel.

Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric should pay a record $2.25-billion penalty for a 2010 natural gas explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people and devastated a neighborhood, regulators recommended Monday. If approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, it would be by far the largest penalty ever levied by the agency. The PUC's largest fine up to now was $38 million, charged against PG&E for a 2008 natural gas explosion in Rancho Cordova. A report released Monday by the Commission's Safety and Enforcement Division said its investigators found more than 100 violations by the company, some dating back decades.

He left no angry manifesto. The last night he was alive, Jacob Tyler Roberts stayed up late drinking and shooting pool with a buddy. Roberts told his friend Sean Cates that he needed a gun, but he didn't say why. The pair, hanging out in Portland, Ore., smoked pot, got drinks from a 7-Eleven and ended up at a Denny's at 3 a.m. The two crashed at Cates' apartment, and when Cates woke up, Roberts was gone - along with Cates' AR-15 rifle....

Silicon Valley has wielded its growing political clout at the state Capitol to kill a digital privacy bill that would have given consumers access to information about them being collected online. Had the Right to Know Act become law, California would have been the first state to take direct aim at an online industry that stockpiles and trades in a wide range of personal data about nearly every adult in the United States. In a major defeat for consumer groups and privacy watchdogs, AB 1291 will instead become a two-year bill, effectively putting it into a deep freeze until next year.