AP State News

A kayaker is being credited with helping to save a family of five after their SUV had veered off a road and ended up in the American River.

Authorities say a longtime Los Angeles Police Department volunteer faces criminal charges for allegedly stealing city gas for his personal vehicle.

Four young hikers avoided spending the night on the side of a Santa Clara County mountain thanks to a search and rescue by California Highway Patrol aircraft.

Authorities have pieced together a 24-page timeline that tracks accused killer Samuel Little's activity across the country since his birth. Little stands charged in the slayings of three Los Angeles women in the 1980s, and investigators in other states are now scouring cold case files and running DNA tests to determine whether Little may be a suspect in other crimes. A timeline of his whereabouts, according to police and public records:

When Los Angeles cold case detectives caught up with Samuel Little this past fall, he was living in a Christian shelter in Kentucky, his latest arrest a few months earlier for alleged possession of a crack pipe. But the LA investigators wanted him on far more serious charges: The slayings of two women in 1989, both found strangled and nude below the waist - victims of what police concluded had been sexually motivated strangulations.

The average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline has dropped six cents over the past two weeks.

Some of California's most powerful unions are pressuring nonprofit hospitals to prove that they provide enough charitable care to justify their tax-exempt status.

Two people are hospitalized after they were shot when a San Francisco police officer opened fire when a person involved in a confrontation pointed what turned out to be an air-powered gun at a group of people.

Resurrected demons and resurrected dinosaurs are helping to put some life back into the weekend box office.

Some people have had it with TV. They've had enough of the 100-plus channel universe. They don't like timing their lives around network show schedules. They're tired of $100-plus monthly bills.

Police say one person is dead and three others are wounded in a shooting in North Long Beach.

A former freelance photographer for the Oakland Tribune has been fatally shot as he drove home from the gym.

A body believed to be that of Nevada's missing chief insurance examiner was found wrapped in a blanket and bound with duct tape Saturday in a river in Carson City, and four suspects were arrested in the case, authorities said.

Authorities say a Metrolink commuter train has collided with a dump truck in Los Angeles, leaving 13 people with minor injuries.

Authorities say a Metrolink commuter train has collided with a dump truck in Los Angeles, causing 12 minor injuries.

Police in Mexico's Baja California state are searching for a U.S. man suspected in the kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl who was taken from her bedroom in Los Angeles, an official said Saturday.

A Mendocino County man wanted by federal authorities on drug charges for four years has been arrested in Berkeley.

The top prosecutor in Northern California's remote Del Norte County has been suspended without pay after a judge recommended he be disbarred.

Members of Rick Warren's Southern California church began Sunday services with a prayer for the popular evangelical pastor, as he and his family coped with the apparent suicide of his 27-year-old son.

A Utah man is trying to use his recognition as this year's national beekeeper of the year to focus attention on a major threat to the industry: colony collapse disorder.

Authorities are investigating the death of a young woman whose body was found in the water at a popular surfing spot near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A Utah man is trying to use his recognition as this year's national beekeeper of the year to focus attention on a major threat to the industry: colony collapse disorder.

Troy James Knapp was dodging authorities, again.

The role of female talk show hosts in late-night TV broadcast network history, all 50-plus years of it, can be summed up in two words: Joan Rivers. It takes just another two - Arsenio Hall - to do the same for minorities.

A small plane attempting an emergency landing at the Big Bear Airport came up short of the runway Saturday and landed in Big Bear Lake instead.

You might use Google Translate to read a hard-to-find Manga comic book or to decipher an obscure recipe for authentic Polish blintzes. Or, like Phillip and Niki Smith in rural Mississippi, you could use it to rescue a Chinese orphan and fall in love at the same time.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has designs on building some of the most expensive public works projects in the nation and wants to keep the state moving forward in its slow recovery from the recession.

Crime in Los Angeles decreased during the first three months of 2013, continuing what has been a trend in the nation's second-largest city for the past decade.

A 41-year-old Durango woman accused of driving drunk and causing a crash that killed two people on a motorcycle has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.