AP - Serial killer Rodney Alcala will be formally sentenced Tuesday, three weeks after a jury recommended the death penalty for the 1970s strangling and beating deaths of four women and a 12-year-old girl.

AP - A court commissioner will consider setting a trial date in a case that will determine whether Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt gets sole possession of the club, or if his wife is declared a co-owner.

AP - If police officers find grainy white powder at a makeshift lab and assume they've made a drug bust, they could be making an explosive mistake.

AP - The Republican National Committee has fired a staffer who helped organize a $1,946 visit last month to a sex-themed Hollywood club, and the GOP says it will recoup the money from a donor who also participated.

AP - Police say a motorist fleeing officers in Cleveland abandoned his car and jumped a fence — landing in what turned out to be a prison yard.

AP - An anti-bullying expert says a school attended by a harassed freshman who committed suicide didn't follow through on all her recommendations.

AP - Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans — a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.

AP - An experimental anti-poverty program that pays poor New Yorkers for good behavior like getting health insurance and attending parent-teacher conferences has had mixed results.

AP - School officials in western Massachusetts didn't follow all the anti-bullying advice they were given months before a harassed freshman girl committed suicide, according to a consultant who offered the tips.

AP - A judge on Tuesday sentenced serial killer Rodney Alcala to death for the strangling and beating deaths of four women and a 12-year-old girl in the 1970s.

AP - A dangerous ammonia gas leak led to the evacuation of hundreds of people from their homes and sent at least three people to hospitals early Tuesday, after authorities say thieves tried to steal the chemical from a farm to likely use it to make methamphetamine.

AP - Charter school by day, social club by night.

AP - The climbing partner of a California man stranded near the summit of Mount Shasta told authorities he fears the man is dead.

AP - Two people stranded high in the air aboard a stalled fair ride have been rescued after nearly an hour.

AP - Police on Tuesday said a North Carolina father sent his daughter to school for two weeks with a dire warning: Tell anyone about your two dead siblings at home, and I'll kill you and your brother, too.

AP - A third New Orleans police officer is expected to plead guilty in a federal probe of the cover-up of a deadly shooting by police in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

AP - Who knew a school cafeteria could be so much fun?

AP - More than 3,000 mourners traveled by busload Tuesday to a funeral for nine Mennonites killed when a tractor-trailer struck a van in south-central Kentucky.

AP - A record-shattering rainstorm hammered the Northeast on Tuesday, delivering widespread flooding for the second time this month and unleashing particular havoc in Rhode Island, a tiny coastal state already beleaguered by a sagging economy and backbreaking unemployment rate.

AP - A gay teenager in New York wins $50,000 from a school district that failed to stop taunts about his sexual orientation. The Justice Department investigates complaints that administrators ignored racial bullying in a Philadelphia school.

AP - A Minnesota man who repeatedly accused his ex-wife of child abuse rammed her car into a tree and shot her to death in front of their three young children before fleeing in a vehicle belonging to good Samaritans who responded to the crash, prosecutors said Tuesday.

AP - Officials in Kansas have been trying to identify several body parts, including six heads, found in a truck at a medical waste company.

AP - NEW YORK — About half the 4,313 security cameras installed along New York City's subways aren't seeing a thing — a blind spot in the crime and terrorism safety net for the nation's largest city.

AP - Louisiana state police say an explosion ignited a huge fire at a warehouse used for chemical storage, forcing the evacuation of about 20 residents.

AP - A close confidant of Mayor Michael Bloomberg is leaving City Hall to oversee communications at Citigroup Inc.

AP - A trial that could determine whether ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers is shared because of a divorce has been set for August.

AP - More than 3,000 mourners, most of them Mennonites or Amish, traveled by the busload Tuesday to pay their respects to nine Mennonites killed when a tractor-trailer struck a family's van in south-central Kentucky.

AP - It started inside a trailer home in rural Michigan, where a small family gathered before bed for prayer. Years later, the private devotions had evolved into a small militia of 'Christian warriors' preparing to fight the Antichrist.

AP - An attorney says a lesbian student who sued a Mississippi school over its policy banning same-sex prom dates can bring her girlfriend to a privately sponsored dance.

AP - A priest who investigated allegations that another priest sexually abused some 200 deaf Wisconsin children over a 24-year span defended the Vatican's handling of the case Tuesday, saying it's unfair to assume the current pope knew about the investigation at the time.

AP - A former congressman running for governor in Georgia disputed claims Tuesday that he may have broken ethics rules with his auto salvage business.

AP - Preservationists say the construction of two hospitals to replace ones damaged by Hurricane Katrina would wipe out a historic New Orleans neighborhood, and they want a federal judge to block the projects.

AP - A huge fire broke out at a chemical warehouse Tuesday in southeastern Louisiana, forcing the evacuation of about 20 nearby residents and pulling in about 100 firefighters, authorities said.

AP - A hospital spokeswoman says three people are dead from a drive-by shooting that wounded six others in the nation's capital.

AP - Federal investigators are looking into the weekend near collision of a commercial jet and small airplane near San Francisco International Airport.