Three federal judges are considering whether they can force California to release 52,000 inmates to relieve crowded prisons without creating a public safety nightmare.

Federal prosecutors have dropped four counts of lying to a grand jury against Barry Bonds.

A Mather man is facing charges after officers stopped him with a loaded gun and his two young children in his car in Folsom Thursday.

The son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and three co-defendants entered not guilty pleas Thursday in a San Diego murder case.

A Tracy couple has been charged with using knives, belts and baseball bats to torture a teen imprisoned in their home.

They say knowledge is power and that is definitely the case when it comes to your health.

AP - A military jury has acquitted a New York Army National Guard soldier in the 2005 bombing deaths of two superiors in Iraq.

AP - Three men, including a small-town police chief, were indicted Thursday on involuntary manslaughter counts in the gun-fair death of an 8-year-old who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi that a prosecutor said he never should have been allowed to handle.

AP - President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush have bought a home among business leaders and prominent Republican donors in an affluent North Dallas neighborhood, where they will live after the president leaves office in January.

AP - A teenage boy who limped into a local gym with a chain locked to his ankle had been burned by a baseball bat heated in a fireplace and forced to watch a family eat meals while he went without food, a woman accused of abusing him said in a jailhouse interview.

AP - Doreen Giuliano was obsessed with saving her son from a life behind bars after he was convicted of murder. She gave herself an extreme makeover — blonde dye job, fake tan, sexy wardrobe, phony name — and began spying on jurors. She befriended one juror to root out any possible misdeeds at the trial, and for nearly eight months, they drank at bars, smoked marijuana and shared meals in her tiny Brooklyn hideaway.

AP - The people of Kansas City thought they were getting a straight-shooter with financial smarts as their new mayor. What they got, critics say, is a henpecked husband who needs his wife to tell him what to do.

AP - Before evangelist Tony Alamo's arrest on federal sex charges, three girls who lived at his Arkansas compound told an FBI agent that he had sexually abused them, and one said he had threatened to have "someone take care of you" if she talked, according to a newly unsealed FBI affidavit.

AP - Two teenage girls who worked at a nursing home have been charged with abuse, accused of taunting, spitting on and groping residents who suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

AP - In the last months of his administration, President Lyndon Johnson voiced worry over the Vietnam peace talks and stridently suggested that associates of Richard Nixon were attempting to keep South Vietnam away from the table until after the 1968 election, recordings of telephone conversations released Thursday show.

AP - If O.J. Simpson is looking for a break from the Nevada judge who will sentence him for kidnapping and armed robbery, he may be in the wrong courtroom.

AP - Medical marijuana became legal in Michigan on Thursday, but smoking a joint could still get a patient arrested because the regulations needed to protect them won't be ready for months.

AP - For more than two decades, many autoworkers who lose their jobs have been able to enjoy one of the best unemployment benefits in the nation: receiving nearly full paychecks without even leaving home.

AP - The 19-year-old son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and three other men have pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges in the October stabbing death of a college student in San Diego.