Cameras capture laxness of L.A. airport police

LOS ANGELES -- City officials are calling for an investigation of Los Angeles International Airport police after hidden cameras captured several officers abandoning their posts and ignoring emergency radio calls. The camera footage broadcast Thursday by KCBS-TV appeared to show officers spending hours of their shifts away from the airport or staying at the airport but not working. It also showed police chatting at a restaurant while ignoring radio calls about abandoned suitcases, and using a patrol car to pick up a child at school. KCBS reporters followed officers for two months with hidden cameras.

Marine killed in Iraq hours after son's birth

OMAHA, Neb. -- Marine Lance Cpl. Shane Kielion was killed in action in Iraq not knowing that his first child had been born just hours before. April Kielion, the Marine's widow and high school sweetheart, gave birth to a boy in Omaha on Monday. The baby was named Shane Kielion Jr., said April Kielion's father, Don Armstrong. He said his daughter was "doing as well as to be expected under the pressure." Shane Kielion, a rifleman in the 1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed Monday in Al Anbar Province, the military said. Kielion joined the Marines on Dec. 3, 2002, and this was his second tour in Iraq.

San Francisco considers fee for grocery sacks

SAN FRANCISCO -- City officials are considering charging grocery stores 17 cents each for grocery bags to discourage use of plastic sacks. More than 90 percent of consumers choose plastic bags, which are blamed for everything from clogging recycling machines to killing marine life and suffocating infants. But the fee would also apply to paper bags to help reduce overall waste. The city's Commission on the Environment will consider the proposal Tuesday. The city's Department of the Environment estimates San Francisco customers bring home about 50 million bags each year. That accounts for about 2 percent of waste, at an annual cleanup cost of about $8.4 million. Grocers and the plastics industry oppose the measure.

Police hunt for serial killers in Illinois murders

PEORIA, Ill. -- Police on all-terrain vehicles, horseback and even airplanes have combed fields and forest in search of one or more serial killers believed responsible for the deaths of six women whose bodies were dumped along little-traveled Illinois roads. The women, all of them black with a history of prostitution or drug abuse, had cocaine in their systems when they were strangled or died of drug overdoses over the last 3 1/2 years. None showed signs of a struggle, investigators said. Until a suspect is identified, authorities are trying to reassure nearly 312,000 residents of two largely rural counties southwest of Chicago, while also cautioning them to be on guard.

Man spends week on roof of adult bookstore

SALINA, Kan. -- A man spent a week on the roof of one of two adult bookstores in town to protest a movement to have the stores investigated for obscenity. Ray Morris, 38, came down from his perch on top of Behind Closed Doors on Saturday morning after staying in a tent there since Nov. 13. "I can't stress enough that I am not promoting porn," Morris said. "I'm promoting the idea of choice. Everyone has a right to choose whether they want to enter these stores." Some local residents are gathering signatures in a petition drive to force a grand jury to investigate whether Behind Closed Doors and another store, Priscilla's, are promoting obscenity by selling sex products.

-- From wire reports