SANTA ANA, Calif. - Investigators say a man arrested in southern California may have carried out 11 bank robberies in the past three months blamed on the "Scarface Bandit."Michael Lee Felix was arrested Wednesday at a gas station near his home in Garden Grove, the Orange County Register reported. Investigators say they got a tip about him. "After hundreds of hours of investigating these robberies, we were very happy it led to an arrest," Sgt. Dan ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama Thursday defended his controversial former pastor as a community leader, ABC News reported.The Illinois senator told the network that the ministry of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, should not be distilled to 30-second sound bites. Obama said Wright has spent 30 years "building a church that is a pillar of the community on the South Side."Wright has been ... [full story]

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A right-wing member of the Dutch parliament has posted his film criticizing the Koran on the Web site LiveLeak.The 17-minute film by Geert Wilders is called "Fitna," a term used in the Koran and sometimes translated as "strife." The first part of the movie combines readings of selected Koranic passages with images of the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, the Madrid train bombings, the London Transport ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - The left-leaning group MoveOn.org is calling on its members to back a petition that criticizes a group of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's supporters.The Hill reported that the petition is in response to a letter that a group of the New York senator's supporters sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., which MoveOn said threatened Pelosi for suggesting superdelegates back the candidate with the most pledged delegates. "This is pretty outrageous: a group of Clinton-supporting ... [full story]

PHOENIX - Thieves struck a daycare center that serves children with special needs in the Phoenix area, removing copper valves from the outside of the building.United Cerebral Palsy of Central Arizona spent $6,600 to repair the damage, the Arizona Republic reported. The center closed down for a day because the missing valves had allowed fresh water into the building.Thefts of copper have become increasingly common because of high commodity prices. But parents of children who ... [full story]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A federal appeals court Thursday ordered that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman be released from prison on bond while his bribery conviction appeal is heard.Siegelman was imprisoned immediately after he was sentenced in 2007 to 88 months for exchanging a seat on the state hospital licensing board for a contribution to an education lottery campaign. His lawyers argued that he should not have been incarcerated while he appealed his conviction, The New ... [full story]

SEATTLE - The man who packed the parachute used by D.B. Cooper said he doubts the parachute found this month by the FBI was the one used in the unsolved U.S. hijacking.Cooper, on a commercial flight to Seattle from Portland, Ore., on Nov. 24, 1971, handed a flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb in his suitcase. He demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. After getting the goods at Sea-Tac Airport, the plane headed ... [full story]

PHOENIX - Phoenix officials responded to a wrongful death claim with a letter blaming a dead woman's husband for allowing her to fly alone to a rehab facility.Carol Gotbaum, daughter-in-law of New York labor leader Victor Gotbaum, was found dead in a holding cell at Sky Harbor International Airport. She was arrested when she became violent after missing a connecting flight to Tucson. Lawyers for Gotbaum's husband, Noah, and their three children filed a notice of ... [full story]

BRISTOL, England - A British coroner ruled Thursday that a 6-year-old boy pushed off a Greek hotel balcony by his father was unlawfully killed.The father, John Hogan, was acquitted of murder in Greece because of his mental state. He had recently received psychiatric treatment there.The decision on prosecuting him in Britain is in the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service, The Telegraph reported. Witnesses at a two-day inquest in Bristol described hearing Hogan arguing with ... [full story]

PRINCETON, N.J. - Nearly half of Americans say protecting the U.S. environment should trump economic growth, a poll indicated.Forty-nine percent of those surveyed told the Gallup organizations they believe protection of the environment should take priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth, while 42 percent said economic growth should take precedence.Gallup said the poll result is far from that of a similar poll taken a year ago, when 55 percent said the environment ... [full story]