POLITICS

A man accused of killing eight people at a California hair salon in October in the largest mass slaying in Orange County history pleaded innocent on Wednesday to murder charges.

The Los Angeles Police Department is searching the Hollywood Hills for evidence Wednesday, after a severed head in a bag was found Tuesday afternoon.

Detectives investigating a decapitated human head found by hikers in the hills below the famed Hollywood sign discovered a pair of severed hands nearby on Wednesday, a Los Angeles police spokesman said.

Authorities announced at press conference on Wednesday a major drug bust in Harlem. About 35 members of an alleged drug ring were arrested or indicted in an early morning take-down, including an 8-year-old boy, and are being brought up on drug related charges.

A highly-anticipated snow storm hit Seattle and the surrounding area Wednesday, dumping less snow than expected on the Pacific Northwest. Check out photos from the snow storm in the Pugent Sound area.

After plaguing the Everglades, four types of the giant, slithering constrictor snakes have been officially banned from the Florida swampland.

The second grade teacher has been arrested on a battery of child pornography and indecent assault charges after federal agents found hundreds of pornographic images and videos, including one of a friend's daughter, and dozens of girls' underwear. The Newton school district is reeling from the recent revelations, but says there is no proof that Ettlinger abused any of his students.

Ethiopia blamed the small neighboring country of Eritrea in the killing of five European tourists on Tuesday.

Many popular websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing, launched a coordinated blackout today to protest the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA). But what do you think of SOPA? How much have you been affected by the blackout protesting it, and will it make a difference? Let us know here.

On Wednesday Jan. 18 much of the internet went dark in an organized blackout. Web sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, Wordpress and thousands more joined in a pact of solidarity to combat the SOPA and PIPA legislations.

Divers searching the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship that ran aground on Friday and began to sink, suspended their search of the ship on Wednesday.

The world's oldest astrologer's board was found by archaeologists in a cave overlooking the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. The ivory fragments of the board are engraved with zodiac signs in the Greco-Roman form and were sealed in a hidden chamber of Nakovana cave for over 2,000 years.

Bill Weir, the co-anchor of ABC's Nightline, made a shocking discovery while working on a story about full body scans this week: he himself is at major risk of having a heart attack. Weir's on-air diagnosis is very rare, but he's not the only reporter whose assignment has turned intensely personal: three other reporters have all saved lives with their coverage, and for two of them, their reasons were intensely personal.

A 2.5-magnitude earthquake hit south of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning, causing no reported damage, but resulting in two aftershocks.

Webmaster trends analyst Pierre Far has announced that GoogleBot, the web crawler that sorts Google's traffic, will be significantly slowed down Wednesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, giving some extra help to sites who've chosen to self-censor on Internet Blackout Day. Google is also providing SEO tips to sites like Wikipedia and Reddit in an effort to bolster their web traffic.

Young Lee, Pinkberry founder, was arrested on Wednesday at Los Angeles airport on a warrant for beating a homeless man in Los Angeles last summer.

The search for the 23 people still missing after the wreck of the Costa Concordia has been suspended again on Wednesday as the ship began to shift. Rescue operations were called off earlier in the week for the same reason, when choppy seas threatened to move the Concordia from its rocky perch.

Snow starting falling on Seattle early on Wednesday morning, but despite the National Weather Service scaling back its snowfall predictions, a significant weather warning is still in place with schools,flights and Amtrak being cancelled ahead of time to prepare for snow accumulation.

The Canadian freeskier is still in a medically induced coma after her horrific crash last week, and doctors have been unwilling to disclose any new information on her prognosis. As Burke struggles, however, critics of freestyle skiing are wondering if the extreme sport, recently accepted into the winter Olympics, is too risky for its athletes.

Italian authorities released a list of 28 passengers still missing after the Costa Concordia cruise ship that capsized off the coast of Italy Friday, including a Minnesota couple named including a Minnesota couple named Barbara and Gerald Heil. .

As an act of protest against a pair of legislations - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) - more than a dozen Web sites, including Wikipedia, Moveon.org, Craigslist, Reddit, Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network, have participated in a day-long blackout.

Wikipedia initiated a blackout Wednesday, Jan. 18, in protest of the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA. SOPA and PIPA are two Congressional bills meant to halt the illegal copying and sharing of movies and music on the Internet, among other aims. However, major Internet organizations -- such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing -- claim the bills will hinder their operations.

It was one of the most adorable scenes when two giant pandas from China appeared frolicking around their new home in France Tuesday.

Brownsville, Texas, has some lessons to teach the country when it comes to creating jobs: it expects to add 5,000 in the next 10 years. How can other cities follow its lead?

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will not cut interest rates at its review on Tuesday, although it is nearly unanimously expected to do so by the end of June, a Reuters poll of 22 economists showed.

Visit Wikipedia, and you can't find those useful articles. The online encyclopedia goes dark in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Home sales in Southern California jumped in December from November helped by demand from investors but slipped from their year-earlier level as many other buyers remained on the sidelines, a DataQuick report said on Tuesday.

Lamar Odom failed to produce a game-swinging performance, but what he did get in his return to the Staples Center on Monday was much needed closure.

A government watchdog group is suing the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming the agencies are refusing to release details of their alleged meetings and communications with director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal.