Man kills woman, self in Missouri mall

No one else was injured but the Jamestown Mall was evacuated.

Marcus Gwynn said he heard four shots as he was walking into the mall to begin his shift at a Radio Shack store.

"I seen a lady on the ground face down, then he sits on the ground and shot himself in the head," said Gwynn, 21. He described both the man and the woman as in their mid-40s.

Deborah and Michael Mingo said they were shopping at Sears when they heard several shots. She said she asked a clerk about the noise and was told it was likely construction, but a short time later people in the store were telling them to get out.

The motive for the shooting just outside the Sears store had not been determined, said St. Louis County police spokeswoman Tracy Panus. Police tape was wrapped around the entrance to the food court near the scene of the shooting.

Woman accused of poisoning 4-yr-old son

PITTSBURGH -- A Tennessee woman has been charged with attempted homicide for trying to poison her 4-month-old son at a city hospital by injecting a saltwater solution into his feeding tube, police said.

Twenty-one-year-old Amber Brewington, who was taken into custody late Tuesday following the latest alleged poisoning attempt, told investigators she was trying to speed up the boy's death to end his suffering, according to a police affidavit.

The boy, Noah King, remained in critical condition with sodium poisoning at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

Brewington told investigators that King was admitted to a hospital in Columbia, Tenn., in May and was later transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, he suffered unexplained seizures and possible brain damage, police said.

While at the Nashville hospital, Brewington "gave her infant son four to five full syringes of high volume salt water in attempts to speed up his death," police wrote in an affidavit. "Amber felt that she did not wish to see her son suffer."

Calif. court passes on suit over gay-marriage

SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court has refused to hear a case seeking to keep an initiative that would ban gay marriage off the November ballot.

The justices' decision not to take up the case means Proposition 8 will stay on the ballot barring further legal action. It also clears the way for the secretary of state to print voter information pamphlets on the issue.

The initiative seeks to amend California's constitution to ban same-sex nuptials in the state. It would overrule a May decision by the state Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage.

Equality California filed a petition last month arguing among other things that the signature petitions used to put the proposal on the ballot were misleading. Wayward N.J. dolphins move to different river

RED BANK, N.J. -- Some of the dolphins that have been entertaining spectators in a river at the New Jersey shore appear to have moved into another waterway instead of returning to the ocean.

The marine mammals have been feeding on fish in the Shrewsbury River near Red Bank for the past few weeks.

Federal environmental representative Teri Frady said Wednesday that wildlife officials saw the dolphins during the weekend in the connecting Navesink River.

Frady says that area is more remote and fewer people will bother the dolphins there. Authorities have issued 11 citations for harassing the dolphins.

An estimated 8 to 12 dolphins were in the Navesink over the weekend, down from 15 in the Shrewsbury earlier. It's unclear whether the others are back in the Atlantic.

Wis. court rules against abused men

MADISON, Wis. -- The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by five men who claimed two Roman Catholic dioceses should have reported sexual abuse claims against a teacher before he moved on to a Kentucky diocese and molested them.

The lawsuit alleged that the Diocese of Milwaukee told Gary Kazmarek to "leave Milwaukee quietly" in the 1960s before he moved to suburban Madison and later Kentucky, where he is serving a 13-year prison sentence for abusing the five men between 1968 and 1973.

The high court unanimously rejected the men's claims that the Madison diocese was negligent in failing to contact police or warn employers that Kazmarek was known for sexually abusing children. The justices said the men did not allege that the diocese even knew Kazmarek was teaching at a Catholic school in Louisville, Ky., or that the archdiocese there had ever asked for references.

"Reasonable and ordinary care does not require the Diocese to notify all potential subsequent employers within dioceses and parochial school systems across the country, along with all parents of future unforeseeable victims," Justice Louis Butler wrote for the court.

Cockpit smoke forces emergency landing

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- A Rhode Island-bound airliner with 71 people on board has made an emergency landing in Rochester, N.Y., because of smoke in the cockpit produced by a faulty air conditioning unit.

No injuries have been reported.

Rochester airport director David Damelio says the regional jet traveling from Chicago to Providence, R.I., landed safely Wednesday morning. Firefighters evacuated the 67 passengers and four crew members.

Authorities said the air conditioning unit was repaired and the flight looked set to resume later Wednesday.

Plea deal ends Texas dognapping case

ALICE, Texas -- A former small-town South Texas mayor accused of secretly keeping her neighbors' dog after telling them the pet died has reached a plea deal.

Grace Saenz-Lopez pleaded no contest Tuesday to filing a false police report, a misdemeanor. Under terms of the deal, she'll pay a $300 fine and serve 48 hours of community service and two years of probation.

Saenz-Lopez, the former mayor of Alice, had claimed the Shih Tzu named Puddles died last year while she was pet-sitting for neighbors Rudy Gutierrez and Shelly Cavazos. Three months later, however, a relative of the neighbors saw the dog, renamed Panchito, at a grooming business.

Saenz-Lopez insisted that Gutierrez and Cavazos had neglected the animal, but state District Judge Richard Terrell in McAllen ordered her in April to return the dog.