By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court struck down an Arizona law on Tuesday that bans abortions from 20 weeks gestation, saying it violated “unalterably clear” U.S. Supreme Court rulings that women have a right to terminate pregnancies until a fetus is viable.

The decision by a three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals in San Francisco, which overturned the ruling of a federal district court judge, was hailed by abortion rights groups as a “huge victory” in a state they say has taken one of the nation’s toughest stances on the issue.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A man arrested on suspicion of growing pot at the home where he lived was a “person of interest” in the brutal fatal mauling of a Southern California woman by a pack of pit bulls, police said on Friday.

Alex Jackson, 29, was arrested after authorities found what is being described as a marijuana “grow” operation at his home, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said. Authorities also seized eight dogs at the property, police said

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A day after a Southern California woman was fatally mauled by a pack of pit bulls, police were trying to determine on Friday whether any of the eight dogs they seized from a nearby home were involved in the attack, law enforcement officials said.

Homicide detectives serving a search warrant at a home in the unincorporated community of Littlerock, in the high desert about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, took eight dogs from the property, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Captain Mike Parker said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A 63-year-old woman was fatally mauled by a pack of pit bulls while walking near her home in Southern California on Thursday and police were searching for the four dogs, law enforcement officials said.

A driver called police Thursday morning to report that four dogs were mauling the woman by the side of a road in a remote high desert area near Palmdale, California, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Captain Mike Parker said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Three people who helped authorities find a fugitive former Los Angeles police officer after he eluded them following a grudge-driven killing spree should split a $1 million reward in the case, a panel of retired judges ruled on Tuesday.

The three-judge panel found that a married couple who were tied up by the fugitive, Christopher Dorner, in their mountain cabin in February, only to break free and call police, should receive 80 percent of the reward.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A Los Angeles judge on Friday ordered a UCLA chemistry professor to stand trial on charges stemming from a 2008 fire in his university lab that fatally burned a 23-year-old research assistant, rejecting a defense request to dismiss the case.

Patrick Harran faces up to 4 1/2 years in prison if he is convicted of all three counts of violating occupational health and safety standards in his organic chemistry laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES, April 22 (Reuters) – Two California men who
pleaded guilty to hacking into the email account of a
professional poker player and trying to extort him with naked
pictures found there have been sentenced to prison terms,
federal prosecutors said on Monday.

Prosecutors say Tyler Schrier, 23, and Keith James Hudson,
39, took part in a so-called “sextortion” scheme targeting poker
pro Joe Sebok in the fall of 2010, threatening to post the
pictures and intimate emails online if he and other victims did
not pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A hacker who pleaded guilty last year to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment was sentenced on Thursday in Los Angeles to a year in prison, followed by home detention, federal prosecutors said.

Cody Kretsinger, a LulzSec hacker who used the online moniker “Recursion,” pleaded guilty in April 2012 to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The gun that the 27-year-old son of popular evangelical pastor Rick Warren used to kill himself was sold to him illegally, with its serial number removed, California authorities said on Friday.

Orange County Sheriff’s detectives were investigating Matthew Warren’s purchase of the firearm, which was recovered at the scene, and could seek charges against the seller, sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A California couple tied up in their mountain cabin by a former policeman wanted by authorities for a grudge-driven killing spree told an emergency call operator that he had likely been hiding in there for days.

The conversation, contained in tapes made public on Wednesday, offered a glimpse into the dramatic final hours before the ex-cop, Christopher Dorner, died on Feb 12 after a shootout with police while he was barricaded in a second cabin.