MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A Hofstra University student being held at gunpoint by an intruder was accidently shot and killed by a police officer who had responded to the home invasion at an off-campus home, police said Saturday.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — It's all about the odds.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Authorities in hazardous materials suits searched a downtown Spokane apartment Saturday, investigating the recent discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Philadelphia police officer once hailed as a hero and given a seat next to the first lady at a speech by President Obama has been arrested and charged with rape and other crimes.

DAMASCUS, Va. (AP) — An elderly driver plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Saturday parade in a small Virginia mountain town and investigators were looking into whether he suffered a medical emergency before the accident.

By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - City Councilman Eric Garcetti leads City Controller Wendy Greuel by 7 percentage points in a tightening race for mayor of Los Angeles, according to the latest opinion poll, but the survey's director said Greuel could still stage an upset in Tuesday's election. The poll released late on Friday by the University of Southern California's Price School of Public Policy and the Los Angeles Times showed Garcetti favored by 48 percent of likely voters, compared with 41 percent for Greuel. Eleven percent of respondents said they were undecided. ...

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) — A simple test could have alerted officials that the drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated, long before authorities determined that as many as a million Marines and their families were exposed to a witch's brew of cancer-causing chemicals.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — The commuter train derailment and collision that left dozens injured outside New York City was not the result of foul play, officials said Saturday, but a fractured section of rail is being studied to determine if it is connected to the accident.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sunbathers flocking to Southern California beaches are used to feeding the meter or paying a parking attendant. Not so along the less developed north coast where it's customary to ditch cars on the shoulder of Highway 1 to surf, swim or picnic.

By Karen Brooks AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Powerball jackpot Saturday night could exceed the $600 million figure being advertised, possibly rivaling the largest lottery payoff in U.S. history, a Texas Lottery official said on Saturday. "Oftentimes, the advertised amount is lower than what the actual jackpot ends up being," said Kelly Cripe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Lottery. "It's entirely possible this $600 million jackpot will end up being a bigger jackpot. ...

NEWARK, N.J (AP) — An airline official says a US Airways Express flight with 34 people aboard was forced to make a belly landing at Newark International Airport after experiencing landing gear trouble. No injuries were reported.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sunbathers flocking to Southern California beaches are used to feeding the meter or paying a parking attendant. Not so along the less developed north coast where it's customary to ditch cars on the shoulder of Highway 1 to surf, swim or picnic.

O'BRIEN, Ore. (AP) — Jennifer Phillippi's grandparents started producing lumber in this corner of Oregon timber country in 1922, when a man could set up a mill, log the trees within range of a team of horses and move the mill to a new stand when those trees ran out.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama has some advice for some Tennessee high school graduates: Strike your own path in college and life and work to overcome inevitable failures with determination and grit.

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP) — A wanted man with a criminal history dating back nearly 15 years was identified by police Saturday as the masked home invader involved in the death of a Hofstra University student early Friday morning.

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) — Officials described a devastating scene of shattered cars and other damage where two trains packed with rush-hour commuters collided in Connecticut, saying Saturday it's fortunate that no one was killed and that there weren't even more injuries.

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP) — A funeral has been scheduled for Wednesday for a 21-year-old Hofstra University student who was gunned down during a break-in at her apartment near the school's Long Island campus.

CINCINNATI (AP) — For more than 100 years, the Anna Louise Inn in downtown Cincinnati has been a safe, serene place that thousands of struggling women came to know as home.

By James Mackenzie VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Pope Francis on Saturday and, apparently responding to his criticism of a heartless "dictatorship of the economy", called for stronger regulation of financial markets. On Thursday, Francis appealed in a speech for world financial reform, saying the global economic crisis had made life worse for millions in rich and poor countries. Merkel visited Rome for a few hours specifically to meet the pontiff and spoke with him privately in his library for 45 minutes, unusually long for a private papal audience. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke painted an upbeat picture on Saturday for the potential of innovation to lift living standards, delivering a sweeping look at the last 100 years that included memories of his 1963 South Carolina home. Bernanke made no reference to monetary policy or the immediate outlook for the U.S. economy in prepared remarks to graduates of Bard College at Simon's Rock, Massachusetts. But the die-hard baseball fan did manage to work in a reference to one of the sport's greats. ...

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has overtaken the ruling Civic Platform in an opinion poll released on Saturday, showing the government may be increasingly vulnerable to the economic downturn. The center-right Civic Platform, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk won 40 percent of the vote at the 2011 election, but its support was down to 23 percent in the survey carried out by CBOS, one of Poland's biggest polling organizations. ...

By Xiaoyi Shao and Michael Martina BEIJING (Reuters) - China's housing inflation accelerated to its fastest pace in April in two years, driven by a jump in prices in Beijing and Shanghai, complicating the task of policymakers trying to cool the property sector while supporting economic expansion. Average new home prices rose 4.9 percent last month from a year ago, after a year-on-year increase of 3.6 percent in March, according to Reuters calculations from data released by the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) on Saturday. The rise was the sharpest since April 2011. ...