Nation Briefly

California: Gas prices up slightly

Gas prices nudged upward about half a penny in the last two weeks after dropping more than 20 cents since May 21, but another price spike is not expected because of a decline in crude oil prices, an industry analyst said Sunday. The combined national average for all grades of gasoline was $1.91, said Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey in Camarillo. The price was up from $1.90 on Aug. 13. Self-serve regular, the biggest seller, was $1.88. Mid-grade national average was $1.97 and the U.S. average of premium was $2.07.

A woman who said she left her 3-year-old daughter behind with relatives after moving from Huntington Beach 35 years ago has been accused in the girl’s death. Donna Pulsifer Kent Prentice, 57, was arrested Friday at her home in rural southwest Wisconsin on a homicide warrant. Two days earlier, authorities in Illinois arrested Michael Kent, who had been Prentice’s boyfriend at the time the girl, Michelle, disappeared. Both are charged with murder. Kent, 62, has been extradited to California. Investigators still do not know how Michelle died or what happened to her body.

Church abuse bill climbs higher

Lawyers for hundreds of alleged victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests estimate that their clients’ claims could cost the Archdiocese of Los Angeles more than $1.5 billion, the largest amount ever paid out by a diocese, according to court documents. Attorney Raymond Boucher said the amount is based on verdicts and settlements in clergy abuse cases nationwide and is consistent with secret estimates of local claims done by a Los Angeles judge earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

A woman shot a University of Arkansas medical school researcher to death in an apparent dispute over money at the researcher’s Little Rock home, police said. Leslie Ann Myers, 42, was charged with capital murder for the death of Bonny Wallace, 57, clinical research director at the University of Arkansas’s surgery department. She was jailed Sunday without bond. Myers also was charged with attempted capital murder for attacking Paul Wallace when he went to his wife’s aid. Wallace was not hospitalized.

USS Razorback returns from Turkey

Thousands of people gathered Sunday on the banks of the Arkansas River to welcome home a historic U.S. submarine as it returned to American waters for the first time in more than three decades. The USS Razorback served 31 years with the Turkish navy after the Pentagon decommissioned and sold the vessel in 1970. City officials in North Little Rock bought the submarine from Turkey for $1 plus shipping costs to make it the centerpiece of a planned maritime museum.

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