KRGV.com

BOSTON (AP) Forecasters had it right. More than 18 inches of snow has fallen in central Connecticut. And throughout the Northeast, 500,000 homes and businesses have lost electrify. It's because of wet heavy snow, freezing rain and howling winds. Accumulations in some areas could reach nearly 3 feet.

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. (AP) SWAT teams, blood hounds and aircraft will be pressed back into service in the snow-covered mountains where a former police officer wanted for three killings may be holed up. More than 100 officers have already been going door to door despite the snow. Christopher Dorner is a former Los Angeles police officer who has posted a manifesto online that says he was unjustly fired.

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. (AP) Authorities are digging around the site where a southeast Alabama man held a little boy hostage for nearly a week after killing a school bus driver. Aerial photos show workers have partially excavated the bunker constructed by Jimmy Lee Dykes. And there's digging around the opening of a steel shipping container that neighbors say Dykes used for storage on his 1.5-acre tract near Midland City.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) Police say a 7-year-old boy alerted a teacher after finding a loaded gun in his backpack at a Philadelphia elementary school. It was a .38-caliber handgun loaded with five rounds of ammunition. The boy says he had his backpack with him in the classroom the entire day. His family is being questioned.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) Two more Marines face criminal charges over a 2011 YouTube video showing members of a scout sniper platoon urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. No date has been set for the hearings, which will be held at Camp Lejeune, N.C.