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in London last year.
• Pistorius, 26, has insisted he shot the 29-year-old Steenkamp by mistake, fearing there was an intruder in his gated and guarded luxury complex in the capital, Pretoria.
• ___

• KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Firefighters with cadaver dogs were searching early Wednesday through the rubble of a popular restaurant flattened by a natural gas explosion and massive fire that sent black smoke high over Kansas City's upscale Country Club Plaza shopping and dining district.
• Authorities said 14 people were known to have been injured -- at least three critically -- by the blast and gas-fed fire that destroyed JJ's restaurant around 6 p.m. Tuesday. The flames, spectacularly reflected in the glass facade of an office building under construction across the street, died down only after crews were able to shut off the gas around 8 p.m.
• Kansas City Fire Chief Paul Berardi said late Tuesday the search with trained dogs was standard given the size of the conflagration and the fact that there was no immediate, reliable count of people who were inside the intimate, one-story restaurant at the time.
• "I would always fear there are fatalities in a scene like this," Berardi said.
• Only after the search was complete -- which wasn't expected until later Wednesday morning -- would the site be released to investigators looking for the cause, Berardi said.
• ___

• TUSTIN, Calif. (AP) -- The early morning commute was just getting under way on suburban Orange County's network of freeways when Melvin Lee Edwards pulled up to a stop sign near a busy off-ramp.
• It was just after 5 a.m. and Edwards, 69, was on his way to work when, police say, a fleeing murder suspect forced him out of his BMW at gunpoint, marched him across the street and shot him three times from behind as horrified commuters watched.

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