Wesley Lowery

George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012, and the case sparked a nationwide debate and protests over "stand your ground" laws and race relations in the United States.

Roughly 200 of the nation's most prominent police chiefs, Justice Department and White House officials, and police training experts convened in Washington on Friday to discuss policy proposals which would amount to the most drastic police reform in decades.

An armed militia took over a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon late Saturday and vows to occupy the outpost for years to protest the federal government's treatment of a pair of ranchers facing prison time.

The prosecutor said he believes the officers involved were reasonable in their belief that Rice had a real weapon, and that new analysis of the video of the shooting leaves it "indisputable" that the boy was pulling the weapon from his waistband when he was killed.

The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others used the phrase "no more baby parts'' to explain his act, according to a law enforcement official, a comment sure to further inflame the heated rhetoric surrounding abortion.

Mall parking lots were packed with after-Christmas shoppers. But nowhere were the lines longer than at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the Van Nuys Masonic Temple, where thousands of people came to exchange their guns for supermarket gift cards.