A truck struck the center divider of the 101 Freeway in Hollywood early Monday morning, sending debris into lanes and briefly causing a full freeway closure. The crash was reported at about 3:08 a.m. on the northbound freeway, south of Cahuenga Boulevard, said California Highway Patrol Officer Elizabeth Kravig. There were no reported injuries, she said. Northbound and southbound lanes were closed, but the southbound lanes, shut down by debris on the roadway, reopened around 4:26 a.m. Northbound lanes remained closed as of 5:45 a.m. as a tow truck tried to upright the truck, which is possibly a taco truck, Kravig said.

Video captured a crowd attacking a California Highway Patrol vehicle in Fresno with an officer inside last week. The incident took place last weekend, and three men have since been arrested in connection with the case. The video shows the assailants punching, kicking and throwing objects at the CHP SUV before the officer is about to drive away. One suspect "admitted to kicking the CHP vehicle and said he did so because he was upset with the CHP because a CHP officer recently towed his vehicle," Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer told ABC30. "There were several other people that were kicking the sides of the CHP vehicle. People there were other people that were chanting, yelling, 'F the police, we run the streets.'"

The gig: Kirstin Harper-Smith, 32, is senior project manager at Boston-based Suffolk Construction, where she is supervising the building of a 525-unit apartment tower on Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles. The 888 Grand Hope Lofts project by L.A. developer CIM Group will eventually rise 34 stories, consuming 27,000 cubic yards of concrete and 3,500 tons of rebar along the way. As head of the 10-person office side of the project, she oversees the budget, ensures safety requirements are met and directs who should do what jobs when -- all while trying to keep the project on schedule to wrap in about two years. She anticipates 10-hour days until then. An early start: Harper-Smith caught the engineering bug while growing up in San Diego.

A coroner says a 6-year-old boy has died days after he was critically wounded in a school shooting in South Carolina. Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore said Jacob Hall died about 1 p.m. Saturday. Jacob had been fighting for his life at a hospital since the shooting Wednesday at Townville Elementary School. A bullet struck Hall in a main artery in his leg, causing massive bleeding. Authorities say another student and a first-grade teacher were also shot when a 14-year-old boy opened fire on a playground.

A Somali police officer says a car bomb blew up at the entrance of a restaurant in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, killing two people. Mohamed Hussein said the blast Saturday occurred at the Blue Sky restaurant close to the presidential palace. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but the Islamic extremist group of Shabab often carries out such attacks. Shabab, Al Qaeda's East African affiliate, is fighting to impose a strict version of Islam in this Horn of Africa nation. Despite losing a lot of ground in recent years, the extremist group continues to carry out lethal attacks in many parts of the country, especially in the capital.

Russia has warned the United States against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East. Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying that a U.S. intervention against the Syrian army "will lead to terrible, tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole." She says regime change in Syria would create a vacuum that would be "quickly filled" by "terrorists of all stripes." U.S.-Russian tensions over Syria have escalated since the breakdown of a cease-fire last month, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes have launched a major onslaught on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.

Swiss researchers have completed a study documenting how alcoholic beverages function as a "social lubricant." Was formal research really needed to establish that alcohol "facilitates sexual disinhibition" leading to hook-ups? As if we baby boomers hadn't already made that connection decades ago. Perhaps the researchers weren't familiar with the wisdom (and wit) of mid-20th century poet Ogden Nash, who famously observed, "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker." To the editor: How can I get on the research gravy train as illustrated by this study whose "researchers concluded that alcohol's role as a social lubricant can be traced to its ability to facilitate'sexual disinhibition?' " Revelation!

California regulators have changed course and opened a pathway for the public to get self-driving cars of the future that lack a steering wheel or pedals. It's not going to happen soon, because automakers and some tech companies are still testing prototypes. But, in a shift, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles said in a revision of draft regulations released late Friday that the most advanced self-driving cars would no longer be required to have a licensed driver if federal officials deem them safe enough. Authorities on Friday released cellphone and surveillance video showing the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man, hoping to quell growing questions about the incident that has led to violent protests. The video provides more context about the moments before the fatal encounter on Tuesday,... Authorities on Friday released cellphone and surveillance video showing the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man, hoping to quell growing questions about the incident that has led to violent protests.

At Experian DataLabs in San Diego, a team of scientists is thwarting bad guys with math. A top-five U.S. credit card issuer recently dumped about 6 billion transaction records on Experian DataLabs to see if its machine-learning mathematical formulas could do a better job of rooting out credit card fraud than the bank's existing system. Experian scientists used neuro-embedding/natural language processing techniques to understand the "syntax" of the credit card data, computer scientist Honghao Shan said. "We thought we had figured it out and went back to them," said Eric Haller, head of Experian DataLabs. "They said, 'How did you do that?' … It turns out we reduced their false positives by half."