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.

Indian and Pakistani troops fired at each other in disputed Kashmir on Monday, as Indian troops searched an army camp elsewhere in the region where suspected militants killed an Indian paramilitary soldier. Indian army Lt. Col. Manish Mehta said Pakistani troops fired without provocation using small arms and mortar shells in the Poonch sector of the Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Pakistan's army said in a statement that its troops were responding to unprovoked firing by Indian soldiers. Both sides said the exchange of fire was continuing. In Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with the leaders of all Pakistani political parties to discuss the ongoing clashes.

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!

With Congress opening the way for Sept. 11 families to sue Saudi Arabia, victims' families are focusing on an unproven theory that a Saudi consular official in Los Angeles and a Saudi intelligence operative in San Diego directly assisted two of the 19 hijackers. The alleged Southern California connection is the key to showing that Saudi Arabia financed Muslim extremists who played a direct role in supporting some of the hijackers, according to lawyers for the families of those killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks. The families contend that lower-level Saudi operatives in Southern California helped find housing for the two hijackers, both Saudi citizens, months before they muscled their way into the cockpit of an American Airlines passenger jet that smashed into the north side of the Pentagon. If a pending lawsuit is allowed to proceed, the families hope to find the evidence in thousands of classified FBI, CIA and Treasury Department documents that could be made public as part of discovery in federal court. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any direct or indirect support for Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that carried out the attacks, or any foreknowledge or involvement in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.