Fast-food worker suspected of stabbing customer

HEMET (AP) — Authorities say an employee at a fast-food drive-thru window in Southern California stabbed a customer after a dispute over his order.

A Riverside County sheriff's statement Friday said the man complained about his order to 28-year-old Gabriel Villalba, who worked at Del Taco in Hemet, shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday.

The statement says the confrontation escalated until Villalba stabbed the customer in the abdomen with a knife.

The customer, whose name was not released, was driven to the hospital by friends. His injury is serious but not considered fatal.

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Calif. same-sex marriage foe now endorses unions
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The chief witness who testified in favor of California's gay marriage ban during a landmark trial on the measure's constitutionality reluctantly came out in favor of gay and lesbian unions on Friday, saying he now thinks "that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over."

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times, Institute for American Values president David Blankenhorn partly attributed his change of heart to a recognition that years of opposing same-sex unions had done nothing to strengthen the institution of marriage among heterosexuals.

Mayor, 2 others accused of pot shop bribes
LOS ANGELES (AP) — If someone wanted to do business in the small Southern California city of Cudahy, federal prosecutors say one-time city manager Angel Perales had some advice.

"Money makes the monkey dance," Perales told an FBI informant, according to court documents.

Perales, Mayor David Silva and Councilman Osvaldo Conde were arrested Friday and charged with soliciting and accepting cash bribes totaling $17,000 to support the opening of a medical marijuana dispensary.

Court documents laid out the scheme to approve a pot shop in exchange for cash and also portrayed the suburb of 25,000 as a virtual den of iniquities where drug use, voter fraud and illicit sex permeated City Hall.