"Of course he knows what he's doing; we trained him. He was also a member of the Armed Forces. It is extremely worrisome and scary." - Police Chief Charlie Beck, after a fired Los Angeles police officer went on a shooting rampage that left a policeman and two others dead and set off an extraordinary manhunt.

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"This one doesn't come along every day. This is going to be a dangerous winter storm. Wherever you need to get to, get there by Friday afternoon and don't plan on leaving." - Alan Dunham, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass., as a blizzard of potentially mammoth proportions threatened to strike some areas of the Northeast with up to 2 feet of snow.

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"He could have stopped this violence a long time ago and this political dialogue could have commenced a long time ago. But he has been continuously killing ... That's why people, out of frustration, out of anger, they have been fighting against their own government." - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, expressing hope that Syrian authorities would accept political talks.