A Phoenix man accused of trying to use the government's Cash for Clunkers program to ditch his BMW after a fatal hit-and-run crash last year has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Maricopa County prosecutors say 24-year-old Timothy M. Kissida was driving his luxury car shortly after midnight Aug. 8 when he hit a bicyclist. Phoenix police say 52-year-old Charles Waldrop's bike had lights and reflectors.

Later that day, Kissida allegedly tried to use the Cash for Clunkers program, aimed at putting more fuel-efficient cars on the road, to trade in his car. Police say he told a dealer his BMW was damaged when he hit a javelina, a pig-like desert mammal.

Kissida was arrested after a tip to police.

He also pleaded guilty Tuesday to leaving the scene of an accident and tampering with evidence. A sentencing date has yet to be scheduled.

Davontae Sanford was just 14 when he told police he killed four people in a drug den, drawing their bodies like stick figures to show where the victims died — on the floor, a couch, a chair.

Sanford was sentenced to at least 38 years in prison for the 2007 slayings, which police say were planned as a robbery.

But now he insists his confession was a lie. A veteran homicide investigator agrees that the young man's statements were unreliable. And his attorney is seeking help from an unlikely ally: A hit man convicted in no fewer than eight other murders.

"It's our hope that he will testify for us," defense attorney Kim McGinnis said of Vincent Smothers, who has told police he took part in the slayings.

For more than a year, a judge has been hearing testimony on the teen's request to take back his 2008 guilty plea and seek a new trial. Prosecutors stand behind their case against the teenager, but at least two officers who interrogated Smothers say he took responsibility for the same murders.

Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor War Machine has been sentenced to a year in jail for violating probation after he assaulted people at two San Diego bars.

War Machine pleaded guilty Thursday to two felony counts of assault and to violating probation in a previous assault case. He has a professional fight scheduled for July 9 and was ordered to surrender for jail a week later.

Prosecutors say the 28-year-old fighter knocked away some bottles and glasses on a bar, cutting a bartender. He also got into a scuffle and punched a security guard.

His attorney says an acquaintance started one of the fights but War Machine failed to stop it. The fighter legally changed his name from Jon Koppenhaver.

A man was convicted Monday of murder as a hate crime during his retrial on charges that he beat an Ecuadorean immigrant with an aluminum baseball bat after mistaking him and his brother for a gay couple.

Jurors deliberated for about seven hours before convicting Keith Phoenix in the death of Jose Sucuzhanay. He also was convicted of attempted assault as a hate crime in the attack on Romel Sucuzhanay.

The trial started about six weeks after the mistrial was declared on May 11 when a juror refused to deliberate.

The brothers were walking home from a bar after a party at a Brooklyn church on Dec. 7, 2008. Romel Sucuzhanay had put his coat around his brother to keep him warm and was helping him walk because he was drunk.

Meanwhile, Hakim Scott, 26 and Phoenix, 30, also leaving a party, pulled up in a sport utility vehicle. They began yelling anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs, according to Assistant District Attorney Josh Hanshaft.

Federal agents have arrested a man accused of hacking into computers to obtain personal data to extort sexually explicit videos from women and teenage girls in exchange for keeping their information private.

The Los Angeles U.S. attorney's office says 31-year-old Luis Mijangos was arrested Tuesday in Santa Ana.

FBI experts say he infected more than 100 computers used by about 230 people, including at least 44 juveniles.

The alleged scheme involved using peer-to-peer networks to infect computers, induce victims to download malware disguised as songs, and control those computers to spread malware through contact lists.

Mijangos allegedly searched computers for sexual or intimate images to blackmail victims into making videos for him. Prosecutors say he also was able to control some webcams to capture intimate scenes.

Five members of a Midwest militia charged with conspiring to rebel against the government and use weapons of mass destruction will remain in jail while awaiting trial, an appeals court said Tuesday, reversing a decision by a federal judge.

Each man is dangerous and "no conditions of release will reasonably assure the safety of the community," two judges on the three-judge panel said.

During a series of raids in late March, authorities arrested nine members of a southern Michigan group called Hutaree. The government claims they were scheming to kill a police officer, then attack law enforcement who attended the funeral, in the first steps toward a broader rebellion.

Over prosecutors' objections, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts had said they could await trial at home under strict conditions, including electronic monitors. The government later dropped its opposition to releasing four but took her decision on the other five to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Defense lawyers say the men legally possessed weapons and that any talk of killing people was simply stupid, hateful speech with no specific targets planned.