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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A U.S. Army veteran, who boasted on Facebook of his military adventures with Syrian rebels, was charged Thursday with firing rocket-propelled grenades as part of an attack led by an al-Qaeda group against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Eric Harroun, 30, of Phoenix, was charged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction - specifically, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher - outside the United States. According to an FBI affidavit, Harroun, who served three years in the Army before being medically discharged after a car accident, was engaged in military action in Syria, siding with rebel forces against the Syrian government, from January to March of this year.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Brown University says the search for a missing student who was last seen on campus a week ago is now expanding outside Providence to Boston, Connecticut, New York, and Philadelphia. Sunil Tripathi is a philosophy major at Brown who grew up on Bryn Mawr. He has been living in Providence since 2008. He was on approved leave from the Ivy League school. Brown spokeswoman Darlene Trew Crist says in a statement released Saturday that Providence and Brown police departments are leading the missing person investigation.

HERE'S A LOOK at some dumb criminals who have implicated themselves online: -An Indiana man, arrested on assault charges after a 2009 bar fight in New York, fled before his sentencing. But Chris Crego left plenty of cyber clues for cops to catch him: He posted his wanted poster on his Facebook page, along with his current hometown, employer and work hours. U.S. Marshals easily tracked him down, and police posted this thank-you note to Crego's Facebook page: "It was due to your diligence in keeping us informed that now you are under arrest.

Ursula Augustine has big dreams; make that universe-size dreams. The Philadelphia makeup artist wants to grow her business - internationally. She wants to win professional awards - as in an Academy Award. She wants to meet certain people - Muhammad Ali, Michelle Obama, Motown's etiquette queen Maxine Powell, to name a few. On that last one? Mission accomplished. On Saturday, Augustine shared the stage with Powell during a self-esteem/beauty workshop. Happy coincidence? Not according to Augustine.

A tearful girl who ran away from a crossing guard outside the Helen L. Beeler Elementary School on Friday morning turned up safe after seven Evesham Township police cars were deployed to the school. Police said the crossing guard asked what was troubling the girl but received no answer before the child disappeared from view. The woman then called 911. The girl, 7, was accounted for within 90 minutes of the 8:35 a.m. emergency call. But the seven-vehicle response and intensive search of the neighborhood sparked "a high volume" of calls from residents and parents worried about what was going on at Beeler.

Danielle McMonagle's semester as a communications intern at the Vatican was supposed to be a quiet one. Then her new boss, Pope Benedict XVI, announced his retirement on the day she was to start, and all heaven broke loose. "It's been pretty crazy ever since," the Villanova University junior said Tuesday. Earlier in the day, she had watched as 115 cardinals from around the world filed into the Sistine Chapel to begin choosing Benedict's successor. But McMonagle, of Moorestown, was no mere face in the crowd at St. Peter's Square.

A LIFE ON the road ended in the blood-soaked parking lot of the Last Chance Saloon in Camden County. Authorities say Francis Panetta Jr., a member of the Warlocks Motorcycle Club, was stabbed in the leg outside the biker bar on the White Horse Pike in Chesilhurst just beore 11 p.m. Friday. The stabbing severed a major artery near his knee, authorities said, and Panetta, 44, was pronounced dead at 11:34 p.m. at a nearby hospital. "Him and another guy got in a fight," said Manny Corti, the bar's owner.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, which criticized electric utilities for insufficient social media outreach during several 2011 tropical storms, has finally joined the Twittersphere itself. The PUC on Thursday launched a Twitter page - @PA_PUC - as well as a Facebook page for PAPowerswitch.com, its website that assists customers shopping for competitive electrical suppliers. "We think this is an ideal time to ramp up our communications efforts, and the use of Facebook and Twitter is bringing us into the 21st century," PUC Chairman Robert F. Powelson said in a video news release.

To the Bock family of Chester Springs, the Bernese mountain dogs Fiona and Argus were happy, loving pets. To neighbor Gabriel Pilotti, they were apparently pests. And when he found them loose among his sheep last week, he shot them dead. "It was just really vicious," Mary Bock said. The dogs had not touched the sheep. Pilotti could not be reached for comment. As of Thursday evening, the Chester County District Attorney's Office and the West Vincent Township police still were trying to determine what happened the morning of Feb. 12 in a part of Chester County where sheep, horses, and alpacas amble in yards larger than the patches of green in more urbanized suburbs and smaller than more rural farms.

THEY ARE burly, tattooed men with soft spots for neglected animals, but members of Justice Rescue took the outlaw-biker mystique too far and broke the law, authorities say. According to the Pennsylvania SPCA, Justice Rescue members Russell Wayne "Wolf" Harper and Robert John "House" Lewis were arrested Tuesday and charged with impersonating a law-enforcement officer, theft, receiving stolen property and conspiracy for allegedly taking a pit bull in...