Woman dies in ER lobby as 911 refuses to helpLOS ANGELES - A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility, newly released tapes of the emergency calls reveal.
Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.
Relatives said Rodrigue... (more) "Relatives reported she died as police were wheeling her out of the hospital after the officers they had asked to help Rodriguez arrested her instead on a parole violation. Sheriff’s Department spokesman Duane Allen said Wednesday that the investigation is ongoing." |
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Chicago to Consider Congestion TaxA Chicago, Illinois city councilman yesterday proposed to join San Francisco and New York City as the third US city to attempt to impose a congestion tax on motorists. The council's Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke, 62, made the proposal as a means of raising hundreds of millions in new revenue.
"I thought as long as London is doing it, as long as New York is doing it, that perhaps it's an idea that Chicago ought to consider," Burke said, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times ne... (more)
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Warning over workplace psychopathsWORKPLACE psychopaths are common in major businesses and are ruining the lives of their colleagues, an expert has warned.
And they are often rewarded for their ruthless behaviour because they appear smart and creative but are really manipulative bullies who steal ideas, according to Sydney-based psychotherapist and author John Clarke.
Dr Clarke, who has penned two books about workplace psychopaths and will speak at the state government-sponsored Queensland Safety Sh... (more)
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NRA, Democrats Team Up To Pass Gun BillAfter 52 years in Congress, John Dingell knows it sometimes takes a "rather curious alliance," such as between the National Rifle Association and the House's most fervent gun control advocate, to move legislation.
That's what took place Wednesday when the House, by voice vote, passed a gun control bill that Rep. Dingell, D-Mich., helped broker between the NRA and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y.
With the NRA on board, the bill, which fixes flaws in the national gun bac... (more)
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UN chief 'bans free speech' United Nations staff expressed their anger at an order by the Secretary General prohibiting them from speaking to the press following the leaking of a confidential document related to Middle East which pained the the United States in negative light.
But Ban Ki-moon's office denied that he was treading on the freedom of speech of UN staff, and claimed that the prohibitions applied to specif... (more)
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How to Sell a War The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us.
To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from th... (more)
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Despite battle in the White House: war with IranThe answer to the question of why Iran has not yet been invaded by the United States can be found in the deteriorating situation in Iraq, which is providing Condoleezza Rice - in contradiction of Dick Cheney's vision - an opening to give negotiations a chance. Newsweek writes: 'One by one, the Cheneyites have been losing significant supporters in the top ranks of the administration--most recently White House d... (more)
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The Neocon Threat to American Freedom The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three to six week affair, now tells us that the US occupation is permanent. Forever.
Attentive Americans of which, alas, there are so few, had already concluded that the occupation was permanent. Permanence is the obvious message from the massive and fortified US embassy under construction in Iraq and from the large permanent ... (more)
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UK troops receiving 'trigger happy' drug BRITISH troops are being prescribed with a controversial drug which has been blamed for making US pilots "trigger-happy" and causing friendly fire deaths.
The Ministry of Defence has admitted that it prescribes the amphetamine dexedrine, which is capable of keeping users awake for as long as 60 hours.
While the MoD has refused to say what it uses the Class B drug for, leading narcotics experts say that the main purpose is to keep soldie... (more)
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Man Faces 7 Year Sentence Under "Wiretapping Law" For Filming Police A man has been charged in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with filming police officers during a routine traffic stop and faces up to seven years in prison for "wiretapping".
Brian D. Kelly is charged under a state law that bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone's oral conversation without their consent, reports the Patriot News.
The criminal case relates to the sound, not the pictures, that... (more)
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Video recording leads to felony chargeBrian D. Kelly didn't think he was doing anything illegal when he used his videocamera to record a Carlisle police officer during a traffic stop. Making movies is one of his hobbies, he said, and the stop was just another interesting event to film.
Now he's worried about going to prison or being burdened with a criminal record.
Kelly, 18, of Carlisle, was arrested on a felony wiretapping charge, with a penalty of up to 7 years in state prison.
His cam... (more)
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Army admits secretly dumping 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents, 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines, rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste into the seaIt is no secret that the U.S. military has used the ocean as trashcan for munitions in the past. Peter discussed at the Old DSN how federal lawmakers were pressing the US Army to reveal everything it knows about a massive international program to dump chemical weapons off homeland and foreign shores. "The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the s... (more)
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Bees Aren't The Only Pollinators MissingMaybe this is just a very strange coincidence with the massive disappearance of the Honey Bee, but my Hummingbird population is quickly dwindling. Normally at this time of year in the gorgeous and verdant Rogue Valley of Oregon, I have to mount three Hummingbird feeders to nourish a normal population of about 40 birds at my home alone.
I have maybe four left, and this is the height of the breeding season. Today, my wife, Liz, saw one particularly large Hummingbird flying erratica... (more)
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A true land of opportunity Gordon Brown was in Iraq yesterday on a "fact-finding mission". It needn't all have looked gloomy for the next prime minister, however - not if he did some fact-finding about Blackwater, a North Carolina company that is now one of the most profitable military contractors operating in Iraq, and proves just what a land of opportunity Iraq really is. Blackwater's president, Gary Jackson, acclaimed a "staggering" 600% growth in 2004: "This is a billion-dollar industry," he said, "and Blackwater has ... (more)
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Justice? No Lawyers for Death Row It took an Alabama jury less than 30 minutes to convict Larry Smith of murder and recommend that a judge send him to his death.
With his life at stake and his last appeal deadline fast-approaching, Smith found a white-shoe Washington, D.C., law firm to take his case for free. His Washington attorneys discovered that Smith's trial lawyer had never shown the jury evidence that suggested Smith might be innocent. They persuaded a judge earlier this year to grant Smith a new trial.
... (more)
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Bush Administration Loses Major Terror Detention CaseIn a “major setback” to President Bush’s terrorism detention policies, a federal appeals court ruled today that the administration “cannot legally detain a U.S. resident it believes is an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him.”
In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circu ... (more)
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Blair Calls For Chinese Style Net Controls In the UK Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair has savaged online media today in a speech in which he declared war on the free press by hinting at new restrictions on internet journalism and suggested that the media should be brought more into line with the government.
Blair complained that the media was too "feral" ... (more)
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Jolie: the Pretty Face of the Global Slave GulagIt’s official. The “UN Goodwill Ambassador” Angelina Jolie will front for the “prestigious” NWO “think tank,” the Council on Foreign Relations. “Angelina Jolie will now be joining former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Diane Sawyer and several other distinguished names as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,” TransWorldNews reports. “The bombshell Oscar winner-turned gl... (more)
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US Army Pushes For Amnesty Bill Fast Track So It Can Recruit Illegal Aliens A senior US defense official today urged the Congress to fast track a section of the stalled immigration bill that would allow the military to recruit illegal aliens, after recruitment figures released by Pentagon showed that the Army failed to reach its targets for May.
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, provision in the immigration bill was expected to help boost military recruiting by allowing illegal alien... (more)
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President Bush's Watch Stolen By Albanian Crowd
White House spokesman Tony Snow claimed Mr Bush’s watch was not stolen by someone in the crowd. “The president put it in his pocket and it returned safely home.”
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Blair accused of sell-out as Britain signs on to EU police DNA databaseTony Blair was accused of a European constitution "sell-out" today after the Government pooled more police co-operation to help fight cross-border crime and terrorism.
A two-year-old agreement between just seven EU countries now becomes part of EU law, involving all 27 nations including the UK.
Under-secretary of state for the Home Office Joan Ryan, signing up on behalf of the UK at talks in Luxembourg, said afterwards it was an example of th... (more)
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