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Health

Nurse 'banned' from caring for newborn because of skin color, lawsuit claims

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© WNEMTonya Battle is suing her employers at Hurley Medical Center.
A Michigan nurse claims she was banned from caring for a newborn child because of her skin color.

Tonya Battle is suing her employers at Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, after they ordered her not to look after the baby in the neonatal intensive care unit following a request from its father, WNEM reports.

The lawsuit states: "The father told the [nurse in charge] that he did not want an African Americans taking care of his baby."

It adds that, during the conversation with Battle's supervisor, the father rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a Swastika.

Phoenix

More than a dozen injured in Kansas City gas blast, fire, official says

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© The Associated Press/KCTVFeb. 19, 2013: In this image taken from video from KCTV, firefighters battle a massive fire at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.
Kansas City, Missouri - A massive fire triggered by a gas explosion engulfed an entire block of an upscale Kansas City shopping district and injured more than a dozen people, a city official said Tuesday evening.

City Manager Troy Schulte said he did not know of anyone being reported missing and had not heard of any fatalities.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, but Schulte said it is believed that an accident involving a utility contractor may have caused the blast.

Fox4KC.com reports that witnesses said the explosion was like an earthquake. The station said there were reports of blown-out windows and minor damage inside apartments near the blast.

Kansas City Fire Chief Paul Berardi said late Tuesday that cadaver dogs were searching the smoldering remains of a restaurant that burned to the ground following the explosion and blaze.

Berardi said the search for possible victims could take hours and that he expected his crews to be at the scene through the night.

While officials have said they have no reports of fatalities, Berardi noted, "I would always fear there are fatalities in a scene like this."

Pistol

At least four dead, two wounded in California shooting and carjacking spree

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© Laszlo Halasi / Shutterstock.com
A shooting rampage left four people dead and at least two people wounded in California on Monday.

Orange County Sheriff's Department Jim Amormino told the Orange Country Register that a man went on a shooting spree that began with the death of a person at a home in Red Leaf at about 5:20 a.m.

The suspect then fled in a SUV and shot a person, who was not fatally wounded, while trying to steal a car the area Red Hill Avenue in Tustin. Reports indicated that a driver was shot and killed near Village Way and the 55 freeway during a second carjacking.

In the process of stealing another car in near Edinger and Newport Avenue, the shooter killed a person and a second person was injured.

Police eventually located the suspected shooter driving on the 55 freeway.

That's when "the suspect shot and killed himself," according to Tustin Police Department Lt. Paul Garaven said.

Sherlock

Body found in Los Angeles hotel water tank may be missing Canadian tourist

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© Reuters/Los Angeles Police Department/Handout Elisa Lam of Vancouver, British Columbia, is seen in this undated handout photo provided by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Los Angeles - A body was found in a large water tank on top of a downtown Los Angeles hotel on Tuesday which may be a 21-year-old Canadian woman who went missing under suspicious circumstances while staying there late last month, police said.

Elisa Lam, a student from Vancouver, British Columbia, who was visiting southern California on her own, was last seen at the Cecil Hotel on January 31. Local authorities had characterized her disappearance as suspicious.

A security video taken in an elevator at the hotel and released by the Los Angeles Police Department last week showed Lam acting strangely, hiding in a corner and repeatedly peering around the elevator doors into the hallway.

A Los Angeles police spokeswoman confirmed that a body had been found in one of four large water tanks on top of the Cecil Hotel early on Tuesday after a maintenance worker went up to investigate reports of low water pressure.

The spokeswoman said police detectives were on the scene, but had not yet determined whether the remains were those of the missing woman.

Source: Reuters

Stormtrooper

Autopsy finds that Maryland man with Down syndrome died of asphyxia while in police custody

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© Unknown
Frederick - The Frederick County Sheriff's Office says the death of a mentally disabled man in police custody has been ruled a homicide.

Cpl. Jennifer Bailey said Friday that the state medical examiner determined that 26-year-old Robert Saylor of New Market died of asphyxia Jan. 12.

Saylor had Down syndrome.

Bailey says he died after resisting arrest by three deputies at a Frederick movie theater. An employee had called police because Saylor wouldn't leave his seat after a movie.

Bailey says Saylor cursed at the deputies. She says he became medically distressed while they were escorting him in handcuffs from the theater.

Handcuffs

Profiting from human misery

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© AP/Mel Evans

A row of beds inside the Elizabeth Detention Center.
Marela, an undocumented immigrant in her 40s, stood outside the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on a chilly afternoon last week. She was there with a group of protesters who appear at the facility's gates every year on Ash Wednesday to decry the nation's immigration policy and conditions inside the center. She was there, she said, because of her friend Evelyn Obey.

Obey, 40, a Guatemalan and the single mother of a 12-year-old and a 6-year-old, was picked up in an immigration raid as she and nine other undocumented workers walked out of an office building they cleaned in Newark, N.J. Her two children instantly lost their only parent. She languished in detention. Another family took in the children, who never saw their mother again. Obey died in jail in 2010 from, according to the sign Villar had hung on her neck, "pulmonary thromboembolism, chronic bronchiolitis and emphysema and remote cardiac Ischemic Damage.' "

Airplane

Yemeni warplane crashes in residential district of capital, killing 11

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© Khaled Abdullah / ReutersMilitary personnel and firefighters try to extinguish a fire at the site of an aircraft crash in Sanaa, Yemen on Feb. 19, 2013.
A Yemeni air force plane crashed in the centre of the capital Sanaa on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 15, security sources said.

The Ministry of Defense said in a text message that the plane had been on a training flight when it came down in a western residential district.

Pictures of the crash on social media sites showed one body near burning wreckage of the aircraft. Several cars were on fire and debris littered the street. A security official said without elaborating that the pilot had ejected from the plane.

Heart - Black

ChristianMingle date rape victims sought by California cops


A suspected rapist accused of sexually assaulting a woman he met on ChristianMingle.com may have used the dating site to prey on women while he traveled across the country, California police said today.

Sean Patrick Banks, 37, a former Navy sailor, used a fake name to contact a woman who he allegedly raped in November, cops in La Mesa, Calif., said. Investigators believe that he used additional aliases to contact other women on the popular website and police hope that if there are additional victims they will recognize Banks.

Banks lives in Del Mar, Calif., and is currently unemployed but previously "travelled frequently around various spots in the U.S." for work, widening the search for potential victims from Southern California to across the country, said La Mesa Police spokesman Lt. Matt Nicholass.

Horse

Nestle finds horsemeat in beef pasta meals

Nestle
© Reuters/Joao VieriaA Nestle logo is pictured on a factory in Orbe April 20, 2012.
London - Nestle (NESN.VX), the world's biggest food company, has removed beef pasta meals from sale in Italy and Spain after finding traces of horse DNA.

The discovery of horsemeat in products labeled as beef has spread across Europe since last month, prompting product withdrawals, consumer anger and government investigations into the continent's complex food-processing chains.

Swiss-based Nestle, which just last week said its products had not been affected by the scandal, said its tests had found more than 1 percent horse DNA in two products.

"We have informed the authorities accordingly," Nestle said in a statement on Monday. "There is no food safety issue."

Nestle withdrew two chilled pasta products, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, in Italy and Spain,

Pistol

Men accused of robbing friend at gunpoint for $1

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© HPDLeonardo Taveras, 24 (L) and Randy Dike, 25,(R) are accused of aggravated robbery for a Feb. 10 incident.
Texas - Two men are accused of beating up a friend, robbing him at gunpoint and walking away with only a dollar found in the man's pocket.

Randy Chinonso Dike, 25, and Leonardo Taveras, 24, were arrested last Thursday for aggravated robbery after the incident on Feb. 10 at the 12700 block of Bryant Rock, court records show.

A Houston man told investigators he received a call from Taveras, whom he knew by name, sight and voice, asking him to meet with him to help with his vehicle.

When he arrived, Taveras and Dike accused the man of burglarizing an apartment several months before, he told police. The man denied to investigators that he stole from Taveras' home.

Dike charged at the man and punched the man in the torso several times, court records show. Taveras then opened the trunk and took a shotgun out of his car parked at the scene and pointed it at the man, records show.

With a shotgun pointed at him, the man told investigators Dike went through his pockets and took a one-dollar bill.

Both are in custody with $50,000 bond.