Nation & World A8
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THE DAILY HERALD
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WWW.HERALDNET.COM
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SATURDAY, 05.02.2015
Rage turns to relief in Baltimore Six police officers are charged in the death of Freddie Gray. By Juliet Linderman and Amanda Lee Myers Associated Press
BALTIMORE — Rage turned to relief in Baltimore on Friday when the city’s top prosecutor charged six police officers with felonies ranging from assault to murder in the death of Freddie Gray. State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Gray’s arrest was illegal and unjustified, and that his neck was broken because he was handcuffed, shackled and placed head-first into a police van, where his pleas for medical attention were repeatedly ignored as he bounced around inside the small metal box. The swiftness of her announcement, less than a day after receiving the police department’s criminal investigation and official autopsy results, took the city by surprise. So too did her detailed description, based in part on her office’s independent investigation, of the evidence supporting probable cause to charge all six officers with felonies. The police had no reason to
DAVID GOLDMAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Karon Carroll, of Baltimore, tells a policeman standing guard to go home Friday after State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that six officers in the police-custody death of Freddie Gray have been charged.
stop or chase after Gray, Mosby said. They falsely accused him of having an illegal switchblade when in fact it was a legal pocketknife. The van driver and the other officers failed to strap him down with a seatbelt, a direct violation of department policy, and they ignored Gray’s repeated pleas for medical attention, even rerouting the van to pick up another passenger. Mosby did not say whether there was any indication the
driver deliberately drove erratically, causing Gray’s body to strike the van’s interior. In 2005, a man died of a fractured spine after he was transported in a Baltimore police van in handcuffs and without a seat belt. At a civil trial, an attorney for his family successfully argued police had given him a “rough ride.” The officers missed five opportunities to help an injured and falsely imprisoned detainee before he arrived
at the police station no longer breathing, she said. Along the way, “Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside of the BPD wagon,” she concluded. Her announcement triggered celebrations across the same West Baltimore streets that were smoldering just four days earlier, when Gray’s funeral led to riots and looting.
Nepal’s May Day relatively peaceful needs: Tents, food Associated Press KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal’s government renewed its appeal to international donors to send tents, tarpaulins and basic food supplies in the wake of last weekend’s devastating earthquake, saying some of the items being sent are of little use. The government also asked donors to send money to help with relief efforts if they cannot send things that are immediately necessary. “We have received things like tuna fish and mayonnaise. What good are those things for us? We need grains, salt and sugar,” Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat told reporters Friday. Information Minister Minendra Rijal said Nepal would immediately need 400,000 tents and so far has been able to provide only 29,000 to the people who need them. A week after the massive earthquake killed more than 6,600 people and collapsed buildings, temples and homes, remote villages remain cut off from help. Aid workers still face “immense logistical challenges,” U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said Friday, noting that the scale of the devastation in Nepal would be an obstacle for any government. The U.N. has estimated the magnitude-7.8 quake that struck April 25 affected 8.1 million people — more than a fourth of Nepal’s population of 27.8 million. In Kathmandu, rescue workers in orange jumpsuits continued to search through collapsed buildings, but fewer tents were standing in a central part of the capital that had been packed with people in the first few days. Some residents who had been fearful of aftershocks have left the city or moved elsewhere.
ACROSS THE U.S.
3 ex-Christie allies charged in scandal NEWARK, N.J. — Federal prosecutors brought charges Friday against three former allies of Gov. Chris Christie — but not Christie himself — in the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal, easing the legal threat that has hung over his 2016 White House ambitions for more than a year. One of those charged, David Wildstein, a former high-ranking official at the transportation agency that operates the bridge, pleaded guilty and accused the two other defendants of joining him in a politically motivated scheme to create huge traffic jams. Christie was not publicly implicated in any wrongdoing, and appears to be in the clear for now. “Based on the evidence currently available to us, we’re not going to charge anyone else in this scheme,” U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said at a news conference.
N.Y.: Ebola, sex alert Health officials now think Ebola survivors can spread the disease through unprotected sex nearly twice as long as previously believed. Scientists thought the Ebola virus could remain in semen for about three months. But a recent case in West Africa suggests infection through sex can happen more than five months later. Based on the case, officials are now telling male Ebola survivors to avoid unprotected sex indefinitely. They had previously advised using condoms for at least three months.
Fla.: 71 ill on cruise ship Seventy-one people on a Holland America Line cruise ship fell ill before the ship returned to Port Everglades here early Friday. Sixty of 1,138 passengers on the MS Maasdam and 11 of 578 crew members experienced vomiting and diarrhea during the cruise, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The ship was sailing on a 14-night Caribbean itinerary that began April 17 and ended Friday.
Colo.: End to pot pesticides Colorado is cracking down on pesticide use in the marijuana industry, trying to end years of sloppy oversight of which chemicals are used on the nascent industry. A state Senate panel voted 7-0 Friday to give the Colorado Department of Agriculture $300,000 to step up pesticide enforcement in the new marijuana industry.
AROUND THE WORLD Mexico: 7 die in operation CRAIG RUTTLE / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protesters march during a May Day rally on a street Friday in Manhattan. Left-wing groups, governments and trade unions were staging rallies around the world Friday to mark International Workers Day. Most events were peaceful protests for workers’ rights and world peace. But May 1 regularly sees clashes between police and militant groups in some cities. See Page A7 for coverage of May Day protests in Seattle.
Black mothers wonder if their lost babies are still alive By Jim Salter Associated Press
ST. LOUIS — Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families. The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who said she was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate. No one is sure who was responsible, but Price’s daughter ended up in foster care, only to resurface almost 50 years later. Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon, has said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother. Price’s attorney, Albert
Watkins, is asking city and state officials to investigate. In a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Watkins said he suspects the hospital coordinated a scheme “to steal newborns of color for marketing in private adoption transactions.” Gilmore’s children tracked recently down her birth mother to mark their mother’s 50th birthday. The search led them to the now 76-year-old Price, who lives in suburban St. Louis. In March, an online video caused a sensation when it showed the moment that Gilmore, who is deaf, learned through lip reading and sign language that her birth mother had been found. The two women reunited in April. DNA confirmed that they are mother and daughter. “She looked like me,” said Price, a gospel singer who has five other children. “She was so excited and full of joy. It was just beautiful. I’ll never forget
that,” she said of the reunion. After the reunion, Watkins started getting calls from other women who wondered if their babies, whom they were told had died, might have instead been taken from them. Their stories, he said, are strikingly similar: Most of the births were in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s at Homer G. Phillips. All of the mothers were black and poor, mostly ages 15 to 20. In each case, a nurse — not a doctor — told the mother that her child had died, a breach of normal protocol. No death certificates were issued, and none of the mothers were allowed to see their deceased infants, Watkins said. “These are moms,” he said. “They are mothers at the end of their lives seeking answers to a lifelong hole in their heart.” He plans to file a lawsuit seeking birth and death records. None of the women are seeking money, he said.
At least seven people died as flames and gunfire erupted around the western Mexico state of Jalisco on Friday when a military operation targeting a violent drug cartel was launched at the start of a three-day holiday weekend. Suspected cartel members stopped buses and trucks to block key highways in the state capital of Guadalajara and other cities, snarling traffic on a day Mexicans took to the road in droves. Officials said 11 banks and five gas stations were firebombed.
Nigeria: Rescues continue Nigeria’s military said it has rescued 234 more girls and women from a Boko Haram forest stronghold in the country’s northeast. The announcement on the Nigerian Defence Headquarters official Twitter account Saturday brings the number declared rescued this week to more than 677. It comes as the army deployed ground troops following air raids on Sambisa Forest camps said to be the last holdout of the Islamic extremists. There have been reports that some women fought the troops, with Boko Haram using them as an armed human shield. It is not known how many girls, women, boys and men Boko Haram has kidnapped over its 6-year-old rebellion.
Thailand: Graves found Police have found dozens of shallow graves, a corpse and an ailing survivor at an abandoned jungle camp in an area of southern Thailand that is regularly used to smuggle Rohingya Muslims, as well as Bangladeshis and other migrants, to third countries. An Associated Press reporter who visited the scene later Friday counted six bodies, including five that had recently been dug up. He said a rescue team told him 27 graves, each with a simple bamboo marker, had yet to be exhumed. The grim discovery was a sharp reminder of the brutal human trafficking networks that operate in Thailand, despite repeated assurances by authorities that they are addressing the root causes. From Herald news services