Category Archives: Louisiana

Louisiana woman denied abortion despite fetus’s fatal abnormality to travel to North Carolina

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Hospital feared loss of license as state law did not explicitly allow the procedure for this rare condition

An expectant Louisiana woman who is carrying a skull-less fetus that would die almost immediately after birth has cemented plans to travel to North Carolina to terminate her pregnancy, she said on Friday.

Nancy Davis, 36, has been facing a choice of either carrying the fetus to term or traveling several states away for an abortion after she says her local medical provider would not perform the procedure amid confusion over whether the state’s abortion ban outlawed it.

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Torrential rains lash southern US as millions under flood warnings

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Meteorologists issue warnings for more than 13 million people in north-east Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico and Arizona

Millions of Americans are under flood warnings after heavy rain this weekend in a large portion of the south and south-western US.

Government meteorologists issued flood warnings for more than 13 million people after torrent rainfall created life-threatening conditions in a region including north-east Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico.

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Louisiana woman faces ‘horrifically cruel’ abortion choice over fetus missing skull

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Nancy Davis, denied abortion in home state despite fetus being diagnosed with fatal skull condition, forced to travel for procedure

A pregnant Louisiana woman faced with either carrying a skull-less fetus to term – for the baby to likely die within hours – or traveling several states away to obtain an abortion has hired a prominent civil rights attorney as she weighs how to move forward.

Nancy Davis, 36, has retained lawyer Ben Crump as she becomes the latest to embody the gut-wrenching decisions some women are being forced to make after the US supreme court’s decision in June to strip away nationwide abortion rights, according to a statement from the attorney’s office.

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Louisiana judge blocks abortion ban amid uproar after Roe v Wade ruling

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State temporarily blocked from enforcing ban as other US states pass ‘trigger laws’ designed to severely curtail access to abortion

A Louisiana judge on Monday temporarily stopped the state from enforcing Republican-backed laws banning abortion, set to take effect after the US supreme court ended the constitutional right to the procedure last week.

Louisiana is one of 13 states which passed “trigger laws”, to ban or severely restrict abortions once the supreme court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that recognized a right to the procedure. It did so on Friday, stoking uproar among progressives and protests and counter-protests on the streets of major cities.

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US justice department to investigate Louisiana State Police following 2019 death of Ronald Greene

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Justice department launches civil rights investigation following beatings including death of a Black man placed in a chokehold

The US Department of Justice has announced a federal civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police following a raft of brutality cases and the fatal beating of a Black motorist, Ronald Greene, in 2019.

Greene, an unarmed 49-year-old, was arrested by six white officers with body camera footage of the incident, obtained years later by the Associated Press, revealing he had been punched, tasered and placed in a chokehold and later dragged face down in handcuffs and left prone for over nine minutes.

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Mariah Carey being sued for $20m over All I Want for Christmas Is You

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Songwriter Andy Stone claims he co-wrote song with the same name and did not give permission for it to be used

Mariah Carey is being sued for $20m (£16m) for alleged copyright infringement over her festive megahit All I Want for Christmas Is You – nearly three decades after it was released.

Since it came out in 1994, the song, which features on her album Merry Christmas, has become a global classic and a firm favourite in the pop Christmas canon.

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American Idol winner Laine Hardy arrested after allegedly spying on woman

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Louisiana college student found hidden audio recording device and told police she feared musician planted it there

Three years ago, Laine Hardy tasted superstardom by winning American Idol. Last week, the 21-year-old landed in the headlines for a different reason.

A college student in Hardy’s home state, Louisiana, looked under her dormitory bed, found a hidden audio recording device and told police she feared the musician planted it there.

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Loud boom and streaking fireball stirs panic in three US states

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The bolide, which disintegrated in Louisiana, was also reportedly spotted in Arkansas and Mississippi

A loud boom prefaced a streaking fireball spotted in three Southern states, scientists confirmed Thursday.

More than 30 people in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi reported seeing the exceptionally bright meteor in the sky around 8am Wednesday after hearing loud booms in Claiborne county, Mississippi, and surrounding areas, Nasa reported. It was first spotted 54 miles (87 km) above the Mississippi River, near Alcorn, Mississippi, officials said.

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EPA opens civil rights investigations over pollution in Cancer Alley

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Agency will look at whether Black citizens’ rights were violated in polluted industrial corridor in Louisiana

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has opened a series of civil rights investigations into state agencies in Louisiana to examine whether permits granted in the highly polluted industrial corridor, known locally as Cancer Alley, have violated Black citizens rights.

The news, first reported by the New Orleans Advocate, marks further enforcement action taken by the federal agency in the region since the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, visited the area late last year.

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Tornado hits New Orleans causing damage, power outages and reports of one death

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Tornado occurred as major storm system tore through parts of the US south, killing another person in Texas and injuring more than two dozen

A large tornado touched down in New Orleans on Tuesday evening, causing damage and destruction to the city’s lower ninth ward, before traveling east into the neighboring parish of St Bernard, where officials reported multiple injuries and one death.

The tornado occurred as a major storm system continued to tear through parts of the US south, killing another person in Texas and injuring more than two dozen.

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Louisiana candidate burns Confederate flag in his latest controversial ad

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‘It’s time to burn the Confederacy down’, says Senate hopeful Gary Chambers, who smoked marijuana in his previous ad

A Louisiana candidate for the US Senate has burned a Confederate flag in a powerful campaign ad about racial injustice in Louisiana and America.

Democrat Gary Chambers is also known for a viral ad where he smokes marijuana to “destigmatize” its use and discusses the unfair policing of drug laws.

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Her son died at the hands of Louisiana police. She’s still waiting for answers, 1,000 days on

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Police are accused of a cover-up in Ronald Greene’s death – and now the governor has had to deny political interference. Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother, says enough is enough

Thursday marked 1,000 days since Ronald Greene died on a roadside in northern Louisiana. And the 1,000th day, too, that Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, has awaited answers from state and federal authorities.

“It’s hard to sleep,” Hardin told the Guardian in an interview. “But it’s something I have to push myself through. It has destroyed my family, because of what we saw and what we know.”

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‘I wanted less than a minute’: 105-year-old unsatisfied after 100m world record

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  • Julia ‘Hurricane’ Hawkins sets record in 105+ category
  • Athlete has also excelled in cycling time trials

Like all elite athletes, Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins has a ruthless streak. So, despite setting a 100m world record on Sunday at the Louisiana Senior Games, she still wants to go faster.

“It was wonderful to see so many family members and friends. But I wanted to do it in less than a minute,” the 105 year-old said after the race, where she recorded a time of 1:02:95, a record for women in the 105+ age category. When someone pointed out that 102 is less than her age and asked if that made her feel better, Hawkins answered: “No”.

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Republicans who let Trump ‘bully’ party will seal midterms defeat, senator says

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One of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial warned on Sunday that the former president’s “bullying” of the party would lead to electoral defeat in next year’s midterms and beyond.

Related: Beto O’Rourke set to run against Greg Abbott for Texas governor – report

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Hurricane Ida: nearly 350 reported oil spills investigated in Gulf – Coast Guard

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Storm wreaked havoc on offshore oil production platforms and onshore oil and gas processing plants

The US Coast Guard on Monday said it was investigating nearly 350 reports of oil spills in and along the US Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

Hurricane Ida’s 150 mile per hour winds wreaked havoc on offshore oil production platforms and onshore oil and gas processing plants. About 88% of the region’s offshore oil production remains shut and more than 100 platforms unoccupied after the storm made landfall 29 August .

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Hurricane Ida: drone footage shows damage in Grand Isle, Louisiana – video

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Drone footage has captured the extent of destruction caused by Hurricane Ida in the barrier island town of Grand Isle in Louisiana. The US death toll from Ida has risen towards 60. In Louisiana, the confirmed storm-related death toll is nine. 

It is nearly a week since one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US mainland made landfall in Louisiana. The White House has said the president, Joe Biden, will survey storm damage in New York City and Manville, New Jersey

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Hurricane Ida death toll nears 60 as states begin to comb through debris

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The US death toll from Hurricane Ida rose towards 60 on Saturday, nearly a week after one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US mainland made landfall in Louisiana. Two more evacuated nursing home residents were confirmed to have died in the southern state.

Related: Louisiana Shell refinery left spewing chemicals after Hurricane Ida

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Louisiana Shell refinery left spewing chemicals after Hurricane Ida

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Power outages from the storm have left air quality tracking systems out of commission, making public health concern hard to gauge

Behind a playground littered with downed tree branches, Shell’s refinery in Norco, Louisiana spewed black smoke from its stacks. The smell of rotten eggs, the signature scent of sulphur emissions, lingered in the air. In an effort to burn off toxic chemicals before and after Hurricane Ida, many industrial facilities sent the gases through smoke stacks topped with flares.

But the hurricane blew out some of those flares like candles, allowing harmful pollution into the air.

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Biden says ‘no question’ Delta variant behind poor August jobs report numbers – live

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A group of parents in Iowa are filing a lawsuit against the state for its ban on mask mandates, says the law discriminates against students with disabilities that make them more susceptible to Covid-19.

The plaintiffs in the case are asking the federal judge to block the ban on mask mandates and order to allow the states to allow mandates.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published yesterday, Democratic senator Joe Manchin said that he will not pass the $3.5tn spending bill that progressive members of the party want to pass through reconciliation.

Manchin said that Democrats looking to pass the bill have “no regard to rising inflation, crippling debt or the inevitability of future crises.”

The Northeast is flooded after torrential rain.
The West Coast is on fire.
The Gulf is still reeling from the hurricane.

This is no time to pause or pull back. We need to pass the President's Build Back Better agenda and invest in urgent climate action NOW. Lives are at stake.

White House’s @KJP46 on the Manchin op-Ed: “Senator Manchin is an important partner to our administration. The president firmly believes that critical investment in our future should be paid for and if we do, economists tells us that they should not increase the inflation risk.”

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Hurricane Ida: aerial footage shows flooding and destruction in Louisiana – video

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Nearly all of Louisiana lost electrical power on Monday after one of the strongest hurricanes to strike the region downed power lines, littered roads with debris and flooded isolated communities south of New Orleans in the US. After dumping a deluge of rain in Louisiana by late Monday afternoon and killing at least two people, Ida was downgraded to a tropical depression as its eye crawled through neighbouring Mississippi

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