New Orleans crime wave

New Orleans crime wave

NEW ORLEANS — A crime wave is intensifying in this city already beset by a flagging recovery from Hurricane Katrina, and Hispanic immigrants helping to rebuild are common targets, according to police and to statistics released Thursday.

Despite an infusion of money and manpower into the justice system, the number of homicides is climbing, and armed robbers are preying on Hispanic day laborers flush with cash from rebuilding jobs, the police department says.

The city, which led the nation in murders per capita in 2006, is on track to do the same this year, according to data presented Thursday for April through June. The report shows a 14 percent increase in murders and 44 percent leap in armed robberies for the first half of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006.

Katrina-deaths trial

ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. — Jurors hearing the homicide case against a couple who own a nursing home where 35 people died after Hurricane Katrina saw photos Thursday of bodies lying in muck and storm-tossed debris. The pictures were shown over the objection of lawyers for Salvador and Mabel Mangano, owners of St. Rita’s nursing home, which the storm swamped as it wiped out St. Bernard parish Aug. 29, 2005.

It was the first day of testimony in the trial of the Manganos, who face 35 counts of negligent homicide and 24 counts of cruelty for the death and suffering of St. Rita’s residents. The six jurors and three alternates showed little emotion as they examined the photos, which were identified by the first witness, parish Deputy Erroll Schults. A prosecutor told the panel in opening arguments Thursday that it was bad judgment by the Manganos in not evacuating the nursing home that cost 35 lives, not faulty storm planning by the government.

New hole being drilled

HUNTINGTON, Utah — Rescuers searching for six coal miners trapped for 10 days were drilling yet another hole into the mine Thursday, this time aiming for a spot where they had detected mysterious vibrations in the mountain. Officials said Thursday that the latest of three holes previously drilled reached an intact chamber with potentially breathable air.

Video images were obscured by water running down that bore hole, but officials said they could see beyond it to an undamaged chamber in the rear of the mine. It yielded no sign the miners had been there. The drill holes can be used to pump air and send food down the mine, but the rescue effort is taking place underground, where miners have advanced to only 826 feet in nine days. They still have 1,200 feet to go to reach the area where the men were working.

Heat wave kills 37

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Unrelenting heat that has baked the Midwest and South for the past 10 days has killed more than three dozen people, authorities said as they reminded people to stay cool and drink plenty of water. In Tennessee, the Shelby County medical examiner’s office confirmed Thursday that heat caused the death of a 53-year-old man found in his apartment the day before, bringing the death toll in Memphis alone to eight.

In all, 37 deaths in the South and Midwest have been confirmed as heat-related, and heat is suspected in 10 more, authorities said. In Memphis, the mercury topped out at 105 degrees Thursday, a record and the seventh consecutive day of triple-digit temperatures.

Ex-Nazi to be deported

BOSTON — An immigration judge has ordered a 91-year-old retired factory worker deported to his native Lithuania because he lied about his part in the Nazi destruction of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto in 1943, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Immigration Judge Wayne R. Iskra’s order, issued Aug. 2 and delivered to the Justice Department on Tuesday, ended an appeal, but the department said Zajanckauskas hasn’t yet left the country. The order comes more than two years after a federal judge revoked his U.S. citizenship. Zajanckauskas, of Sutton, 40 miles west of Boston, denied he was in Warsaw at the time and said his service was limited to working the bar at the Nazi training camp in Trawniki, Poland.

Adoptions put on hold

ANTIGUA, Guatemala — Ann Roth mortgaged her Chicago home to adopt two 9-month-olds from Guatemala. Now the future of her babies is caught up in an international crackdown on a country that sent more than 4,000 babies to U.S. homes last year.

Roth’s children are being watched by police carrying assault rifles after their raid on the Casa Quivira adoption home in this colonial tourist hub. Guatemalan officials argue the home’s paperwork didn’t meet legal standards. But parents and the home’s directors say the raid was politically motivated after U.S. pressure to clean up a largely unregulated, multimillion dollar industry in which some brokers steal babies.

Associated Press