Police: No charges over CPR refusal

Police: No charges over CPR refusal

BAKERSFIELD, Calif.

Police said Wednesday that no criminal charges will be filed after a care worker’s attention-grabbing refusal to perform CPR on a resident of a Central California independent-living facility.

The Bakersfield Police Department said it has closed its investigation into the death of Lorainne Bayless, 87, who died Feb. 26 at Glendale Gardens while a nurse there refused a 911 dispatcher’s pleas to administer CPR.

Mourning Chavez

CARACAS, Venezuela

By the hundreds of thousands, Hugo Chavez’s tearful supporters carried their dead president through streets still plastered with his smiling image, an epic farewell to a larger-than-life leader remembered simply as “our commander.”

In a display of raw, and at times, unruly emotion, generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez’s socialist party, filled Caracas’ streets Wednesday to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer.

Chavez’s flag-draped coffin floated over hundreds of thousands of supporters as it made its way atop an open hearse on a seven-hour journey to a military academy in the capital, where it will lie in state.

Elections on hold

TRIPOLI, Libya

Egypt slipped further into political disarray Wednesday when a judge suspended upcoming parliamentary elections and referred the country’s much-criticized electoral law to the nation’s highest court.

An administrative judge struck down a decree by Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to have staggered elections for a lower house of parliament slated to begin April 22. The court, citing concerns over the recently amended electoral charter, asked the Supreme Constitutional Court to review the law.

Ark. abortion law is US’ most restrictive

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.

Arkansas lawmakers overrode a veto Wednesday and gave the state the most-restrictive abortion law in the country — a near-ban on the procedure from the 12th week of pregnancy onward that is certain to end up in court.

A day after the Republican- led state Senate voted to override Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe’s veto, the GOP-controlled House voted 56-33 to do the same. Only a simple majority was needed in each chamber.

Arrest in fatal hit-and-run crash

NEW YORK

A man suspected of fleeing the scene of a grisly crash in New York City that killed a pregnant woman and her husband was arrested at a convenience store in northeastern Pennsylvania on Wednesday after a friend arranged his surrender with New York authorities.

Julio Acevedo, 44, walked to officers waiting in cars in the parking lot in Bethlehem, Pa., and was arrested on charges of leaving the scene of an accident, said Paul Browne, chief spokesman for the New York Police Department. Acevedo, wearing a hooded sweat shirt, said nothing to officers who took him into custody, Browne said.

NH grants freedom 233 years later

CONCORD, N.H.

When 20 slaves petitioned New Hampshire two centuries ago seeking their freedom, lawmakers decided the time wasn’t right and delayed action.

Now, 233 years later, legislators in one of the nation’s whitest states have decided the time is right to consider the request. A Senate committee Wednesday unanimously recommended the full body posthumously emancipate the 14 petitioners who never were granted freedom.

Woullard Lett, a member of the Manchester NAACP, said it’s never too late to right a wrong.

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