Free Republic

Participants in a Federal Drug Administration (FDA) protocol at TCA Cellular Therapy utilizing stem cells to treat lower limb ischemia are experiencing increased mobility and decreased pain in lower legs. Lower limb ischemia is a condition where plaque build-up causes decreased circulation in the lower leg. Symptoms of the condition include intense pain and swelling. Study participants may have had different factors that contributed to their condition: a family history of Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), history of smoking and other vascular conditions. Common among them however, were that more traditional treatments (utilizing stents and grafts) were ineffectual and that the...

Sunken City' a reminder of an ill-fated residential area By Josh Grossberg, Staff Writer Article Launched: 06/11/2008 01:00:00 AM PDT Jessica Bagwell of Walnut photographs the ruins at Sunken City as a school project on landscape architecture and plant resilience at Cal Poly Pomona. (Sean Hiller/Staff Photographer)But the property also features a less-savory aspect of life in Southern California: treacherous and unstable terrain. Now ominously known as "Sunken City," the 6-acre parcel overlooking the cliffs at the southernmost tip of Los Angeles, in San Pedro, was once dotted with homes - a community of bungalows owned by Harbor Area developer...

Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne said Tuesday he will meet today with a Democrat-affiliated group responsible for a voter registration effort that is inundating East Baton Rouge and other parish registrars with bogus and incomplete applications. Dardenne said his investigators are trying to determine if any state election laws have been violated as thousands of voter registration cards have been dumped on registrars offices through the efforts of VIP. “We have some very real concerns about the data we are getting from them,” Dardenne said. VIP is a Washington, D.C., group hired by national Democrats to register some 70,000...

Barack Obama will be welcomed back to Hollywood on June 24 for his first fundraiser in L.A. since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. The event is likely to draw the largest congregation of celebrities and local heavy-hitters attending a political event since late January, when Obama met with Sen. Hillary Clinton at their initial one-on-one debate at the Kodak Theatre. That televised confrontation, which launched the final stretch of the long-fought Democratic nominating race, drew showbiz notables including Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pierce Brosnan, Stevie Wonder as well as a who's who of state and local...

Many in the great state of Texas have a lot to say about a proposed network of toll roads and railway lines known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Texas Department of Transportation received more than 27,000 public comments during a three-month comment period on a proposed corridor project called the TTC-69, said TxDOT spokesman Mark Cross. Transportation officials had 47 public hearings in February and March and accepted written comments through April 18 on the environmental and social impact of the corridor. Comments ranged from flat-out opposition to the corridor to suggestions about how to lessen its impact, Cross told...

More than a dozen suspected members of a ruthless Norteño street gang allegedly responsible for four murders, several attempted murders and assaults in San Jose are behind bars, the result of a 1 1/2-year police investigation. A five-week grand jury proceeding culminated Tuesday with indictments being issued against 13 suspected members of El Hoyo Palmas, described by police as a multi-generation gang that has operated in San Jose for about 30 years.

LOS ANGELES — Faced with a persistent drought and the threat of tighter water supplies, Los Angeles plans to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies, joining a growing number of cities considering similar measures. Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who opposed such a plan a decade ago over safety concerns, announced the proposal on Thursday as part of a package of initiatives to put the city, the nation’s second largest, on a stricter water budget. The other plans include increasing fines for watering lawns during restricted times, tapping into and cleaning more groundwater, and encouraging businesses and...

GOVERNOR JINDAL: (snip) They started defending spending and earmarks, that was not defensible that they railed against when they were the majority, that's our work cutting taxes down here in Louisiana and showing that you can be truly conservative. But secondly, you also said something very important at the beginning of our interview which is, we as Americans have to be vigilant. What this incident proved after Katrina was that it's not enough just to say it will never happen in America, because it is happening in America. It did happen in America. And that means we've got to be...

LOS ANGELES -- Four people were arrested Friday after a fight involving more than 400 teens broke out at a South Los Angeles high school, resulting in a campus lockdown, officials said.

...It was a bad choice, but Olson was simply underqualified. This year it's more serious. Los Angeles voters, if they don't pay attention, could hand judicial robes to a racial separatist who called for restricting U.S. citizenship to persons "of the European race" and deporting blacks, Asians, Latinos and others who don't meet his racial criteria. The candidate is Bill Johnson. Under the name James O. Pace, he wrote the racial exclusion as a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a 1985 book supporting it. Under the name Daniel Johnson, he ran a losing race for Congress in Wyoming...

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

EDMONTON - TransCanada Corp. alone plans to ship more than one million barrels a day of oilsands production to the United States with an expanded pipeline construction program unveiled today. The Alberta oil and gas delivery mainstay added a second leg to its new Keystone export service that would more than double the system's capacity and extend it to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada president Hal Kvisle said the added route is a companion instead of competition for projects underway by Enbridge Inc., which is also advancing more than one million barrels daily in new oilsands...

AUSTIN — Maybe Texas’ transportation problems are a lot simpler to understand than recent fights over toll roads make it seem, North Texas leaders told state senators Wednesday. “My first recommendation: You need to provide a lot more revenue for transportation,” Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, told the Texas Senate transportation committee. That was hardly the only suggestion from Mr. Morris or the many others who spoke to the committee, which is seeking input as it readies an approach on toll roads, TxDOT and more for the next legislative session. But it might...

Los Angeles is at the leading edge of a U.S. demographic trend, with half of its workforce immigrants, many of them unskilled and speaking little English. As baby boomers retire, the same pattern will emerge across the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Demographers estimate that by 2025 most of the growth in the workforce will be from immigrants. Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, said Los Angeles is at a crossroads. "The question is: Are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an...

NEW ORLEANS — Calling it a “pivotal moment’’ in the 215-year history of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Archbishop Alfred Hughes said Wednesday that 25 church parishes — 19 of them shuttered since Hurricane Katrina — will close and merge with neighboring congregations by year’s end.The majority of those Catholic parishes are in New Orleans, while a handful are in St. Bernard Parish and one each are in Plaquemines and Jefferson parishes.Hughes also announced that two other church parishes, both in the Jefferson suburb of Kenner, will close and merge by the middle of next year. Four other church parishes...

A conservative firebrand with a connection to a former Ku Klux Klan leader will run for a Louisiana seat in the House of Representatives, raising Democrats' hopes they can pick up what has been a reliably conservative district for more than three decades. After a weekend primary run-off, Democrats are hoping for victory in the Baton Rouge-based district of former Republican Rep. Richard Baker, who retired in February after holding the seat for 21 years. Conservative Woody Jenkins won Saturday's Republican run-off, 62% to 38%, against lobbyist Laurinda Calongne, while state Rep. Don Cazayoux won the Democratic run-off, 57% to...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two men attempting to board a plane to China with nearly a dozen sensitive infrared cameras in their luggage were arrested on Saturday, a federal official said. Federal agents stopped the pair on the jetway as they were preparing to board the flight to Beijing. The men had been in the United States for about a week, said Rick Weir, assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. Yong Guo Zhi, a Chinese national, and Tah Wei Chao, a naturalized U.S. citizen, were arrested...

Monsignor Michael Duca Vatican City, Apr 1, 2008 / 10:10 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Shreveport, Louisiana, home to around 40,000 Catholics, received a new bishop today. Monsignor Michael Duca from the Diocese of Dallas will be the new shepherd of Shreveport, Archbishop Pietro Sambi the Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S. announced this morning.  Msgr. Michael Duca will become the second bishop of Shreveport, filling the seat left vacant when Bishop William Friend retired in December 2006.In response to his appointment Bishop-elect Duca said, “I am humbled and honored by the Pope’s decision to appoint me as Bishop of...

LOS ANGELES - Rescue crews responding to a wreck on a Los Angeles freeway found a driver fatally shot in the head early Sunday, while another driver was shot and wounded in a separate attack about 30 miles away, authorities said. The shootings were the latest in a string of attacks on Southern California freeways that have alarmed motorists and authorities. Investigators did not know what led to the fatal shooting on the 101 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley on Sunday. The wreck snarled traffic for several hours near Van Nuys. "There's absolutely no witnesses at this time, no...

As police sped toward West San Jose on Wednesday night where Homer Bejarano Resendez lay fatally shot, the city of San Jose was accelerating through one of its bloodiest stretches in years.

Protesters in several US cities held anti-war rallies Saturday to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, March 20th. More rallies are planned in coming days in other U.S. cities. Mike O'Sullivan reports, several thousand joined an anti-war protest in Los Angeles.Marchers chanted and some carried flag-draped coffins as speakers demanded that U.S. troops come home.Sharaf Mowjood of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says the continued presence of American troops is worsening conditions in Iraq, and diverting attention from domestic U.S. problems, including rebuilding New Orleans. The city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.“We need to...

Los Angeles (AP) -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is making plans to lay off city workers to help close a looming budget gap. The mayor's office said Wednesday that the layoffs are expected to come after July 1. The mayor's office did not say how many of the city's approximately 40,000 workers would be cut loose to help close a spending hole as big as $500 million.

Eight people, including five under the age of 15, were shot at a bus stop south of downtown Los Angeles this afternoon, officials said. Witnesses told police that a man opened fire multiple times into a crowd waiting for buses at Central and Vernon avenues shortly after 3 p.m. The gunman exited a bus and argued with someone on the street before firing his weapon, said LAPD Cmdr. Andy Smith. "It appears he was shooting indiscriminately into the crowd at the bus stop. It was a busy area and it is not clear who he was shooting at, but he...

MIAMI (AP) -- A man with multiple passports was arrested Monday after he bolted from security screeners at Miami International Airport, jumped from a second floor concourse and broke his arm and ribs, authorities said. Transportation and Security Administration officials became suspicious of Faid Beydoun as he stood in a security line, waiting to board a Los Angeles-bound flight. When Beydoun's travel documents also raised concerns, agents asked him to step out of line for a secondary screening. Beydoun, who was carrying multiple passports, then ran from security screeners, jumped 25 feet off the second floor concourse and broke his...

McCain Gains Louisiana Delegates Saturday, February 16, 2008 4:26 PM A majority of Louisiana's 47 Republican National Convention delegates tell The Associated Press they intend to back for Senator John McCain for president. Louisiana Republicans met Saturday to divvy up 44 of the state's delegates to the national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September. Louisiana's Feb. 9 presidential primary would have pledged 20 at-large delegates had a candidate received at least 50 percent of the ballots cast. With Huckabee winning with 43 percent and McCain right behind with 42 percent, no at-large delegates were awarded.

NACOGDOCHES — The rows of extra chairs brought into the The Fredonia's biggest meeting room Thursday night were not enough to accommodate more than 750 people who attended an open house and public hearing on the proposed TTC-69 highway. Texas Department of Transportation officials heard hours of public testimony that continued late into the night overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new roadways through East Texas. Applause throughout the hours-long meeting never swelled as loudly as it did when the first speaker of the night, state Rep. Wayne Christian, told TxDOT representatives emphatically that "our answer is 'no' on the...

HOUSTON -- It did not take long Tuesday for the Texas Department of Transportation to find out what the Houstonians at a public hearing thought about the proposed 600-mile Trans-Texas Corridor, KPRC Local 2 reported. "George Washington, Sam Houston would vomit on you people," one attendee said. Chris Zora, who opposes the plan, attended the hearing at the Arabia Shrine Center in Southwest Houston. "I'd like to see a show of hands here of anybody that approves of this corridor," Zora said. "Is there anyone in this room who approves of this corridor? Raise your hands if you approve of...

Trucks hauling everything from cars to produce use Southeast Texas roads to deliver their goods, and when a proposed Interstate 69/Trans Texas Corridor is completed, local drivers could see even more of them, local transportation officials said. The proposed I-69 corridor stretches from Michigan down to Texas. Once in Texas, the corridor goes about 650 miles from Texarkana to Brownsville and Laredo and includes separate lanes for cars and semis and areas for trains and utilities. It doesn't cut through Beaumont, but local arteries like U.S. 69 and Interstate 10 would connect to it. Travelers and truckers just need to...

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

~EXCERPT~ SACRAMENTO—Pressure intensified on Los Angeles County elections officials Thursday to quickly address the "double bubble" controversy over ballots given to independent voters in this week's presidential primary. Potentially at stake is the county's final delegate allocation for Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are locked in a tight race for the party's nomination. Independent voters in California were allowed to vote in the Democratic Party or American Independent Party primaries. In Los Angeles County, independents who requested one of those ballots had to fill in an extra bubble stating which party's primary they were voting...

LOS ANGELES -- A plan to accelerate transportation in the region with a $26 billion high-speed train system has received initial approval from the Los Angeles City Council as it created a joint-powers agreement with neighboring cities. The move Wednesday marked the first step in negotiations to solidify an Atlanta-based firm's proposal to construct a magnetic-levitation train system that would start at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, run through downtown and eventually reach Ontario Airport, the Daily News reported. Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith said American Maglev Technology would foot the bill for the system and...

BATON ROUGE, La. — Bobby Jindal, the 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, was sworn in Monday as Louisiana's 55th governor and immediately moved to make good on a campaign promise, saying he will call a February special legislative session on ethics to help cleanse the hurricane-battered state's corrupt image. .

Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services show that those in this country, and the county, illegally collected more than $37 million in welfare and food stamp allocations in November, up $3 million from September... for a projected annual cost of $444 million. "an alarming increase in the devastating impact illegal immigration continues to have on Los Angeles County taxpayers."

LOS ANGELES (AP) - In a murderous quest aimed at "cleansing" their turf of snitches and rival gangsters, members of one of Los Angeles County's most vicious Latino gangs sometimes killed people just because of their race, an investigation found. There were even instances in which Florencia 13 leaders ordered killings of black gangsters and then, when the intended victim couldn't be located, said "Well, shoot any black you see," Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said. "In certain cases some murders were just purely motivated on killing a black person," Baca said. Authorities say there were 20 murders among...

Nationwide, juvenile gang homicides have spiked 23 percent since 2000. There are six times as many gangs in L.A. as there were a quarter century ago, and twice as many gang members. But as important as the gang activity itself is what’s different about the violence. In America’s urban ganglands, and in L.A. in particular, the ferocity of the thuggery has surged; gang members, their victims and police long on the gang beat tell me the fighting has become more codeless, more arbitrary and more brutal than ever. And it is everywhere. According to the Department of Justice, today America...

Attorneys have requested a temporary restraining order against a man they claim threatened Cardinal Roger Mahony and other Los Angeles archdiocese officials. Documents filed yesterday in the restraining order petition accuse Edward George Filek of breaking into Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral early Monday and making threats against Mahony and other cathedral workers. Mahony recently told fellow priests that he was assaulted earlier this year in the wake of the Catholic Church's sexual-abuse scandal. Filek is not linked to that attack.

Last year at this time, Democratic Party loyalists saw Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as the early favorite to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not any more. The collapse of Villaraigosa's effort to gain substantial control of Los Angeles public schools, followed by revelations of an extramarital affair, have opened the door to others -- most notably Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown. Beyond those setbacks and self-inflicted wounds, Villaraigosa faces timing problems that could severely complicate any attempt to become California's first Latino governor in more than a century. Because the 2010 governor's race follows closely behind the 2009 mayoral election, Villaraigosa...

A seemingly small-time drug ring busted this week in Los Angeles was actually targeted for funding the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, the Daily News has learned. Prosecutors left out the terror tie when they announced Tuesday that federal agents and local cops had arrested a dozen people for allegedly peddling cocaine and counterfeit clothing in Bell, Calif. But several sources familiar with the investigation said the predominantly Arab-American gang was believed to have smuggled its crime cash to the Iranian-backed terror group. "This was a classic case of terrorism financing, and it was pretty sophisticated how they did it," a...

An extensive mapping program launched by the LAPD's anti-terrorism bureau to identify Muslim enclaves across the city sparked outrage Thursday from some Islamic groups and civil libertarians, who denounced the effort as an exercise in racial and religious profiling. Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing, who heads the bureau, defended the undertaking as a way to help Muslim communities avoid the influence of those who would radicalize Islamic residents and advocate "violent, ideologically-based extremism."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In what one FBI spokesman described as "almost an annual ritual," the bureau has obtained uncorroborated intelligence indicating al Qaeda would like to strike shopping malls during the holiday shopping season, two law enforcement sources said Thursday. Those sources confirmed there is intelligence dating back to August that al Qaeda would like to attack malls in Los Angeles, California, and Chicago, Illinois. The FBI's information is contained in an intelligence report and is intended for law enforcement and intelligence partners. "There is no information to state this is a credible threat," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said in...

Like Pasadena, Los Angeles is Exposed to "Utility Math" Jack Humphreville Neighborhood Council - DWP Oversight Committee Like Pasadena, we in Los Angeles are being exposed to utility math. DWP has proposed to raise our power rates on January 1 and July 1, 2008, and July 1, 2009. They have been characterized as "fairly modest" and only "$1.75 a month" and 8.5% over 3 (years) the rate hikes and they are vital to improve our power reliability. Unfortunately, when you take in the "pass thrus," our rates are going up 23%. That is not fairly modest, that is RATE SHOCK!...

FRANKLINTON, La., Oct. 17 — An Oxford-educated son of immigrants from India is virtually certain to become the leading candidate for Louisiana’s next governor in Saturday’s primary election. It would be an unlikely choice for a state that usually picks its leaders from deep in the rural hinterlands and has not had a nonwhite chief executive since Reconstruction. But peculiar circumstances have combined to make Representative Bobby Jindal, a conservative two-term Republican, the overwhelming favorite. Analysts predict Mr. Jindal, 36, could get more than 50 percent of the vote in the open primary, thus avoiding a November runoff and becoming...

Federal prosecutors today charged members of the Latino Florencia 13 street gang with racially motivated crimes against African Americans, including several attempted homicides. Authorities said the gang specifically tried to eliminate rival African American gangs in South L.A. and the Florence-Firestone area in an effort to "cleanse" the neighborhood. In doing so, they mistakenly harassed and attacked innocent African American residents, according to the indictment. More than 60 members and associates of the Florencia 13 street gang were charged with federal racketeering and drug charges. "In their attempt to intimidate African Americans in the community, they targeted innocent citizens," U.S....

Los Angeles (AP) -- Homeless people can sleep on the sidewalks of Los Angeles during the night after city officials reached a legal settlement with homeless advocates. The deal announced Wednesday will allow homeless people to sleep on sidewalks between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Monica Barra went to South Los Angeles last month to attend a jazz festival. She went home with a free tree, a one-gallon African sumac that she lugged around on a Sunday afternoon past the shops and restaurants of Leimert Park. The college senior took the tree on an impulse, though each tree recipient was required to fill out a "pledge to plant," a form smaller than an index card and a signature feature of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to plant 1 million trees across Los Angeles. "I just really like having trees and plants where I'm living," said Barra,...

A major Mexican political party is holding a convention in a city with many of its countrymen — Los Angeles. The Sept. 30 gathering of the PAN — a Spanish acronym for the National Action Party — will bring together Mexican party members living in the U.S., including some who are American citizens. “What’s going on is that the political worlds of the U.S. and Mexico are becoming more and more intertwined,” writes Allan Wall on the Web site of VDARE, an organization that deals with immigration issues. “The U.S. is marrying Mexico — or, perhaps more accurately, Mexico is...

Los Angeles, Sep 5, 2007 / 10:11 am (CNA).- Thanks to local preservationists and an astute developer, the former cathedral of Los Angeles was returned to its previous structural glory last week. The former St. Vibiana Cathedral, now simply named Vibiana and converted into a concert and events hall, got its 3,500-pound cupola back Aug. 30, reported the L.A. Times. The moment ended an 11-year campaign to save the downtown landmark. The historic cathedral was marked for demolition after it suffered structural damage in a 1994 earthquake. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles decided that repairs would cost more than the...

So, President and Mrs. Bush went down to New Orleans to commemorate the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina...Here's a pop quiz: How much money has Uncle Sam spent...since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart? The grand total is $127 billion (including tax relief). That's right: a monstrous $127 billion. Of course, not a single media story has highlighted this gargantuan government-spending figure. But that number came straight from the White House... This is an outrage. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. So the cash spent there nearly matches...

Houses abandoned to foreclosure are beginning to breed trouble, adding neighbors to the growing ranks of victims. ... Chris Ragsdale, the Los Angeles Police Department's senior lead officer for Westwood and Bel-Air, recalled one case from the end of that era, when a group of men moved into a foreclosed house in Pacific Palisades. The squatters changed the locks, turned on the electricity and brought in furniture. When the agent trying to sell the place showed up, they maintained that they had a lease. "If you know what you're doing, you can get six months in a place with a...

Officers will impound unlicensed drivers' cars under some conditions only, pending a legal assessment of a ruling in an Oregon case. The Los Angeles Police Department has imposed a moratorium on impounding the vehicles of unlicensed drivers amid concerns that the practice may be unconstitutional, officials said Tuesday. The decision touches on what has long been a hot-button issue, because many unlicensed drivers who have their cars towed are illegal immigrants who cannot get driver's licenses. Immigrant rights groups and some legislators for years LAPD officials said they decided to stop impounding until the city attorney's office provides a final...