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Los Angeles, California (CNN) — Criminal charges relating to Michael Jackson’s death last summer will be filed Monday, Los Angeles prosecutors said.

The District Attorney’s Office did not say what the charges would be or who would be charged. The lawyer for Dr. Conrad Murray — Jackson’s personal physician, who was with him when he died — has said he expected Murray to be charged.

It was unclear whether Los Angeles police would arrest Murray or whether the doctor would be allowed to turn himself into authorities for booking and a bond hearing Monday.

Charges were expected to be filed on Friday, but they were delayed because prosecutors and Murray’s chief defense lawyer, Ed Chernoff, failed to reach agreement on a surrender deal for the doctor, a law enforcement source with detailed knowledge of the talks said.

A surrender, in which a defendant turns himself in at a police station for booking, would allow the doctor to avoid being seen in public handcuffed and escorted by police.

“An arrest of Dr. Murray would be a waste of money, time and resources,” Chernoff said last week. “We’ve always made it clear: ‘ You tell us where; we’ll be there.’ ”

The doctor traveled to Los Angeles at the end of January from his home in Houston, Texas, in expectation of possible charges, his lawyer said.

Murray used part of his time last week to visit the pop star’s resting place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Murray, a cardiologist, was hired as Jackson’s personal physician last spring as the singer prepared for comeback concerts in London, England.

The doctor told Los Angeles police that he was with Jackson at his $100,000-a-month rented Holmby Hills mansion through the early morning hours of June 25, 2009, in an effort to help the pop star fall asleep, according to a police affidavit.

He administered sleep aids, and after Jackson finally began sleeping in the late morning hours, Murray said, he left the bedroom for “about two minutes maximum,” the affidavit says.

“Upon his return, Murray noticed that Jackson was no longer breathing,” it says.

The doctor stayed with Jackson as an ambulance rushed him to UCLA Medical Center.

Efforts at CPR proved fruitless, and Jackson was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m.

The Los Angeles County coroner ruled Jackson’s death a homicide, resulting from a combination of drugs, primarily propofol and lorazepam.

The coroner’s statement said Jackson died from “acute propofol intoxication,” but there were “other conditions contributing to death: benzodiazepine effect.” Lorazepam and two other drugs Murray said he used are benzodiazepines.

The doctor told investigators he had given Jackson three anti-anxiety drugs to help him sleep in the hours before he stopped breathing, a police affidavit said.

Murray had been treating Jackson for insomnia for six weeks at the time of the singer’s death. The doctor told investigators he gave Jackson 50 milligrams of propofol, the generic name for Diprivan, diluted with the anesthetic lidocaine every night via an intravenous drip.

The doctor told police he was worried that Jackson was becoming addicted to the drug and tried to wean him off it.

During the two nights before Jackson’s death, Murray said, he put together combinations of other drugs that succeeded in helping Jackson sleep.

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Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) — A Haitian attorney representing 10 Americans charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti told CNN Sunday he has resigned.

Edwin Coq said he had quit as a lawyer for the Americans. It wasn’t immediately clear who would replace him.

“I know that they have been looking at other lawyers,” said Phyllis Allison, mother of one of those detained, Jim Allen. “They don’t know what to do.”

The 10 missionaries, including group leader Laura Silsby, were charged Thursday with kidnapping children and criminal association. Coq had said that court hearings would be held Monday and Tuesday for his clients, who have been split up at two prisons.

He has tried to get the Americans released, though he has also blamed Silsby for the missionaries’ legal troubles.

Conviction on the kidnapping charge would carry a maximum penalty of life in prison; the criminal association charge would carry a penalty of three to nine years, according to a former justice minister.

The Americans were turned back a week ago as they tried to take the children across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documentation. They said they were going to house them in a converted hotel in that country and later move them to an orphanage they were building there.

The Americans have said they were just trying to help the children leave the earthquake-stricken country. A January 12 earthquake flattened Haiti’s capital and killed more than 200,000 people.

“Except for Laura — the group’s leader, who took the responsibility to displace these 33 children, fully knowing she didn’t have any legal document that would allow her to do so — the other nine American citizens didn’t know anything about what was going on and I remain convinced that they would not have given their accord,” Coq told CNN.

Coq added that Silsby “said she had no intention to do any harm.”

Some of the detained Americans have said they thought they were helping orphans, but their interpreters told CNN this week that they were present when group members spoke with some of the children’s parents. Some parents in a village outside Port-au-Prince said they had willingly given their children to the Americans, who promised them a better life. The parents also said they were told they could see their children whenever they wanted.

The Dominican consul general has said he warned Silsby about trying to cross the border without proper documents.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN’s “Larry King Live” Thursday that the judge in the case has three months to decide whether to prosecute. “We hope that he will decide long before those three months,” he said. “He can release them, he can ask to prosecute them.”

If a decision is made to prosecute, the case would be heard before a jury, he said.

Bellerive told CNN the Haitian government was open to the possibility of the case being transferred to a U.S. court, but he said the request would have to come from the United States. “Until now, I was not asked,” he said.

Coq told CNN he had been hired by Eric Thompson, husband of Carla Thompson, one of the arrested missionaries, on behalf of the families.

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Although emergency relief is being coordinated in Haiti, the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army have received orders to leave for Haiti, following an announcement by the US Department of Defense of Thursday. They will be deploying for Haiti with over 3,500 troops.

The first 100 of the 82nd US Airborn will arrive in Haiti on Thursday to provide “humanitarian assistance, relief and security as required”. The 82nd Airborne Division is from Fort Bragg, North Caroline.

The army will also be sending three amphibious ships, and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to Haiti, as well as a hospital ship, a destroyer, several Coast Guard cutters and transport planes. There are also plans to send about 2000 marines to provide relief effors after the earthquake according to the head of Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser.

Thousands of men, women, and children have died in the high magnitude earthquake and aftershocks that registered as a 7.0 in scale. Around three million people were directly affected by this earthquake, and the city of Port au Prince has been reduced to rubble. The number that are injured and dead has still not been confirmed at this time as many are still suspected to be trapped beneath the debris.

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All four people traveling in a car that overturned in a Southlake pond Saturday have died.

Wendy Akion, 38, of Irving and Sharon Ransom, 56, of Grapevine died overnight at a Grapevine hospital, authorities said.

The other two occupants, identified as Monty Hardy, 56, of Southlake and Vance Hadassah, 35, of Euless, were pronounced dead Saturday, authorities said. The four were riding in a Toyota Avalon at about 11:20 a.m.

Saturday when the car went through a pipe fence at Lonesome Dove Road and Burney Lane, hit a tree and flipped over in about 6 feet of water, witnesses and police said.

Avalons are among the millions of Toyotas subject to a recall. The floor mats can interfere with the accelerator pedal, federal officials say.

Police said it’s too early in the investigation to say what contributed to the accident

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KENNEDALE — Tanner Walker headed home recently with his best Christmas present – remission from a rare cancer that required grueling chemotherapy treatments at an Arkansas hospital.

But someone denied him his next-biggest wish — to relax in the comfort and security of his Kennedale home for the holidays.

Before he and his mother, Angela Walker, arrived at their doorstep Dec. 18, his grandmother called to break the news that the home that friends and relatives had decorated to welcome the 17-year-old was ransacked by burglars.

They stole thousands of dollars worth of belongings, including a flat-screen TV, a video camera and about 500 DVDs, leaving Tanner and his mother unnerved and even more worried about dealing with about $290,000 in medical bills.

“It was just so disheartening,” Angela Walker said. “He was so excited to come home. It was all he had been dreaming of, to have Christmas and have a break from all that had been going on.”

Tanner added: “I was hoping it would be normal, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

Life-changing diagnosis

He had spent the past month getting his final round of treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer that causes abnormal plasma cells in bone marrow to multiply and overwhelm the production of healthy blood cells. The disease can cause bones to break easily, the tell-tale symptom when Tanner slipped while walking in June.

“I didn’t even really fall,” he said. “I caught myself before I fell, but my leg just snapped. At first it didn’t feel like it was broken.”

Doctors in Fort Worth found a tumor in his bone and were stunned to learn that it was myeloma, which usually strikes people over age 50 and is almost never seen in people as young as Tanner.

Tanner regretted acting on his first inpulse, which was to search the Internet for information about the disease.

“There’s a lot of bad news about it,” he said. “But when we got to Arkansas, the first thing the doctor said was that he would cure me. So that made me feel better.”

Knocking out cancer

His doctors had referred him to the renowned Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, part of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.

Specialists there chose an aggressive treatment, using chemotherapy to kill the plasma cells and two transplants of Tanner’s stem cells to rebuild healthy blood-cell production. It took several lengthy visits to the treatment center, but the payoff is that Tanner is in full remission.

Life expectancy with regular drug treatments used to be about 30 months. But stem-cell transplants, added about 20 years ago, and improved drug therapies achieve remission in about 85 percent of cases, and specialists now expect as many as three-fourths of those patients will never suffer a recurrence, said Bonnie Jenkins, a nurse and program coordinator at the institute.

With the good news for Tanner came medical bills, most of which his healthcare provider declined to pay because it considers the treatment experimental.

Angela Walker, who is divorced and earns less than $50,000 a year, had committed to the center that she would pay any uncovered costs. She felt that she had no choice after the diagnosis.

“That night the oncologist called me and said that at his state he would have two years to live,” she said.

Standard of care

James Ford, general counsel for U.S. Health and Life Insurance Co. in Michigan, said two independent medical reviews agreed that Tanner’s regimen was not standard.

“But there are a lot of other bills that are caught up in this situation that are payable once we get the bills and look at them,” Ford said. Those include treatment for the broken leg, he said.

Jenkins was not satisfied, saying many other insurance policies cover the center’s myeloma treatment.

“The first thing everyone has to remember is this is not a pediatric disease,” Jenkins said. “We’ve seen five cases under 18. That’s probably more than anybody else in the world has seen. Any insurance company who believes there would be a standard of care for a 17-year-old with this disease is blowing smoke.”

Coming home

A surprise welcome for Tanner was on Kelsey Ruck’s mind when she went to the Walker home Dec. 18.

Ruck, Tanner’s sister-in-law, was loaded down with presents to put under the tree, which other relatives had put up along with lights and other decorations.

“But when I got over there, the door was unlocked, and I walked in and everything was basically trashed,” Ruck said. “My heart stopped. I couldn’t imagine who would do something like this, knowing what they were going through.”

Kennedale police Capt. Darrell Hull said he has no leads. But he added that his detectives have not had time to spend on the burglary because they are focused on investigating a triple-fatality arson fire that occurred the same day.

Tanner said he suspects that the burglars were young and knew the family, which makes the break-in that much harder to bear.

But he doesn’t dwell on it so much anymore.

“I’m in full remission,” he said. “Everything is good now.”

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A Hamilton County resident is dead and another is behind bars following an altercation that occurred last week.

Sheriff Greg Bewley said Hamilton County deputies were dispatched to the scene of an assault about 9:30 p.m. on Dec. 21. While en route to the scene, deputies witnessed a vehicle traveling recklessly from the direction of the reported assault.

Source: Empire Tribune

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“I’m convinced in the next 24 months there will be evidence-based data that will irrefutably show why we are having colony collapse,” said Walker, vice chairman of the National Honey Board and a former co-chairman of the National Honeybee Advisory Board.

Now, Walker has been far more selective on where he sends his bees. “My bees haven’t been exposed to chemicals in three years,” he said. “I’m still shipping some of them to California for the almond crop late this winter — there are some fungicides there — but that’s the only exposure they’re having. We’re making honey crops on wildflowers; we’re managing them with health-protein supplements. We’re boosting their nutrition and letting them rest.”

In Texas, most commercial beekeepers are based to the east of the Interstate 35 corridor and in the southern half of Texas. But most risk exposure from shipping their hives across the country.

Paul Jackson, chief apiary inspector with the Texas A&M’s Apiary Inspection Service, remains skeptical that any one thing can be blamed.

“I hope someone hits the nail on the head that can prove it, but I personally think it’s a combination of two, three or four things,” Jackson said. “That’s the reason it is so hard to understand. I guess we can put the blame on pesticides, but I don’t believe that.”

Multiple causes?

The Sierra Club is touting a documentary, Nicotine Bees, suggesting that neonicotinoids, which went into wide use in 2005, are the cause.

Kevin Hansen, the Albuquerque-based director of the documentary, said the fact that these seeds were distributed worldwide then is strong anecdotal evidence. But he says his film is not an attack against the chemical companies.

“I think it is more of a public-policy issue more than blaming a single chemical company,” Hansen said.

The makers of neonicotinoids have insisted that there is no hard evidence against the seeds.

“Everybody knows this is about the varroa mite, the nosema pest and a number of fungal and viral diseases,” Dr. Julian Little, a British spokesman for Bayer CropScience told The Independent newspaper in London in September. “The healthiest bees in the world are in Australia, where they have lots of neonicotinoids, but they don’t have varroa. If you look at a country where they have restricted the use of neonicotinoids, France, they have a worse bee problem there than they do in the U.K.”

In the United States, the EPA created a pollinator protection team in June and announced a strategic plan to deal with colony collapse disorder. In August, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit after the EPA failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for agency documents on pesticide use and colony collapse disorder.

Talbert, the Collin County beekeeper, wonders whether bees and colony collapse disorder are “canaries in the coal mines” for humans.

“Some of us think we’ve got enough chemicals out there killing bees, which begs the question: What is it doing to people?” Talbert said.

BILL HANNA, 817-390-7698

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One year after local retailers began selling beer and wine for off premise consumption in Erath County, the Stephenville City Council will consider allowing a convenience store in the neighborhood of Tarleton State University to cash in on the sales.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, citizens will have an opportunity to speak their minds on a variance to the alcoholic beverage ordinance to allow the sale of alcohol at Texan Kwik Stop, located at 1362 W. Washington Street.

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A 17-year-old Stephenville woman was killed early Tuesday morning in what law enforcement officials called a “catastrophic” crash on FM 205.

Heather Michelle Williamson was killed instantly after she lost control of her 1993 Mitsubishi Mirage and was struck by a dually pickup.

The accident occurred about 1:15 a.m. when Williamson, traveling south, attempted to pass her boyfriend, Ephrain Mendoza, 19, of Stephenville, who was driving a Camaro, according to Trooper Kenneth Bratton with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“They (Williamson and Mendoza) were having some type of argument that transferred to the road,” Bratton said. “When she tried to pass him, she lost control of her vehicle and spun out in front of a dually heading north.”

Traveling in the dually were two Tarleton State University students, Kehl Robbins, 17, and Paul Hopson, 22. The men did not sustain any injuries.

Williamson was a 2008 graduate of Iredell High School who reportedly moved to Stephenville only recently. She and Mendoza have a six-month-old child.

Bratton said the accident is still under investigation.

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