San Francisco removes Indian statue
SAN FRANCISCO -- A 19th century statue near San Francisco's City Hall that some said is racist and demeaning to indigenous people was removed early Friday.
A group of American Indians chanted, beat drums and burned sage as the workers used a crane to take down the Early Days statue depicting a native American at the feet of a Spanish cowboy and a Catholic missionary. It was part of group of bronze statues near City Hall that depict the founding of California.
Activists, who have tried to have the statue removed for decades, renewed efforts last year after clashes broke out across the country over Confederate monuments.
Cities nationwide have tried to remove Confederate monuments following the racially motivated massacre of nine people at a black church in South Carolina and a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
The San Francisco Board of Appeals voted unanimously Wednesday to remove the statue.
The statue will be restored and put in storage until officials decide what to do with it, San Francisco's Arts Commission spokesman Kate Patterson said.
Drug kingpin extradited to U.S., indicted
LOS ANGELES -- A Colombian drug kingpin who participated in a violent ring that used planes, speedboats and submarines to smuggle cocaine worth hundreds of millions of dollars faced federal trafficking charges Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom, prosecutors said.
Victor Hugo Cuellar-Silva is among nearly four dozen defendants charged in a vast conspiracy to ship tons of cocaine from South America through Mexico to the United States.
The indictment unsealed Thursday was unique in targeting people throughout the drug distribution chain from the source of where the coke was produced in Colombia to investors in Mexico, transportation coordinators, houses where the drugs were stashed and to large scale distributors in the U.S., federal prosecutors said.
The indictment charged 47 people in the drug operation. Seven defendants were arrested Thursday in the U.S., four were in custody in Thailand and about a half-dozen were facing extradition from Colombia. The others remained at large.
Cuellar-Silva, who was extradited Thursday from Colombia, was a high-ranking member of the drug ring headed by Mexican fugitive Angel Humberto Chavez-Gastelum, who is one of the most-wanted drug traffickers in the world, prosecutors said.
Authorities seized more than 7,700 pounds of cocaine with a street value more than $500 million during the three-year investigation.
1 dead, officer wounded in bar heist
DALLAS -- A gunbattle between police and group of robbery suspects outside of a Fort Worth bar early Friday left one suspect dead and an undercover officer fighting for his life, authorities said.
The undercover officer, Garrett Hull, was in critical condition at a hospital, Fort Worth police Chief Joel Fitzgerald said at a news conference. The suspect who was killed, Dacion Steptoe, shot Hull after Steptoe and two accomplices left a bar they had just robbed, the chief said.
The two other suspects were arrested and none of the 10 people who were in the bar were hurt.
Fitzgerald said Hull was part of a team of undercover and uniformed officers who were trailing the suspects and rushed into the bar when officers discovered it was being robbed. The officers confronted the three suspects outside the bar.
Fitzgerald said the crew is suspected in 17 robberies in and around Fort Worth in recent months. Investigators believe the men focused on Hispanic bars thinking that Hispanic victims would be less likely to report being robbed.
Oklahoma raises Medicaid rate 3%
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma health care providers will get more money for treating Medicaid patients for the first time in nearly a decade.
The 3 percent rate increase came after years of cuts from budget shortfalls, The Oklahoman reported. Medical professionals saw their Medicaid reimbursements rates fall by nearly 3.3 percent in 2010, by almost 7.8 percent in 2014 and by 3 percent in 2016.
The last time the rate increased was in 2009.
Nursing home providers will see a rate increase of 3.2 percent in reimbursements from the state for treating patients on SoonerCare, Oklahoma's Medicaid program. Lawmakers approved a 2 percent increase, but the Oklahoma Health Care Authority planned to use savings from program changes -- along with drug rebate collections -- to increase the rate by an additional percentage point.
The state's contribution for nursing homes will increase from about $146 to more than $150 per day, which is still about $15 short of what it costs on average to take care of a long-term patient, according to nursing home advocates. Facilities plan to make up the difference with rates paid by residents who aren't on state aid.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 09/15/2018