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CNN Live Today

New Carry-On Rules Go Into Effect; Katrina Investigation Focuses on Possible Intentional Killing of Patients

Aired December 22, 2005 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are right at the half hour. I'm Daryn Kagan.
Breaking news out of New York City within the last few minutes. A tentative deal to end the city's crippling transit strike. The chief mediator says the union has agreed to recommend that bus and subway service resume while contract negotiations continue. The Transit Union Executive Board is expected to approve the agreement later today.

New passenger screening guidelines go into effect at U.S. airports today. The federal government says screeners have more important things to do than confiscate small, sharp objects. So from today, many small scissors and tools will get a pass. Screeners instead will spend more time searching for explosives and bomb parts, which will become more difficult to detect.

In Norwalk, Ohio, a couple who forced some of their 11 adopted children to sleep in wood and wire crates will face abuse charges. Negligence allegations were dismissed, however. The judge said there's no evidence that Michael and Sharen Gravelle did not clothe or feed the children. The couple says the cages were intended to protect the children from each other.

In Connecticut, a 69-year-old nun has been released after three years in prison at Danbury. Sister Ardeth Platte and two other nuns were convicted of damaging government property and obstructing national security when they painted bloody crosses on a missile silo in Colorado in 2002.

And as we just were telling you a few minutes ago, the son of the Indianapolis Colts football coach Tony Dungy has died. Eighteen-year- old James Dungy was found dead in his bedroom at his apartment near Tampa early this morning. Just moments ago, the Colts president Bill Polian said the team will continue playing and that is at Dungy's request, while the coach takes a leave of absence to be with his family.

Getting back to the breaking news at the top of the hour. It looks like there is some resolution, at least, to get transit workers back to work at New York City.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: Now on to holiday travelers. They are hitting the road and taking to the skies. Take a look at traffic in St. Louis. AAA predicting more than 51 million Americans will be driving to their holiday destinations. Also, pictures from Los Angeles International Airport. This is a peak travel day for the nation's airlines.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: Let's head to the airport now and to a CNN "Security Watch." The government changes the rules today for post-9/11 carry- ons. Why? Trying to speed up the security lines. Also, to free up screeners to look for more threatening items than those little scissors you want to bring on board.

Let's check go ahead and check in with Kathleen Koch. She is at Reagan National Airport. Good morning.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

And these are some of the once-forbidden items that now have been given the green light to be carried on board U.S. aircraft. But the government says at the same time, it is stepping up other security measures.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH (voice-over): Since the 9/11 attacks, the government has seized tens of thousands of scissors, screwdrivers and other tools from airline passengers because they were potential weapons. But starting today, the ban has been lifted because the government is worried about a bigger threat.

KIP HAWLEY, DIR. TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION: So virtually any object can cause harm -- my hands, a tie, belt, you know, whatever. But our perspective at TSA and Homeland Security is the system, and what can hurt the United States. And the big threat is explosives to the United States. Scissors and small tools do not represent much of a threat to the country.

KOCH: The government says screeners will now spend more time looking for bombs.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We're seeing an ever-increasing sophistication in the kinds of explosive devices that we encounter all over the world. And we have to train our screeners now to become more alert and more adept at detecting devices that are not as obvious as they might have been 10 years ago.

KOCH: But critics warn the decision could leave aircraft and their crew vulnerable to terrorists.

REP. EDWARD MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: TSA can't have it both ways. If this knife is too dangerous to be in a passenger cabin, then this scissors is too dangerous to be in a passenger cabin.

PAT FRIEND, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: We believe that the TSA's decision is reckless and it endangers the people who work on that aircraft and it endangers the people who fly on that aircraft, and potentially endangers thousands of people on the ground.

KOCH: Government screeners will also step up random passenger screenings and pat-downs, including arms and legs instead of just the torso.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: ... create an undue risk, they point out that since the 9/11 attacks, all cockpit doors are hardened. Many pilots carry guns. And then there are also more federal air marshals on board the aircraft.

And there are also limitations in the types of things you can bring on board. Scissors have to have a blade of four inches or less, and the tools can be no longer than six inches -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Duly noted. Kathleen, thank you. Kathleen Koch, just outside of Washington, D.C.

CNN "Security Watch" keeps you up to date on safety. Stay tuned day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

When we come back, a CNN investigation -- what really happened at this New Orleans hospital in the tense hours and days after Katrina struck? Drew Griffin reports.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: There are new details and new allegations in CNN's continuing investigation into whether medical professionals may have resorted to euthanasia at a New Orleans hospital in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now if you recall after the storm, there were hundreds of deaths in hospitals and nursing homes.

All of these are being investigated by Louisiana authorities. Among those, one investigation has focussed on allegations that patients were intentionally killed at Memorial Hospital. Now, CNN has learned more than one medical professional is under scrutiny as a possible person of interest in that investigation.

CNN's Drew Griffin has the exclusive report you'll see only here on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Memorial Hospital had been a storm refuge for up to 2,000 people. Patients, staff and their families rode out the storm inside. But, by Thursday, four days after Katrina, despair was setting in. The hospital was surrounded by floodwater.

There was no power, no water. And the heat was stifling.

Nurses had to fan patients by hand. And, outside the hospital windows, nurses tell CNN they saw looters breaking into this credit union. Up on the seventh floor, Angela McManus was with her critically ill mother. Thursday, she noticed a change, too. Nurses, she says, were now discussing, for the first time, which patients would have to stay behind.

ANGELA MCMANUS, MOTHER DIED AT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: I mean, these were grown men that were buckling down to their knees, because they were like, they couldn't believe that FEMA was making them stay there and watch the people die. They had decided not to evacuate the DNR patients.

GRIFFIN (on camera): That's when you heard for the first time...

MCMANUS: Right.

GRIFFIN: ... your mom was not going to get out.

MCMANUS: The first time.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Angela McManus's had a DNR, a do-not- resuscitate order, but was alert. Her daughter says Wilda (ph) McManus did not make it out. She wants to believe her mother died peacefully from her illness, but now doesn't know.

On her death certificate lists the first cause of death merely as hurricane-related.

MCMANUS: I think she died from the infection. I don't know. I really don't know. And, you know, hearing -- this doctor was saying about euthanasia -- euthanasia at the hospital, I just don't know where to go.

GRIFFIN: The Louisiana Attorney General's Office is looking into what did happen to the patients at Memorial Hospital. Attorney General Charles Foti has told CNN that allegations of possible euthanasia there are -- quote -- "credible and worth investigating" -- end quote -- but that is all he will say.

While Foti will not provide any details of his investigation, a source familiar with it, who did not want to be identified, told CNN that more than one person is being actively looked at as a possible person of interest for crimes related to euthanasia there.

Dr. Bryant King, who has since left Memorial, was working as a contract physician at the hospital in the days after Katrina. This is what he saw in the triage area Thursday, September 1.

DR. BRYANT KING, FORMER CONTRACT PHYSICIAN AT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: ... and realized, there were no more fanners; there were no more nurses administer -- checking blood sugars or blood pressures. They were all pushed out.

And then there were -- there were people standing at the -- the -- the ramp at the Claire (ph) garage. There were people standing over by where the morgue were -- the chapel that we were using as the morgue. There were people standing at the entrance-way to where the -- the -- the emergency room led up to the second-floor area. So, it was kind of just being blocked off. And that didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense why would we stop what we had been doing, especially given the fact that we are evacuating patients.

GRIFFIN: Dr. King said another hospital administrator asked if he and two other remaining doctors should pray. King says, one of those doctors, Dr. Anna Pou, had a handful of syringes.

B. J. KING: This is on the second floor in the lobby. This -- and across that walkway, there's a group of patients. And Anna is standing over there with a handful of syringes.

GRIFFIN (on camera): Dr. Anna Pou.

B. J. KING: Talking to a patient. And the -- the words that I heard her say were, "I'm going to give you something to make you feel better."

And she had a handful of syringes. I don't -- and that was strange on a lot of -- on a lot of different levels. For one, we don't give medications. The nurses give medications. We almost never give medications ourselves, unless it's something critical. It's in the middle of a code or -- even in the middle of a code, the nurses give medications.

Nobody -- nobody walks around with a handful of syringes and goes and gives the same thing to each patient. That -- that's just not how we do it.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Dr. King had no way of knowing what was in those syringes. He left the hospital. He says he personally did not witness any acts of euthanasia.

Right after evacuating Memorial Hospital, Dr. Anna Pou had this to say to a Baton Rouge television station.

DR. ANNA POU, MEMORIAL HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN: There were some patients there that -- who were critically ill, and, regardless of the storm, were -- had the orders of, do not resuscitate, in other words, that if they died, to allow them to die naturally and not to use any heroic methods to resuscitate them.

We all did everything within our power to give the best treatment that we could to the patients in the hospital, to make them comfortable.

GRIFFIN: Dr. Pou talked to CNN in several phone calls in the days after the evacuation. She would not comment on the euthanasia allegations and has since hired an attorney.

Dr. Pou's attorney, Rick Simmons (ph), sent this statement to CNN on behalf of his client.

It reads: "The physicians and staff responsible for the care of patients, many of whom were gravely ill, faced loss of generator power, the absence of routine medical equipment to sustain life, lack of water and sanitation facilities, extreme heat, in excess of 100 degrees, all occurring," says the statement, "in an environment of deteriorating security, apparent social unrest, and the absence of governmental authority. Dr. Pou and other medical personnel," it reads, "at Memorial Hospital worked tirelessly for five days to save and evacuate patients, none of whom were abandoned. We feel confident that the facts will reveal heroic efforts by the physicians and the staff in a desperate situation."

(on camera): As part of its investigation, the attorney general's office has sent tissue samples from the bodies recovered to a lab for testing in the Orleans Parish corner. Frank Minford (ph) is confirming to CNN, that one of the tests is to determine if excessive amounts of morphine, a painkiller that in large doses could kill, has been found in any of the bodies. How many bodies is still under investigation and no charges have been filed.

There are two companies that handle patient care at Memorial Hospital. Tenent (ph) runs the hospital, and Life Care of New Orleans leases space on the seventh floor to care for long-term patients. Both of those companies have declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

But both say that the employees that they hired acted heroically under terrible circumstances and, both say, they are cooperating fully with the attorney general's investigation.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And then there's this, two New Orleans police officers have been fired for their role in the videotaped beating of a 64-year- old man. But a union official vows to fight that decision. The incident happened in October in the French Quarter.

Robert Davis told CNN he was talking to one officer when another interrupted, setting off the dispute. He denies the officers' claim that he was intoxicated. The city's police superintendent stands by the decision to fire the two officers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUPT. WARREN RILEY, NEW ORLEANS POLICE DEPT.: The New Orleans Police Department has taken a new direction. The New Orleans Police Department at no time will tolerate our officers disrespecting or abusing citizens. It brought -- I don't want to get into too much, but we made the appropriate decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: The officers' attorney says they used proper police procedure in trying to restrain Davis. They talked about the case and the videotape on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FRANK DESALVO, OFFICERS' ATTORNEY: It was a part tape for number one. Number two, you really have to break down what each officer did on an individual basis and look at it in very slow motion. And we did that. We did it over and over and over again, and I can tell you what each officer did when, where and how, and it doesn't fit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't fit.

KAGAN: And you can see American morning weekdays beginning at 6:00 A.M. Eastern. Hard to believe.

Well, actually, a check of your travel forecast is coming up. And then, the custodian at this church finds not one, but two babies. Where is the mother? That story is just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: All right. Well, you're saying things have been very cold in Chicago?

UNKNOWN MALE VOICE: Yes.

KAGAN: Yes. Well that makes this story all the more interesting. Two babies left abandoned, twin babies left abandoned at a church in Chicago. It happened at the North Austin Lutheran Church. The babies, a boy and a girl -- presumably twins -- were swaddled in their baby carrier. They were given names to fit the season, Mary and Joseph.

Church workers helped get the babies to a hospital. Both are in good condition. Illinois does have a safe haven law that a parent can leave a newborn at a hospital or a police station and walk away, no questions asked, if the baby is 3 days old or younger.

But churches are not on that safe haven list. The parents could face abandonment charges if they are found.

And that wraps up this hour. I'm Daryn Kagan. International news is up next. Stay tuned for "YOUR WORLD TODAY". Michael Holmes and Zain Verjee are with you after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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