New Orleans nursing home owners found not guilty of Katrina drowning deaths News
New Orleans nursing home owners found not guilty of Katrina drowning deaths

[JURIST] A Louisiana state court jury Friday found nursing home owners Salvador and Mabel Mangano not guilty of the drowning deaths of residents at St. Rita's Nursing Home in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive]. Lawyers representing the Manganos, who pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to 35 charges of negligent homicide and 64 charges of cruelty last October, had argued that the owners did what they thought would keep the residents safe by keeping the residents at the home with food, water, and generators. Thirty-five residents drowned in the flood waters [NYT report; victim list, PDF] that overtook the one-story nursing home in less than 20 minutes.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti [official website] charged the Manganos in September 2005, but the couple was not indicted [JURIST report] until last September due to the extensive damage in the area. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

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