Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/10148
6 LIVEMAGS.NET MAY>>10 On April 8, area locals and City Council joined together to break ground that began the three-month construction project creating "Rosa Parks Park" in Central Long Beach. The park honors the civil rights activist and her values of freedom from oppression and racial unity. The event was presided over by Sixth District Councilman Dee Andrews, who was instrumental in the park's development. The Redevelopment Agency, L.B. Transit and the Arts Council have connected to put an art installation at the bus stop plaza on 15th St. and Alamitos Avenue in tribute to Parks. The new park's design has a solar irrigation system, a pathway, a xeriscaped garden, benches, and LED lights. In Belmont Shore a loose pit bull violently assailed and injured a man who was walking near the dog. The pedestrian was taken to the hospital to treat his wounds. On the night of April 6, the Long Beach Police Department dispatched officers who found the pit bull and killed him with gunfire, acting in response to an emergency call after the man was attacked by the dog. The pit bull ran from the police until it was killed in Livingston Park on the corner of St. Joseph. The dog's owner was not at the scene when the animal attacked, nor when the dog was killed. During an investigation on a domestic disturbance report, a homemade bomb was found by police officers. The police on the scene called in the sheriff's bomb squad to scrutinize the jerry-rigged explosive on the evening of April 5. The device was in a residential building on the 300 block of Wisconsin Avenue. Working through the night, the bomb squad declared the device in question, and the surrounding area, safe in the early morning hours of April 6. The building's residents had been evacuated to Burbank Elementary School for the duration of the bomb threat. One man was arrested in connection with the potentially explosive device. Herpetologists from the University of Kansas alongside researchers from the National Museum of the Philippines published their discovery of a new species of giant monitor lizard in the Royal Society's Biology Letters Journal on April 7. This 6.5-foot gold and brown spotted lizard lives on the main island of the Philippines, Luzon, and was aptly named the Northern Sierra Madre Forest Monitor Lizard (Varanus Bitatawa) after its habitat in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Since it first came to the attention of biologists in 2004, DNA samples have been tested and compared to all known species of monitor. The researchers concluded that this lizard has been documented by science for the first time. An explosion in a Montcoal, West Virginia, coal mine killed 29 workers on April 5. Rescue crews drilled ventilation airways to let lethal methane and carbon monoxide gases escape before entering the mine to search for survivors. Four days later they could enter and found only dead bodies. The Upper Big Branch South Mine is owned by Massey Energy Co. and had been repeatedly cited by the federal government for safety violations over the past four years. The mine accrued $1.8 million in fines related to its dangerous ventilation plan, escape routes and equipment. The miners had been working about a mile and a half underground when the explosion occurred. There were no survivors. A Tennessee woman, Torry Hansen, who adopted a boy from Russia in September of 2009, sent him on an airplane back to Moscow with a backpack and a note saying "He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues [...]" In response to the treatment of 7-year-old Artyom Savelyev, the Russian Ministry of Education suspended the adoption license of the World Association for Children and Parents, the Renton, Washington, agency involved in the failed adoption. A Russian-United States adoption freeze has been set in place until the series of events and individuals involved in the case have been thoroughly investigated. LOCAL IN REVIEW THEMONTH NATIONAL Police Shoot Attacking Dog Rosa Parks Park Groundbreaking Bomb Scare New Giant Lizard Species Coal Miners Killed in Explosion Adopted Child Banished to Russia Writer>>Tova Morrison