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Hundreds of other babies likely died in the squalid clinic that Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran from 1979 to 2010, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said at a news conference.

“My comprehension of the English language can’t adequately describe the barbaric nature of Dr. Gosnell,” he added.

Williams said he might seek the death penalty for Gosnell, who with nine of his associates, including his wife, was arrested on Wednesday.

Gosnell was charged with murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abortion at 24 or more weeks and other charges.

Pennsylvania law prohibits abortion after 24 weeks except to save the life of the mother or avoid serious health risk to her.

In a nearly 300-page grand jury report filled with ghastly, stomach-turning detail, prosecutors said Pennsylvania regulators ignored complaints of barbaric conditions at Gosnell’s clinic, which catered to poor, immigrant and minority women in the city’s impoverished West Philadelphia section.

Prosecutors called the gruesome case a “complete regulatory collapse.”

“Pennsylvania is not a third-world country,” the district attorney’s office declared in the report. “There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago.”

Gosnell, 69, was arrested and charged with eight counts of murder altogether in the alleged killings of seven babies and the death of a woman from an overdose of painkillers. Nine of Gosnell’s employees — including his wife, a cosmetologist — also were charged.

Prosecutors said Gosnell made millions of dollars over three decades performing thousands of dangerous abortions, many of them illegal late-term procedures. His clinic had no trained nurses or medical staff other than Gosnell, a family physician not certified in obstetrics or gynecology, prosecutors said.

At least two women died from the procedures, while scores more were injured from perforated bowels, cervixes and uteruses, authorities said.

In a typical late-term abortion, the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces. That is more common than the procedure opponents call “partial-birth abortion,” in which the fetus is only partially extracted before being destroyed. Prosecutors said Gosnell instead delivered many of the babies alive.

He “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” District Attorney Seth Williams said.

Gosnell referred to the practice as “snipping,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors estimated Gosnell ended hundreds of pregnancies by cutting the spinal cords, but they said couldn’t prosecute more cases because he destroyed files.

“These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them,” the grand jury report said. “They were considered ‘standard procedure.'”

Defense attorney William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, said: “Obviously, these allegations are very, very serious.”

Authorities raided Gosnell’s clinic early last year in search of controlled drug violations and stumbled upon “a house of horrors,” Williams said. Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses “were scattered throughout the building,” the district attorney said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

Prosecutors said the place reeked of cat urine because of the animals that were allowed to roam freely, instruments were not properly sterilized, and disposable medical supplied were used over and over.

Gosnell didn’t advertise, but word got around. Women came from across the city, state and region for illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. They paid $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. The clinic took in $10,000 to $15,000 a day, authorities said.

“People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr. Gosnell,” Williams said.

According to the New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, Saracen’s head is Lafras Luitingh, a former officer in South Africa’s Civil Cooperation Bureau. During the apartheid era, the CCB acted as a hit squad, killing or attempting to kill anti-apartheid dissidents.

After apartheid ended, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found the CCB guilty of numerous killings. It has also been alleged that the CCB poisoned the water supply at a Namibian refugee camp, bombed a South African kindergarten, and even attempted to bewitch Bishop Desmond Tutu with a baboon fetus.

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.

But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.

Beyond their short-term budget gaps, some states have deep structural problems, like insolvent pension funds, that are diverting money from essential public services like education and health care. Some members of Congress fear that it is just a matter of time before a state seeks a bailout, say bankruptcy lawyers who have been consulted by Congressional aides.

It was confirmed overnight that four had tendered their resignations, joining Foreign Minister Micheal Martin, who stood down on Tuesday.

The enterprise minister is said to be also planning to resign.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen, faced with a general election this spring, is expected to name a new cabinet.

His government has seen its support rapidly dwindle since negotiating an international rescue for the debt-ridden economy last year.
‘Call elections now’

The Dail (parliament) was suspended for 15 minutes during rowdy scenes after the opposition demanded the taoiseach (prime minister) come into the House and clarify who was in charge of the six ministries affected.

The device, called AIRprint, is being developed by Advanced Optical Systems (AOS). It detects fingerprints by shining polarized light onto a person’s hand and analyzing the reflection using two cameras configured to detect different polarizations.

Joel Burcham, director for projects at the Huntsville, Alabama-based company, says AIRprint could help make authorization more efficient in lots of settings. Instead of punching a keypad code or pressing fingers to a scanner, individuals could simply hold up a hand and walk toward a security door while the device checks their identity. “We’re looking at places where the standard methods are a hassle,” says Burcham. For instance, AIRprint could be linked to a timecard system, he says, to help avoid a logjam at manufacturing plants at the start or end of the workday.

“We believe it will be a deterrent to crime when it is out and about and will help us solve crimes more quickly when they do occur,” Ogden City Mayor Matthew Godfrey told Reuters.

In a presentation set for next week’s Black Hat conference in Washington D.C., University of Luxembourg research associate Ralf-Philipp Weinmann says he plans to demonstrate his new technique on an iPhone and an Android device, showing how they could be converted into clandestine spying systems. “I will demo how to use the auto-answer feature present in most phones to turn the telephone into a remote listening device,” he said in an e-mail interview.

The NSA Career Links Smartphone application—which is available for download through iTunes—delivers real-time NSA updates directly to the user’s iPhone. This includes information about available employment opportunities, career fairs, and agency news. Users can also view videos highlighting NSA employee experiences, according to an agency announcement.