girlfreddy

The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).

In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.

Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.

And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.

9,227 -- The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza.

144 -- The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank.

1,400 -- The number of people killed in Israel.

24 -- The number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of the ground offensive.

23,516 -- The number of Palestinians injured in Gaza.

2,200 -- The number of Palestinians injured in the West Bank.

5,400 -- The number of Israelis injured.

250,000 -- The number of Israelis displaced.

More than 1.4 million -- The number of Palestinians displaced in Gaza.

At least 241 -- The number of soldiers and civilians being held hostage in Gaza.

5 -- The number of hostages released or rescued.

421 -- The number of aid trucks let into Gaza.

33,960 -- The number of residential units destroyed in Gaza.

Residents and local officials have long blamed the high number of cancer cases on contamination from a rail yard originally owned by Southern Pacific and later bought by Union Pacific near two historically Black neighborhoods, Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens. The wood preservative creosote, which has been associated with an increased risk of contracting cancer, was used for more than 80 years at the site until the 1980s. City officials say the contamination has reached the groundwater in the neighborhoods.

During a city council meeting in which the funding was approved, Mayor Sylvester Turner said Houston “has a moral obligation” to help relocate residents away from the four different cancer clusters that have been identified in recent years. Health officials have found higher rates of respiratory cancers as well as childhood cancers, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Aaron Erlich, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it's important to make people aware of misleading information online. But he said the wording in the CSIS campaign was "not the most straightforward" and appeared to be an attempt not just to educate but to invoke fear.

Erlich said clumsy messaging can backfire, and he would like to know if the messaging was tested at all to see how it would be received.