Saturday, Feb 22nd
Last update09:18:25 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
The US Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the insurance giant UnitedHealthcare for its Medicare billing practices.
The federal government is examining whether UnitedHealthcare is using patient diagnoses to illegally increase the lump sum monthly payments received through the Medicare Advantage program, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
A Mississippi judge issued a Tuesday order forcing the Clarksdale Press Register to remove an editorial criticizing city officials, sparking First Amendment concerns and pushback from press advocates.
The piece, titled “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust” accused authorities in Clarksdale, Miss., of intentionally failing to notify the outlet about a City Council meeting on a proposed tax for alcohol, marijuana and tobacco products.
Judge Crystal Wise Martin ruled in favor of a temporary restraining order requested by city officials and scheduled a full hearing for Feb. 27, according to The Associated Press.
“I think it’s dangerous that a judge would issue a temporary restraining order without a hearing,” Wyatt Emmerich, president of the paper’s parent company, Emmerich Newspapers, told the AP.
“We’ll fight it and see where it goes.”
An Alabama grand jury has recommended that a city's police department be "immediately abolished," finding there is a "rampant culture of corruption," officials said Wednesday while announcing the indictment of five of the agency's officers, including its police chief.
Five Hanceville police officers were arrested and charged amid a probe into the department, Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker said. The spouse of one of the officers was also charged, he said.
"This is a sad day for law enforcement, but at the same time, it is a good day for the rule of law," Crocker said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
Crocker provided limited details on the case. Though the investigation encompassed the department's evidence room and the death of a Hanceville dispatcher, 49-year-old Christopher Michael Willingham, who was found dead from a toxic drug combination at work, officials said.
Victoria Porter spent two days last year fighting a small forest fire that sprang up from a hunter’s campsite in the Montana wilderness.
Porter, 28, helped dig a fire break to prevent the blaze from spreading and used a mule team to haul water to squelch the blaze.
Firefighting wasn’t Porter’s primary job at the time. She worked for the U.S. Forest Service on a crew maintaining hiking trails. But, like many Forest Service workers, she has basic training in fighting wildfires and is expected to help fire crews when needed.
Porter won’t be around to help when the next wildfire flares up. She was fired from her job last week as part of the wave of mass terminations of probationary employees by President Donald Trump’s administration, a move she believes will put a strain on the agency’s firefighters.
“They need our support, and now they don’t have it,” Porter said.
A midair collision involving two small planes in southern Arizona killed two people Wednesday morning, authorities said.
Federal air-safety investigators said each plane had two people aboard when they collided at Marana Regional Airport on the outskirts of Tucson.
One plane landed uneventfully and the other hit the ground near a runway and caught fire, said the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation and cited preliminary information before its investigators had arrived.
The Marana Police Department confirmed that the two people killed were aboard one aircraft and said responders did not have a chance to provide medical treatment. Sgt. Vincent Rizzi said the two people on the other plane were uninjured.
A Jewish man in Miami Beach is facing charges of attempted murder following accusations that he opened fire on two men he believed were Palestinians but reportedly turned out to be Israeli visitors.
According to arrest documents, at 9.30pm on Saturday surveillance video appeared to show Mordechai Brafman, 27, getting out of his truck and opening fire with a semiautomatic handgun at a vehicle as it passed. Brafman allegedly fired 17 times, striking one victim in the left shoulder and grazing the other’s left forearm.
While in custody, Brafman spontaneously told detectives that while he was driving his truck, “he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both”, arrest documents said.
Law enforcement officials did not confirm if the victims were in fact Palestinians and the Miami Herald reported that they were actually two vacationing Israelis, naming them as Ari Rabey and his father.
Facebook posts after the shooting show Rabey at Miami’s Jackson memorial hospital and his Hyundai with several bullet holes and markings.
Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.
According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.
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