U.S. News

In the words of Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano, the goal is to “provide the full support and resources of the state government … to come alongside of these thousands of women and their families who might find themselves with unexpected, unplanned pregnancies.”

But an investigation by ProPublica and CBS News found that the system that funnels a growing pot of state money to anti-abortion nonprofits has few safeguards and is riddled with waste.

A former Florida police officer who relocated to Moscow is one of the key figures behind it.

Dozens of bogus stories aimed at influencing US voters and sowing distrust ahead of November’s election. Some have been roundly ignored but others have been shared by influencers and members of the US Congress.

For example, one of these stories was published on a website called The Houston Post – one of dozens of sites with American-sounding names which are in reality run from Moscow - and alleged that the FBI illegally wiretapped Donald Trump’s Florida resort.

Another positive step in the right direction for an organization rife with brokenness. There's a lot I don't like about the organization, but this is something a love--a scouting organization open to young women and the lgbtq community. The next step is being inclusive of nonreligious agnostic and atheist youth and leaders. As well as ending the cultural appropriation of Native American peoples.

May this organization continue to build up youth, never allow further violence against youth, and make amends for all the wrongs. There's a lot of good that comes out of organizations like this and I won't discount it even though it's riddled with a dark history.

Third-grade teacher Aurore Soliman, a French national, has taught in classrooms around the world. In France and in Norway, she was hired and automatically benefitted from pay scales and workplace conditions negotiated by teachers unions.

Now, in New Orleans, she’s fighting for one.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke, a 32-year-old Army veteran from Colorado, had briefly worked at the NSA, prosecutors said, and was reapplying to the agency when he tried to sell classified information to a person he believed worked for the Russian government but who actually worked for the FBI.

Florida is continuing to “callously” strip healthcare coverage from thousands of children in lower-income households in defiance of a new federal law intended to protect them.

Since 1 January, more than 22,500 children have been disenrolled from Florida KidCare, its version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) that is jointly subsidized by states and the US government for families with earnings just above the threshold for Medicaid.

Florida healthcare officials admit at least some were removed for non-payment of premiums, an action prohibited by the “continuous eligibility” clause of the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act that took effect at the beginning of this year. The clause secures 12 months of cover if at least one premium payment is made.

Last week, the administration of Republican governor Ron DeSantis challenged the rule in federal court Tampa, arguing it makes Chip an entitlement program that illegally overrides a state law requiring monthly payment of premiums.

But it has chosen not to wait for a ruling before continuing to separate children from coverage. Figures from the Florida Health Justice Project show there were 5,552 removals in the month to 1 April, following 5,097 in March, 5,147 in February, and 6,780 in January.

Florida argues the numbers include children aging out or moving into other coverage, and that “disenrollment has been consistent at this level for years”. Notably, the monthly average so far this year is more than 1,500 higher than the whole of 2023.

The FTC is sending 117,044 PayPal payments to consumers who had certain types of Ring devices, such as indoor cameras, during periods when the FTC alleges unauthorized users may have had access to customer videos. Consumers should redeem their PayPal payment within 30 days.

Consumers who have questions about their payment should contact the refund administrator, Rust Consulting, Inc., at 1-833-637-4884, or visit the FTC website to view frequently asked questions about the refund process. The Commission never requires people to pay money or provide account information to get a refund.

The probe is focused on whether McKinsey engaged in a criminal conspiracy when advising Purdue and other pharmaceutical manufacturers on marketing strategies to boost sales of prescription painkillers that led to widespread addiction and fatal overdoses, two of the people said.

The Justice Department is also investigating whether McKinsey conspired to commit healthcare fraud when its consulting work for companies selling opioids allegedly resulted in fraudulent claims being made to government programs such as Medicare, they said.

The times dives into an intelligence report on how TikTok's political algorithm anomalies align with the CCP's Geostrategic Objectives https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.21.23.pdf

This report highlights major differences in the prevalence of hashtags related to subjects like Hong Kong Protests, Tainanmen Square, Tibet, the South China Sea, Taiwan, Uyghurs, Pro-Ukraine, and Pro-Isreal when compared to other major social media platforms.

Additionally the times cited a Wall Street Journal analysis (https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-israel-gaza-hamas-war-a5dfa0ee) which "found evidence that TikTok was promoting extreme content, especially against Israel. (China has generally sided with Hamas.)"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14830625

‘Not like other Passovers’: hundreds of Jewish demonstrators arrested after New York protest seder

In 2023 ...

Top 3 import from 🇲🇽 Mexico: +5.29% 🇨🇦 Canada: -2.01% 🇨🇳China: -19.9%

Top 3 export to 🇨🇦 Canada: +1.13% 🇲🇽 Mexico: +0.925% 🇨🇳 China: +0.071%

List of all selected countries: https://x.com/data_graffiti/status/1782836998123974667

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This looks like a replay of the Albertsons/Safeway merger, with way more stores being sold off to a company unaccustomed to the sort of volume that would make the deal work:

C&S Wholesale Grocers, a supplier to independent grocery stores and owner of a retail pharmacy and 23 supermarkets under the Piggly Wiggly and Grand Union banners, has agreed to acquire a total of 579 stores in a revised divestiture deal worth $2.9 billion.

So the new C&S would be 25 times its current store footprint. Wholesale experience could mitigate that to some extent, but just ask Haggen how suddenly growing by an order of magnitude worked out. The story covers the Washington-state chain completely devoid of context:

In addition, Kroger will sell its Haggen banner to C&S, and C&S will license the Albertsons banner in California and Wyoming and the Safeway banner in Arizona and Colorado.

Again, this is a repeat of what the last merger did in Oregon and Washington, except this time it ropes four additional states into the problem. And, if history is any sort of barometer, there will be systemic failures on the part of C&S that result in the merged behemoth buying back the divested stores for a pittance, creating the same problems they're claiming the new plan will solve.

With an additional hitch: As a wholesale distributor to 7,500 competing independent grocery stores, there's no reason to believe that relationship will survive as a new direct competitor.

Edited because I did some research and had a major error. C&S does operate retail locations well west of the Mississippi.