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At least 1.7M Americans use health sharing arrangements, despite lack of protections

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

Markian Hawryluk | KFF Health News (TNS)The report from the Colorado Division of Insurance found that more than 1.7 million Americans rely on sharing plans and that many of the plans require members to ask for charity care before submitting their bills.The total membership numbers are likely even higher. The state agency collected data from 16 sharing plans across the U.S. but identified five other plans that did not report their data.“These plans cover more people than we had previously known,” said JoAnn Volk, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.Under the arrangements, members, who usually share some religious beliefs, agree to send money each month to cover other members’ health care bills. At least 11 of the sharing plans that reported data operated in or advertised plans in all 50 states in 2021.Sharing plans do not guarantee payment for health services and are not held to the same standards and consumer protections as health insurance...

Florida deputy and motorist survive being swept through storm drain amid huge rainstorm

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida sheriff’s deputy and a motorist are lucky to be alive after they were sucked into a flooded storm drain during a torrential downpour, then dragged underwater for around 30 seconds before emerging — soaked but unharmed — on the other side of a highway.Deputy William Hollingsworth was helping stranded drivers amid the rapidly rising water early Friday when he saw the motorist disappear beneath the surface. Hollingsworth “rushed to his aid without regard to his own safety,” Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons told reporters. The pair traveled nearly 100 feet (30 meters) under four lanes of Highway 98, Simmons said. The episode was recorded by the deputy’s body camera — although the underwater portion of the video is completely dark, filled only with the muffled sounds of rushing water.After emerging on the other side, Hollingsworth calls out to the driver while wading toward him, shouting “Buddy I g...

4 dead after fire at New York City e-bike shop spreads to apartments

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A fire at a New York City e-bike shop quickly spread to upper-floor apartments and killed four people early Tuesday in the latest deadly blaze linked to exploding lithium ion batteries.The fire, reported shortly after midnight, happened at a shop that was cited last summer for safety violations related to the storage and charging of batteries, officials said.A pile of burned bikes, scooters and other debris lay on the sidewalk outside the shop, HQ E-Bike Repair, which was on the ground floor of a six-story building in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.So far this year, there have been more than 100 fires and 13 deaths linked to battery explosions in the city, said Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh.“There was a very large number of both batteries and e-bikes,” Kavanagh said at a morning news conference. “This location is known to the fire department. We have written violations at this location before and we have conducted enforcement at t...

Blood-red crickets invade Nevada town, residents fight back with brooms, leaf blowers, snow plows

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

ELKO, Nev. (AP) — Dana Dolan was driving through her small Nevada hometown when she thought she had come upon a gory crash. The ground surrounding Elko’s stretch of Interstate 80 looked as if it had been covered in blood. As the red color shifted and moved, she realized instead it was an infiltration of crickets, some bigger than her thumb. “It’s almost like a biblical plague,” Dolan told The Associated Press last week, laughing at the absurdity of the situation that is playing out in Elko, where she’s lived for six years. Tens of thousands of Mormon cricket eggs buried about an inch deep in the soil began to hatch in late May and early June. For weeks, the red critters have been invading swaths of northern Nevada and causing chaos, said the state’s longtime entomologist Jeff Knight. The invasion of the cannibalistic crickets has hit especially hard in Elko, a small town of about 20,000 near Idaho and Utah known for its gold mining. The big red bugs leave behind a ...

IMF applauds Canada’s climate action, warns of ‘race to the bottom’ with subsidies

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

OTTAWA — The International Monetary Fund warns that Canada’s green subsidies could stoke an international race to the bottom, even as it credits the country for a “multipronged” approach to addressing climate change. The international agency published Tuesday the preliminary findings of its staff from an official visit to Canada.“Canada’s actions to meet its climate commitments and to incentivize investment in green sectors are welcome, although the design of some incentives could pose some risks,” the report says. The IMF applauded Canada’s climate action, including its carbon-pricing regime and 2023 federal budget investments in the green economy. But it called for better international co-ordination to avoid a “race to the bottom” where countries compete over investments with even larger subsidies. “Moreover, the current strong focus on electric vehicles — and their batteries in particular — as key to Canada’s green indus...

Inuit group hopes review into handling of priest allegations brings change

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

IQALUIT, Nunavut — A national group representing Inuit says it hopes a review into how the Oblates handled allegations of a former priest sexually abusing children in Nunavut will bring change within the Catholic Church.A retired Quebec judge has been tasked with leading the review into how the Oblates handled the abuse allegations against Johannes Rivoire.“We look forward to engaging with Justice André Denis and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to achieve a greater understanding of the decisions that contributed to the unconscionable situation of an accused criminal being allowed to evade justice,” Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami said in a statement.“We hope that Justice Denis’ independent review will help to bring about necessary governance change within the Oblates and the Catholic Church more broadly as well as bring a small measure of peace to victims through an assurance that such decisions are not repeated.”The group added that it continues to call for action to...

The vessel missing near the Titanic wreck is a submersible, not a submarine: Here’s the difference

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

The vessel that went missing Sunday in the North Atlantic while exploring the Titanic’s wreckage is a submersible not a submarine, and there is a key difference. The Titan, with five people on board, remained missing Tuesday even as an international search and rescue effort was underway.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains the difference. A submarine has enough power to leave port and come back to port under its own power.But a submersible has more limited power and range. It needs a mother ship from which launch, to return to, and for support and communications.The Titan’s mother ship is the Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker.The Associated Press

North Carolina legislature pushes limits on transgender youth rights in final days of session

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Transgender rights are taking center stage Tuesday in North Carolina as the GOP-controlled General Assembly considers legislation to restrict gender-affirming health care and trans participation in sports.The legislative push comes in the dwindling days of the North Carolina session and as many Republican-led state legislatures round out a record year of legislation targeting transgender residents.Hours after the House Health Committee advanced a bill banning state facilities from treating trans minors with hormones and gender-affirming surgeries, the Senate will vote later Tuesday on whether to ban trans girls from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity.Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has little power to block legislation now that Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers.If it passes the Senate on Tuesday, the bill prohibiting trans girls from playing on girls’ middle school, high school and college sports teams cou...

Police raid Iranian opposition camp in Albania, seize computers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albanian authorities on Tuesday raided a camp for members of the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq to seize 150 computer devices allegedly linked to prohibited political activities, and several people were injured.Albanian Interior Minister Bledi Cuci and the head of the national police, Muhamet Rrumbullaku, said both police officers and Iranian dissidents were injured during the raid at the Ashraf-3 camp near Manze, a small hill town 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) west of Albania’s capital. Representatives of the Mujahedeen group said one person was killed; Albanian authorities disputed that the raid caused the man’s death.The Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime’s office has opened investigations into suspected political activities by Mujahedeen members. Cuci and Rrumbullaku referred questions about the nature of the alleged violations to prosecutors, saying police were only carrying out a court order to seize evide...

A list of mass killings in the United States since January

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:33 GMT

The latest mass killing in the United States happened Sunday in Kellogg, Idaho, where a 31-year-old man was detained at the scene of a shooting that left four people dead inside a residence. The mass shooting was part of a spate of gun violence over the weekend that killed and wounded people across the U.S., including at least 60 shot in the Chicago area alone.The Idaho shooting is the country’s 27th mass killing of 2023 in which four or more people died, not including the assailant, within a 24-hour period, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. So far this year, the nation has witnessed the highest number on record of mass killings and deaths to this point in a single year. There have been more than 550 mass killing incidents since 2006, according to the database, in which at least 2,900 people have died and at least 2,000 people have been injured.Here’s what happened in each U.S. mass killing this year...