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Last week, ProPublica published a five-part series that I wrote with senior research reporter Doris Burke about Albany, Georgia, and its only hospital, Phoebe Putney Memorial. We started working on the story five years ago, when COVID-19 was racing around the globe and Albany small, remote and barely touched by time had the worlds fourth-highest case rate.We initially set out to write a David-vs.-Goliath narrative about the towns response to the crisis. But, as I write in the series, there came a turning point at which we realized there were more enduring questions and challenges facing Albany than COVID-19. They were about race and power.In the weeks immediately following the outbreak, when the pandemic made it too risky for me to travel, I monitored the citys daily press briefings and the hospitals flood of social media posts on Facebook. That, I thought, was where the first draft of Albanys COVID-19 story was being written, and the narrative that was being pushed in them felt disturbingly familiar.Albany is a majority Black city of some 67,000 people. However, while Black residents were dying in disproportionate numbers, the officials leading the response were white: the mayor, the chair of the county government and the senior executives at Phoebe. At every briefing, officials announced the number of people who were sick with COVID-19 and the number of whod died.Then, in early April 2020, for the first time, they announced a name, not a number. The one person who merited personal recognition was Judge Nancy Stephenson. She was white.The chief medical officer at the hospital, Dr. Stephen Kitchen, choked up when he announced her death. Mayor Kermit Bo Dorough took to the podium to ask for a moment of silence to mark the moment, saying it brings many of the people in this community to the next phase of this battle because now we know someone who has been a victim of COVID.The chair of the county government at the time, Christopher Cohilas, proclaimed, We have lost a tremendous jewel of this community. A jewel to the people. Then he added, I think that her passing highlights exactly how lethal this disease can be.Im not going to lie. I cringed at what I was hearing. Some 38 people had died by then. The overwhelming majority were Black. There hadnt been any named mentions or moments of silence at the press briefings for them. How could it be, I thought to myself, that it wasnt until Stephensons death that the citys leaders understood how lethal the disease could be?The comments that came pouring into the live chat of the video briefing made clear I wasnt the only one asking that question.One read, Lets not forget all the others who have passed, and who are known by others in our community.Another read, So you extend condolences to the judge, but not your residents.And then there was this: So now it hits home.That moment resonated with me because two decades earlier Id written a piece as part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for The New York Times about how histories written by people in power most of them white tend to erase, minimize and misrepresent the experiences and contributions of those who are not.That story was also set in the South. The series, titled How Race Is Lived in America, was meant to show how the systemic divisions that shape our society and each individuals place in it are driven by day-to-day interactions at work, at school and in hospitals.What I was seeing play out in Albany and at Phoebe felt like the stuff of a new installment. Not only did it seem that city leaders had failed to recognize the magnitude of the crisis until one of their own had died, they had also made those bearing the brunt of the pandemic feel responsible for their own demise. According to the official narrative, the outbreak started at a Black funeral, and the reason Black people were so vulnerable to the virus was because they didnt take care of themselves.Read MoreInside the Free Clinic Caring for Those Who Cant Afford the Only Hospital in TownOn my first visit to Albany, I met Pastor Daniel Simmons, the leader of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. He made clear he was skeptical of the prevailing narrative and encouraged me not to fall for it either.If Albany, Georgia, had done things differently over the years, our community wouldnt have been as vulnerable as it was, he said. If the health care system was different, if it had a different relationship with poor people and people of color, the outcome would have been different.The main lesson that he hoped I and other people would take from Albanys COVID-19 crisis was: It didnt have to be this way.What he and others told me had been left out of that narrative was how hard it had been for African Americans in Albany, particularly those who are poor and uninsured, to get safe and affordable health care in a city whose dominant institution is a hospital. Phoebe Putney Health System is not only the largest provider of health care in southwest Georgia, it is also Albanys largest employer and property owner. The health systems CEO, Scott Steiner, said the hospitals mission is to provide care regardless of race, religion and ability to pay, but were always trying to balance that out with paying the bills.Doris and I spent the following four years exploring that part of Albanys story, interviewing more than 150 sources and poring over thousands of pages of records. We learned that Phoebe was the only hospital in town because it had worked hard even stealthily and spent millions of dollars to drive out its old competitor, before finally managing to acquire it. The cost of care went up and quality went down. Meanwhile the more Phoebe grew, the more economically dependent Albany became, and the harder it was for patients to hold the hospital to account.The CEO that oversaw Phoebe during the period of its most significant growth and the health systems former attorney did not respond to detailed lists of questions. When we asked Phoebes current leaders for responses to our findings, a hospital spokesperson accused us of intentionally excluding positive patient stories. Most patients have positive experiences at Phoebe, he said. Ignoring that fact is wrong.As for Doris and me, we were determined to focus on the people who tend to get left out of Albanys, and the nations, stories because we believed they would resonate with anyone who has struggled to get the health care they need. We hope youll spend time with the whole series. You can read it here. Or you can listen here to an audio version, produced in collaboration with actors from Theater of War.The post I Started Covering the COVID-19 Crisis in Albany, Georgia. This Moment Made Me Realize There Was a Bigger Story to Tell. appeared first on ProPublica.

The alleged gunmen in the shooting, Sajid Akram, 50, and his son, Naveed Akram, 24, were from Bonnyrigg, a diverse, multilingual suburb miles from Sydneys Bondi Beach.

Judges across Tennessee are now demanding greater accountability from people who have been ordered to give up their guns, a shift aimed at strengthening protections for domestic violence victims.The change is being adopted county by county, after state lawmakers bowed to opposition from the National Rifle Association over a bill that would have taken that reform statewide.The move follows reporting by WPLN and ProPublica over the past two years that found Tennessees lax gun laws and enforcement have allowed firearms to remain in dangerous hands. The state consistently has one of the highest rates of women killed by men, and most of those homicides are committed with guns. The news organizations analysis found that about 1 in 4 victims of domestic violence gun homicides were killed by someone who was barred from having a firearm.In Tennessee, when someone is convicted of a domestic violence charge or is subject to an order of protection, they are not allowed to possess a gun. A person ordered to relinquish their firearm can turn it over to a third party, like a friend or relative, for safekeeping. But the state doesnt require them to disclose whose hands the weapon ends up in. Advocates say that makes it hard to ensure that the guns were given up and that they were given to someone who is legally allowed to hold on to them.As part of its investigation, WPLN and ProPublica reported on an East Tennessee county that had transformed its justice system for domestic violence victims. Scott Countys reforms include a requirement that when a court is stripping domestic violence abusers of their guns, they must tell the court in a written affidavit who is going to take custody of their weapons. The county also asks for the address of that person, who is asked to sign an affidavit saying they are in receipt of the weapons. None of these extra measures of accountability, however, are required on the states standard gun-dispossession form.The [states] form is really incomplete, said Becky Bullard with Nashvilles Office of Family Safety. We cant have someone dispossess of their firearm lawfully if we dont know who theyre giving the gun to.At least nine counties, including Tennessees two largest, Davidson and Shelby, have amended the states gun dispossession affidavit to require information about who will be taking possession of the weapon. Other counties are also considering the change, advocates say.When I heard about what Scott County was doing, I was shocked, said Shelby County Judge Greg Gilbert, who adjusted that courts form when he found out that courts were able to do that themselves. It does make it a little more likely that people will take this seriously.Last year, two Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would have made Scott Countys form the default for the rest of the state, but the bill was pushed to 2026 after opposition from the Tennessee Firearms Association and the NRA. Neither association responded to requests for comment at the time. One of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, Sen. Becky Massey, a Knox County Republican, said she would move forward with the bill again if her House counterpart, Rep. Kelly Keisling, did. But Keisling, a Republican whose district includes Scott County, said he is uncertain as to the future of this particular piece of legislation.This month, advocates for victims of domestic violence also pushed for a state council on domestic violence to recommend adoption of the amended form. That effort failed after a procedural mishap; the group plans to revisit the topic at its next meeting in March.We really do not have a minute to lose. This is a battle that we have been fighting around a form for years, said Bullard, who has advocated for this reform since a deadly shooting in 2018 at a Waffle House where the man traveled with a gun that he was ordered to give up. And it could affect someone in the next minute.The post A Countys Move to Protect Domestic Violence Victims Is Spreading Across Tennessee After Legislative Delay appeared first on ProPublica.

In immigration courts, U.S. lawyers have filed thousands of requests to dismiss asylum cases and force people to pursue asylum elsewhere.

Nuno Loureiro, 47, was killed by an old classmate who was on the run from a shooting at Brown University, the authorities said.

The huge sum shows that while the Koch network may not hold significant power at high levels of the Republican Party, it remains a financial juggernaut.

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