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U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting and killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance division, in New York last year. In a statement, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo called the decision to seek the death penalty “barbaric.” “While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Friedman Agnifilo said. Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses. He could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case. New York does not have the death penalty for state charges. Mangione faces a parallel federal indictment in Manhattan federal court over Thompson’s killing, which is where Bondi said prosecutors will aim for the death penalty. He has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges. If Mangione is convicted in the federal case, the jury would determine in a separate phase of the trial whether to recommend the death penalty. Any such recommendation must be unanimous, and the judge would be required to impose it. Thompson was shot dead on December 4 outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the company was gathering for an investor conference. Luigi Mangiones murder of Brian Thompson – an innocent man and father of two young children – was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement. “After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trumps agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Bondi said. The brazen killing of Thompson and ensuing five-day manhunt captivated Americans. Police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, found Mangione on December 9 with a 9-millimeter pistol and silencer, clothing that matched the apparel worn by Thompson’s shooter in surveillance footage, and a notebook describing an intent to “wack” an insurance company CEO, according to a court filing. While public officials condemned the killing, some Americans have cheered Mangione, saying he drew attention to steep U.S. healthcare costs and the power of health insurers to refuse payment for some treatments. He is currently being held in federal lockup in Brooklyn. Bondi lifted a moratorium on February 5 on federal executions imposed in 2021 by her predecessor Merrick Garland, the attorney general under Democratic President Joe Biden. Doina Chiacu and Luc Cohen, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at ending price gouging for live entertainment tickets, with musician Kid Rock at his side in the Oval Office wearing a bright red, white, and blue bejeweled suit. Anyone whos bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 yearsno matter what your politics areknows that its a conundrum, Kid Rock told reporters. Trump said while he didn’t know much about price gouging, “I checked it out, and it is a big problem. For decades, musicians have been feuding with ticket sellers like Ticketmaster over the high fees they pass on to fans, going back to 1995 when Pearl Jam canceled their tour after a dispute with Ticketmaster, over what they said were excessive and unfair fees. Here’s what to know about the new executive order. What does the executive order do? The executive order is designed to stop price-gouging by middlemen, and orders the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ensure price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process” and work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to better enforce the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act against companies and individuals demonstrating unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct, like using bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and then resell them. It comes after the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment last May, arguing their monopoly over live events in the U.S. has eliminated competition and driven up ticket prices. Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Golden State Warriors fans also experienced price gouging Another notable price gouging case occurred in 2015 when ticket seller StubHub sued rival Ticketmaster and the Golden State Warriors basketball team, arguing they unfairly required fans to resell game tickets on Ticketmasters platform, which increased ticket prices. However, the most publicized example is when Ticketmaster fumbled pre-ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in 2022, after the site crashed, leaving users logged out or frozen and causing “Swifties” hours of frustration as they attempted and failed to buy tickets. (In 2023, those tickets eventually reached between $11,000 to $22,500.) On Monday, Lady Gaga fans experienced something similar as they attempted to buy tickets for her highly anticipated The MAYHEM Ball tour, when dynamic pricing, which raises prices in real-time, drove tickets sky high with the help of bots and resellers. Now, many angry “little monsters” (the name given to Lady Gaga fans) are weighing whether to shell out thousands of dollars to see their favorite artist. Angry fans took to social media, where one X user complained tickets for Lady Gaga’s New York show were already “$1,770 for good lower level tickets . . . Just disgusting.” Meanwhile, another X user recalled Ticketmaster’s most infamous fiasco: “Like be for real . . . 1066 to be front row . . . like what in the Taylor Swift are these prices!?”
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E-Commerce
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people. The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues. At the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading health and medical agency, the layoffs occurred as its new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, began his first day of work. The revolution begins today! Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Bhattacharya and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Kennedy’s post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices. Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country. The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America. The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country. HHS said the layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually from the departments $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. Some staffers began getting lay off notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their job had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked. Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service. One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. At the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the NIHs 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. An email viewed by The Associated Press shows some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond. At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDAs tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs would be eliminated. The FDA as weve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration. The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread. They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy, Murray said Friday. The CDC has not provided a breakdown of cuts, but employees in different parts of the organization described to the AP extensive layoffs in programs that track asthma, air pollution, smoking, gun violence, reproductive health, climate change and other health threats. The intent seems to be to create a much smaller, infectious disease agency, but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDCs director during President Barack Obama’s administration, said he is particularly concerned about cuts to the CDCs Office on Smoking and Health and the agencys Global Health Center. Weakening tobacco prevention is a gift to Big Tobacco that would guarantee more addiction, disease, and death, Frieden said, while cuts to the CDCs global disease detection work will cost lives. Among the hardest-hit centers was the CDCs National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, with more than 1,000 employees. NIOSH is based in Cincinnati but also has people in Pittsburgh; Spokane, Washington; and Morgantown, West Virginia. Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Trump’s Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly. But the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health, which no longer has a functioning webpage. Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump’s Republican administration has sought to end. This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are and meeting their specific health needs, said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs. The Office of Program Operations & Local Engagement, which does local outreach for CMS operations, was also gutted, Grant said. Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back mor than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated, some of them overnight, some of them are already gone, said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos. HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesdays mass firings, but on Thursday it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts. __ 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods. __ 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide. __ 1,200 jobs at the NIH. __ 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid. Carla K. Johnson, AP medical writer Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone, and Mike Stobbe contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Category:
E-Commerce
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