Federal Officials

Four more years to improve conditions at the Baltimore City Detention Center, a jail that has been on the federal government's watch list since 2000? That's not a gift to the outgoing Ehrlich administration. It's consistent with how long it will likely take for the state to rebuild infrastructure at a facility that in part dates to the 19th century. And it keeps the state under the eye of federal officials for that much longer. Until then, mandatory inspections - as well as an unrelated lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates - should keep the state moving forward.

Tenet Healthcare Corp. agreed yesterday to pay a $10 million penalty to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it inflated its earnings by fraudulently billing the Medicare system, company and federal officials said. The accord closes the book on government actions against the nation's second-largest hospital operator related to its alleged Medicare fraud, which took place while it was based in Santa Barbara, Calif. Tenet, now based in Dallas, admitted to no wrongdoing in the settlement but said in a press release that the company "has undertaken dramatic changes in its operations, financial safeguards, governance and compliance" since the allegations surfaced in late 2002.

Round up criminals without expanding federal authorityThis letter is regarding the article ("Freed suspect arrested by FBI," Feb. 6), which stated that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had arrested a suspect in an armed robbery and carjacking on April 20, 1996.The reason for the FBI involvement was that Baltimore prosecutors and judges had botched the case, according to The Sun. The article described how a number of citizens involved in the incident were pleased with this development.

It's called Whacking.Millions of birds - most of them songbirds - are killed each year when they crash into the thousands of television, radio and cellular towers spread across the American landscape.Songbirds migrating through the night skies become disoriented by the lights on the towers and crash into the towers, their support wires or each other, according to federal officials.About 4 million birds are killed each year in crashes linked to communications towers, according to scientists and federal officials.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will send federal officials to all the states to investigate whether they have improperly excluded people from Medicaid or from a new federal health insurance program for children, White House officials said yesterday.At the same time, he will try to get schools across the country to help arrange health coverage for millions of uninsured children.Clinton plans to announce the efforts today when he addresses the 91st annual meeting of the National Governors' Association in St. Louis.

A former technician at a University of Maryland research institute faked more than a dozen test records in two government-funded studies of schizophrenia, regulators say.The federal Office of Research Integrity reported this month that the technician, who worked for the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Catonsville, acknowledged making up data for tests she never administered. The data wound up in a table published last year in a scholarly journal.Joann A. Boughman, vice president for academic affairs for the University of Maryland, Baltimore, said an internal investigation began last year when someone in a center laboratory noticed a discrepancy in research records.

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh have ordered federal agents to broaden their investigation into evidence of Chinese nuclear espionage, far beyond the earlier scrutiny of a scientist fired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, government officials said yesterday.The widened inquiry will include reopening a fundamental debate on whether American nuclear secrets were stolen and, if so, where and how the theft might have occurred, law enforcement officials said.

It's called whacking.Millions of birds - most of them songbirds - are killed each year when they crash into the thousands of television, radio and cellular towers spread across the American landscape.Songbirds migrating through the night skies become disoriented by the lights on the towers and crash into the towers, their sup-port wires or each other, accord-ing to federal officials.About 4 million birds are killed each year in crashes linked to communications towers, according to scientists and federal officials.

State and federal officials involved in drug control efforts promised yesterday to work to cut drug abuse among youths and adult criminal offenders in Maryland by 20 percent over the next eight years.The promise was the centerpiece of a first-in-the-nation partnership agreement signed by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.The agreement -- which includes no specific promises of additional federal money -- will allow state and federal officials to work together more closely, Townsend said, and will reduce red tape that can hinder drug-fighting efforts.

The Navy plans to truck asbestos-contaminated soil from a long-closed training center in Cecil County to a rubble landfill in eastern Baltimore County, federal officials said yesterday -- prompting concerned county officials to call for more information on the plan.The project, to be discussed tonight at a community meeting in Middle River, was conceived after the Environmental Protection Agency found that the Navy had violated federal law while demolishing 400 buildings at the former Bainbridge Naval Training Center between 1990 and 1995.

The Maryland Board of Public Works approved on Wednesday a transfer to the federal government of state-owned land in Northwest Baltimore where U.S. officials plan to build an office building to house some Social Security Administration operations. The new structure, which federal and state officials say is needed by 2012, is planned near the Reisterstown Road Plaza Metro station. It would be one of the largest and most expensive federal office buildings in Baltimore in years. About 1,600 federal workers now at the federal agency's Metro West complex on Greene Street would move there.

Ten of the nation's 19 largest banks must raise a total of $74.6 billion to withstand a worse-than-expected economic downturn, according to results of government "stress tests" released Thursday. Bank of America Corp. led the way with a need for $33.9 billion in new capital, followed by Wells Fargo & Co. with $13.7 billion, GMAC with $11.5 billion, Citigroup Inc. with $5.5 billion and Morgan Stanley with $1.8 billion. But nine of the banks have no need to raise new money, and federal officials emphasized that all the banks have enough to handle current economic conditions.

WASHINGTON -In another blow to troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac, one of the company's top executives was found dead in his Virginia home Wednesday, the victim of an apparent suicide. The death of David Kellermann, 41, the acting chief financial officer, adds more turmoil at Freddie Mac, which was seized by the government in September along with its sister company, Fannie Mae, as they teetered near failure because of the housing market meltdown. Since then, Freddie has become the subject of a series of investigations by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Maryland's senators are seeking answers from federal law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence officials about any information-sharing and contacts with the Maryland State Police regarding a spying operation that mistakenly identified protesters as terrorists in state and federal databases. In a letter yesterday, Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin and Barbara A. Mikulski, both Democrats, noted that cooperation among federal, state and local agencies is "critical" to national security. Nonetheless, they wrote, participants in nonviolent demonstrations should not end up in terrorism databases.

Wall Street responded to the forced bankruptcy of a 158-year-old investment leader and the self-initiated sale of a household name in the brokerage business with predictable pessimism - the Dow plunged big-time yesterday. But it's not as though the fates of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch came as a surprise. Rather, their predicaments reinforced the latest fallout of the ongoing U.S. financial crisis: More institutions are likely to falter, and they can't all expect the federal government to come to their rescue.

LAS VEGAS - As outlying sagebrush here was quickly devoured by starter homes and chain stores, Las Vegas began grappling with the kinds of problems that long have vexed California - crowded classrooms, packed freeways, lack of water, immigrants who struggle to learn English and rising poverty. Similar issues recently have bedeviled the Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque, N.M., metropolitan areas. By 2040, Las Vegas and its fast-growing brethren will be home to nearly 12.7 million more people.

Twenty Maryland hospitals, including Johns Hopkins Bayview and the University of Maryland Medical Center, are featured in a print ad campaign by the federal government, which wants consumers to look at the hospitals' quality ratings. The ads, paid for by the national Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, are appearing today in 58 major daily newspapers, including The Sun. They cover 2,500 hospitals and promote Hospital Compare ( www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov), a government Web site that offers information designed to help choose a hospital.

Someone should have been watching Nolan L. Evans. On a night in April 2006 when court records show he was supposed to have been secured inside a halfway house, authorities charge that the convicted felon was able to shoot a man in Northwest Baltimore. Months later, the man died from his injuries. The little-publicized homicide case, scheduled for trial this week, could be another blow to Volunteers of America's Comprehensive Sanction Center. The Sun reported last month that during a spot-check in April 2007, 10 inmates were discovered missing from the halfway house and that two probationary employees suspected of accepting bribes from those inmates were fired as a result.

There's a new narcotic on the street in Baltimore and other communities - and taxpayers helped put it there. The hexagonal orange pills some users call "bupe" are championed as an exceptional treatment for heroin and pain-pill addicts. Federal officials have spent millions of dollars to help create and promote buprenorphine, and are encouraging thousands of private doctors to prescribe it. But making buprenorphine widely available has also made it easy for patients to sell the narcotic illegally, leading to growing abuse, an investigation by The Sun found.

A former private security company executive pleaded guilty yesterday to lying to federal officials who were investigating a bribery scheme designed to illegally secure $130 million in government contracts. Richard S. Hudec, 44, of Naples, Fla., admitted in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt that he concealed relevant information from federal contracting officials about his criminal background, which includes four felony convictions. In October, the former owner of the company, Michael B. Holiday, 50, of Silver Spring, pleaded guilty to bribery and tax evasion in connection with rigging three federal government contracts awarded to his Montgomery County company for private security guards at federal buildings in California and Maryland.