Federal Officials

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.

HUNTINGTON, Utah -- The deaths of three rescuers caught in an explosive coal blowout while digging toward a team of trapped miners left this mining region torn yesterday over how to proceed, as federal officials suspended the disastrous underground search. Shaken by a string of setbacks in the rescue effort and then by the catastrophic "seismic bump" Thursday night, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. urged the rescue organizers to "send no one else into that mine until they can guarantee their safety."

NEW YORK -- Federal investigators said yesterday they had disrupted a plot by Islamic extremists to blow up buildings, fuel tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport, another plan to take aim at America's air travel system and a landmark in its largest city. The arrests of a U.S. citizen from Guyana and alleged accomplices in Trinidad underscored what counterterrorism officials have described as the global spread of the terrorist threat beyond the Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia associated with al-Qaida and other groups.

Dundalk activists say they expected a bill to block a liquefied natural gas facility off Sparrows Point to fare better than a proposed ban on trans-fatty foods or a measure to create a license plate honoring Maryland's mountains. But as state lawmakers concluded the 90-day session in Annapolis late last night, legislation aimed at stopping the unpopular LNG project in eastern Baltimore County failed to win approval. Three LNG measures were among the dozens of bills - including the trans-fats and license plate legislation - that stalled in committees.

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.

WASHINGTON -- State and local officials are protesting efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to exclude them from a new unit designed to share information about possible terrorist threats to the country. The information-sharing group, created by a White House directive last year, is designed to send out bulletins to state and local officials when the federal government learns of terrorist activity at home and abroad. But Homeland Security officials are opposed to letting representatives of state and local government serve on the unit that would send out the information because they believe it would confuse the process.

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.