The release of Americans deemed wrongfully detained in China has been a top agenda item in each conversation between the U.S. and China, and Wednesday’s development suggests a willingness by Beijing to engage with the outgoing Democratic administration before Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Now that the MOU is signed, authorized members of the Trump transition team can have access to agency and White House employees, facilities and information because it has "agreed to important safeguards to protect non-public information and prevent conflicts of interest, including who has access to the information and how the information is shared," said Saloni Sharma, a spokeswoman for the White House.

While the White House would have preferred that the Trump transition team sign the GSA agreement, it decided that a disruption in the transfer of power would be more risky.

In the first major update to assisted living and residential care regulations in more than 15 years, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services has proposed significantly increasing staffing requirements, among other changes.

The proposed updates follow an investigation by The Maine Monitor and ProPublica into the state’s largest residential care facilities. It found dozens of violations of resident rights, including incidents of abuse and neglect, as well as more than 100 cases in which residents wandered away from their facilities and hundreds of medication and treatment violations.

As part of the news organizations’ investigation, one facility owner called the current staffing requirement “scary,” “unsafe” and “completely inadequate.” Experts, advocates and providers said requiring higher staffing levels, better training and more nursing care would help address these problems.

In the 1990s, the FCC developed the Universal Service Fund as a way to aid telecom expansion while also providing increased digital access for low-income communities. The program is funded by charging telecoms fees (the telecoms then ostensibly pass on some of the cost incurred to paying customers) and then using the revenue from those fees to provide internet access to families, schools, healthcare providers, libraries, and other organizations who qualify for it.

However, a right-wing non-profit called Consumers’ Research recently sued the FCC, claiming that its method of funding the redistributive program was “unconstitutional.” A cursory scan of the organization’s website reveals the prevalence of a familiar “free-market” ideology and, humorously, a portal where members of the public can report “woke” workplace practices.

Separately, conservative political commentator and activist Robby Starbuck has been going after corporate DEI policies, calling out individual companies on the social media platform X. Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they are pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe's and Tractor Supply.

But Walmart, which employs 1.6 million workers in the U.S., is the largest one to do so.

De la Torre is the ultra-wealthy former CEO of the now-bankrupt hospital chain Steward, once the largest for-profit health care company in the country. Steward and de la Torre have been accused of being "health care terrorists" and practicing "third-world medicine" that killed and maimed patients as executives extracted millions in payouts, stripping the company of assets.

In September, de la Torre was held in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to abide by a congressional subpoena to attend a Senate hearing over the alleged corruption.

The execution of a search warrant last week is a clear sign that a sprawling federal corruption and fraud investigation against Steward and de la Torre is escalating. According to people close to the investigation who spoke with the Globe, federal prosecutors have a two-pronged probe, including investigating potential fraud and embezzlement in the US, and also potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it unlawful to bribe foreign government officials to obtain or retain business.

But on March 6, 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services temporarily expanded Medicare’s telehealth coverage to all specialties. That expansion, renewed in 2022, is set to expire at the end of the year, impacting more than 65 million Americans.

Multiple bills have been introduced in the 118th Congress to preserve Medicare telehealth provisions and continue allowing people on Medicare to use telehealth flexibly, but all still await votes in both the House and Senate. Perhaps the likeliest to pass, the Telehealth Modernization Act of 2024, introduced by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), received widespread, bipartisan support from members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its subcommittee on health.

Workers who clean airplanes, remove trash and help with wheelchairs at Charlotte's airport, one of the nation's busiest, went on strike Monday during a busy week of Thanksgiving travel to demand higher wages.

The Service Employees International Union announced the strike in a statement early Monday, saying the workers would demand “an end to poverty wages and respect on the job during the holiday travel season.” The strike was expected to last 24 hours, said union spokesperson Sean Keady.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Feb. 26 in a case involving the showing that plaintiffs in “reverse discrimination” cases must make, followed by oral arguments on March 4 in a lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking to hold them liable for gun violence in Mexico.

The Texas State Board of Education approved a new curriculum that will incorporate stories from the Bible into elementary school education.

In an eight-to-seven vote on Tuesday, the board approved the state-written “Bluebonnet” curriculum, which infuses Bible stories into language arts materials for students in kindergarten through fifth grade. All four Democrats on the board were joined by three Republicans in voting unsuccessfully against the curriculum.

According to public records, there is no David Flory who resides at that apartment building in western Miami. But a fellow named David Flor once lived there. He died in 2013.

Looking to talk to the David Flory of Miami Beach, a Mother Jones reporter reached his wife, Julie Flory on her cell phone, and asked if she was familiar with the Miami address associated with the $100,000 donation to the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC. She said did not know it. She then conferenced her husband David into the call. Asked about the $100,000 contribution to Gabbard’s PAC and the address tied to it, he said, “Doesn’t sound familiar,” and he tried to end the conversation. Pressed as to whether he had made a donation to Gabbard, he said, “I’m not interested in talking to you about it.” Sounding irritated, he addressed his wife, “Julie, don’t take these calls. Just hang up on them.” He then left the call.

Another early major donor to the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC was John Calnan, the head of a Massachusetts construction company, who kicked in $25,000. He gave $200,000 to the Trump campaign this year. A few months later—shortly after Gabbard endorsed Trump—disgraced Las Vegas mogul, Steve Wynn, a close pal of Trump, cut this PAC a $60,000 check.

All told, from February through mid-October, For Love of Country, Inc. raised $280,000. It only spent $49,000. Ten thousand dollars of those expenditures paid for an event in Las Vegas. Almost all the rest covered payments to Gabbard’s political staff and advisers.

The Houston project is being developed by HyVelocity Hub, a group that includes Exxon Mobil, the University of Texas at Austin, French gas supplier Air Liquide, Texas-based oil major Chevron, the nonprofit Center for Houston's Future and GTI Energy, a research and development company based in the Chicago area.

The Gulf Coast already possesses the bulk of the nation's hydrogen infrastructure, converting natural gas to hydrogen through a carbon-intensive process necessary for the refining of oil and other industrial processes.

The Houston hub aims to clean up those facilities by capturing their emissions and storing them in underground aquifers beneath the Gulf of Mexico. They also plan to build new wind and solar-powered hydrogen facilities, which would convert water into hydrogen fuel.