Putin: Russia agrees to extend ceasefire

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Saturday that Moscow "agreed immediately" to United States leader Donald Trump's proposal for an extension of the ceasefire in Ukraine.

Speaking at a press conference following the Victory Day celebrations, Putin said that Russia also agreed to a new prisoner exchange. However, he added that Ukraine did not agree to it and has not sent any proposals for an exchange. On the other hand, Putin noted that the Defense Ministry did not report any provocations from Kyiv on May 9.

Still, Putin stressed that Russia must "focus on the final defeat of the enemy within the framework of its own."

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Putin:-Russia-agrees-to-extend-ceasefire/66258194

Putin: Meeting with Zelensky after peace deal

 Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he would meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky when a permanent peace is agreed between the two countries.

Speaking at a press conference following the Victory Day celebrations, Putin remarked that such a summit would have to be held in a third country. He also voiced his belief that the conflict in Ukraine "is coming to its end."

Putin's comments came after Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico stated that he conveyed a message from Zelensky to the Russian president, which said that the Ukrainian leader would be willing to meet. Fico claimed that Putin replied that, if Zelensky wants a meeting, he should give him a phone call first.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Putin:-Meeting-with-Zelensky-after-peace-deal/66258202

Which State Is Next In The Medicaid Fraud-O-Rama?

 When the scale of the Medicaid fraud in Minnesota started to emerge, our first thought was that, if it’s that easy to rip off Medicaid, the North Star State can’t be the only place where it’s happening.

Turns out we were right, as the Daily Wire’s exposé of massive fraud schemes in Ohio makes clear. Which means there are almost certainly still more to be uncovered. Which leads to the question of why we are learning about this only now.

Daily Wire is releasing a five-part series that alleges massive fraud in an Ohio Medicaid program – a state that obtained a waiver so it could reimburse “home healthcare.” The idea made sense. Care at home is cheaper than in skilled nursing facilities.

But it threw open the door to flagrant abuse.

As the Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak explains, “Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries’ homes to perform ‘homemaking’ and ‘chores’ like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these ‘personal services’ tasks don’t even have to be healthcare workers — and in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient.”

Rosiak dug into a treasure trove of Medicaid data released by DOGE and found the same thing being uncovered by independent journalists in Minnesota and in California. Obvious cases of fraud. Storefronts that don’t appear to be doing anything other than billing Medicaid. And, as it turns out, lots of immigrants are running these scams.

In the second part of his series, he reports finding 288 “home health” companies in just seven buildings in Columbus, Ohio, that collectively billed Medicaid $250 million.

So now, independent, muckraking journalists have uncovered massive child care fraud schemes in Minnesota, hospice fraud schemes in California, and a bustling “home health” care racket in Ohio.

And in each case, the governors have dismissed the allegations, claiming that their administration is aggressively rooting out fraud and that this is all just MAGA types causing trouble.

Even Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s initial statement – after the Daily Wire’s first article in the series was published – was dismissive of the report, saying that it “does not seem to allege any fraud in the details provided.”

One big problem with Medicaid is that, because of the way it’s financed, fraud actually pays dividends to the states, which get federal matching dollars for every dollar spent on providing Medicaid benefits. So, if the state doles out hundreds of millions of dollars to phony day care, hospice, or “home health” companies, Washington kicks in hundreds of millions, which the state can then use to pay for legitimate healthcare.

So, how many more Medicaid schemes are out there? How many schemes involve food stamps? Obamacare? Medicare?

If the journalism profession weren’t so hopelessly captured by the Democratic Party, every investigative journalist at every major news outlet in every state would be digging into to see if it’s happening in their hometowns.

But our guess is that zero are, because it would be seen as somehow helping Donald Trump.

Instead, reporters are filing stories about the “devastating,” “draconian,” and “deadly” Medicaid cuts Republicans approved as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Typical is an NPR headline from last week: “It’s Day 1 of Medicaid work requirements in Nebraska. People are worried.” The Bulwark, which is so insanely anti-Trump that it now makes the Huffington Post look sensible, cried that “Trump’s Big Medicaid Cuts Are About to Get Very Real.”

You’d think Democrats would be as adamant as anyone about rooting out fraud. After all, every dollar that goes to a con artist is a dollar that isn’t being used to help the needy.

But as we’ve said before, for today’s Democrats, fraud isn’t a bug that needs to be stamped out. It’s a feature that enriches their friends and family — and gets them reelected.

https://issuesinsights.com/2026/05/08/which-state-is-next-in-the-medicaid-fraud-o-rama/

Patients Should Not Have to Wait Until 2028 for Accountability

 Prescription drug prices keep rising, driven in part by a system in which pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) sit at the center—controlling which drugs are covered, what pharmacies are paid, and what patients ultimately spend. Yet their profits are tied to higher prices, not lower ones, creating a system where the middleman benefits when costs rise. As long as those incentives remain hidden, patients are left paying the bill with no way to challenge it. Bringing transparency to PBM pricing and compensation is the first step to exposing these misaligned incentives and forcing the market to work in favor of patients rather than PBMs. Congress has taken steps in that direction, but the reforms will not go into effect until 2028, leaving state legislatures as patients’ hope for transparency in the meantime.

PBMs profit from high-priced drugs that offer rebates. Instead of passing those rebates on to patients, PBMs retain some or all of them, leaving patients paying more than they would for a generic alternative. In turn, brand-name manufacturers are incentivized to raise both prices and rebates, increasing what PBMs can capture at the patient’s expense.

Although PBMs are supposed to favor lower-cost generics and biosimilars, they often earn more from rebates than from serving patients. By prioritizing brand-name drugs over lower cost alternatives, PBMs create more opportunities to generate rebate-driven revenue.

PBMs also drive up costs for insurers and pharmacies—costs that are ultimately passed on to patients—by charging insurers more than they reimburse pharmacies, a practice known as spread pricing. This inflates insurance premiums while simultaneously reducing pharmacy revenue, fueling ongoing battles in state legislatures.

Spread pricing is one of several PBM practices pharmacies blame for the growing number of closures that reduce patient access to care. Between 2010 and 2021 nearly one-third of retail pharmacies closed. PBMs reimburse pharmacies for the medicines they dispense to patients. However, independent pharmacies are reimbursed at lower rates than PBM-affiliated pharmacies for generics and are often hit with excessive fees months after the PBM reimbursed them for a prescription, often leaving the pharmacy at a loss for the prescription.

PBMs have been able operate this way because they function in an opaque market where insurers, pharmacies, employers, and patients are disconnected from the true price of medicine. That can be changed by requiring PBMs to report pass-through rates and justify decisions to prioritize brand-name drugs over generics and biosimilars. With that information, patients, employers, and insurers can compare PBMs on meaningful metrics and choose those that prioritize lower drug costs.

Transparency works because it shifts the balance of leverage in negotiations. Once patients, employers, and insurers can see rebate retention, spread pricing, and net drug costs, they can stop rewarding PBMs that profit from higher prices and move to models that pass savings through. That pressure forces PBMs to compete on cost rather than hide in opaque market, because contracts become comparable and switching becomes feasible. Employers can demand pass-through pricing, avoid PBMs that steer patients to their affiliated pharmacies, and favor those that prioritize generics and biosimilars. When pricing is visible PBMs that lower costs win business, and those that rely on hidden margins lose it.

Fixing the problem means shedding light on this industry. Before federal requirements go into effect, state legislators can still act to require transparency from PBMs operating within their borders, including clear reporting on rebate pass-through and their prioritization of generics and name brands. Patients should not have to wait until 2028 for accountability.

 

Justin Leventhal is a senior policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization that advocates for consumers through evidence-based analysis and data. 

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2026/05/08/patients_should_not_have_to_wait_until_2028_for_accountability_1181633.html

Thinking About Smartphone Bans in Schools

 by James Pethokoukis

America’s war on student smartphones is intensifying. Roughly two-thirds of US states have moved to restrict phone use in schools. The educational logic is straightforward enough. If these devices distract our kids, lock the gadgets away and learning will naturally improve—a strong prima facie case, to be sure. Yet new nationwide evidence suggests the story is more complicated than this basic common parental and teacher intuition.

A fresh NBER working paper by Stanford University’s Hunt Allcott and co-authors, “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches,” examines one of the most stringent approaches—lockable phone pouches that physically prevent access during the school day. Using a dataset spanning thousands of schools, the researchers take advantage of a kind of natural experiment by comparing outcomes before and after adoption against similar schools that didn’t adopt the policy.

If the goal is to keep kids off their phones while at school, mission accomplished. On those terms, the policy works. Phone use plunges with pouches—fewer GPS pings on campus and far less in-class use, according to teachers.

Yet as the paper points out, “Parents express support for pouches and expect improvements in academic, social, and mental health outcomes.”

This intervention is supposed to have numerous downstream effects. As for better classroom focus and achievement, there is little sign of improvement. Student survey measures of classroom attention barely budge—same with bullying and attendance—and may even dip slightly, suggesting that removing phones doesn’t automatically translate into more engaged students. 

What’s more, disciplinary incidents rise and student well-being falls in the first year. No one said students would be happy or that enforcement would be easy. Over time, however, those effects fade: Discipline normalizes and well-being rebounds, even turning modestly positive.

For many parents, of course, academic improvement is the big goal, and their evidence of a big payoff is elusive. Average test scores show essentially no change. High schools register small gains, particularly in math, while middle schools see slight declines. These results suggest that while phones may be irritating to teachers, they may not be a meaningful constraint on learning.

None of this means phone restrictions are altogether misguided. Schools may value quieter classrooms or reduced screen time for reasons beyond test scores. And it’s worth pointing out, as the authors do, that the longer-term effects remain unknown. And even minor drawbacks may be significant if any upsides—such as digital literacy or as an addendum to traditional instruction—are hard to pin down. (The paper doesn’t go there.) In that case, parents will likely continue to trust their instincts.

Perhaps the most useful way to view this research is a serious data point that cuts against any sort of sweeping claims that view phone bans as an educational panacea. Even if the phones are gone, plenty of work remains.

https://www.aei.org/economics/thinking-about-smartphone-bans-in-schools/

Kayhan editor threatens Hormuz ban for backers of UN shipping resolution

 

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of Iran’s hardline Kayhan newspaper, said countries supporting a proposed UN resolution calling on Iran to halt attacks and mining in the Strait of Hormuz should lose access to the waterway.

“We should officially announce that countries voting in favor of the draft resolution will be considered hostile states and ships under their ownership, or carrying imports or exports for them, will not be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” Shariatmadari wrote.

His comments referred to a US- and Arab state-backed draft UN Security Council resolution demanding Iran stop attacks in the strait, disclose the locations of any mines and refrain from obstructing shipping. The measure is expected to face likely vetoes from China and Russia, according to diplomats.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/liveblog/202605087268

Iran judiciary says 262 properties seized in war-related cases

 

Iran’s judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said on Saturday that authorities had so far seized 262 properties belonging to Iranian citizens in cases linked to war-related accusations.

Speaking at a press conference, Jahangir said the figure was based on actions taken following requests from the prosecutor general’s office.

He added that Iran’s property registration authority had conducted 722 inquiries tied to arrest and asset seizure requests involving citizens since the conflict began.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/liveblog/202605087268