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Paula Case knows the job of a medical examiner wasn’t meant to be easy. Since 2021 she has driven up and down seven counties of western North Carolina investigating deaths that are sudden, violent, unexpected or simply unattended by a physician. Like all local medical investigators in the state, Case, a registered nurse, is a part-time employee appointed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. (Clifford, 6/7)

Outrage over the death of Moore County toddler Rylan Ott in 2016 compelled North Carolina on a path to improve its child welfare system. Nearly a decade later, the state has rolled out several of those reforms — a statewide office focused on preventing child fatalities, regional supervisory offices to provide more support to county departments of social services, and a modernized intake and assessment system for all 100 counties that will eventually include case management. (Fernandez and Fredde, 6/8)

Timmy G. Robinson Jr., founder and owner of what was once Kentucky’s largest drug addiction treatment company, was criminally indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. The indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky, charges Robinson with fraudulently selling millions of dollars of the same IRS tax credit to two companies. Robinson “devised a scheme” to “unlawfully enrich himself” by selling those tax credits to two parties, the indictment says. Robinson is also charged with two counts of money laundering  for spending the proceeds of the fraudulent sale. (Acquisto and Six, 6/5)

The St. Louis Public Schools said late Friday afternoon that a Legionnaires' disease case involving a district employee had spurred officials to begin testing water at its central office downtown. (Schlinkmann, 6/7)

Carrie Frail was in the process of leaving an abusive relationship when she discovered she was pregnant. Her partner told her he could hit her in the stomach until she had a miscarriage, and it would save some money. “I firmly believe he would have killed me at some point, whether accidentally or intentionally,” Frail said. (Moseley-Morris, 6/5)

���ϳԹ��� News: By September, Nearly A Third Of Americans Will Live In States With Legal Aid In Dying

Jules Netherland traveled from her home in the Bronx to the New York state Capitol in Albany several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid in dying bill, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription. She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators’ offices. In 2024, as the state Assembly was debating the aid in dying bill, she helped unfurl a banner in the chamber gallery that read, “Stop the Suffering.” (Span, 6/8)