JetBlue flight strikes parked plane at JFK, another crypto arrest: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: JetBlue flight strikes another plane at JFK airport

Federal officials are investigating after a plane struck another on the ground in New York. Plus, USA TODAY White House Correspondent Maureen Groppe looks at low COVID booster rates in nursing homes, USA TODAY Investigations Editor Amy Pyle talks about sex trafficking in the U.S., the founder of another crypto exchange is arrested, and West Virginia announces an opioid settlement with Walgreens.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 19th of January 2023. Today, the latest on a plane incident in New York, plus low COVID booster rates in nursing homes and a closer look at sex trafficking in the US.

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Federal officials are investigating after a JetBlue flight hit the tail of another plane at JFK International Airport in New York yesterday. The airline confirmed that a flight bound for Puerto Rico hit a parked unoccupied plane during pushback. The plane then returned to the gate, and passengers were assigned to a different one. The incident comes after an almost more serious one at the same airport last week when two planes nearly collided. The FAA said preliminary information shows a Delta Boeing 737 stopped its takeoff roll about 1000 feet before hitting another plane crossing the runway.

Meanwhile, investigations continue into Sunday's devastating plane crash in Nepal that killed 72. The State Department confirmed this week that two US citizens and two other permanent residents were killed in the crash.

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Residents at nursing homes are at a higher risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19 than the general population, and the Biden administration made a major push this winter to encourage those in nursing homes to stay up-to-date on vaccines and boosters. Still, up-to-date booster rates remain low. I caught up with USA TODAY White House Correspondent Maureen Groppe to find out why. Maureen, thanks for coming on the show.

Maureen Groppe:

Happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Maureen, heading into the winter months, the Biden administration made this push to get more nursing home residents their COVID boosters. But despite that, around half are not up-to-date on their vaccines. Why is this the case?

Maureen Groppe:

Well, they did take a lot of steps. They did make this big effort. They tried to use both assistance to nursing homes and also reminded nursing homes that they are required to provide vaccines to residents and to educate them about their benefits. And the rates did move, but just a little bit. They went from about 45% vaccinated before Thanksgiving to just about half at the start of the year. And there are a variety of reasons for that. The largest nursing home group in the country, they said the biggest factor is that people don't think they're needed. They don't see the same reason for getting the booster shot as they saw for getting the original vaccines.

Taylor Wilson:

So how does enforcement actually work on this? Are there any nursing homes that actually require up-to-date boosters? And who is overseeing the nursing homes when it comes to vaccination efforts like these?

Maureen Groppe:

Nursing homes don't require them. The people who work in nursing homes, they're required by federal law to have the initial vaccines, but they're not required to be boosted, and residents aren't required either. But the nursing homes are required to make sure residents are aware of the benefits of COVID vaccines and boosters and are required to help the residents get them who want to get them.

When the administration started this push to try to increase booster rates before people started gathering for the holidays and winter really set in, they warned nursing homes that they could face penalties if they're not doing this. Well, the problem with that is that the enforcement doesn't happen at the federal level. It happens at the state level, and it happens on this rolling basis where nursing homes are all inspected roughly once a year from state agencies. And these nursing homes may not have even been evaluated on this at the point that the administration was saying, "Look, you really need to get these rates up."

And beyond that, consumer groups say that they don't think that these state reviews are as robust as they should be, or that the penalties are as strong enough as they need to be to make sure that nursing homes are doing this and all the other things that they're required to do.

Taylor Wilson:

What are the efforts being done to try to actually boost these rates, whether it's the Biden administration or the state's or the nursing homes themselves?

Maureen Groppe:

At the beginning of the year, the administration, the head of CMS wrote to those states with the five lowest rates and said, "Hey, pointing this out to you. This is something that you should do more on and let's talk about how we can get those rates up." In general, the administration and the nursing home association say that some progress has been made, but they know more needs to be done. And they're continuing to work on this, they're continuing to find ways to make it easier for nursing homes to bring in people to get their folks vaccinated.

The administration temporarily changed the rules in December to make it easier for nursing homes that want to administer vaccines themselves to be able to do that. The administration is also trying to work with hospitals. Nursing homes were complaining that, "Hey, we're getting people discharged from the hospitals who aren't fully vaccinated. So you also need to get the hospitals involved and make sure that before they send us one of their patients, that that person is fully vaccinated."

Taylor Wilson:

All right. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Maureen Groppe, great info. Thanks for making the time.

Maureen Groppe:

Happy to do it.

Taylor Wilson:

You can find a link to the full story in today's show description.

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January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act was supposed to help women who are new to the United States and sometimes are undocumented immigrants. But more than two decades after the law took effect, women are still being actively trafficked across the US for massage parlor sex. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with USA TODAY Investigations Editor Amy Pyle to find out more.

PJ Elliott:

Amy, thank you for joining 5 Things.

Amy Pyle:

Thank you for having me, PJ.

PJ Elliott:

So let's start here, can you tell us how bad the human trafficking problem is in the United States, specifically with massage parlors?

Amy Pyle:

Yes, a very good question. There are a number of different organizations that try to track that. Probably the National Human Trafficking Hotline has the best pulse of it, and they acknowledge that their numbers are way low. So they've been tracking 500, 600 cases a year. Those are only situations where trafficking victims - mostly women, mostly from Asia who work in these spas - have come forward to advocates, have had contact with advocates through issues with law enforcement, or have had contact with law enforcement through raids and other kinds of things. So we can talk more about that, but those are fairly rare. So we know that that's just the tip of the iceberg.

PJ Elliott:

So in the story, it mentions that victims are being contacted through WeChat and even Facebook. Are these apps and social media platforms to blame for this problem?

Amy Pyle:

Yeah, it's interesting to think about social media and the way that it's changed a lot of different industries, including ours. We did a story earlier this year that was based on some of the information that came out with the Facebook papers. This was a former worker from Facebook who said they were not doing enough to deal with some of their security issues, and one of the things that they had tracked was communication related to a string of massage parlors that were trafficking women. And it was quite clear that Facebook's concern in tracking that had more to do with reputational damage, (they used those words), than it did with protecting the victims. So I think there is this question about the social responsibility of these apps. WeChat is even more complicated because of course, the agreement with WeChat is that it's all private.

PJ Elliott:

Why do you think there's this lack of action being taken to help these victims and eliminate these parlors from both the social media and app companies as well as law enforcement?

Amy Pyle:

I think it's a couple of things. One, the traffickers themselves have played off of this question about whether the women are victims or willing sex workers. And I think there obviously are people who go into this as a career. What we have found in these spas is that typically women who come may or may not know what they're getting themselves into in the general sex sense, but they're poor and they see this as a way out of a situation that they're in.

So then once they come here, they're sort of trapped. And I think for law enforcement, they go in, they raid one of these parlors and try to make a case, often can't make a case, can't get the DA or in some cases Attorney General to take these cases on. They get frustrated, too. So I think you have both of those things happening at the same time.

PJ Elliott:

Amy, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Amy Pyle:

Thanks.

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Taylor Wilson:

The founder of a China-based crypto exchange was arrested yesterday in Miami in connection with a money laundering operation. 40-year-old Russian Anatoly Legkodymov is accused of transmitting more than $700 million in illicit funds over the past four years. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said his exchange, Bitzlato, helped fuel dark net marketplaces and to launder the proceeds of ransomware attacks. The case is separate from last month's arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the failed crypto exchange FTX. He's accused of misappropriating billions of dollars in customer funds in one of the largest fraud schemes in US history.

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West Virginia has settled with Walgreens for the pharmacy chain's role in the opioid crisis. The state has the nation's most per capita overdose deaths and will receive $83 million as part of the settlement. That now brings the total West Virginia money brought in from opioid litigation to more than $950 million, according to the State's Attorney General's office. The settlement resolves a lawsuit that alleged Walgreens failed to maintain controls against illegal distribution of opioids.

Walgreens is part of a larger litigation in the state involving other major pharmacies: Kroger, Walmart, CVS, and Rite Aid. West Virginia also settled last year with three drug distributors for some $400 million. Money from all the settlements will be distributed throughout the state to help fight the opioid crisis. Nationally, CVS and Walgreens announced agreements in principle in November to pay around $5 billion each to a broad coalition of states around the country over the toll of opioids.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every morning right here, wherever you're listening right now. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: JetBlue flight hits parked plane, sex trafficking in US: 5 Things podcast