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A provision of the Affordable Care Act requires that Medicare pay for obesity counseling by primary care physicians. The federal health insurance program for people 65 and older has long paid for costly treatments of some of the chronic diseases associated with obesity, such as diabetes and heart disease, but in what many viewed as a contradiction, Medicare refused to reimburse doctors for the work they did helping patients lose weight.

One of the last remaining skirmishes in the Tennessee General Assembly this year pits the interests of agriculture against animal rights activists. The proposal before the state Legislature requires people go to the police immediately if they take photos or video of animal abuse.

“Investigations and documentation—if that’s what was required—needs to be done by law enforcement, not by vigilantes,” State Senator Dolores Gresham, a Republican from Somerville, said on the Legislature floor Thursday.

This week on the Behind the Headlines Radio Roundtable, a conversation about the sustainability of Memphis city pensions.

Allen James Walker was born a slave near Germantown in 1845. During the Civil War, Walker was one of the thousands of local slaves who escaped from their bondage. Walker joined the Union Army, which raised 51 black companies from Shelby and Fayette County alone.

As a soldier in the 7th US Colored Heavy Artillery, Walker was stationed at Corinth, Mississippi and Ft. Pickering, here in Memphis, but was ultimately sent to Ft. Pillow, overlooking the Mississippi and Hatchie Rivers.