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A family facing homelessness reached out at least three times to Detroit's homeless response team, including as recently as late November, before two children froze to death in a van in a casino parking structure on Monday.

A day later, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan called for a review of city services for homelessness, the city's homeless call center and ways to make services more accessible after the children's deaths. They were ages two and nine.

The family of a Wisconsin man is suing after they say he died from an asthma attack when his medication price rose from $66 to $539. Cole Schmidtknecht, 22, lived with chronic asthma since he was an infant, according to a lawsuit filed by his parents on Jan. 21 in Wisconsin federal court.

Schmidtknecht took daily doses of Advair Diskus to manage his asthma, the lawsuit said. His medication was covered by his employer-provided health insurance United Health-OptumRx Plan. Under the healthcare plan, the Advair Diskus cost no more than $66.86, and at times as low as $35 “during the covered phase,” according to the civil complaint.

On Jan. 10, 2024, Schmidtknecht went to a Walgreens pharmacy in Appleton to fill a prescription from his physician when he was told that the medication was no longer covered by his insurance, the lawsuit said.

Schmidtknecht was told the medication would now cost $539.19 out of pocket.

The complaint said OptumRX did not give Schmidtknecht a 30-day notice of any change as Wisconsin law requires.

“As a result, he did not have the opportunity to ask for an exception to the OptumRx’s re-classification of the medication under its formulary that suddenly made his normal medication prohibitively expensive,” the lawsuit said.

OptumRx said in a statement that the Walgreens pharmacist should have contacted Schmidtknecht’s doctor “about three other ‘clinically-appropriate alternatives available at a Tier-1 (more affordable) Co-pay,’” the lawsuit said.

McClatchy News reached out to Walgreens and OptumRX on for comment Jan. 28 and was awaiting a response.

The complaint said Walgreens didn’t offer Schmidtknecht a generic option for medication and also told him there were no cheaper alternatives or generic medications available.

Schmidtknecht left Walgreens without the medication he needed, the lawsuit said.

“Over the next five days, Schmidtknecht repeatedly struggled to breathe, relying solely on his old ‘rescue’ (emergency) inhaler to limit his symptoms, because he did not have a preventative inhaler designed for daily use,” the complaint said.

On Jan. 15, 2024, he had a severe asthma attack, the lawsuit said. Schmidtknecht’s roommate rushed him to the hospital, but he became “unresponsive and pulseless in the car,” according to the complaint.

Schmidtknecht never woke up again, the lawsuit said. On Jan. 21, Schmidtknecht’s parents took him off life support and he died.

Context -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5244648

-> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5309060

-> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5298363

The sectorial Vice-President for Politics, Citizen Security and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, presented this Wednesday in his program Con el Mazo Dando serious accusations regarding a plan to disregard the Venezuelan Constitution through the swearing-in of an opposition candidate as President abroad.

During his intervention, Cabello pointed out that former presidential candidate Enrique Márquez, together with lawyer Sergio Urdaneta, prepared a 21-page document entitled “Urgent proposal in the face of January 10, proposal of restricted circulation only to the addressees.”

The document proposes that Edmundo González, former defeated presidential candidate, be sworn in as president in a Venezuelan diplomatic seat outside the country, in order to form a “provisional government”. According to the text, this would be justified as an extension of Venezuelan sovereignty abroad, but Cabello denounced that it is an attempted coup d'état.

“They intend to bypass the Constitution, which in its article 231 establishes that the president must be sworn in before the National Assembly in Venezuela,” declared Cabello, recalling that Nicolás Maduro will be officially sworn in next January 10 after his reelection in 2024.

The document, which according to Cabello was found in Marquez's computer, would be addressed to opposition figures such as Antonio Ledezma, Asdrubal Aguiar, and Humberto Calderon Berti, among others. He also linked Marquez to an FBI official recently captured in Venezuela, described as a “heavyweight” with more than 20 years operating in the country.

Together with the operation that led to the capture of this US agent, two Colombian mercenaries allegedly related to contractors coming from Ukraine were also arrested. Cabello affirmed that evidence of plans against the Venezuelan government were found in the devices seized from the detainees.

Additional Source -> https://xcancel.com/rolandoteleSUR/status/1877198230657564718

A 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in recent weeks, CNBC has confirmed.

Balaji left OpenAI earlier this year and raised concerns publicly that the company had allegedly violated U.S. copyright law while developing its popular ChatGPT chatbot.

“The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,” David Serrano Sewell, executive director of San Francisco’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told CNBC in an email on Friday. He said Balaji’s next of kin have been notified.

The San Francisco Police Department said in an e-mail that on the afternoon of Nov. 26, officers were called to an apartment on Buchanan Street to conduct a “wellbeing check.” They found a deceased adult male, and discovered “no evidence of foul play” in their initial investigation, the department said.

(...)

OpenAI is currently involved in legal disputes with a number of publishers, authors and artists over alleged use of copyrighted material for AI training data. A lawsuit filed by news outlets last December seeks to hold OpenAI and principal backer Microsoft accountable for billions of dollars in damages.

ROTTERDAM, Dec 9 (Reuters) - A Dutch court on Monday extended the detention of a Russian former employee of semiconductor equipment maker ASML (ASML.AS), opens new tab suspected of stealing intellectual property and selling it to buyers in Russia in violation of European sanctions.

The suspect is German Aksenov, a 43-year-old man who has worked for ASML subsidiary Mapper and chip technology company NXP (NXPI.O), opens new tab.

He is suspected of stealing design manuals for microchips, microchip equipment and for technology with potential military applications that belonged to ASML, Mapper, NXP and the Delft University of Technology, to which he had access through his employment.

During the initial hearing in the case on Monday, the prosecution said Aksenov took USB sticks with the information to Moscow and gave them to state-owned companies for cash, with the goal of setting up a microchip plant.

A year after taking office, the Government of President Javier Milei alleged that the prolongation of this emergency for the last 18 years prevented “the free exercise of productive and recreational activities on the lands involved”, besides limiting “the right to dispose of such property”.

The Executive pointed out that the Law of Indigenous Territorial Emergency, which suspended the execution of sentences ordering the eviction of their lands, generated “legal insecurity” and a “serious affectation to the right of property” of their owners, as well as to the provincial dominion over the natural resources.

The current administration emphasized that one of its main pillars is “unrestricted respect for private property”, understanding this right “not only as a principle of justice, but also as a key factor to attract the investments necessary for the true welfare of the country”.

In this change of state policy, the Government requested the Permanent Bicameral Commission of the Congress of the Nation to evaluate the corresponding opinion in order to “guarantee the full exercise of the constitutional right” and put an end to a situation “that endangers national sovereignty”.

“Given the unreasonable extension of the emergency measure and the different affectations that it produces, both to the right of property and to the dominion of the natural resources of the provinces and to the certainty of the right, it is deemed necessary to provide for its immediate termination”, the decree adds.

Bashar al-Assad, the former president of Syria, arrived in Moscow with his family, where they were granted asylum by Russia on humanitarian grounds, according to a source in the Kremlin.

"President Assad of Syria, with his family, has arrived in Moscow. Russia, based on humanitarian considerations, has granted them asylum," the source told RIA Novosti.

ISTANBUL (Sputnik) - The leader of Palestinian movement Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, had been fighting against the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip for 18 days before his death as he did not want to stay out of the battlefield, the Turkiye newspaper reported on Saturday, citing a source from the movement.

Sinwar was advised to avoid hostilities after he headed the movement's political office in August replacing assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the source said.

"However, he did not want to stay out of the battlefield, he wanted to die in battle. He had been fighting against Israel in [the southern Gazan city of] Rafah for 18 days and was engaging in a battle with four comrades on the day of his death, a battle that lasted about two hours," the source added.

The source also expressed opinion that Sinwar was alone at the moment of his death, as other Hamas fighters sought to divert the Israeli military in another direction. He intentionally covered his face when filmed by a drone to avoid artificial intelligence recognition, the source was cited as saying by the newspaper.

Is this the birth of a new Che?

Israeli authorities have detained investigative journalist Jeremy Loffredo following his groundbreaking report that exposed extensive damage to Israeli military bases struck by Iranian missiles last week.

To prepare his report on the Israeli bases hit by Iran, Loffredo, an independent journalist based in New York City, traveled to the Israeli-occupied territories and documented several impact sites that had not been reported by Israeli authorities, including areas near the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv.

On Wednesday, American journalist and filmmaker Max Blumenthal, the Grayzone editor, announced on his X account that Loffredo was among several journalists detained by Israeli authorities.

The main UN aid agency operating in Gaza has said that members of its polio vaccination convoy in Gaza were held at gunpoint by Israeli forces at a military checkpoint and shots were fired.

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters at a news briefing on Tuesday that the Israeli military had detained a convoy of international and local staff members from various UN bodies at gunpoint as they traveled to northern Gaza to help roll out the polio vaccination campaign.