People with substance use disorder across the country are not getting a formal say in how most of the approximately $50 billion in opioid lawsuit settlement money is being used to stem the crisis, a new analysis found.
Some advocates say that is one factor in why portions of the money are going to efforts they don’t consider to be proven ways to save lives from overdose, including equipment to scan jail inmates for contraband, drug-sniffing police dogs and systems to neutralize unneeded prescription medications.
In Jackson County, West Virginia, officials voted earlier this year to use more than $500,000 in settlement funds for a first-responder training center and a shooting range. They also allocated $35,000 to a quick response team that works with overdose survivors.
Indonesian rescuers recovered 10 bodies that were swept away in flash floods or buried under tons of mud and rocks that hit hilly villages on the country’s main island of Java, officials said Monday. Two people are still missing.
Torrential rains since last week have caused rivers to burst their banks, tearing through more than 170 villages in Sukabumi district of West Java province, as mud, rocks and trees tumbled down mountainside hamlets, said Lt. Col. Yudi Hariyanto, who heads a rescue command post in Sukabumi.
Landslides, flash floods and strong winds devastated 172 villages and forced more than 3,000 people to flee to temporary government shelters, Hariyanto said. Authorities have warned nearly 1,000 people to evacuate as more than 400 houses are threatened by extreme weather.
Police don’t know who he is, where he is, or why he did it.
As the frustrating search for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killer got underway for a fifth day Sunday, investigators reckoned with a tantalizing contradiction: They have troves of evidence, but the shooter remains an enigma.
One conclusion they are confident of, however: It was a targeted attack, not a random one.
They know he ambushed Thompson at 6:44 a.m. Wednesday as the executive arrived at the Hilton for his company’s annual investor conference, using a 9 mm pistol that resembled the guns farmers use to put down animals without causing a loud noise. They know ammunition found near Thompson’s body bore the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose,” mimicking a phrase used by insurance industry critics.
Teagan Stupsky can be reached at stup3715@stthomas.edu.