Tag: News

• Ukraine's envoy to the UN accused Russia of serving Chicken Kiev after missile strikes on the capital.
• He posted a photo of the luncheon's menu, which came after a Ukrainian children's hospital was hit.
• The luncheon was related to Russia holding the Security Council president's chair for July.

Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, accused Russia on Wednesday of serving "Chicken Kiev" at a luncheon after it attacked a children's hospital.

He posted a photo of the menu for a Tuesday UN Security Council event hosted by Russia, which includes the item "Chicken Kiev served with Potato Paille."

Chicken Kiev is a stuffed chicken fillet coated in egg and bread crumbs. It is a dish often eaten in Ukraine and the Soviet Union, though its origins are disputed. Some sources claim it was invented in St. Petersburg, while others say it came from France.

In a caption to his post on X, Kyslytsya bashed Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia.

"I cannot understand how you can shake his hand and accept an invitation to dine with him, paid for in blood money," he wrote, taking an excerpt from a speech he made on Tuesday.

Nebenzia holds the president's chair for the Security Council in July as part of the UN's monthly rotation.

He chaired an emergency meeting on Tuesday condemning a missile strike that destroyed part of the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv on Monday.

The strike killed at least two people, Ukrainian authorities said.

It came amid a wave of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine, which killed at least 47 people and injured 190 more that day.

At the UN meeting on Tuesday, Kyslytsya slammed Russia and Nebenzia.

"The question is, what kind of future are we talking about if a murderer feels comfortable sitting here knee-deep in children's blood in the chair of the President of the Security Council?" he said.

According to the Associated Press, Nebenzia thanked Kyslytysa as part of his duty as rotating president of the security council.

"In accordance with the traditions of the council presidency, and purely as the president of the council," he said, per The AP, "I am compelled to thank Ukraine for their statement."

The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Russian Geneva mission to the UN did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• Democratic senators have accused Justice Clarence Thomas of accepting undisclosed gifts and trips.
• He allegedly accepted gifts like a yacht trip and a chopper ride to St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown.
• Senators seek investigation into potential tax fraud and financial ties between Thomas and Crow.

Two Democratic senators have accused Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of accepting free trips to Russian President Vladimir Putin's hometown.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon filed a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland on July 3, asking to open an investigation into the SCOTUS judge.

The letter highlighted the "serious possibility of tax fraud" and accused Thomas of having "secretly accepted gifts and income potentially worth millions of dollars."

The letter's appendix, which lists 35 undisclosed gifts, shows a "yacht trip to Russia and the Baltics" and a "helicopter ride to Yusupov Palace, St. Petersburg," both listed under the year 2003.

St. Petersburg is Putin's birthplace and where he grew up. The president currently resides in Moscow.

The appendix list is titled "Likely Undisclosed Gifts and Income from Harlan Crow and Affiliated Companies." Harlan Crow is a real estate developer and the former chairman and CEO of the Trammell Crow Company.

The senators cited a ProPublica report from May 2023 detailing Thomas' hushed-up financial ties to Crow.

The report stated that apart from the Russia trip, Crow also funded Thomas' grandnephew Mark Martin's boarding school fees, which cost "more than $6,000 a month."

In their letter, the senators wrote that other gifts from Crow included "multiple instances of free private jet travel, yacht travel, and lodging," as well as "gifts of tuition for Justice Thomas's grandnephew," "real estate transactions," "home renovations," and "free rent for Justice Thomas's mother."

In September 2023, Thomas acknowledged that he had accepted three trips on a private plane owned by Crow. He did not mention any other gifts.

Whitehouse and Wyden are not the only Democrats who have voiced concerns over Thomas' sketchy financial ties.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York filed articles of impeachment against Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday.

"Justice Thomas and Alito's repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law," her statement read.

Representatives for Thomas, Whitehouse, Wyden and Crow didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

• Critical Role on Wednesday announced "Moonward," a four-part miniseries.
• "Moonward" follows CR's 2023 acquisition of "Midst," a sci-fi space western audio drama.
• "Moonward" also stars two heavyweight CR cast members, in a renewed push into the podcasting business.

Critical Role has been churning out some big productions aside from its long-running main "Dungeons & Dragons" campaigns. Now, they're looking to sink their teeth further into the podcasting business.

Critical Role creative director Marisha Ray announced the miniseries on a livestream on Wednesday evening. Titled "Moonward," the four-part, stand-alone series is set in the world of "Midst," an experimental audio drama that Critical Role acquired in 2023.

"Midst," a sci-fi space western set on a desert planet, was originally helmed by three unnamed narrators. Now, its crew — Matt Roen, Sara Wile, and Xen — have come out of anonymity.

On "Moonward," they're getting experimental on-set with Ray and fellow CR main cast member Liam O'Brien.

Ray said "Moonward" will be set shortly after the events of "Midst's" three seasons. It will feature a cast of characters "on an expedition to locate the sunken remains of Midst's destroyed moon."

"We all walked away from the table at the end really attached to the story we told," O'Brien said on Wednesday evening's stream.

There are no dice and no rules in "Moonward" — unlike the "D&D main campaign" those two cast members are used to. Instead, it will feature just pure roleplay and acting.

"It's certainly nothing like what we have done here at Critical Role," Ray said, likening the experience to combining roleplaying games with a live jam session.

This has been a significant year for Critical Role's expansion into the business of nerdworld. The third season of the company's Amazon-backed animation series, "The Legend of Vox Machina," is getting a fall release. The "Mighty Nein" animated series, based on their second long-running "D&D" campaign, is also in the works. And their business expansion continues with two games: the "Daggerheart" open-beta, a game with the potential to rival Hasbro's major moneymakers like "Magic: The Gathering" and "D&D," and "Candela Obscura," CR's gothic horror offering.

The first full trailer for "Midst" will be released on July 24.

For now, Critical Role fans can tide over their programming cravings with the start of "Downfall," the long-anticipated blockbuster main campaign arc helmed by "Dimension 20's" Brennan Lee Mulligan.

"Downfall" kicks off on Thursday night. It will stream on Twitch, YouTube, and Beacon, CR's in-house membership and streaming service.

• Two researchers in the US say Russia's promised payouts to its wounded and dead would take $26 billion.
• That's about 6% of the country's budget for 2024, which is $414 billion.
• The researchers arrived at the figure through open-source data and Russia's own laws.

The Kremlin would need to spend some 2.3 trillion rubles, or $26 billion, in promised one-time payouts to wounded soldiers or families of those killed in Ukraine, according to two researchers estimates.

That's about 6% of Russia's total budget for 2024, which is 36.6 trillion rubles, or $414 billion.

The figures were calculated by Thomas Lattanzio, a public service fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Harry Stevens, a research assistant at the US think-tank Center for the National Interest.

In a commentary for War On The Rocks, they used estimates from French and British officials to ballpark Russia's casualties from the Ukraine war. They arrived at a total of 400,000 wounded or dead, including 100,000 soldiers killed.

Russian law entitles families of killed soldiers to a one-time payment of 8.8 million rubles, with another 5 million rubles from a measure passed in 2022 just after the war began.

Lattanzio and Stevens wrote that stacked with additional payments of between 1 and 3 million rubles from local authorities, most families would receive one-time payments totaling about 14 million rubles, or $158,000.

Wounded soldiers also receive 3 million rubles, per the 2022 decree.

"Simple math shows that one-time payments would equate to 900 billion rubles for wounded personnel and at least 1.4 trillion for families of the dead, 2.3 trillion rubles total," wrote Lattanzio and Stevens.

The cost of the one-time payments would be a "staggering amount," they wrote.

Representatives for the Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Still, it's not clear if Russia has consistently been rolling out its one-time payments to its wounded or its deceased soldiers' next-of-kin.

Reuters reported in June 2022 that some soldiers, including four servicemen interviewed by the outlet, were struggling to receive their compensation after sustaining battlefield injuries.

In November, Radio Free Europe's Russian investigative unit, Systema, found that multiple Russian contract soldiers and families of those killed were still not receiving their payments despite trying to acquire them.

In April, Ukraine published what it said was a recording of an intercepted call from a Russian soldier who claimed that Russia designated those killed as "missing in action" so it could deny full payouts to their families.

Ukraine claimed in June that Russia has suffered 515,000 casualties, while Moscow does not release regular updates on how many of its soldiers were killed or wounded.

Independent Russian outlet Mediazona, which tracks the names of those killed in the war, estimated in a July 5 update that between 106,000 to 140,000 Russian troops have died, including 39,000 this year.

Yearly cost of treating PTSD at 2% of budget, researchers say

Lattanzio and Stevens also estimated the cost of Russia treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among its servicemen, arriving at about $15,000 yearly for each patient treated.

They used cost figures from the US on its own PTSD treatment, adjusted them for purchasing power parity in Russia, and assumed that 500,000 Russian veterans would acquire some "sort of post-traumatic stress disorder" from the war.

In total, this amounts to a yearly 660 billion rubles, or $7.4 billion, to treat PTSD from the war, which is about 2% of Russia's total budget.

Russia plans to spend nearly a third of its total 2024 budget on defense, or about 10.8 trillion rubles, which is $122 billion.

That's nearly double the amount it spent on defense in 2023, and much of the funds are expected to flow toward weapons production.

Many observers say such a skew toward military expenditure indicates that Russia intends to fight out the Ukraine war for a prolonged period.

"By staking everything on rising military expenditure, the Kremlin is forcing the economy into the snare of perpetual war," wrote analysts from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Russia and Eurasia Center.

• Joe Biden wants to stay on in the presidential race, but his party's leaving the door open.
• On Wednesday, Pelosi did not give a firm endorsement of Biden staying on in the race.
• And Chuck Schumer has told donors in private that he's open to replacing Biden, per Axios.

President Joe Biden has emphatically declared that he plans to stay the course and keep going in the 2024 presidential race — but the key voices in his party might not share that same zeal for his candidacy.

As Biden faces growing calls for him to step aside following his fumbling performance in a debate with former President Donald Trump on June 27, key Democratic leaders like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might be able to put their fingers on the scale to sway the president.

Axios reported on Wednesday, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that the New York senator privately told donors he's open to replacing Biden as the party's presidential nominee.

Schumer, like many other Democratic lawmakers, from Gov. Gavin Newsom to Vice President Kamala Harris, has publicly supported Biden's candidacy.

When approached for comment, a Schumer representative pointed BI to a statement the senator issued after the Axios story was published.

"As I have made clear repeatedly publicly and privately, I support President Biden and remain committed to ensuring Donald Trump is defeated in November," Schumer said.

While Schumer appears to still be on the Biden train, Pelosi — unmoored from the trappings of House leadership, having stepped down as speaker — sent some mixed signals about her stance on Wednesday.

During an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Pelosi declined to give a firm endorsement of Biden staying in the race.

"It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run," she said. "We're all encouraging him to make that decision. Because time is running short."

"I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that's the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with," Pelosi continued.

A spokesperson for Pelosi later said in a statement to The Washington Post on the same day that the California congresswoman "fully supports whatever President Biden decides to do."

"We must turn our attention to why this race is so important: Donald Trump would be a disaster for our country and our democracy," the statement said.

Representatives for Pelosi and Biden didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

To be sure, not all Democratic politicians have given up on Biden's candidacy just yet. In particular, the party's progressive faction has thrown their support behind the presumptive Democratic nominee.

"Joe Biden is our nominee," New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Monday. "He is not leaving this race. He is in this race, and I support him."

"The president can win, and I think he will win," Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told HuffPost on Wednesday.

For his part, Biden has said that he's determined to stay on.

"The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it's time for it to end," Biden said in a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday.

"It's time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump," the letter continued.

• Jeff Bridges says that he's "feeling great now," three years after his cancer went into remission. 
• Bridges was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2020, and caught COVID-19 in early 2021. 
• He stars in the second season of "The Old Man" on FX, opposite John Lithgow. 

Jeff Bridges is more than ready to go ahead with the season two premiere of his FX series "The Old Man," three years after he contracted COVID-19 while undergoing chemotherapy.

Bridges appeared on Wednesday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour alongside his "Old Man" costar John Lithgow and executive producers Jonathan Steinberg, Dan Shotz, and Warren Littlefield. Bridges spoke about the show's upcoming second season and gave an update on his health.

"I'm feeling great now. I'm coming back for more punishment," Bridges said.

Bridges announced in October 2020 that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma. Early the following year he said he caught COVID-19 while undergoing chemotherapy. Bridges was in the hospital for five weeks, and told People that he was "pretty close to dying."

In "The Old Man," Bridges plays Dan Chase, a former CIA operative haunted by his past. The show's first season went on a production hiatus after Bridges' diagnosis. It resumed production in 2022 after he announced in September 2021 that he was in remission, Deadline reported.

"In the first season when I was doing these fight scenes, I had a 9-inch by 12-inch tumor in my body, in my stomach, that didn't hurt at all," Bridges said. "So that's surprising to me, but I'm feeling great now."

Bridges praised "The Old Man's" stunt coordinators for helping him pull off some fight scenes. His costar, Lithgow, recommended that people watch Bridges in the 1972 film "Bad Company" to better "appreciate" the work he's doing now.

"Some of the greatest scenes in 'The Old Man' are Jeff's fight scenes, an old man having to summon up the strength and skill he had 50 years ago," costar Lithgow said.

Season two of "The Old Man" will premiere on FX on September 12.

• China's Customs said it seized 104 snakes from a man traveling to mainland China on Tuesday.
• The man tried to smuggle the snakes in his pants pockets.
• It's illegal to bring non-native species into China without permission.

A man tried to smuggle more than 100 live snakes to mainland China in his pants with just adhesive tape and canvas bags.

The country's customs authority posted details about the incident on Tuesday in a post to Weibo, China's version of X.

Officials said a male passenger entered mainland China through the Huanggang Port at Futian before officers intercepted him and conducted an inspection. Futian is in Shenzhen's downtown core and sits on the China-Hong Kong border.

Officers discovered the man had worn six snake-infested canvas bags sealed with adhesive tape in his pants pockets. The bags had several species, including a milk snake, the western pig-nosed snake, and a corn snake. None of the snakes are venomous, but some are not native to China.

"After being opened, each bag was found to contain a number of live snakes of different colors and forms. After counting, there were a total of 104 snakes," the post, translated to English, reads.

Footage shared by China's customs showed the snakes, which tended to be small and thin in size.

China's biosafety and quarantine laws prohibit the carrying or mailing of animals into the country and bar travelers from moving non-native species past border checkpoints without permission.

In its social media post, the customs authority said it may pursue legal action against those involved.

It is unclear where the snakes were headed for for what purpose.

China has a snake farming industry, that Business Insider has previously written about, which includes the Zisiqao village in the Zhejiang Province.

The province's 160 families bred more than three million snakes annually for medicine and food, according to a 2013 Reuters report.

• Russia has been jamming precision Western weapons in Ukraine through its electronic counterwarfare.
• The situation has shown there are still uses for unguided artillery, a Finnish general told WSH.
• "They are immune to any type of jamming," he said.

Russia's thwarting of precision weapons provided to Ukraine by the West shows there are still use cases for unguided artillery in technologically advanced warfare, a Finnish general told The Wall Street Journal.

Weapons guided by a GPS system provide precision strikes against enemy targets and have been crucial for some of Ukraine's prior countermeasures against Russia during the war.

The M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which can hit targets up to 50 miles away, was once seen as a vital lifeline for Ukraine in order to stop Russia's advance in the summer of 2022.

But those same precision weapons, which are being supplied by the West, are being rendered ineffective as Russia adapts on the battlefield and engages in electronic warfare.

The methods involve jamming or spoofing the GPS system in weapons so that they're led off course. These electronic countermeasures are often cheap and can also be used against drones, Business Insider previously reported. Both Ukraine and Russia have engaged in electronic warfare.

These measures have also thwarted the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, a US-Swedish guided bomb that has a range of 94 miles, that Ukraine received in early February, The Journal reported.

Lt. Gen. Esa Pulkkinen, the permanent secretary of Finland's defense ministry, told The Journal that electronic warfare has shown that there are still uses for less-advanced, unguided artillery shells.

"They are immune to any type of jamming, and they will go to target regardless of what type of electronic warfare capability there may be," Pulkkinen told The Journal.

According to The New York Times, precision-guided weapons have been a large point of focus for the US's broader defense strategy, but in Ukraine, the war is largely fought with unguided artillery.

As a result, the US and others in the West have ramped up production of unguided artillery shells. Pentagon officials have said that the US aims to increase production of 155mm artillery shells, which are shot out of howitzers, to 100,000 per month by 2025.

• Lee Se-Dol, a South Korean Go legend, was defeated by an AI program in 2016.
• The Go player told the New York Times that his loss brought a profound realization of AI's progress.
• Lee is concerned that AI may take away people's value in creativity and originality.

One of the world's greatest Go players who was defeated by an artificial intelligence program warns that the technology may come with a rude awakening for humans as it advances.

Lee Se-Dol is a South Korean legend in the game of Go, which is widely considered to be a more complex game than chess. The game, which can be played in person and online, also once posed a computational challenge for AI researchers.

In 2016, the Go world was rocked after Lee was defeated by AlphaGo, an AI program made by Google's DeepMind. Lee lost 4 out of 5 games.

The defeat was a huge upset and pushed Lee to retire from the game in 2019.

"With the debut of AI in Go games, I've realized that I'm not at the top even if I become the No. 1 through frantic efforts," Lee told Yonhap News Agency at the time. "Even if I become the No. 1, there is an entity that cannot be defeated."

Lee told The New York Times in a recent interview that his loss against AlphaGo had a profound impact on his life: "Losing to AI, in a sense, meant my entire world was collapsing."

Now, he warns that the technology won't just be coming after Go players.

"I faced the issues of AI early, but it will happen for others," Lee said at an education fair in Seoul, according to The Times. "It may not be a happy ending."

Lee told the publication that he can see AI creating new jobs as it takes away others. But a larger concern for the retired Go player is what AI will do to people's appreciation for originality.

"People used to be in awe of creativity, originality, and innovation," Lee told The Times. "But since AI came, a lot of that has disappeared."

Since AI's rise to the mainstream, artists and some leading intellectuals have raised doubts about the technology's ability to be creative.

Noam Chomsky, a linguistics professor and philosopher, previously told Business Insider in 2023 that he was "skeptical" that artificial intelligence could make breakthroughs in studies like the arts.

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg said in an interview with Stephen Colbert that AI takes the "soul" out of creative work.

"I think the soul is unimaginable and is ineffable," Spielberg said. "And it cannot be created by any algorithm, it is just something that exists in all of us."

• California officials confirm that a "potential gastrointestinal illness" has struck at San Quentin.
• Four prisoners told BI that last Wednesday's boiled chicken was to blame.
• A July 4th weekend lockdown affecting some 2,000 inmates is only now being lifted, they said.

Usually, when "chicken hindquarters" is on the dinner menu at San Quentin, it's good news.

"It's a very popular meal in prison," Aaron Ramzy, who is incarcerated there, told Business Insider in a phone call from his cell unit Wednesday. "You get one piece of chicken, roasted on the bone."

But last Wednesday, the welcome dish may have led to a very unwelcome result. Four men serving sentences at San Quentin say dozens of prisoners were sickened, and some 2,000 were subjected to a week of lockdown to prevent any illness from spreading.

Only on Wednesday, a full week later, were some units being taken off lockdown, they said.

In a written statement, a spokesperson for California Correctional Health Care Services confirmed that "a potential gastrointestinal illness" had resulted in a precautionary cut-back in "programming and visitation."

But the officials would not confirm any specifics, and said the cause was still under investigation.

The four men who spoke to Business Insider told similar stories.

It all started, they said, with some gnarly chicken served the day before the 4th of July holiday.

"Normally, it's prepared in the oven until it's well done," said Ramzy, 34. This chicken, though, was white with translucent skin. He said it looked undercooked.

"Hey, what is this?" Ramzy said he asked a correction officer who worked in the kitchen, which serves some 2,000 prisoners. The officer, he said, only shrugged.

"'Enjoy your food,'" Ramzy said he was told.

In the four days after eating the chicken, he said he suffered "sweats, trembling, shivering," along with even more unpleasant symptoms of diarrhea and dry-heaving.

"Oh, you ate that chicken?" he recalled officers telling him, as he lurched toward the prison medical facility. "Go ahead, go ahead and get to medical."

Ramzy said a sergeant told him some three dozen fellow residents of the prison's 600-inmate South Block needed medical attention, including electrolytes and antacids.

Luis Sigueras, 61, said he was rushed out of the prison to Marin General Hospital.

"Yes, I did eat the chicken, and I have other health problems," including heart trouble, he told Business Insider.

"They took an EKG and a CAT scan and said I had food poisoning. It was the chicken on the bone from Wednesday — they served it with mashed potatoes and cake for dessert," he said.

A doctor told him, "The next time you come here with chest pains or food poisoning, your heart is so weak you might not make it," he said.

"I told him, 'Doctor, if I gotta go, I gotta go. If God wants me, he'll take me.'"

Marty Zahorik, 74, said he, too, was sickened after eating last Wednesday's chicken. He was put on an IV and couldn't keep water down.

"Everybody said I looked like I was going to die," he said.

Zahorik said prison medical personnel told him 72 prisoners were treated for severe food poisoning.

"The food has been on a consistent downhill slide in the 22 years I've been here," he said. Portions have shrunk to subsistence levels, condiments and other extras have vanished, and for years, there's been a pigeon problem, he said.

Zahorik said as recently as Wednesday, he witnessed bird droppings on tables and broken windows in the kitchen.

About three years ago, the infestation was so bad, "We got a new sergeant, and he had a bunch of officers bring in pellet guns. And they executed the pigeons," he said.

San Quentin is California's oldest and most notorious prison. First built in 1852, it has survived waves of controversy.

The state is facing four lawsuits stemming from the 2020 transfer of prisoners infected with COVID-19 to the prison — and the coronavirus outbreak that followed, sickening 75% of the population.

Ultimately, 28 prisoners and a correctional officer died.

The prison's four cell blocks house some 3,000 people in total.

Last May, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the facility's "transformation" from San Quentin State Prison into San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, empowering an advisory council comprised of community leaders, prison staff, and program leaders to come up with recommendations to improve conditions.

On Tuesday, the prison staff served chicken again, said Ramzy. "It was like chicken chunks over rice, with some kind of marinara sauce," he said.

He has no idea how well it was cooked or what it tasted like.

"I didn't eat it. I was scared," he said.

"I know I've done something wrong, and I'm paying my debt to society, but I'm also human," he told Business Insider Wednesday afternoon, as the lockdown began to be lifted, unit by unit.

"I have a family who loves me. I shouldn't be getting just anything on a tray. I shouldn't be subjected to poison," he said.

A spokesperson for the California Correctional Health Care Services issued this statement on Tuesday:

"We are currently investigating cases of a potential gastrointestinal illness at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. When multiple patients in a housing unit present with symptoms consistent with a gastrointestinal illness, CDCR and CCHCS will take proactive measures to limit potential spread. This includes providing additional cleaning, education on proper handwashing procedures, and testing for potential causes.

"Results of testing can take multiple days. Additionally, programming and visitation can be limited as a precaution to prevent further spread."

California Correctional Health Care Services did not respond to follow-up questions Wednesday.