DETROIT (AP) — Nearly 43,000 people died in traffic crashes in 2021, the highest number in 16 years with deaths due to speeding and impaired or distracted driving on the rise. The 2021 final numbers, released Monday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, confirmed earlier estimates by the agency showing a 10.5 percent increase [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — For every American killed by gunfire, an estimated two or more survive, often with terrible injuries — a fact that public-health officials have said is crucial to understanding the full impact of guns on society. A new federal government study highlights a surge in gunfire injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic, when [...]
NAVAL STATION NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — On Navy ships docked at this vast base, hundreds of sailors in below-deck mazes of windowless passageways perform intense, often monotonous manual labor. It's necessary work before a ship deploys, but hard to adjust to for many already challenged by the stresses plaguing young adults nationwide. Growing mental-health distress [...]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this week approved selling Narcan, the leading version of naloxone, without a prescription, setting the overdose-reversing drug on course to become the first opioid treatment drug to be sold over the counter. It's a move that some advocates have long sought as a way to improve access to [...]
Residents of a Louisiana parish located in the heart of a cluster of polluting petrochemical factories filed a federal lawsuit this week raising allegations of civil rights, environmental justice and religious liberty violations. The lawsuit names St. James Parish as the defendant and says the parish council approved the construction of several factories in two [...]
WASHINGTON — A new “good neighbor” rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency will restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. Nearly two dozen states will have to cut harmful industrial emissions of nitrogen oxide and other pollutants to improve air quality for millions of [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick. The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week ordered a number of improvements in access to mental-health care to reduce suicides in the military, but held off on endorsing more controversial recommendations to restrict gun and ammunition purchases by young troops, sending them to another panel for study. An independent committee in late February [...]
The state of Ohio this week launched new data dashboards to better track and report overdose deaths and other substance-use related measures throughout the state, Gov. Mike DeWine said in an announcement. The statewide dashboards were adopted and expanded from dashboards devised from the National Institutes of Health-funded HEALing Communities Study, which investigated the effectiveness of local [...]
The recent kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico highlights a common practice for many people in the United States: traveling to other countries for medical care that either is not available at home or costs a lot less. The four were abducted — leading to the deaths of two — during a trip to Mexico [...]