Newly released US government data shows suicide rate among military veterans as considerably higher in western and rural parts of the country, further indicating that female and older veterans are at higher risk and that social isolation, gun ownership and limited access to health care are likely factors.

The new figures are the first-ever Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) data on suicide that show wide state-by-state disparities, demonstrating that states such as Montana, Utah, Nevada and New Mexico have had the highest rates of veteran suicide as of 2014 — the most current VA data available, the AP reported Saturday.

According to the official report, the suicide rates among US war veterans in the four states stood at 60 per 100,000 individuals, which is much higher than the average veteran suicide rate of 38.4.

Veterans in large parts of those states must drive 70 miles (112 kilometers) or more to reach the nearest VA medical center for treatment.

The overall suicide rate in Western states, the latest data shows, stood at 45.5 while all other regions of the US had rates below the national average rate.

The new VA data also reconfirmed drastic demographic differences: Female veterans are at much greater risk, with their suicide rate 2.5 times higher than for civilian women. This is while the suicide risk among male veterans was 19 percent higher than civilian men.

As a whole, however, older veterans make up most military suicides, according to the government report, which pointed out that nearly 65 percent of the victims were age 50 or older.

Other states with high veteran suicide rates, including mostly rural West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, had greater levels of prescription drug use, including opioids.

This is while a 2016 VA study found that veterans who received the highest doses of opioid painkillers were more than twice as likely to die by suicide compared to those receiving the lowest doses.

“This report is huge,” said epidemiologist Rajeev Ramchand, who studies suicide for the government-sponsored RAND Corporation. He further noted that the suicide rate is higher for veterans than non-veterans in every single US state by at least 1.5 times. “No state is immune.”

According to Ramchand, pinpointing specific causes of veteran suicide was difficult but they likely involved factors more rampant in rural areas, such as social isolation, limited health care access, gun ownership and opioid addiction.

“This requires closer investigation into why suicide rates by veteran status are higher, including the role that opiates play,” Ramchand emphasized.

“These findings are deeply concerning, which is why I made suicide prevention my top clinical priority,” VA Secretary David Shulkin said recently. “This is a national public health issue.”

The VA has reported a major hike in the number of veterans seeking medical care after returning from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US military has intervened in purported bids to root out terrorism and bring stability to the troubled regions.

Terrorism, however, expanded drastically in both countries since the US-led military meddling as Washington seeks another upsurge of troops in the war-torn nations following major withdrawals.

The latest data provides more detailed breakdowns on national figures released in 2016, which saw 20 veterans committing suicide per day. The statistics come from the largest study of veterans’ records by the VA in a bid to uncover new information on where to direct resources and identify veterans most at risk.

Source: Presstv

Several hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters have taken St. Louis’ streets to voice their anger after a Missouri judge acquitted a white former St. Louis police in the 2011 killing of an African-American man. Some protesters clashed with police and a few scuffles broke out on Friday in the state of Missouri where racially charged clashes in the nearby city of Ferguson created the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014.

Police said some demonstrators hurled rocks and water bottles, while witnesses and video footage showed police used pepper spray on at protesters about a block from the courthouse. A court in Missouri freed Jason Stockley, 36, who was charged with first-degree murder for killing Anthony Lamar Smith, 24. He was arrested in May 2016.

The former policeman was accused of planting a gun in Smith’s car but claimed in his testimony that he did this in self-defense. More than 500 protesters held a demonstration following the verdict in downtown St. Louis, chanting, “No justice, no peace” and “Shut it down.” Some held “Black Lives Matter” signs.

“I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m mad,” said the Reverend Clinton Stancil of the Wayman AME Church in St. Louis. “We haven’t made any progress since Ferguson, that’s clear. Cops can still kill us with impunity.” The deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police over the past years have sparked nationwide protests under the banner of Black Lives Matter movement.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice will not bring civil rights charges against six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, the young African-American man whose killing sparked mass protests in 2015.

The department said that “the evidence is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that the officers who arrested Gray “willfully violated” his civil rights.

Source: Presstv

British police are investigating a reported explosion at a subway station in southwest London, which left several people injured and hundreds of commuters running from the platform in panic.  

The Metropolitan Police said Friday that officers have arrived at the Parsons Green station and are investigating and will give more information as soon as possible.

According to news agencies, the blast left some passengers with facial burns and that paramedics were present at the scene.

Transport for London confirmed that Parsons Green station has been closed and there was no service between Earls Court and Wimbledon on the District Line which runs through Parsons Green.

One witness reported seeing “a flash and a bang” in a bag holding the container, which is said to have had wires coming from it, on the packed rush-hour carriage.

Russia is set to launch major joint military drills with Belarus on Thursday, amid continuing tensions between Moscow and NATO. The large-scale drills, called Zapad (West) 2017, are scheduled to be held from September 14 to 20 around the Baltic Sea, in western Russia, Belarus, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

The maneuvers, described by Moscow as “purely defensive,” will involve 12,700 troops, 70 aircraft, 250 tanks, and 10 warships.

NATO claims that Russia is under-reporting the number of troops participating in the drills and that the military exercises could provide cover for a possible permanent relocation of offensive equipment near the Baltic countries. Some of the alliance’s eastern members allege that Moscow has committed more than 100,000 servicemen to the war games, a claim that has been rejected by Russia as flat-out wrong.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the “artificial hype” about the maneuvers is aimed at “justifying the spending on NATO’s military buildup on Poland and the Baltic states in the eyes of the western audience.”

Russia and NATO have had strained ties since conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine some three years ago. More than 10,000 have been killed in the war in Ukraine’s industrial east, where the Kiev government is fighting pro-Russia forces.

Russia has long been wary of NATO’s expansion eastward — toward Russia’s western borders. NATO has deployed around 4,000 troops, consisting of four battle groups, to Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland in recent years.

The US military took part in a training exercise with Baltic allies in June that included B-1 and B-52 bombers and 50 naval ships. Also in July, 25,000 servicemen from 17 countries participated in a NATO training exercise in the Black Sea, which were monitored by members of the Russian military.

Sweden holds biggest war games in 20 years

Meanwhile, the Swedish military has started its “first and largest” drills, dubbed Aurora 17, in more than two decades on Wednesday, involving 19,000 troops with support from NATO countries.

Sweden, which is not a member of NATO, plans to conduct the war games in the air, on land and at sea, with the participation of a US Patriot missile battery, helicopters, and a unit of National Guard tanks.

Around 1,500 troops from the United States, France, Norway, and other NATO allies are taking part in the exercises over a three-week period.

Brandishing the ‘Russian threat’

Micael Byden, the commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, seemed to suggest that the drills were being launched in response to a perceived security threat from Russia.

“The security situation has taken a turn for the worse,” Byden said. “Russia is the country that affects security in Europe right now with its actions… so it is clear that we are watching very closely what Russia is doing.”

Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern over Sweden’s growing military activities and its closer cooperation with NATO. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in early June that Moscow would need to take additional security measures if the Scandinavian country decided to join NATO.

“If Sweden joins NATO, that will affect our [bilateral] relations in a negative way,” Putin said back then, adding that Moscow would regard the move as “an additional threat.”

Storm-shocked Floridians returned to shattered homes on Monday as the remnants of Hurricane Irma pushed inland, leaving more than half of all state residents without power and city streets underwater from Orlando and Jacksonville into coastal Georgia and South Carolina.

Downgraded to a tropical storm early on Monday, Irma had ranked as one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record before barreling into the Florida Keys on Sunday and plowing northward along the Gulf Coast and moving inland to wreak havoc across a wide swath of the third-most populous US state.

Still, the scope of damage in Florida and neighboring states paled in comparison with the utter devastation left by Irma as a rare Category 5 hurricane in parts of the Caribbean, where the storm killed nearly 40 people – at least 10 of them in Cuba – before turning its fury on Florida.

Especially hard hit in the United States was the resort archipelago of the Keys, extending into the Gulf of Mexico from the tip of Florida’s peninsula and connected to the mainland by a single, narrow highway, Governor Rick Scott told a news conference on Monday.

“There’s devastation,” he said, adding that virtually every mobile-home park on the island chain was left upended. “It’s horrible what we saw.”

While some evacuees from the Keys expressed anger at authorities refusing to allow them to return to their homes on Monday, the US Defense Department said as many as 10,000 residents who had stayed put on the island may now be stranded and in need of evacuation.

Monroe County fire officials said later they would reopen road access on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) for residents and business owners from Key Largo, the main island at the upper end of the chain, as well as the towns of Tavernier and Islamorada farther to the south.

No timetable for reopening the remainder of the Keys was given.

In Miami, which escaped the worst of Irma’s winds but experienced heavy flooding, residents in the city’s Little Haiti neighborhood returned to the wreckage of trailer homes that were shredded by the storm.

“I wanted to cry, but this is what it is, this is life,” Melida Hernandez, 67, who had ridden out the storm at a nearby church, said as she gazed at the ruins of her dwelling, split in two by a fallen tree.

Evacuees urged to stay put

The storm claimed its first known US fatality over the weekend in the Keys – a man found dead in a pickup truck that had crashed into a tree in high winds.

At least one other possibly storm-related fatal car crash was reported on Sunday in Orange County, Florida. On Monday, two people were killed by falling trees in two Atlanta suburbs, according to local authorities.

Some 6.5 million people, about one-third of Florida’s population, had been ordered from their homes ahead of Irma’s arrival, and more than 200,000 people sought refuge in about 700 shelters, according to state data.

Scott urged evacuees all over the state to stay put for now rather than rush home, saying downed power lines, debris and other hazards abounded. “Don’t put any more lives at risk,” he said.

Without power

One of the biggest lingering problems was widespread power outages, with utilities reporting some 7.4 million homes and businesses without electricity in Florida and neighboring states. They said it could take weeks to fully restore service.

Scott said 65 percent of Florida was without power. Travel into and out of the state likewise remained stymied. Miami International Airport, one of the busiest in the country, halted passenger flights through at least Monday.

Police in Miami-Dade County and Fort Lauderdale reported making 48 arrests for looting. The Keys were largely evacuated before the storm struck with winds of up to 130 mph (209 kph), and police established a checkpoint on Monday to keep displaced residents from returning while authorities work to restore power, water, fuel supplies and medical service.

Some seeking re-entry argued with police who stopped them at the first of a series of bridges leading to the island chain. Irma’s arrival in Florida came around two weeks after Hurricane Harvey claimed about 60 lives and caused property damage estimates as high as $180 billion after pummeling the Gulf Coasts of Texas and Louisiana with heavy rains and severe flooding.

(Source: Reuters)

Hurricane Irma is still “extremely dangerous” and will “devastate” parts of Southeastern United States, federal officials and agencies have warned.

“Obviously Hurricane Irma continues to be a threat that is going to devastate the United States,” Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator (FEMA), said at a press conference Friday morning. “We’re going to have a couple rough days.”

Long, whose agency is still preoccupied with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which caused catastrophic flooding in parts of Texas and Louisiana last month, said around 3,000 federal emergency workers have been mobilized to deal with Irma.

Irma, one of the strongest storms in US history, is surging towards the US after causing death and destruction in the Caribbean islands.

Irma is still “extremely dangerous,” with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 km), which are strong enough to uproot trees, bring down power poles and rip off the roofs and some exterior walls of well-built frame homes, The National Weather Service cautioned.

Irma was downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 storm early Friday morning. As of 11 am Eastern Time, the storm was moving 14 mph (22 km) and located 405 miles (651 km) southeast of Miami, Florida.

The National Weather Service issued its first hurricane warnings for Florida Thursday night, warning residents that “preparations to protect life should be rushed to completion.”

Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for barrier islands, coastal communities, low-lying areas and mobile homes across Florida. Experts estimate roughly 1.2 million Florida residents have been ordered to evacuate.

Meteorologists expect Irma will make landfall near Miami as a strong Category 4 hurricane with winds about 140 mph (225 km).