Author: Reporter

An estimated 17 million households reported problems finding enough food in 2022, a sharp jump from 2021 when boosted government aid helped ease the pandemic-induced economic shutdown. A Department of Agriculture report, released in October, painted a sobering picture of post-pandemic hardship with “statistically significant” increases in food insecurity across multiple categories. Using a representative survey sample of roughly 32,000 American households the report said 12.8% (17 million households) reported occasional problems affording enough food — up from 10.2% (13.5 million households) in 2021 and 10.5% (13.8 million households) in 2020. That was up from 10.2% (13.5 million households)...

The number of prescription opioid pills shipped in the U.S. in the second half of the 2010s decreased sharply even as a nationwide overdose crisis continued to deepen, according to data released in September. The decline in painkiller prescriptions — finally dropping below the quantities sold in the mid-2000s when the overdose epidemic accelerated — happened after state and federal governments tightened prescribing guidelines and state, local and Native American tribal governments sued the industry over the toll of the addictive drugs. “We are still at an epidemic proportion of pills,” Peter Mougey, a lawyer representing governments that are...

Hundreds of thousands of older Americans could pay less for some of their outpatient drug treatments beginning early next year, the Biden administration announced on December 14. The White House unveiled a list of 48 drugs — from chemotherapy treatments to growth hormones used to treat endocrine disorders — whose prices increased faster than the rate of inflation this year. Under a new law, drugmakers will have to pay rebates to the federal government because of those price increases. The money will be used to lower the price Medicare enrollees pay on the drugs early next year. “For years,...

The year 2023 started with high hopes for Ukrainian troops planning a counteroffensive against Russia. It ended with disappointment on the battlefield, an increasingly somber mood among troops, and anxiety about the future of Western aid for Ukraine’s war effort. In between, there was a short-lived rebellion in Russia, a dam collapse in Ukraine, and the spilling of much blood on both sides of the conflict. Twenty-two months since it invaded, Russia has about one-fifth of Ukraine in its grip, and the roughly 620-mile front line has barely budged this year. A crunch has come away from the battlefield....

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. In just over two months, the disorganized offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group. The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments...