Archive for June 2025

What drives the rural very poor into the arms of politicians like whose servility to large corporations and billionaires is so transparently obvious? Pike County in eastern Kentucky exemplifies, in extreme form, this confounding pattern as part of the second poorest Congressional district out of 435. It ranks lowest on a “well-being” index of all counties in the nation. Across the United States in 2021, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses in the United States was 32 per 100,000; in Pike County, the rate was 91 per 100,000.

Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law. Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated. Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show. The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.

Thousands of British nationals are charged with drug smuggling abroad every year. The UK charity Prisoners Abroad reports a rise in the number of British people imprisoned abroad for drug offences in 2024-25, compared to the previous year, especially women under 34. Above: Three British nationals on trial for alleged drug smuggling in Indonesia, where they may face the death penalty.

The game, named The Cards You’re Dealt, features an image and statement on each of the playing cards with something the children feel is important to their lives.

When Jonathan Gluck learned he had cancer, he was struck dumb. Just thirty-eight-years-old and the first-time father of a seven-month-old daughter, he had no family history of the disease and, besides a sore hip, no other symptoms of illness. He was told he had eighteen months to live.

Mamdani’s campaign is as fresh in substance as it is in style. He’s framed his mayoral run around the most pressing issue for working-class New Yorkers: the cost of living. He’s not leading with vague invocations of equity — he’s leading with rent relief, housing justice, public transit expansion, and raising the minimum wage. And he’s doing it without cozying up to the city’s entrenched political machines or its constellation of institutional donors.

Terminations were handed down April 1 to more than 8,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, including roughly 500 from the Administration for Children and Families.