MicroWave

There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.

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America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.

According to a recent Agriculture Department estimate, the rural population did rebound by 0.25 percent from 2020 to 2022 as some families decamped from urban areas during the pandemic.

But demographers say they are still evaluating whether that trend will continue, and if so, where. Pennsylvania has been particularly afflicted. Job losses in the manufacturing and energy industries that began in the 1980s prompted many younger families to relocate to Sun Belt states. The relocations helped fuel population surges in places like Texas and Georgia. But here, two-thirds of the state’s 67 counties have experienced a drop in population in recent years.

Non-paywall link

The World’s Ugliest Dog annual contest may not render the most flattering title to its victor, but don’t tell that to Wild Thang.

The eight-year-old pekingese won this year’s competition on Friday.

Eight dogs vied for the title at the 2024 Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California. Most of the creatures came from dog shelters before being adopted.

Wild Thang – of Coos Bay, Oregon – has competed in five editions of the World’s Ugliest Dog contest. Friday marked his first victory.

The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon emissions.

U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that while the U.S. team appreciates efforts aimed at sustainability, the federation would be supplying AC units for what is typically the largest contingent of athletes at the Summer Games.

“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France.

The far-right darling is accused of leaving his mom and sister high and dry as they fight eviction.

Kyle Rittenhouse has been publicly dragged by his own family, who say the far-right darling has left them high and dry as his mother and sister brace for eviction from their home. 

Faith, Kyle’s sister, put out a desperate plea for help on May 29, setting up a GoFundMe to help fight their eviction notice.

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“With my brother’s unwillingness to provide support or contribute to our family, we’ve been left to navigate this journey on our own,” she added. 

Her family has “exhausted every resource available to us,” she wrote, and “time is running out.”

“When I was in the hospital we tried to like talk to my brother, we tried to like to tell his lawyer to tell like my brother like I was maybe needing surgery or like I was in the hospital, I never heard from him,” Faith told viewers of the V-Radio podcast.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday said he floated the idea of having a “migrant league of fighters” to UFC President Dana White, again employing dehumanizing language to describe people who enter the US illegally.

“I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea: Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters. And then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants. I think the migrants’ guy might win, that’s how tough they are,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said at a gathering of Christian conservatives in Washington.

Trump added, “He didn’t like that idea too much, but actually, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

The former president repeated the comments at a campaign rally in Philadelphia later Saturday.

President Joe Biden’s campaign swiftly denounced the comments Saturday afternoon.

“Fitting that convicted felon Donald Trump spent his time at a religious conference threatening to round up Latinos, bragging about ripping away Americans’ freedoms, and promising to be even more extreme if he regains power,” spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said. “Trump’s incoherent, unhinged tirade showed voters in his own words that he is a threat to our freedoms and is too dangerous to be let anywhere near the White House again.”

The elective course was reviewed to see if it complied with Youngkin executive order banning ‘inherently divisive concepts’

Virginia’s education department proposed dozens of revisions to an elective course on African American history, striking some references to white supremacy and systemic racism among other changes, documents show.

A spokesman for the state education department said the review is still ongoing, and no changes have been implemented yet. But some professors involved in the creation of the earlier curriculum are concerned that the proposed revisions would dilute some of the topics and language explored in the course if implemented.

The department has not publicly released the proposed changes, which were submitted last August. The review was revealed in public records obtained by watchdog group American Oversight and shared with The Washington Post.

The proposed revisions were part of a review of whether the African American history elective complied with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order banning “inherently divisive concepts” from the classroom.

Non-paywall link

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Nearly untouched for millions of years, the salt flats of the inhospitable Puna plateaus are being transformed into a dynamic center of lithium production, bringing with them both economic opportunities and concerns about environmental damage. North of the ruins of Mina La Casualidad, several heavy-duty trucks cross the mountains towards the Mariana mine, a large lithium project under construction, operated by the Chinese company Ganfeng, one of the largest producers of lithium in the world.

The mine is one of the five projects that the lithium giant is carrying out in Argentina, a country that has become the scene of a strategic rivalry between China and the United States, where both seek to obtain the necessary supplies for the manufacture of batteries.

Argentina, the fourth largest lithium producer in the world, holds a fifth of the world’s reserves. It is the second largest deposit on the planet. As the country’s production soars, both Beijing and Washington want to take a piece of Argentina’s “white gold.”

China, the main producer of lithium batteries and the country that refines the most lithium in the world, has a clear advantage when it comes to investing in Argentina’s nascent industry. But the U.S., which is seeking to develop its own clean technology production chains outside of Chinese control, is trying to counter Beijing’s growing influence in South America with new investments.

In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, Kansas, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.

Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.

A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.

More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.

Voters may want social care to be on the ballot at the UK general election, but no one seems to be listening.

“They used to say Eastbourne was the place to go to die,” sighs a woman walking along the town’s main street. 

A classic British seaside town, Eastbourne — 70 miles south of London, perched on the southern tip of Britain — is both beautiful and run down. White cliffs line the seafront, a tired arcade juts out upon the pier. 

Eastbourne’s population is — there’s no sugarcoating it — old. 

Around 25 percent of residents are aged 65 or over — far higher than the national average of 18.6 percent. In Eastbourne and the wider East Sussex area there are an estimated 69,000 unpaid carers looking after those in need. That means a national crisis which has long gripped the U.K. is keenly felt in this quiet, sun-struck corner of the south coast. 

Britain’s adult social care sector has been in turmoil for as long as most can remember — soaring numbers of elderly people and chronic underfunding posing a public policy challenge met with a distinct lack of answers by several generations of politicians.

The European Commission has delayed action on tobacco and nicotine, but countries say it should consider a ban on flavored vapes.

Denmark is leading a charge for a European clampdown on vapes in a move the country says will protect children and young people from harm.

A total of 12 EU health ministers, led by Denmark’s Sophie Løhde, have backed a paper calling on the European Commission to propose new legislation, which could include banning flavored vapes and limiting nicotine content.

They also suggest that social media giants take "greater responsibility" for marketing and sales of vapes on their platforms.

The pressure on the Commission to act on vapes comes after the EU executive delayed its planned reform of tobacco and nicotine rules earlier this year.

The setback triggered a backlash from Belgium's Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, who told the European Parliament's health committee in January that industry lobbying was to blame for the Commission's inaction.

Idaho librarian June Meissner was closing up for the day at the downtown Boise Public Library when a man approached her asking for help.

As an information services librarian, answering patrons’ questions is part of Meissner’s day-to-day work, and serving the community is one of her favorite parts of the job. 

But when the man got close enough, “he took a swing at me and tried to punch me in the head,” said Meissner, a transgender woman. “I blocked it and he started yelling slurs and suggesting that he was going to come back and kill me.”

Worldwide Pride Month events are well underway to celebrate LGBTQ+ culture and rights. But it is coming at a time when people who identify as LGBTQ+ say they are facing increasing difficulties at work, ranging from being repeatedly misgendered to physically assaulted. 

Gender nonconforming library workers in particular, like Meissner, are also grappling with growing calls for book bans across the U.S., with books about gender identity, sexual orientation and race topping the list of most criticized titles and making the attacks all the more personal.

More than 1,000 people died during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabiaas the faithful faced extreme high temperatures at Islamic holy sites in the desert kingdom, officials said Sunday.

More than half of the fatalities were people from Egypt, according to two officials in Cairo. Egypt revoked the licenses of 16 travel agencies that helped unauthorized pilgrims travel to Saudi Arabia, authorities said.

Saudi Arabia has not commented on the deaths during the pilgrimage, which is required of every able Muslim once in their life.