Canada could take in some Central American migrants to help U.S. - minister

 

By Anna Mehler Paperny  

 Reuters/CARLOS JASSO A group of Central American migrants rest along the railway track on their way to the United States

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada is prepared to take in some Central American migrants to help the United States, which is grappling with an influx of migrants at its southern border with Mexico, Canadian Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said.

In their first phone call since President Joe Biden's administration was sworn in, Mendicino and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas last week discussed issues including Central American migration - an area where the Biden administration is struggling to gain control.

Canada wants to help, Mendicino told Reuters in an interview late Tuesday.

"I certainly think that we have the capacity within our existing levels plan to accommodate more refugees," he said.

Canada aims to resettle 36,000 refugees for 2021.

While Mendicino would not rule out accepting migrants in U.S. custody, his spokesperson said this was unlikely as Canada resettles refugees referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Mendicino would not say how many migrants Canada might take.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Canada's offer to help comes as the number of migrants taken into custody at the U.S.-Mexico border has soared in recent months to the highest levels in two decades.

Vice President Kamala Harris, tasked with addressing Central American migration, was in Mexico and Guatemala this week to pursue solutions to the situation.

Mendicino said he and Mayorkas discussed "the road map to a renewed Canada-U.S. relationship," managing their shared border and achieving migration goals.

Canada has styled itself as a leader in refugee resettlement, even as it turns back asylum-seekers at its own border. Last year it took in about 40% of the total number of resettled refugees globally, or about 9,000.

"By having a plan as ambitious as we do around this, what we're signaling not only to the Americas but the world, is, Canada will continue to play a leadership role when it comes to resettling refugees," Mendicino added.

In its 2021 budget, Canada allocated C$80.3 million ($66.6 million) over two years to the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.

Canada also wants to expand the Safe Third Country Agreement (SCTA), under which asylum-seekers trying to cross at ports of entry are turned back, so that it applies to the entire Canada-U.S. border.

This would affect people who cross irregularly, such as at Quebec's Roxham Road, a common destination for asylum-seekers avoiding the STCA.

"There was certainly a very strong sense between our two countries that this is a very valuable instrument, it is a very valuable agreement, because it does create the opportunity for additional cooperation," Mendicino said.

($1 = 1.2064 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Global criminal elites hit by 'unprecedented' AN0M sting with Canadian roots

Adrian Humphreys 
POSTMEDIA

JUNE 9,2021

 Provided by National Post About 1,000 people have been arrested worldwide after using a supposedly secret encrypted phone system, called AN0M, that was really run by the FBI.

An international police team have pulled off one of the world’s most sophisticated and expansive penetrations of the upper echelons of the criminal underworld, using criminal influencers to lure mobsters, narcos, bikers, gangsters and corrupt cops into using a supposedly secret encrypted phone system — which was really run by the FBI.

About 1,000 people have been arrested worldwide, tons of drugs, hundreds of guns and tens of millions of dollars in cash and assets were seized, and multiple murders averted, authorities said.

There was a Canadian component, but while police in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden crowed about the wild success of the innovative three-year honeypot sting, the RCMP would not say what the Canadian content was.

Arrests and seizures started Monday in Australia and New Zealand and announcements revealing the remarkable operation rolled across Europe and into the United States Tuesday.

“This was an unprecedented operation in terms of its massive scale, innovative strategy and technological and investigative achievement,” said Randy Grossman, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California.

“Hardened encrypted devices usually provide an impenetrable shield against law enforcement surveillance and detection. The supreme irony here is that the very devices that these criminals were using to hide from law enforcement were actually beacons for law enforcement.”

The operation’s birth sprang from the death of a Canadian technology company.

Spy phones 'in gangsters' back pockets' betray hundreds to police

Hi-tech sting leads to global crackdown on organized crime, over 800 detained

It started when a Vancouver company called Phantom Secure was hit by the FBI in 2018. The U.S. describe Phantom Secure as a provider of “secure communications to high-level drug traffickers and other criminal organization leaders.”

Phantom Secure was selling hardened encrypted devices, which are modified cell phones that maximize privacy and security to connect with others using a similar device with encrypted messages.

While there are many legitimate uses for encryption — sensitive business deals, investigative journalism, human rights work in dangerous jurisdictions, for example — few outside the criminal world will pay the premium

 for a hardened device while tolerating its limited functions, such as no camera, web browsing, or GPS.When Phantom Secure was brought down, its CEO imprisoned and its servers seized, its customers looked for replacement platforms. Popular options included France-based EncroChat and another Vancouver product from Sky Global.

Another competitor, though, was in development, trying to build the “next generation” of underworld secrecy.

It was called AN0M.

One of those working to build AN0M was a veteran in the criminal use of secure devices. He previously distributed Phantom Secure and Sky Global handsets and invested heavily to create AN0M, but when facing charges on other matters, made authorities an offer they couldn’t refuse.

He offered his baby to the FBI to raise as its own.

© Handout AN0M’s marketing pitch was “designed by criminals for criminals.”

Working with the Australian Federal Police investigators who cracked Phantom’s encryption, master keys to unlock the secret codes were built into the AN0M system. It placed a tiny bit of computer code into each message to allow investigators to gather, track, decrypt and store messages.

In essence, it sent a blind copy of every message to police.

Once the FBI got this new platform working, the cooperating source convinced some of his existing clients to sign up for it.

In October 2018, the source started offering the devices to three former Phantom Secure distributors to sell. They allegedly took on roles as administrators, recruiting new users to AN0M. A U.S. indictment alleges they are all linked to transnational crime groups and names them as Joseph Hakan Ayik, a Turkish citizen, Domenico Catanzariti, an Australian citizen, and Maximilian Rivkin, a Swedish citizen.

They unwittingly reached out to clients who had established reputations and criminal ties, which authorities say included outlaw bikers, Italian Mafia and drug lords.

AN0M’s marketing pitch was “designed by criminals for criminals.”

Some early adopters became “influencers” — making the new system trusted and trendy in the underworld. These were “well-known crime figures who wield significant influence,” according to court documents.

In Canada, AN0M cost approximately $1,700 for six months of service.

The FBI’s source, the one who turned over the AN0M business, has been working with the FBI since 2018 hoping for a lower sentence on charges he is facing. He has a prior conviction for drug importation and spent six years in prison.

While he helped promote AN0M, the FBI paid him $120,000 plus $59,508 in travel and living expenses, the FBI said.

Australian police did an early test run, with court authorized monitoring of 50 AN0M devices, giving officers a detailed view of some of Australia’s most sophisticated criminal organizations, police said.

“It grew organically based on word of mouth,” said FBI Special Agent Nicholas Cheviron, in a sworn affidavit.

By the summer of 2019, AN0M was gaining traction. Demand for devices was expanding beyond Australia. As the FBI was sending out devices, Australian police continued to monitor them.

The new legal ground this operation covers is reflected in the caution the FBI used. The United States was “geo-fenced,” meaning devices inside the U.S. were not monitored by U.S. authorities, but by the Australians, who only alerted the FBI in cases of an imminent threat to life.

In 2020, when it was revealed that EncroChat had been hacked by European authorities, and again in March, when Sky Global’s CEO was indicted in the United States, clients scrambled to join AN0M.

© Australian Federal Police via Reuters A person is detained by Australian Federal Police during Operation Ironside.

By the end of the operation, Suzanne Turner, Special Agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego Field office, said there were about 12,000 AN0M devices in use, sending 27 million messages through 100 countries in 45 languages.

The top five countries for AN0M use were Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, and Serbia. There were active devices in Canada, the FBI said.

On Monday and Tuesday, authorities moved against a long list of targets in 16 countries.

About 800 arrests were being processed, including of six law enforcement officials caught working with criminals.

In Australia, the underworld damage was particularly harsh, with suspects arrested who are allegedly linked to “Australian-based Italian mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs, Asian crime syndicate and Albanian organized crime.”

In the United States, 17 people were indicted, listed variously as distributors, administrators and underworld influencers for AN0M. They are citizens of eight countries. Six of them are Australian and four are Dutch. Eight were in custody as of midday Tuesday, the others remaining international fugitives.

It is uncertain what role Canada played to deserve its flag being on the FBI’s Operation Trojan Shield logo. The RCMP said the operation was “conducted in consultation with the RCMP.”

Police in Australia gave the RCMP credit for help in the early days of its part of the probe, called Operation Ironside.

“This operation demonstrates that law enforcement will not stop in our pursuit of criminal activity related to encrypted criminal communications,” the RCMP said in a written statement to National Post, but questions on specific roles, actions or results went unanswered.

It is possible the Canadian role remains secret, or equally possible there wasn’t much recent involvement to report.

As the sting was in full swing, someone figured out AN0M was fishy.

In March, a tech-savvy blogger examined an AN0M device. His curiosity was piqued by an alert AN0M sent to clients after the Sky Global breach, assuring them of AN0M’s safety. His conclusion was blunt: “STAY AWAY FROM ANOM IF YOU VALUE YOUR PRIVACY & SAFEY,” the blog concluded, misspelling “safety.”

“THEY ARE COMPROMISED, LIARS AND YOUR DATA IS RUNNING VIA USA.”

It is uncertain who paid attention to his warning, other than the FBI.

For years, a growing stable of criminal clientele had bought into the lie that AN0M phones were secure.

Officials were in awe of the trust criminals placed in it, dropping the coy and coded language typically used for explicit detail, about what was being shipped, to what address, and when, allowing police to intervene without revealing how they knew.

Police say an immense amount of data and information accrued during the lengthy probe is still being investigated.

“Countless spin-off operations will be carried out in the weeks to come,” according to Europol, the European Union’s police agency.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

Tyson Foods sets net-zero emissions goal, but falls short on farming project
By Tom Polansek 

© Reuters/Mike Blake FILE PHOTO: Tyson food meat products are shown in this photo illustration in Encinitas

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Tyson Foods set a goal on Wednesday to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050, after missing a deadline to improve U.S. farming practices as part of an earlier effort to cut emissions.


The new target by the biggest U.S. meatpacker by sales expands a previous goal of reducing emissions by 30% by 2030.

To achieve net-zero emissions, Tyson said it will plan for U.S. operations to use 50% renewable energy by 2030 and extend a program to verify sustainable production practices for cattle, among other steps.

"We believe progress requires accountability and transparency," said John Tyson, chief sustainability officer.

Three years ago, Tyson Foods pledged to improve environmental practices on two million acres (809,370 hectares)of U.S. farmland by 2020. So far, though, it has enrolled just 408,000 acres, according to the company.

Tyson said it now plans to meet its two-million-acre target by 2025.

The company does not own grain farms but has influence over farming as the U.S. meat industry's largest buyer of feed corn. Two million acres is enough land to grow corn to feed all Tyson chickens for a year.

The 408,000 acres represent land enrolled in a 2019 pilot program by Farmers Business Network, which sells agricultural supplies online, according to Tyson.

A pilot program run by another company, MyFarms, enrolled 11,000 acres in 2019, Tyson said. However, Tyson removed these acres last year due to a lack of data and discontinued MyFarms' pilot in 2021, according to the meatpacker.

For Tyson Foods, it was a big learning experience to determine how to obtain "high-quality information about what's going on at the farm in a way that is as frictionless as possible for all parties," John Tyson said.

Interruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic also hindered land stewardship work last year, Tyson said in a sustainability report.

Meatpackers including Tyson came under fire in 2020 as COVID-19 infections tore through slaughterhouses.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek; editing by Richard Pullin)

Gunmen kill 10 mine sweepers at charity's camp in north Afghanistan

By Zarrin Ahmed

A HALO Trust worker is moved to an ambulance on Wednesday following an attack in Baghlan, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. Photo by Ajmal Omari/EPA-EFE


June 9 (UPI) -- Nearly a dozen mine sweepers from a British-American charity have been killed in northern Afghanistan during an attack on their office, authorities said.

Officials said the attack occurred late Tuesday at the HALO Trust organization's camp in Baghlan.

Ten deminers were killed and several others were injured in the attack. Baghlan is located about 100 miles northwest of Kabul.

HALO Trust, a mine clearance group, said more than 100 men were in the camp after finishing demining work in nearby minefields.

"We strongly condemn the attack on our staff, who were carrying out humanitarian work to save lives," the organization told Tolo News.

No group initially claimed responsibility for the attack, but Kabul's interior ministry blamed the Taliban. The militant group denied involvement.

"The local Taliban... came to our aid and scared the assailants off," HALO Trust CEO James Cowan told the BBC.

Violence across Afghanistan has increased since the United States formally began withdrawing troops last month after two decades of a constant presence. U.S. President Joe Biden has said the withdrawal will be complete by September. Earlier this month, U.S. Central Command said the pullout was almost 45% complete.

Several districts in Baghlan province have experienced fighting between the Taliban and government forces.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 
GAO urges DOD to update weapon programs cost oversight

While F-35 procurements have brought down the Pentagon's overall cost of weapons systems development, a GAO report says the overall cost of these programs increased in the last year. Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense

June 8 (UPI) -- The U.S . Government Accountability Office in a report published Tuesday urged the Pentagon to update its oversight approach on it's costliest weapons programs to improve weapon system acquisition.

The GAO made the recommendation in its 19th annual report on the Department of Defense weapon programs, which it is obligated to conduct under federal law.

The report found that many weapon programs have acquisition approaches that could result in cost and schedule challenges that have led to the DOD weapon system acquisition being placed on the High-Risk List for more than two decades.

GAO outlines cost growth issues in a wide range of weapons programs, with specific focus on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- noted as the Pentagon's current costliest program -- and that it's costs have gone down since the agency's previous report because of procurement reductions.

RELATED  Second Ghost Fleet Overlord USV finishes trip to Pacific


The DOD now has six acquisition "pathways" designed to account for the type of weapon system, including major capability acquisition and middle-tier acquisition pathways used by the programs GAO reviewed, and timeframe its needed, but more options are needed, according to the GAO report.

"In particular, DOD has yet to develop an overarching data collection and reporting strategy for programs transitioning between acquisition pathways or conducting multiple efforts using the same pathway to deliver the intended capability," the report stated.

"The lack of strategy not only limits DOD's visibility into these programs but also hinders the quality of its congressional reporting and makes the full cost and schedule for the eventual weapon system more difficult to ascertain," GAO said in a summary of the report.

RELATED Pentagon to maintain policy prohibiting display of Pride flag

The GAO added in the report that the DOD plans to invest over $1.79 trillion in its costliest weapon programs, but not all costs are reported.

The report carries a recommendation for multiple reporting capabilities in order to provide more information on each individual program effort, overall planned costs and a schedule for delivery of the program's expected capability.

Primarily, major defense acquisition program costs are reported, but the DOD is increasingly using the middle-tier pathway to acquire weapons programs. This acquisition tier does not, however, include potential investments beyond the current cost or cover classified programs.

RELATED  DoD expects to wrap investigation of PFAS pollution by 2024

The F-35 program, the Pentagon's largest, reported a procurement cost decrease of $23.9 billion in fiscal year 2020, "primarily due to lower prime and subcontractor labor rates," the report noted.

Earlier this year, however, the GAO reported that a Pentagon project to continuously modernize the F-35 has seen about $2 billion in cost growth since 2019.

And while F-35 procurement reductions led to an overall weapons program portfolio cost decrease since GAO's last annual report, delivery and test delays and poor system performance led to a growth in costs in the last year, the report said.

RELATED GAO report finds spiraling costs in F-35 modernization program


Meanwhile, the DOD continues to expand its MTA programs, which the GAO could not assess due to inconsistent cost reporting.

The GAO added many weapon programs failed to attain knowledge that could limit cost growth and deliver weapon systems faster, and "they inconsistently implemented leading practices," including "conducting certain types of cybersecurity assessments during development."

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Survey of nearby universe reveals surprising diversity of stellar nurseries

For the PHANGS census, researchers surveyed more than 100,000 stellar nurseries located in 90 different galaxies throughout the nearby universe. Photo by ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/PHANGS, S. Dagnello (NRAO)

June 8 (UPI) -- Stellar nurseries in the nearby universe come in a surprising variety of shapes and sizes, according to a new cosmic survey.

Every galaxy's stars are formed from dense clouds of gas and dust called mollecular clouds, or stellar nurseries. Previously, astronomers thought stellar nurseries were largely the same across the cosmos.

For the latest census, called the PHANGS project, scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or the ALAM telescope, located in Chile, to image 100,000 stellar nurseries in 90 different galaxies, all positioned within the nearby universe.

The results of the PHANGS survey, published Tuesday in the journal Astrophysical Journal Supplement, showed the appearance and behavior of stellar nurseries varies from place to place.

RELATEDMergers may have stunted growth of early galaxies

"This is the first time that we have ever taken millimeter-wave images of many nearby galaxies that have the same sharpness and quality as optical pictures," lead author Adam Leroy said in a press release.

"And while optical pictures show us light from stars, these ground-breaking new images show us the molecular clouds that form those stars," said Leroy, an associate professor of astronomy at Ohio State University.

Leroy and his colleagues likened the diversity of stellar nurseries to the differences between different cities and regions across the United States.

RELATEDAstronomers find carbon monoxide gas flowing from distant star system

Though people, houses and neighborhoods share many similarities across the country, they also take on unique characteristics in different cities, states and regions.

"To understand how stars form, we need to link the birth of a single star back to its place in the universe," said study co-author Eva Schinnerer. "It's like linking a person to their home, neighborhood, city, and region."

"If a galaxy represents a city, then the neighborhood is the spiral arm, the house the star-forming unit, and nearby galaxies are neighboring cities in the region," Schinnerer said, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and principal investigator on the PHANGS project. "These observations have taught us that the 'neighborhood' has small but pronounced effects on where and how many stars are born."

RELATEDAstronomers observe stellar winds from aging stars in unprecedented detail

The survey results showed that characteristics of different stellar nurseries -- their molecular gas properties and star formation rates -- depended on where in a galaxy they were located.

Stellar nurseries in galaxy disks were different than stellar nurseries in stellar bars, as were stellar nurseries in spiral arms and galaxy centers.

PHANG images showed molecular clouds in the centers of galaxies were generally bigger, denser and more turbulent than those located in bars and arms.

The survey findings also showed the position of a nursery within a galaxy seems to influence how quickly the star formation process depletes a cloud's supply of gas and dust.

"By mapping different types of galaxies and the diverse range of environments that exist within galaxies, we are tracing the whole range of conditions under which star-forming clouds of gas live in the present-day universe," said co-author Guillermo Blanc.

"This allows us to measure the impact that many different variables have on the way star formation happens," said Blanc, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Though astronomers have previously used ALMA to study stellar nurseries, previous surveys have focused on stellar clouds within single galaxies or parts of galaxies.

The new atlas contains 90 of the best maps ever made, according to study co-author Erik Rosolowsky, who said they reveal where the next generation of stars is going to form.

"The PHANGS project is a new form of cosmic cartography that allows us to see the diversity of galaxies in a new light, literally," said Rosolowsky, an associate professor of physics at the University of Alberta.

"We are finally seeing the diversity of star-forming gas across many galaxies and are able to understand how they are changing over time. It was impossible to make these detailed maps before ALMA," he said.

New spacecraft will use lasers to transmit video, data in seconds

An illustration depicts the Laser Interconnect and Networking Communication System (LINCS) satellites built for launch in 2021 by San Diego-based General Atomics. Image courtesy of General Atomics

ORLANDO, Fla., June 9 (UPI) -- New space missions being launched this summer will attempt to revolutionize space communications by using laser beams to quickly transmit large amounts of data, including high-definition video from the moon.

Two missions by the U.S. government will test such lasers, which use invisible, infrared light beams

NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration will explore the best ways to beam information to the Earth from orbit using lasers. And a separate demonstration for the Department of Defense, known as LINCS, will focus on beaming laser communications between two small satellites.

Also, NASA's Orion spacecraft being prepared for launch later this year on an uncrewed lunar mission will use lasers on future missions to send high-definition video of the moon back to Earth.

RELATEDSecond test of Air Force's drone-killing laser may start later this year

The main goal for NASA's laser demonstration spacecraft is to determine how Earth's atmosphere, especially clouds, influences laser links to the surface, David Israel, NASA architect for exploration and space communications, said in an interview.

The lasers will allow "a whole day's worth of video or observation data to just be blasted down in one quick pass," Israel said.

Israel worked on a new $310 million mission. Scheduled for launch this summer, the spacecraft consists of receivers and a laser transmitter and is no bigger than a king-sized mattress, according to NASA.

Launch provider ULA postponed a June 23 target date to evaluate an issue with the rocket's engines and hasn't yet set a new date.

The relay demonstration satellite will orbit the Earth for years, eventually testing the transmission of large amounts of data from the International Space Station to ground stations in Hawaii and New Mexico, Israel said.

RELATEDLockheed, General Motors team up on lunar rover plan

If clouds are too thick at the intended ground station, laser transmitters could be adjusted to find other receivers, he said.

"We have models and predictions, but we don't have much in the way of actual data to really characterize how bad the effects of weather will be," Israel said. "We will measure the impact of weather so we can better predict good transmission conditions."

The light beams of infrared lasers travel no faster than radio waves, but lasers can pack 10 to 100 times more data into a relatively quick beam. Such density would allow transmission of maps for the entire surface of Mars in about nine days, compared to nine months for radio waves, NASA said.

A NASA laser experiment satellite, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, or LCRD, is prepared for launch at the agency's Maryland-based Goddard Space Flight Center. Photo courtesy of NASA

Laser communications will aid a new era of spaceflight for private companies, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, said Debra Emmons, general manager of communications technologies and engineering at the non-profit, California-based Aerospace Corp., a think tank for the U.S. defense department.

"The ability to communicate and operate interchangeably between space assets will be critical ... as we set sights to the moon and beyond," Emmons said in an email.

"The sheer distances require laser-based communication -- not for speed, but for smaller size, weight, and power of optical terminal payloads compared to larger radio frequency [equipment]."

Laser communication is more secure than radio transmission due to the tighter, narrow beam of data, Emmons said.

"The chances of intercepting a laser beam are much smaller," she said. "One has to be in the path of a laser beam to intercept any data, whereas radio waves scatter, and therefore can be intercepted more easily."

The study of such lasers is expanding rapidly, Peter Delfyett, professor of physics, optics and photonics at the University of Central Florida, said in an interview.

"We're talking about massive amounts of information to be transmitted quickly, within a few seconds or minutes," Delfyett said.

He compared laser communications to fiber-optics on the ground, without the use of fiber.

Infrared lasers carry no significant risk to people in most circumstances and would not be visible unless someone was wearing infrared goggles, Delfyett said.

The public may witness the improvements in communication, thanks to lasers, when NASA sends Artemis missions to the moon, NASA's Israel said.

"When that first flyby of the moon happens and high-definition video is streaming back, that'll be coming through an optical [laser] link," he said.

An illustration depicts infrared lasers beaming data to a ground station from space at speeds many times faster that radio waves. Image courtesy of NASA

 Study: Death rates from chronic conditions, 'deaths of despair' rising in rural U.S.

By  Steven Reinberg, HealthDay News

In rural America, more people die from chronic health conditions and substance abuse than in suburbs and cities, and the gap is widening.

Researchers report in a new study that the difference in rural and urban death rates tripled over the past 20 years mostly due to deaths among middle-aged white men and women

"We looked at all-cause death, and found that instead of the difference in this disparity getting better over time, as you might expect as our economy progresses and our health system improves, we've actually seen that differences really multiplied," said lead researcher Dr. Haider Warraich, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and the VA Boston Healthcare System.

This gap is partly due to access to care, but other factors also contribute, he said.

RELATEDCOVID-19 vaccination rates lower in U.S. rural areas among all groups

In terms of access, rural areas have seen a wave of hospital closures driven largely by economics, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Warraich said.

"But it's hard to disconnect health from other factors in our societies," he said. "I think it's linked to the overall economic outlook of rural America as well, and also, health behaviors that contribute to poor health, such as poor nutrition, lack of exercise, smoking, substance use, etc.

In rural areas, death from conditions like heart and lung diseases as well as so-called "deaths of despair" from drugs, alcohol and suicide have risen significantly, and are likely to continue doing so, Warraich said.

RELATEDFinding a doctor in rural America getting tougher, experts say

This is a huge problem, he said, noting that 60 million Americans live in rural areas.

"It's hard to divorce health from the overall economy," Warraich said. "But I think one thing that we really need to do is re-imagine rural health care, really think about what are the things that make an effective rural health care system -- and it might not be just simply hospitals."

Bolstering a lack of high-quality primary and preventive care is essential, he said.

RELATEDStudy: Black adults in rural areas more likely to die from heart-linked causes

Warraich predicted that health care trends in rural America are likely to spread to suburban and urban areas.

"A lot of what we're seeing already in our society, especially with regard to the challenges of rural America, are a consequence of this public health crisis," he said.

"I think, often times, there's a feeling that what happens in these areas stays there, and it's not a problem for the rest of the country. That might become harder to ignore as the crisis evolves and transforms into something that might be even greater," Warraich said.

Bill Finerfrock, executive director of the National Association of Rural Health Clinics in Alexandria, Va., said that unfortunately, the findings are not surprising.

"They only serve to reinforce the long-held understanding that there are ongoing and pervasive health disparities between urban and rural residents," he said.

Finerfrock, who was not part of the study, said while it cited no cause for the stark differences in death rates, the opioid crisis is probably a factor -- especially in rising death rates among rural Americans between 25 and 64 years of age.

He warned that the loss of health care clinics as well as hospitals over the last 10 years may make these disparities even worse in the years ahead.

For the study, Warraich and his colleagues used federal government health data for 1999 through 2019.

They found that age-adjusted death rates dropped in both rural and urban areas over that period. But the gap widened dramatically as death rates rose among white rural residents between 25 and 64.

Over the study period, rural death rates increased 12% for that group. Although death rates dropped among rural Black residents, they still had a higher death rate than all other groups in both rural and urban areas, researchers noted.

Nationwide, the racial difference in death rates was cut in half over the period.

The research was published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Mark Holmes, director of the North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center in Chapel Hill, also reviewed the findings.

"This study adds to existing evidence by showing how individual populations contribute -- the fact that, for example, mortality among rural whites is increasing. The higher mortality from COVID-19 in rural areas is yet another example," he said.

Breaking down the rural trends, as the authors do, can provide better understanding of causes, Holmes added.

More information

Learn more about disparities in rural health care at the Rural Health Information Hub.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved. 

U.N. : Southern Myanmar faces exodus, 'mass deaths' with military in control

A demonstrator walks near a barricade during an opposition protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myaar, on March 27. File Photo by EPA-

June 9 (UPI) -- The United Nations says about 100,000 people in Myanmar's Kayah State have fled because of deteriorating security and the humanitarian situation in the country, which has now been under military control for more than four months.

The global body says civilians living in the southern Myanmar border state, adjacent to Thailand, have been targeted by indiscriminate attacks by security forces, which has led to severe displacement.Officials said those fleeing are in need of food, water, shelter, fuel and access to healthcare. The United Nations said it's been able to help those seeking safe shelter and persons who decide to stay and wait out the violence.

"Many of them are currently seeking safety in host communities and forests across Kayah and southern parts of neighboring Shan State," the United Nations in Myanmar said in a statement Tuesday.

RELATEDChina highlights ties with ASEAN ahead of 30th anniversary meeting

"This crisis could push people across international borders seeking safety, as already seen in other parts of the country."

The military junta staged a coup on Feb. 1 and forcefully removed Myanmar's civilian leaders from power, arguing that parliamentary elections last fall were illegitimate. The military has since charged leaders, including head of state Aung San Suu Kyi, with crimes and physically cracked down on opposition demonstrators in streets nationwide.

The United Nations in Myanmar also blamed security forces for delaying humanitarian supplies in critical areas.

RELATEDVeteran Myanmar activist with brother in military dead, report says

Tom Andrews, U.N. special rapporteur for Myanmar, warned on Tuesday that the military's suppressive tactics are threatening the lives of thousands of people in Kayah and Karenni states.

"Let me blunt. Mass deaths from starvation, disease, and exposure, on a scale we have not yet seen since the February 1 coup, could occur in Kayah State absent immediate action," he said in a statement.

"Any pressure or leverage U.N. member states can put on the junta must now be exerted so that junta leader Min Aung Hlaing will immediately ... open access roads and allow lifesaving aid to reach those in need, and stop terrorizing the population by ceasing the aerial bombardment, shelling and shooting of civilians."

RELATEDOusted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi seen in court for first time since coup

UN report: Aquaculture linked with harmful algal blooms

Researchers say that rising seafood demand and coastal development may be linked to an increase in more harmful algal blooms, such as the one pictured in the Baltic Sea. Photo by European Space Agency

June 8 (UPI) -- New analysis of thousands of harmful algae blooms, or HABs, has revealed links between increases in the damage caused by algae blooms and human activities, including aquaculture development.

The international study, organized and funded by UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, featured several dozen scientists from all over the world. Scientists analyzed the timing and extent of more than 9,500 HABs over the last 33 years.

The analysis -- published Tuesday in the journal Communications and Earth and Environment -- revealed strong links between algae blooms and increased stress on marine resources, undermining the notion that global warming and rising ocean temperatures are the primary driver of harmful algae blooms.

"There has been a widely-stated contention that HABs worldwide are increasing in distribution, frequency or intensity, so a quantitative global assessment is long overdue," lead author Gustaaf M. Hallegraeff, a professor at the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, said in a press release.

By amassing data on thousands of HABs, researchers were able to establish a baseline with which to compare future changes in the frequency, origins and extent of harmful algae blooms.

Records from a pair of databases, the Harmful Algae Event Database and the Biodiversity Information System, showed HABs are increasing in the Caribbean, South America, Mediterranean and North Asia.

Harmful algae blooms are occurring slightly less frequently, however, along the West Coast of the United States and along the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.

RELATED Blue-green algae blooms can release harmful toxins into the air

Almost half of all the analyzed HABs yielded seafood toxins, while approximately 7 percent resulted in mass plant and animals deaths.

Researchers had to work hard to standardize the HAB records from different parts of the world. HAB monitoring efforts are more robust, for example, in places where aquaculture development has dramatically increased.

Even when accounting for this, researchers found strong links between aquaculture development and harmful algae events.

While scientists suspect increases in nutrient pollution from aquaculture activity can help explain increases in HAB events, they suggest more analysis is necessary to confirm the link.

Given that algal blooms serve as a direct threat to both human health and the health of marine ecosystems, it's imperative that scientists work out the connections between aquaculture and HABs.

"Overexploitation acts as a natural multiplier of the effects of HABs, leading to an increase in impacts independent of an actual trend in HABs," said co-author Adriana Zingone, researcher at Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Italy.

Unlike previous studies, which have suggested HABs are increasing exponentially in all parts of the world, the latest findings suggest more nuanced trends.

Still, the scientists suggest it is imperative that marine researchers and policy makers improve their ability to forecast the threats posed by HABs.

"As the human population continues to increase in tandem with resource demands, HABs will predictably constitute a serious threat in terms of seafood safety and security, a hindrance to recreational uses of the sea, and a problem for the tourism industry," said study co-author Henrik Oksfeldt Enevoldsen.

"Occurrences of harmful species over time and their human impacts can be expected to change locally, regionally and globally alongside the effects that climate, hydrography and human pressure impose on the coastal environment," said Enevoldsen, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen.