Deaths

Civilians left increasingly exposed as a dangerous new front opens up in the country’s decades-old conflictAs night fell over southern Colombia, and a group of children began their weekly Tuesday football match, a drone appeared overhead.The children looked up, and the drone dropped a grenade, its blast killing a 10-year-old boy and injuring 12 more civilians. The child’s death, in southern Cauca in 2024, marked the first known time a person in the country had been killed in a weaponised drone attack. Continue reading...

Trump administration accused of cutting military’s civilian harm program in light of US strike on girls school in IranThe Pentagon has quietly dismantled a program it is legally required to operate to prevent and respond to civilian deaths in US military operations, according to its internal watchdog.A report released by the department’s inspector general concluded the US military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy, and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE). Continue reading...

The US-based site, whose operators were fined £950,000 by Ofcom, appears in Google’s search results and can be accessed in UKGoogle has denied breaching the Online Safety Act by promoting a “nihilistic” suicide forum associated with 164 deaths in the UK where it is supposed to be banned.The UK’s internet regulator fined the forum’s US-based operator £950,000 because the site, which “presents a material risk of significant harm”, can still be accessed in the UK despite British laws criminalising encouraging or assisting suicide. Continue reading...

Ofcom attempting to block UK access to site cited in multiple coroners’ reportsA nihilistic internet suicide forum implicated in over 160 UK deaths has been fined £950,000 by the online regulator in its latest attempt to shut it down.Ofcom said the US-based website remains accessible in the UK despite over a year of warnings. Online safety campaigners have accused the regulator of taking an “interminable” amount of time to act. Continue reading...

Seventh body found near railroad tracks thought to be connected to what authorities call ‘potential human smuggling event’Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailFederal agents are investigating the deaths of at least six people thought to be immigrants found inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the border with Mexico in Laredo, Texas, on Sunday as a “potential human smuggling event”.Officials reportedly have also said the death of a seventh person whose body was found near railroad tracks outside San Antonio, Texas – 150 miles (241km) to the north – may be connected to the case.Guardian staff contributed reporting Continue reading...

• Between 1999-2022, US mortality rates exceeded other high-income countries by 38% in 2022, leading to 12.7 million preventable 'missing Americans' deaths. • Cardiovascular diseases topped causes, followed by metabolic conditions like diabetes, Alzheimer's, and drug/alcohol complications, per Boston University study in JAMA Network Open. • Excess deaths rose steadily through 2019 and spiked during COVID-19, highlighting failures in health, social, and economic policies.

Findings come after third-hottest April on record globally and amid fears of more brutal European summer weatherEconomic inequality adds more than 100,000 deaths to the vast toll from heat and cold in Europe each year, research has found.Cutting the level of inequality to that of Europe’s most equal region, as measured by the Gini index, would reduce temperature-related mortality by as much as 30%, equating to 109,866 people, the study found. Continue reading...