Provisional estimates show drug overdose deaths declined about 3.1% nationwide, but multiple states reported increases of more than 20%.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s provisional estimated overdose deaths in 2023 declined about 3.1% to 107,543. That’s down from 111,029 in 2022. Two out of every three deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a cheap and potent opioid smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.
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A new report from Ember-climate.org, which describes itself as “an independent energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy” touting that renewable energy provided 30% of electricity generation in 2023 is getting a lot of attention, with reports in The Guardian, Associated Press, and Reuters, and CNN.
“A permanent decline in fossil fuel use in the power sector at a global level is now inevitable,” the report by Ember declares.
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2023 was a record year for domestic natural gas consumption, and its supply wouldn’t have been possible without record U.S. production, led by Texas, according to several reports.
Texas produced the equivalent of one-third of the natural gas consumed last year, with Texas producers breaking multiple records last year, The Center Square reported.
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The year 2023 saw an increase in the number of police officers hired for the first time in several years, after widespread anti-police sentiment as a result of the race riots in the summer of 2020.
According to ABC News, more sworn officers were hired in 2023 than in any of the preceding four years. At the same time, fewer officers resigned or retired than in recent previous years. The information comes from 214 different law enforcement agencies responding to a study conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).
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Home prices for the 10 largest cities in the U.S. rose by 7.0% year-over-year in December, up from 6.3% in the previous month, according to Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index report.
The top 20 cities had a slightly less pronounced increase, with prices rising 6.1% year-over-year as of December, up from 5.4% in November, according to the index. The increase in costs is coupled with a rise in the average for a 30-year mortgage rate, which ticked up to 6.90% the week of Feb. 22 after declining slightly from the recent peak of 7.80% that was seen in October, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
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Pharmaceutical companies set median starting list prices 35% higher in 2023 than the previous year, despite the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to tamp down on surging costs, Reuters reported Friday.
The median list price for a drug being placed on the market, many of which were for rare diseases, was $300,000 in 2023, which is up from a median price of $222,000 in 2022, according to an analysis by Reuters of 47 drugs. The Biden administration has made it a goal to tame drug prices, announcing steps like imposing automatic rebates to Medicare for drugmakers that raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation, which does not cover the starting list price.
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An analysis by the news media watchdog group AllSides Technology finds roughly 63% of stories last year on the Google News were from “left and left-leaning news sources.”
In the new analysis released Thursday, 937 stories were reviewed from Oct. 30 to Nov. 14, 2023.
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The latest report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reveals that American adults lost a record amount of money to acts of fraud in the year 2023, totaling around $10 billion.
As reported by Axios, the number of Americans who fell victim to fraudulent scams was roughly 690,000. The average lost amount per person was $500.
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Ford lost billions of dollars on its electric vehicle (EV) product lines last year, according to corporate documents.
The company lost $4.7 billion on EVs in 2023, a greater loss than the $4.5 billion the company expected it would lose in 2023 at mid-year, according to a summary of the company’s annual earnings. The company pointed to “an extremely competitive pricing environment” as a key reason for the losses.
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More chain stores closed in 2023 as a result of high inflationary costs, with the trend continuing in 2024 led by the iconic department store, Macy’s.
In 2023, retail stores, pharmaceutical and fast-food chains continued a trend of previous years: declaring bankruptcy and closing their doors or shutting down some locations to cut costs, citing inflation, higher costs, and profit losses.
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