deconstruct

A growing number of rural hospitals have been shuttering their labor and delivery units, forcing pregnant women to travel longer distances for care or face giving birth in an emergency room. Fewer than half of rural hospitals now have maternity units, prompting government officials and families to scramble for answers. One solution gaining ground across the U.S. is freestanding midwife-led birth centers, but those also often rely on nearby hospitals when serious complications arise.

The closures have worsened so-called “maternity care deserts" — counties with no hospitals or birth centers that offer obstetric care and no OB providers. More than two million women of childbearing age live in such areas, the majority of which are rural.

Ultimately, doctors and researchers say, having fewer hospital maternity units makes having babies less safe. One study showed rural residents have a 9% greater probability of facing life-threatening complications or even death from pregnancy and birth compared to those in urban areas — and having less access to care plays a part.

“Moms have complications everywhere. Babies have complications everywhere,” said Dr. Eric Scott Palmer, a neonatologist who practiced at Henry County Medical Center in rural Tennessee before it ended obstetric services this month. “There will be people hurt. It’s not a question of if — simply when.”

The issue has been building for years: The American Hospital Association says at least 89 obstetric units closed in rural hospitals between 2015 and 2019. More have shuttered since.

The main reasons for closures are decreasing numbers of births; staffing issues; low reimbursement from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people; and financial distress, said Peiyin Hung, deputy director of the University of South Carolina’s Rural and Minority Health Research Center and co-author of research based on a survey of hospitals.

Two people have been hit with multiple charges after a 1-year-old boy died and three other young children were hospitalized after suspected opioid exposure at a Bronx, New York, day care on Friday.

Drug production equipment was also found inside the day care following the death Nicholas Dominici and the hospitalization of three other young children, according to the New York City Police Department.

Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, and 36-year-old Grei Mendez, now face 11 charges, including murder, manslaughter and assault.

A kilo press was discovered by police executing a search warrant inside 2707 Morris Avenue following Nicholas' death, police said.

The day care, for children between 6 weeks and 12 years old, recently opened in January and just passed a surprise visit from city inspectors last week with no violations found, officials said.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP), the largest anti-hunger initiative around the globe, is grappling with the worst funding shortage in its 60-year history and "we are in a desperate situation," Executive Director Cindy McCain said on Sunday.

"It's a combination of things -- it's COVID, it's climate change, it's conflict and also the cost of being able to do business," McCain told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl about the reasons behind the lack of money. "Those things combined and, of course, a world that has kind of grown tired of all this. There's a great malaise right now within countries about foreign aid and giving."

"The bottom line is those that are going to suffer [are] those who can't afford to," McCain said.

In September, the WFP said it "has been struggling to meet the global need for food assistance .... And for the first time ever, WFP has seen contributions decreasing while needs steadily increase." The organization has already had to make "significant cuts in hot spots such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Jordan, Palestine, South Sudan, Somalia, and Syria."

Wisconsin Republicans are considering impeaching a newly elected liberal Supreme Court justice in the state over comments she made as a candidate about redistricting and for receiving donations from the state Democratic Party.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) announced this week the formation of an impeachment criteria panel as Republicans weigh ousting Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose win in April established a 4-3 liberal majority on the court.

Protasiewicz has yet to hear a case, but the high court was asked in August to hear several cases on Wisconsin’s legislative maps.

Republicans point to previous comments Protasiewicz made about the state’s maps, in which she called calling them “rigged.”

Protasiewicz declined to say during the election how she would rule on the issue, and she has not determined whether she will recuse herself from the case.

Videos posted online on Sunday showed the iconic Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower engulfed in flames.

"This is truly painful," said Tagreed Abdin, an architect of the building, in a post on Twitter.

Air strikes and ground battles have continued in Khartoum and other towns and cities since fighting broke out in April.

Over one million people have been forced to flee the country, the UN has said.

Located near the River Nile, the 18-storey oil firm skyscraper is one of the most recognisable landmarks in Khartoum.

Ms Abdin said it defined the skyline of the city, and lamented "such senseless destruction".

President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, secretly met in Europe this weekend with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to two U.S. officials, a significant step in U.S. efforts to repair deeply strained relations with China.

Sullivan and Wang Yi held discussions Saturday and Sunday in Malta as “part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly managing the relationship,” one of the officials said.

Their talks could lay the groundwork for a much-anticipated meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping this fall aimed at easing tensions between the world’s two largest economies in the wake of the surveillance balloon saga and China's support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Administration officials have been preparing for a possible meeting in November around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit in San Francisco.

A meeting between the two leaders would come at a critical moment in the U.S.-China relations. There are a range of economic and security issues at stake, including export controls, the war in Ukraine and concerns in the U.S. that China could move on Taiwan.

The arrival of US soldiers for a peacekeeper training exercise in Armenia has rankled the Russian government, which has for decades acted as the sole security guarantor for the former Soviet republic. The 10-day “Eagle Partner” exercise, which began Monday, involves 85 US and 175 Armenian soldiers and aims to prepare the Armenians to take part in international peacekeeping missions.

The exercise, while small in scale, is the latest in a series of what Russia’s foreign ministry has deemed “unfriendly actions” taken by its traditional ally.

Armenia recently sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine for the first time, and its parliament is set to ratify the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute – meaning it would be obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he were to set foot in the country, which Russia has long viewed as its own backyard.

Armenia’s flirtation with new international partners has been spurred by its frustration that Russia has been unable or unwilling to defend it against what it sees as aggression from neighboring Azerbaijan, and has raised questions about Russia’s ability to retain its hold on countries and conflicts across the former Soviet empire.

Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan said his country was beginning to taste the “bitter fruits” of the “strategic mistake” of trusting Russia with near-exclusive responsibility for his country’s defense.

“Armenia’s security architecture 99.999% was linked to Russia,” he told Italian newspaper La Repubblica earlier this month. “But today we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons… Even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s needs.”

Edit: As Furball commented, Pashinyan is the Prime Minister of Armenia

Over 98,000 utility customers in Maine are currently without power, according to Poweroutage.us., as post-tropical cyclone Lee made landfall in Nova Scotia in eastern Canada.

Lee made landfall on Long Island in Digby County, Nova Scotia at around 4 p.m. Saturday with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The storm will then move across eastern Canada Saturday night and Sunday.

“Lee is expected to be at or just below hurricane strength when it reaches Nova Scotia later today," the National Hurricane Center said in an update. "Weakening is forecast tonight and Sunday while Lee moves across Atlantic Canada."

Formerly a hurricane, Lee became a post-tropical cyclone Saturday because it no longer possesses the characteristics to be considered tropical. The new designation is not a downgrade in impacts as Lee is still producing hurricane-force winds at 75 mph and may bring hurricane conditions to Eastern Canada when it makes landfall Saturday.

At least five of the major candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, have endorsed doing away with the Department of Education, a favorite target at August's GOP debate.

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has gone a lot further. The list of departments he wants to abolish includes not only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Nuclear Regulatory Commission but also the Internal Revenue Service -- and even the FBI.

ABC News spoke with half a dozen experts about how eliminating departments would work. They described such pledges as political talking points easier said than done, with some calling the proposals either impractical or unfeasible.

"Some of the implications are either dangerous in terms of the ability of the federal government to fulfill its mission or downright impossible, that is making promises candidates are not going to be able to keep," said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its school of public policy.

"It's a long shot," said Kevin Kosari, a senior fellow at the center-right think tank American Enterprise Institute. "Government agencies have a habit of sticking around."

The idea of dismantling these agencies isn't novel. Republicans have long run on the idea that the federal government is too big and needs to be streamlined. Abolishing the Department of Education, in particular, has been a Republican Party goal since the agency was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Amid continued demand for drugs used for weight loss, including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, some people are instead turning to laxatives.

The trend of using over-the-counter laxatives as alternatives to the drugs is touted on social media as "budget Ozempic," but it's a trend that doctors say is dangerous, as laxatives don't lead to weight loss and can carry significant health risks if misused.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, laxative misuse is recognized as a type of extreme weight loss behavior and can be a sign of a serious eating disorder.

"Obviously, I see the reasoning for this because Ozempic is so expensive and so popular now, but there is a totally different pharmacology," said Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent and a board-certified OB-GYN. "This is not something people should be following."

The Wall Street Journal reports that searches for laxative pills have "more than tripled" in the past year on Amazon, while the manufacturers of Metamucil and Benefiber, two brands of fiber supplements, have reported "double-digit sales growth."

The Environmental Protection Agency waited a month to consult some of its top experts about the risk of dangerous chemical exposure around East Palestine, Ohio, following the fiery derailment of a Norfolk Southern train hauling toxic materials, internal emails show.

That delay left at least two EPA scientists surprised and concerned. And it occurred while the agency was deferring to the railroad giant and its web of contractors to spearhead environmental testing, including crafting protocols for sampling soil, water and air for chemicals — a move many saw as a glaring conflict of interest.

The Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3 while hauling toxic and flammable materials, including hundreds of thousands of pounds of vinyl chloride, a common organic chemical used in the production of plastics and that’s been linked to several types of cancer.

EPA officials confirmed to HuffPost that the agency did not direct and was not consulted about the so-called “controlled burn.” They said EPA’s role at that time was to “coordinate and conduct air monitoring from outside the evacuation area,” yet acknowledged the agency never considered monitoring for dioxins, a family of extremely toxic compounds that can form when chlorinated chemicals like vinyl chloride combust.

Enck and Stephen Lester, a toxicologist and the science director for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, who both reviewed the emails and have closely followed the response in East Palestine, accused the agency of misjudging the dioxin risk and failing to uphold its mission to protect public health.

“Virtually every step of this process they’ve done it wrong,” Lester said. “I’ve been doing this for more than 40 years. I’ve seen EPA’s work at hundreds of sites around this country, contaminated sites, and this is as bad as I’ve ever seen them be. And that is shocking to me.”

The family of a man fatally shot in New Mexico by police officers responding to the wrong house sued the department for wrongful death and other claims in federal court, according to a complaint filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico.

Robert Dotson, 52, was shot and killed in the doorway of his house in Farmington after local police officers opened fire after they said they saw he had a gun.

Police knocked on Dotson's door at 11:30 p.m. on April 5, according to the complaint filed in court. Dotson grabbed his gun from the top of the refrigerator and went to open the front door. The complaint says "police vehicles were parked down the street and did not have their lights on."

Three officers standing outside the door immediately opened fire, according to the complaint. Dotson was hit by 12 bullets. His wife, Kimberly, wearing just her robe, came down the stairs to find out what happened, the complaint says, and the officers fired an additional 19 bullets at her but missed.

New Mexico State Police issued a statement saying that Farmington police were responding to a domestic violence call but went to the wrong address.