January 6

The AP website reported that an army veteran drew a gun from his checked luggage on arrival at the Fort Lauderdale airport and opened fire, killing five people and wounding eight.

 

January 11

The Pew Research Center revealed that since 2015, almost 500 blacks have been fatally shot by police. Their deaths and the disputed circumstances surrounding many of these incidents have sparked widespread protests over police tactics.

 

January 27

The U.S. administration signed an executive order saying that it was necessary to suspend for at least four months the resettlement of refugees from around the world — and those from Syria indefinitely; and for at least 90 days block entry of visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

 

January 28

Protests broke out in many cities around the United States against the White House order suspending the entry of refugees and others from several majority-Muslim nations.

 

January 31

The USA Today website reported that referring to the order as a "Muslim Exclusion Order," 27 plaintiffs from across the US filed a lawsuit and complained that the order “implements an impermissible religious gerrymander that divides foreign nationals, even those lawfully present inside the United States, into favored and disfavored groups based on their faith.”

 

 

February 13

The U.S. Economic Policy Institute released a report saying that average wealth for white families was seven times higher than average wealth for black families. Median white wealth was twelve times higher than median black wealth. More than one in four black households have zero or negative net worth, compared to less than one in ten white families without wealth.

 

February 21

The Forbes website reported that student loan debt was the second highest consumer debt category - higher than both credit cards and auto loans. There were more than 44 million borrowers with 1.3 trillion dollars in student loan debt in the United States alone. The average student in the Class of 2016 had 37,172 dollars in student loan debt.

 

February 22

The CNN website reported that a total of 214 people have been indicted since January 20 on felony rioting charges in connection with the Inauguration Day protests in downtown Washington.

 

February 23

The Washington Post website reported that on the evening of February 22, hundreds of people took to the streets of Anaheim, Calif. for a protest against an off-duty Los Angeles police officer firing his gun during a confrontation with teenagers a day earlier. A total of 23 people were arrested during the protest.

 

February 24

The Guardian website reported that one of the first things the new U.S. administration did was to make a huge number of middle-income families considerably worse off. Just hours after the inauguration it reversed the previous administration’s decision to cut Federal Housing Administration insurance premiums by 0.25 percent. Millions of Americans are evicted each year as they struggle to make rent: these people are the true forgotten poor.

 

 

March 6

The website of the Urban Institute reported that 33 percent of households in public housing have a member aged 62 or older and 39 percent have children, while 21 percent of residents have a disability. In a report on health condition of people in public housing in the District of Columbia, 33 percent of the surveyed adults reported having a child with asthma, 21 percent reported having an overweight child, and 14 percent reported having a child with a chronic health condition.

 

March 7

The National Registry of Exonerations reported that African Americans are far more likely to be wrongfully convicted of crimes such as murder, sexual assault and illegal drug activity than white people, according to a review of exonerations from 1989 to October 2016. Of the 1,900 defendants convicted of crimes and later exonerated, 47 percent were African Americans -- three times their representation in the population.

 

March 14

The CBS website reported that a retired Navy admiral is among nine military officers who have been indicted in a burgeoning bribery scandal. Retired Adm. Bruce Loveless and the other officers accepted the services of prostitutes, lavish meals and fancy trips from a businessman in exchange for helping his company. The indictment has charged more than 20 former or current Navy officials so far.

 

March 15

The Gallup issued a poll showing that 42 percent of Americans say they personally worry a "great deal" about race relations in the United States, up seven percentage points from 2016 and a record high in Gallup's 17-year trend. This is the third straight year worries about this issue have increased by a significant margin.

 

On the same day, the website of the Institute for Policy Studies reported that Wall Street banks handed out 23.9 billion U.S. dollars in bonuses to 177,000 New York City-based employees in 2016, which were 1.6 times the combined annual earnings of all 1,075,000 U.S. full-time minimum wage workers. Since 1985, the nominal value of the average Wall Street bonus has increased 890 percent, whereas the minimum wage has risen only 116 percent.

 

March 28

The Washington Post website reported that the U.S. Congress proposed to wipe away landmark online privacy protections, a significant reworking of the rules governing Internet access. If the legislation is approved, providers will be able to monitor their customers’ behavior online and, without their permission, use their personal and financial information to sell highly targeted ads. “It means that Americans will never be safe online from having their most personal details stealthily scrutinized and sold to the highest bidder,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. It is “a tremendous setback for America.”

 

 

April 4

A USA Today website report quoted statistics from the Institute for Women's Policy Research as saying that women overall earned about 82% of the full-time weekly pay check of a man. Black women's earnings were just 68% compared to white men and Hispanic women's were 62%.

 

April 6

The Daily Mail website reported that Twitter had received an administrative summons in March demanding it to reveal who is behind an account opposed to the U.S. President's tough immigration policies. The government gave no reason for the demand. Twitter said the summons was an abuse of law.

 

April 11

A report on the Economic Times website quoted WikiLeaks as saying that the U.S. National Security Agency operators have hacked into Pakistani mobile networks and have been spying on hundreds of IP addresses in the country.

 

April 11

The Washington Post website reported that a passenger was forcibly dragged off an overbooked United Airlines plane. The passenger, bleeding, appeared to be of Asian origin and was overheard complaining that this might have been a factor in his treatment.

 

April 30

Website of the Independent reported that the Pentagon said at least 352 civilians have been killed in the US-led strikes in Iraq and Syria since operations began in 2014. Transparency project Airwars claimed that over 3,000 civilians have been killed in the bombing campaign.

 

 

May 8 

According to the Federal Election Commission data, dozens of political action committees collected tens of millions of dollars in the first three months of 2017. Individual donors contributed 236.4 million U.S. dollars to political action committees and related political entities during the quarter, 30 percent more than contributions recorded during the same period following the 2012 presidential election.

 

May 11

Rane Baldwin, an African American woman, booked two First-Class American Airlines tickets from Kentucky to North Carolina on May 2 with her white friend, but she was told after boarding that the plane had fewer First Class seats than originally thought, The Sun website reported. Her seat had been changed to a row in the back of the plane while her white friend stayed in First Class.

 

May 11

According to data released on May 10 by the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 61.4 percent of Americans who were qualified to vote cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, dipping to the lowest rate in 16 years, The Hill website reported. Only 49 percent of Asian Americans and 47.6 percent of Hispanic Americans turned out to vote; voter turnout among black voters fell almost seven percentage points from 2012 to 59.4 percent.

 

May 14

The Zero Hedge website reported that a group of hackers used the U.S. National Security Agency’s “Top Secret Arsenal” of tools, which allow anyone to “back door” into virtually any computer system, to create the ransomware virus and launch a global malware cyberattack, holding at least 200,000 computer systems around the globe hostage.

 

May 15

According to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 245.5 million Americans aged 18 and older in November 2016, about 157.6 million of whom were registered to vote, the Pew Research Center website reported. By international standards, only 55.7 percent of the U.S. voting-age population cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, putting the US behind most member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

 

May 17

According to the website of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Carolina Creek company demoted employee Korrie Reed after learning she had a pregnancy-related complication. This violated federal anti-discrimination laws. After Reed told the company’s executive director that she believed her demotion was illegal, Carolina Creek fired her and then sued her in two different lawsuits.

 

May 31

The BBC website reported, an “N-word” was spray painted on to NBA superstar LeBron James’ Los Angeles home. He said, “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are… being black in America is tough.” “Racism will always be a part of America, and hate in America – especially for African Americans – is living every day.” 

 

 

June 1 

U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the country would step away from the climate change agreement signed in 2015 in Paris, the Washington Post website reported. The article commented that the decision makes little sense since climate change is a real threat to Americans’ health. However, the government viewed this international agreement solely through the lens of economic benefits to the United States.

 

June 9

CNN reported that William Boucher, a 23-year-old white man in Chicago, spitted at a black man for no reason, telling him that his children are “disposable vermin” and calling a second black man a slave.

 

June 10

Al Jazeera website reported that Adam Purinton, a 52-year-old white man, shouted “get out of my country” as he shot dead one Indian man and injured another at a bar in Kansas.

 

June 21

In a poll of more than 1,000 political scientists in the United States, most respondents believed that American democracy had been plateauing for decades and that the U.S. government failed to meet democratic standards for granting citizens an equal opportunity to vote or stopping officials from exploiting their public office for private gain, The Atlantic website reported.

 

June 22

The San Diego Union Tribune website reported that disability advocacy organization ADAPT organized a demonstration to protest against cutting Medicaid funding. Bruce Darling, an organizer, wrote in a statement that the American Health Care Act caps and significantly cuts Medicaid which will greatly reduce access to basic medical services for elderly and disabled Americans who rely on them.

 

June 30

Latest statistics show Los Angeles County saw a 23 percent increase in the number of homeless people, to 57,794, The Guardian website reported. For the approximately 1,800 people sleeping on the surrounding streets of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, only nine cisterns without doors are available at night.

 

 

July 5 

The Financial Times website reported that “in reality the US political system has been so warped by big money that it is now effectively controlled by an elite Republican oligarchy answerable primarily to ultra-rich donors that has succeeded by gerrymandering and other nefarious acts to create a situation where, even if it does not control all branches of government, it will still be well positioned to block any agenda seeking to change the status quo.”

 

July 11 

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that about 67 percent of 18-to 29-year-olds have experienced some form of online harassment, with young women the most likely to face online abuse. About 21 percent of women aged between 18 and 29 say they have been sexually harassed online, and 53 percent of them say they have been sent explicit images that they didn’t ask for.

 

July 22 

The Intercept.com website reported that the US was re-escalating its war in Afghanistan, expanding its operations in Iraq and Syria, conducting covert raids in Somalia and Yemen.

 

July 22 

The Independent website reported that an errant U.S. air strike in July 21 killed 16 Afghan National Police officers who were fighting the Taliban and wounded two others.

 

July 25 

A Pew Research Center survey finds that American minority groups more frequently encounter online harassment that carries racial overtones. A quarter of black Americans say they have been targeted online due to their race or ethnicity. Some 74 percent of blacks and 72 percent of Hispanics consider online harassment to be a “major problem”, while 68 percent of blacks are more likely to say it is more important for people to feel safe and welcome online than to be able to speak their minds freely.

 

July 26 

The Washington Post reported that two policemen went to a wrong address and shot dead an innocent person when executing an arrest warrant. The victim had no crime records.

 

 

August 5 

The Guardian website reported that according to statistics from the International Organization for Migration, 232 people attempting to cross the U.S. border from Mexico died in first seven months of 2017, up 17 percent year on year.

 

August 6 

The Mother Jones website reported that the US-led coalition’s use of white phosphorus munitions on the outskirts of al-Raqqa, Syria, was unlawful and might amount to a war crime.

 

August 12 

CNN reported that some white nationalists and right-wing protesters converged on Charlottesville,  shouting “blood and soil”， a phrase invoking the Nazi philosophy of "Blut und Boden." 

 

August 12 

The CBS website reported that James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old white nationalist, drove a car that plowed into a group of counter-protesters, killing one person and injuring 19 others.

 

August 13 

The Telegraph website reported that three people were killed and dozens injured after a white nationalists’ rally and ensuing violent incidents in Charlottesville , which was described by civil rights groups as America's "largest hate gathering in decades".

 

August 15 

The Chicago Tribune website reported that in the morning of August 12, Richard Hubbard III, an African American, was stopped by two white policemen when he drove through the Cleveland suburb of Ohio. Without obvious provocation, he was pressed down to the car and punched over by the policemen. The incident evoked strong criticism on the police’s abuse of force.

 

August 22 

The Huffington Post website reported that on August 16, when an Asian customer dined at a New York restaurant, she was referred by an employee as “Ching Chong”, a racially insulting name, on a takeout receipt.

 

August 23 

The UN News Center reported that for the violent incident in Charlottesville, Anastasia Crickley, Chairperson of UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, noted that: “We are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred.” She criticized the U.S. government for failing to clearly oppose the racially violent actions, calling for U.S. politicians and government officials to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country.

 

August 23 

The Interception.com website reported two US-led coalition air strikes in Syria in March killed at least 84 civilians, including 30 children. The targets of the U.S. army were a school for the displaced in the Mansoura town on the outskirts of Tabqa and a market in Tabqa respectively.

 

 

September 8

The Associated Press reported that six black police officers had filed complaints claiming their white supervisors were racist. The supervisors referred to black civilians as "scum" and called black civilian killings "thinning the herd."

 

September 10

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) website reported a shooting rampage at a Plano home party on the night of Sept. 10, leaving nine dead and one injured.

 

September 13 

The New York Times website reported that eleven people whose phones and laptops were searched at the U.S. airports and at the nation’s northern border were suing the Department of Homeland Security. Several of the plaintiffs said they were intimidated. According to the most recent data available, there were nearly 15,000 searches from October 2016 to March 2017, compared with 8,383 in the same period a year before.

 

September 13

Over 40 million people live in poverty, with 18.5 million of them in extreme poverty, according to the latest data from the United States Census Bureau.

 

September 15

A report from the New York Post website told that a volunteer Ohio firefighter posted racist comments on social media which said if he had to choose between saving a dog and a black man from a burning building, he would save the dog first. “That’s because one dog is more important than a million [expletive],” he wrote, using the n-word.

 

September 16

ABC news reported that on Sept. 15 night, 32 people were arrested when protesters took to the street in St. Louis after a white former police officer, Jason Stockley, who killed 24-year-old black man Lamar Smith with five shots in 2011, was acquitted earlier that day. “If you look like me, then you feel like there is no other way to express yourself in this kind of verdict. Time and time again, African-American men are killed by police, and nobody is held accountable,” a protester was quoted as saying.

 

September 25

ABC News website reported that the Senate held a hearing on the Republican health care bill, known as the Graham-Cassidy bill. People from all over the United States and all walks of life lined up as early as 5 a.m., urging lawmakers to oppose the bill. Protesters in wheelchairs cried aloud with chants of "No cuts to Medicaid! Save our liberty!" Capitol Police officers struggled to remove people, with some sliding out of their wheelchairs and onto the floor. 181 protesters were arrested.

 

September 27

British newspaper The Independent reported on its website that the U.S. government had quietly announced that it was planning on continuing to collect social media information on immigrants in America. Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, an associate professor of law at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law, told The Independent that monitoring social media accounts could have a chilling effect on free speech.

 

 

October 1 

The USA Today website reported that at least 59 people have been killed and over 500 injured in a mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert, considered the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

 

October 4

The Chicago Tribune website reported that U.S. authorities have made more than 300 arrests at demonstrations over the Sept. 15 acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley in the fatal shooting of an African American. Protesters and civil liberties groups have accused the authorities of using heavy-handed tactics against demonstrators. And the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri filed a lawsuit which accused police of unnecessarily using tear gas and pepper spray, arresting bystanders and journalists.

 

October 18

A research by the Pew Research Center showed that 57 percent of women said the country hasn’t done enough to give women equal rights with men; 38 percent of women who said they have faced gender discrimination cited experiences related to hiring, pay or promotion; 26 percent said they have had their abilities questioned or were treated as if they weren’t smart because of their gender; and ten percent cited sexual harassment.

 

October 25

The International Business Times website reported that a study from the Reflective Democracy Campaign found that 90 percent of all U.S. elected officials were white and 71 percent were men. With only the wealthy funding and communicating with the campaigns of elected officials, politicians were incentivized to make policy decisions that align with their donors’ interests, not those of their broader constituency. Nick Nyhart, founding executive of voting rights advocacy group Every Voice, said “every cycle, there are fewer and fewer donors giving more and more of the money. The voices of everyday people get heard less and less each year. People who win under [the current system] don’t promote policies that everyday people want to happen”.

 

October 26

A study on the website of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research showed that child care costs represent a large financial burden for parents who are in college. Washington State’s child care assistance rules made it difficult for low-income students to access child care. And Washington was one of 11 states that require parents in postsecondary education to also work to be eligible for child care assistance.

 

October 31

The New York Post website reported that police arrested three men who smashed more than 40 headstones and spray-painted racial slurs on graves that had Asian names on them at a Queens cemetery in the summer of 2016.

 

 

November 3

The New York Daily News website reported that a racist attack on two Asian school board candidates in central New Jersey came in the form of a postcard with racist words. The postcard, which was mailed to residents in Edison, included photos of Jingwei (Jerry) Shi and Falguni Patel with “DEPORT” stamped over their faces.

 

November 5

The website of WHAM, a New York based station, reported that at least 26 were dead and 20 were injured in a mass shooting happened in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Those shot range from 5 to 72 years old, and the incident was called the "worst mass shooting" in the state's history.

 

November 7

The Huffington Post website reported that New York Police Department detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall were accused of detaining and raping a woman in a police van after finding her in possession of marijuana and anti-anxiety pills.

 

November 8

The Huffington Post website reported that eighty percent of the political nominees the president has sent to the Senate have been men. Among the nominees for U.S. attorney, 41 were men and only one was woman.

 

November 8

The website of the American Civil Liberties Union reported that after a decade of collecting evidence, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, announced that she would take steps toward a full investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over the course of the armed conflict in Afghanistan since May 2003. In a 2016 report, the prosecutor’s office revealed that it had reason to believe that members of the U.S. military “subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity” and members of the CIA “subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape.”

 

November 18

The Huffington Post website reported that a report released from the U.S. Sentencing Commission looked at federal prison sentences in the United States from Oct. 1, 2011 to Sept. 30, 2016, and found that black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than those of “similarly situated” white male offenders. Sentencing was just one part of the broader problem of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system: Black people were incarcerated in U.S. state prisons at more than five times the rate of white people.

 

November 20

The New Yorker website reported on the hugely imbalanced gender ratio in tech industry. Studies estimated that women make up only a quarter of employees and eleven percent of executives in the industry. In September, three women brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all female Google employees, accusing the company of “segregating” women into lower-paying jobs and of paying them less than their male counterparts for “substantially similar work.”

 

November 20

The USA Today website reported that sexual harassment troubles mounted in statehouses around the country. Since 2016, at least 40 lawmakers in 20 states have been publicly accused by more than 100 people of some form of sexual misconduct or harassment. In Illinois and California, hundreds of people signed letters alleging widespread sexual harassment in state politics.

 

November 21

The Newsweek website reported that hundreds of thousands of Americans were being denied the right to vote because they are poor. In nine states, legislators have enacted laws that disenfranchise anyone with outstanding legal fees or court fines. In Alabama, more than 100,000 people who owe money – roughly 3 percent of the state’s voting-age population – have been struck from voting rolls.

 

November 22

The BBC website reported that former USA Olympic gymnastics sports doctor Larry Nassar has been accused of sexually abusing more than 130 women, including several Olympic gold medalists.

 

November 24

The New York Times website reported that the elderly and disabled citizens of any age have faced several obstacles while voting. The results of a survey of 178 polling places showed that the great majority had impediments outside — like steep ramps or inadequate parking — or inside that could discourage or exclude disabled voters. Voting machines may not accommodate people who use wheelchairs or are visually impaired.

 

November 29

The Al Jazeera website reported that protests carried out by African Americans have been monitored by the U.S. government and have been seen as a potential threat, according to documents from the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.

 

 

December 5

The BBC website reported that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled the new U.S. administration's travel ban on six mainly Muslim countries could go into full effect. The decision was a boost for President Trump’s policy against travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. A federal judge in Hawaii said the policy "plainly discriminates based on nationality" in violation of “the founding principles of this nation.”

 

December 6

According to the Guardian website, a study showed that 553,742 people in the United States were homeless on a single night in 2017. The homeless population of New York increased 4.1 percent. The poverty rate of California has reached 20.4 percent.

 

December 12 

The VOA website reported a survey showing that nearly six in 10 Americans believe the level of government corruption rose in the year since U.S. President Donald Trump was elected and that the White House was now a more corrupt institution than Congress. The survey said 44 percent of Americans believed that the White House officials were corrupt, and 38 percent believe members of Congress were.

 

December 13

The Al Jazeera website reported that sexual harassment, assault and violence were widespread among women farm-workers in the United States, who number hundreds of thousands across the country. Many women had come forward with stories of sexual abuse at the hands of powerful men working in media, politics, sports and other areas. Many of the women didn’t have legal status in the US, leaving them with little recourse to report abuse, seek legal recourse or get any other type of support. The nature of their work - seasonal, temporary and low-wage - also played a role. Sexual harassment and abuse at work was widespread in industries dominated by low wages. A 2016 survey of 500 women employed in Chicago-area hotels and casinos found that 58 percent of hotel workers and 77 percent of casino workers had been sexually harassed by a guest.

 

December 13

The website of ABC news reported that the new U.S. administration has not released any prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay and not added any to the list of cleared men who can go home, or to a third country, for resettlement.

 

December 14

The Independent website reported that Nils Melzer, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said torture was still being carried out at Guantanamo Bay and urged the United States to end its torture of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

 

December 14

The website of CNN reported that U.S. service members have been accused of assaulting and raping Okinawans.

 

December 15

According to the Al Jazeera website, the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) voted to end the 2015 Open Internet Rules on December 14. The end broke the net neutrality rules, and allowed internet service providers to block and “throttle” certain data streams. It would also deepen the "digital divide" between the wealthy and low-income communities. Nyasia Valdez with Detroit's Equitable Internet Initiative in Southwest Detroit, said making the internet more expensive would further economically disadvantage poor people. “It would be so devastating and further exacerbate the inequality that's already there.” A research showed that 94 percent of job recruiters used online means of finding candidates for work. Minority and lower-income populations in the US would experience joblessness at higher rates. With so many jobs recruiting online, the problem of unemployment is made worse.

 

December 15 

The website of the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, released a report from Philip Alston, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who had spent two weeks touring America. According to Alston, “the American Dream was rapidly becoming the American Illusion.” He said, “I met with many people barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles. I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to. I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers. I saw sewage-filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility. I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor. I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by opioids, and I met with people in Puerto Rico living next to a mountain of completely unprotected coal ash which rains down upon them, bringing illness, disability and death. ” He pointed out that the United States had harnessed neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty. The youth poverty rate in the United States was the highest across the OECD with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14 percent across the OECD. According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US had the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western Countries. The United States was fast becoming a champion of inequality. Philip Alston warned that “the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power. With political will, it could readily be eliminated.”

 

On the same day, the Guardian website reported that the “health gap” between the US and its peer countries continued to grow. The United States had much fewer doctors and hospital beds per person than the OECD average. Americans could expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other rich democracy. Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, were increasingly common in the United States. It had been estimated that 12 million Americans live with a neglected parasitic infection. The United States had the highest prevalence of obesity in the developed world. In terms of access to water and sanitation the US ranked 36th in the world.

 

December 17

 

The Al Jazeera website reported that the so-called “medical deserts” were becoming more common in the United States. Since 2010, more than 80 rural hospitals had been closed and hundreds more were at risk of shutting their doors.

 

December 18

The Huffington Post website reported that at least 15 women said Judge Alex Kozinski groped them, made inappropriate sexual comments, and/or showed them pornography.

 

December 18 

According to the gunviolencearchive.org website, as of December 18, 2017, the total number of gun violence and crime incidents in the United States was 60,091, including 338 mass shooting incidents, causing total deaths of 15,182 and 30,619 injuries. 716 children aged 0 to 11 were killed or injured, and 3,178 teens aged 12 to 17 were killed or injured.

 

December 27

The Center for Responsive Politics website reported the latest figures on federal lobbying activity showing that the total spent on lobbying in 2017 reached 2.468 billion U.S. dollars, a new record high in the past five years. 

 

December 31

The Washington Post website reported that 987 people have been shot and killed by police in 2017. According to monthly statistics, in 2017, the U.S. police shot 92 people dead in January; 100 in February; 76 in March; 67 in April; 74 in May; 84 in June; 94 in July; 82 in August; 70 in September; 85 in October; 84 in November; and 79 in December.