Good Morning! Thank goodness it’s Friday. This weekend many of us will be celebrating Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day. The day commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery. June 19th, 1865, is considered the date when the last slaves in America were freed. Check out Toni’s column On the Town with Toni for details about the 14th Annual Juneteenth Festival of the Carolinas and other fun weekend ideas.

Today, the weatherman says expect a mixture of sun and clouds with a high of 92°. A stray thunderstorm and widely scattered showers are possible later in the day.

Here’s what’s brewing in the news:

US life expectancy falls behind other nations

Life expectancy for people living in the United States varies greatly depending on where they live. A new study finds that people in Appalachia, the Deep South, and Northern Texas live the shortest lives.

Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington conducted a county-level analysis and say large swaths of the country are showing decreasing or stagnating life expectancy even as the nation’s overall longevity trend has continued upwards.

As people in Japan, Canada, and other industrialized nations enjoy significant gains in life expectancy every year, those living in most counties within the United States are falling behind, the study says.

“We are finally able to answer the question of how the US fares in comparison to its peers globally,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME Director and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Despite the fact that the US spends more per capita than any other nation on health, eight out of every 10 counties are not keeping pace in terms of health outcomes. That’s a staggering statistic.”

Researchers say men in America live longer than the women, but the opposite appears to be true for black men and women, who have lower life expectancies than white men and women in all counties.

Life expectancy for black women ranges from 69.6 to 82.6 years, and for black men, from 59.4 to 77.2 years. In both cases, no counties are ahead of the international frontier, and some are more than 50 years behind.

Life expectancy for black men living in Washington, D.C. experienced a jump from 61.7 years in 1997 to 68.9 in 2007, but the reason for the big increase isn’t entirely clear.

The researchers suggest that the relatively low life expectancies in the US cannot be explained by the size of the nation, racial diversity, or economics. Instead, the authors point to high rates of obesity, tobacco use, and other preventable risk factors for an early death as the leading drivers of the gap between the US and other nations.

“It’s not the health care system that’s having the biggest impact on health; it’s the community,” said Dr. David Fleming, Director of Public Health in Seattle. “The average person in the US spends one hour annually in a physician’s office unless they are really sick. So until we start moving our interventions out into the communities where people live, we are not going to get ahead of these problems.

QUESTION: What steps are you taking today to improve the quality and longevity of your life?
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Gingrich demands an apology
Earlier this week, NBC aired a story suggesting that Newt Gingrich’s wife Callista was to blame for the staff shake-up that imploded his campaign last week. Now Gingrich wants the station to apologize to his wife for what he called  a "irresponsible" and "reprehensible" program.  He told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren Gingrich it's "the kind of thing that makes it hard to get decent people to run for public office." (Read more here)

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