What has the potential to save more lives, the insurance reforms in the landmark health care bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month or the higher taxes on the rich the bill imposes to pay for those reforms? This rather odd question would likely strike most Americans as somewhat silly. What could the level of taxes on the rich possibly have to do with our health? Maybe more than we think. Maybe much more. So suggests new research — by a team of Japanese and American health analysts — just published in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. Inequality, this research helps establish, kills. In societies where public policies — like higher taxes on the rich — keep the distribution of income and wealth relatively equal, fewer people die. Staggeringly fewer people.

Rep. Alan Grayson reads the number of dead from each of the Republican congressional districts if the health care bill doesn’t pass.

This puts the mortality rates of people dying from swine flu into perspective. Really!

This is no political contest. This is very real life and death. Mothers and babies. Young and old. The profit-takers know no boundaries for their greed, and our killing fields are filling with the innocents. We apparently do not understand that this is no different than an external enemy attacking our citizens and killing 120 of them every single day. What would we be doing? Would we repel that aggressor? Would we protect civilian lives? I don't know that answer to that as we apparently think it acceptable to allow Jenny and her baby to die. And they were just two that day - 118 others died too just on that day alone.

Since taking office, President Obama has sanctioned at least 41 Central Intelligence Agency(C.I.A.) drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed between 326 and 538 people, many of them, critics say, "innocent bystanders, including children," according to reliable reports. The drone is a remotely controlled, unmanned aircraft. "Even if a precise account is elusive," writes Jane Mayer in the October 26th The New Yorker, "the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country." Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., "the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President," Mayer reports.

As the war in Afghanistan entered its ninth year, the Labor Department recently released new figures [1] for the number of civilian contract workers who have died in war zones since 9/11. Although acknowledged as incomplete, the figures show that at least 1,688 civilians have died and more than 37,000 have reported injuries while working for U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.More than 5,200 soldiers have died in the two war zones, meaning that one civilian contractor has died for every three soldiers — a ratio that reflects the unprecedented degree to which the Pentagon has outsourced the work of war. Civilian contractors make up [2] about half the total U.S. forces in the war zones and they have been deployed on the front lines far more than any previous U.S. conflict [3].Despite the importance of civilian contractors to its mission, the Defense Department hasn’t been measuring their sacrifice. A little-noticed report [4] from the Government Accountability Office last week noted that the Pentagon has yet to implement a Congressional requirement to track contractor fatalities.

"The death rate from the pandemic H1N1 swine flu is likely lower than earlier estimates, an expert in infectious diseases said on Wednesday. New estimates suggest that the death rate compares to a moderate year of seasonal influenza, said Dr Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University."

"I took some flesh home and called it my son." The NATO airstrike that killed more than 70 civilians near Kunduz earlier this month was a deadly confluence of two primary elements that characterize the living hell of Afghanistan: relentless violence and crushing poverty. The villagers were slaughtered while trying to siphon gasoline from two fuel tankers that the Taliban had hijacked from the occupation forces. The trucks were stranded in the ford of a shallow river. Unable to get the trucks out, the insurgents invited local villagers to come gather the fuel for themselves. The prospect of salvaging a can or two of free fuel to help them get through the coming winter drove many of the villagers out into the dead of night. At about 1 a.m, an airstrike ordered by a German commander struck the fuel tankers and the surrounding area. The result was a firestorm that ripped the villagers to pieces and roasted their bodies beyond all recognition. But that was not the end of it, nor, perhaps, the worst of it. For then the survivors of the slain had to come to the smoking field and try to find their loved ones amidst the gruesome, ungodly residue.

One of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh "interrogation techniques." The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn't make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge." She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows.

"A Philadelphia man who was Tasered during a traffic stop Friday after he and his female companion allegedly assaulted state troopers, died from unknown causes Sunday morning at Crozer-Chester Medical Center."

The Army has no idea how many of its soldiers have been wounded in Afghanistan, the top brass has admitted. There are no accurate figures for the number of seriously injured soldiers in its ranks, according to the report prepared ordered by Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff. And many of those wounded in the line of duty are not receiving appropriate medical support.

Regardless of your feelings about these wars, those who answered the call of their country and who made the ultimate sacrifice deserve our honor and respect.

Where were you and what were you doing on the dates below? Enjoying the Fourth of July? Hitting the beaches for the summer? Finally getting that long overdue vacation?

You'd have to make a desperate effort not to know that Michael Jackson (until recently excoriated by the media) had died, and you'd have to make a similarly desperate effort to know that we've knocked off one wedding party after another these last years in Afghanistan. One of these deaths -- Jackson's -- really has little to do with us; the others are, or should be, our responsibility, part of an endless war the American people have either supported or not stopped from continuing. And yet one is a screaming global headline; the others go unnoticed. You'd think there might, in fact, be room for a small headline somewhere. Didn't those brides, grooms, relatives and revelers deserve at least one modest, collective corner of some front page or a story on some prime-time news show in return for their needless suffering? You'd think that some president or high official in Washington might have sent a note of condolence to someone, that there might have been a rising tide of criticism about the slow response here in expressing regrets to the families of Afghans who died under our bombs and missiles.

The record could not be clearer regarding the fact that we caused numerous detainee deaths, many of which have gone completely uninvestigated and thus unpunished. Instead, the media and political class have misleadingly caused the debate to consist of the myth that these tactics were limited and confined.

Human Rights Watch charged Tuesday that Israeli pilots failed to verify targets of drone aircraft at least six times during the Gaza war, firing missiles that killed at least 29 civilians. Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the group, charged that drone operators had fired before making sure their targets were actual threats.

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan will soon formally order U.S. and NATO forces to break away from fights with militants hiding in Afghan houses so the battles do not kill civilians, a U.S. official said Monday. The order would be one of the strongest measures taken by a U.S. commander to protect Afghan civilians in battle. American commanders say such deaths hurt their mission because they turn average Afghans against the government and U.S. and NATO forces.

Rising anger over Afghan civilians accidentally killed in U.S. military bombing campaigns has prompted some U.S. officers to issue a stark warning to troops involved in airstrikes: If grave mistakes persist, they could lose armed air support—considered by most soldiers and marines to be an invaluable tool during battle. "Maybe they're just saying that to us as a scare tactic," says one U.S. military officer in Afghanistan. "But they are really serious about cutting these deaths."

The Air Strike Tracker chronicles every reported U.S. air strike that has affected civilians since September 11, 2001. The visual interface makes information about each bombing incident from numerous sources highly accessible, often providing the ability to view online videos and other relevant media. You can browse incidents by location, date, or tags (e.g. unmanned drones, official investigations, local protest). The Air Strike Tracker is an ongoing project, and we will continue to update the underlying data as new information is obtained.

7,337: The estimated number of people who have died in drug related violence in Mexico since the start of 2007, shortly after Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug traffickers. That’s more than the U.S. fatalities in the Iraq war.