Rep. Jackie Speier and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan wrote to Military Sec. Christine Wormuth.
Suicide in Alaska for the navy was virtually solely an Military drawback in 2021.
Fort Wainwright, in Alaska’s frigid inside, is the epicenter of the Military’s suicide disaster.
WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of lawmakers known as on the Military to handle its alarming drawback of suicide in Alaska, requesting plans to enhance residing circumstances and guarantee troopers have well timed entry to psychological well being counselors, a key discovering of a USA TODAY investigation into suicide deaths there.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and Alaska’s Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan wrote to Military Sec. Christine Wormuth in regards to the Military’s suicide disaster that’s liable for the confirmed or suspected deaths of 17 troopers in Alaska in 2021. The whole, first reported by USA TODAY in January, is greater than the earlier two years mixed.
“The epidemic of navy suicides throughout America cries out for speedy motion, particularly in Alaska the place twice as many service members died in 2021 in comparison with 2020,” Speier stated in an announcement. “I’ve spoken beforehand with the spouses and fogeys of service members who’ve died by suicide there, in addition to different service members and behavioral well being care suppliers overwhelmed with demand within the area.”
‘Like suffocating’:An Alaskan military base is the epicenter of navy suicides. Troopers know why
Speier and Sullivan plan to journey to Alaska to talk with Military leaders on efforts to avoid wasting troopers from suicide.
“It’s a tragedy that the scourge of suicide disproportionately harms Alaska’s navy service members and their households,” Sullivan stated. “Alaska is dwelling to hundreds of navy service members and extra veterans per capita than some other state. However together with that proud distinction, our state additionally has horrifically excessive charges of navy suicide.”
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Alaska has the second highest price of suicide within the nation, behind Wyoming, based on information from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. For the energetic responsibility navy as a complete, the suicide price elevated from 20.3 per 100,000 troops in 2015 to twenty-eight.7 per 100,000 troops in 2020, based on the Pentagon. The navy’s suicide price is just like that of society. Nevertheless, troops are topic to far larger oversight than civilians and the Pentagon expects a decrease price, Protection officers have stated.
Suicide in Alaska for the navy was virtually solely an Military drawback in 2021. Whereas there have been 17 confirmed or suspected suicides amongst troopers, only one airman of the ten,000 stationed there died by suicide there, based on the Air Pressure.
Wormuth was in Alaska Wednesday, the place she met with troopers and their households and behavioral well being specialists, stated her spokesperson, Lt. Col. Randee Farrell. Wormuth intends to reply on to the members of Congress who wrote to her.
“She may be very involved about deaths by suicide and is working with the (Pentagon) to prioritize the assist wanted to answer the problem in Alaska and throughout the Military,” Farrell stated.
There are about 11,500 troopers stationed there, most at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage and Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.
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Fort Wainwright, in Alaska’s frigid inside, is the epicenter of the Military’s suicide disaster. USA TODAY spent a number of days there in February and had entry to troopers of all ranks who spoke brazenly about delays in receiving counseling. Additionally they talked in regards to the challenges of residing in Arctic circumstances of maximum chilly and lack of daylight, bodily isolation and issues with funds and relationships.
‘It broke my coronary heart’:A mom misplaced her son to suicide. The Military despatched her a botched report on his loss of life.
USA TODAY revealed its account April 4. The lawmakers’ letter was despatched to Wormuth April 8.
“Our inquiries and conversations have made a number of issues clear: service members stationed in Alaska are underneath an out-sized stage of stress from a number of angles, together with behavioral well being specialist shortages, monetary challenges, infrastructure and transportation limitations, and the adjustment to residing in a distant location with excessive chilly climate,” the lawmakers wrote to Wormuth. “The issue is very acute at Fort Wainwright, an obligation station for which many aren’t adequately screened or ready.”
One soldier informed the paper that he was knowledgeable that he must wait a month to see a counselor after almost ending his life the night time earlier than. A Protection official concerned in overseeing well being applications stated the soldier in all probability ought to have been seen instantly or admitted to an emergency room. The Military, in an announcement, acknowledged that some troopers in Alaska had skilled delays in receiving care.
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“The behavioral well being capability at Fort Wainwright and Fort Richardson is inadequate as a result of there are inadequate numbers of suppliers,” based on the lawmakers’ letter. “Because it stands proper now, there are 11 unfilled civilian psychological well being supplier positions at Fort Wainwright. This has put insufferable strain on the uniformed and civilian suppliers who’re filling these billets, rising the chance that they stop and additional exacerbate the issue.”
They requested Wormuth for a plan with a timeline for sending extra behavioral well being counselors to Alaska and increasing counseling by video.
“We have to do every little thing in our energy to show this tide and be there for our service members – to get them the correct assist they want so suicide isn’t the reply,” Murkowski stated in an announcement. “This consists of working to make sure there are sufficient psychological well being suppliers to serve those that are defending our nation.”
The letter additionally known as on Wormuth to not ship troopers with present or latest psychological well being points to Alaska, or these from warm-weather areas for his or her first project to the state. The lawmakers additionally requested for a plan to create incentives for serving at Fort Wainwright, together with decreasing excursions there to 2 years from three.
In case you are a service member or veteran in disaster or having ideas of suicide (or you realize somebody who’s), name the Navy Disaster Line/Veterans Disaster Line for confidential assist 24 hours a day, seven days per week, one year a 12 months. Name 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1 or textual content 838255 or chat on-line at VeteransCrisisLine.web/Chat.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Accenture has scrapped its global diversity and inclusion goals after an “evaluation” of the US political landscape, becoming the latest big company to ditch its targets since the election of Donald Trump.
A memo to staff from chief executive Julie Sweet said the New York-listed consulting group would begin “sunsetting” its diversity goals set in 2017, as well as career development programmes for “people of specific demographic groups”.
Sweet said in the memo that the change followed an “evaluation of our internal policies and practices and the evolving landscape in the United States, including recent Executive Orders with which we must comply”.
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Accenture, which employs 799,000 people around the world, joins Meta, McDonald’s and Target in ditching diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals in response to the new political climate since Trump’s election.
The US president has been highly critical of what he calls the “absolute nonsense” of “discriminatory” diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
He signed a series of executive orders cutting federal DEI programmes when he came into office last month, tapping into a vein of corporate fatigue for diversity goals.
Other companies, such as Costco and JPMorgan Chase, have reaffirmed their commitment while some are reassessing their inclusion policies for the Trump era.
In 2017, Accenture set a target that half its staff would be women by the end of 2025. It also set a goal for 25 per cent of its managing directors to be women by 2020, a target it later updated to 30 per cent by 2025. At the time, 41 per cent of its employees and 21 per cent of managing directors were women.
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The group also set itself goals for ethnic minority representation in its workforce in the US, UK and South Africa.
As well as rolling back the targets, which Sweet said would no longer be used to measure staff performance, Accenture would no longer submit data to external diversity benchmarking surveys.
The group would also “evaluate” external partnerships on the topic “as part of refreshing our talent strategy”, she added.
Authorities are searching for a passenger plane that went missing over Alaska on Thursday, the state’s Department of Public Safety said.
The plane, which was carrying nine passengers and a pilot, was flying from the remote community of Unalakleet to Nome when it was reported missing at around 4 p.m. local time (0130 UTC).
The airline, Bering Air, said officials lost contact with the the Cessna Caravan less than an hour after it took off from Unalakleet.
“Staff at Bering Air is working hard to gather details, get emergency assistance, search and rescue going,” said Bering Air’s director of operations David Olson.
Rescue crews battle poor conditions
Alaska’s Department of Public Safety said rescue crews were “working to get to the last known coordinates” of the missing flight.
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Meanwhile, the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said it was conducting a ground search around Nome and White Mountain.
“Due to weather and visibility, we are limited on air search at the current time,” it said.
Residents have been warned against forming their own search parties because the weather is too dangerous.
The missing flight is the latest in a string of serious aviation incidents in the United States this year, including a passenger jet that collided with a helicopter over Washington and a medevac flight that crashed in Philadelphia.
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Elon Musk’s crusade to slash US government spending suffered setbacks on Thursday after a federal judged barred the Treasury department from handing data from its payments system to outsiders and one of the billionaire’s staffers was forced to resign over racist social media posts.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly put the temporary order in place after Musk boasted that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was “rapidly shutting down” Treasury remittances. They apparently gained access to the system that disburses trillions of dollars, including social security payments and Medicare, each year.
Hours after the judge’s decision, 25-year-old coder Marko Elez, who was working for Doge at the Treasury, abruptly resigned after apparently racist comments from a dormant social media account were unearthed. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the historic remarks.
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Elez was one of a handful of young engineers recruited by Musk’s Doge and installed in various government agencies. When asked about their roles this week, President Donald Trump called the coders “very smart” and defended their work.
Representatives of government employees and retirees had earlier this week sued to stop the sensitive data — accessed by Elez — being shared with Musk and others at Doge, arguing that such moves were “depriving them of privacy protections guaranteed to them by federal law”.
Although the US government reassured the court that only two of Doge’s emissaries, Cloud Software Group chief executive Tom Krause and Elez, had access to the sensitive system, Kollar-Kotelly pushed for an order preventing any information being shared outside the Treasury, while she considers a more permanent injunction.
As a result, Musk himself will not be able to review data pulled from the payments system.
The legal challenge comes as Treasury officials and the White House have sought to quell fears over Musk’s and Doge’s purported access to the system, and his broader authority, after the entrepreneur suggested his team was unilaterally cancelling “illegal” payments.
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On Monday, Trump said Musk, who has been made a special government employee, “can’t do — and won’t do — anything without our approval”.
Doge, whose emissaries have infiltrated the networks of various government agencies, including USAID, Health and Human Services and the Department of Transportation, has been sued multiple times by groups claiming the body is circumventing various legal protections.
Separately on Thursday, a judge in Massachusetts ordered a deadline for federal employees to accept or reject a buyout package — part of a personnel reduction effort spearheaded by Musk — to be extended at least until Monday.
The White House also confirmed that only 40,000 workers had thus far accepted the offer, well short of the hundreds of thousands it had previously forecast.
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Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Washington