Drug overdoses killed more Americans last year than the Vietnam War

CBS News: The opioid epidemic ravaging the United States is taking a grim and growing toll.

The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 64,070 people died from drug overdoses in 2016. That's a 21 percent increase over the year before. Approximately three-fourths of all drug overdose deaths are now caused by opioids — a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers as well as heroin and potent synthetic versions like fentanyl.

A new report from Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization that focuses on "critical issues in policing," puts those numbers into context.

According to the report, more Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016 than the number of American lives lost in the entirety of the Vietnam War, which totaled 58,200 >>>

The rise and fall of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Washington Post: On Tuesday, U.S.-backed forces claimed to have full control of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s onetime capital and most symbolically important stronghold. The militant group — once known as al-Qaeda in Iraq — began seizing key cities in 2014 with the capture of Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul.

The Islamic State continued to acquire land in Iraq until the end of 2015, when opposing forces started pushing the militants out of the cities. It retreated from Mosul, its last urban center in Iraq, in July 2017. With the loss of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s remaining areas of concentration are mostly in Syria’s Deir al-Zour and Iraq’s Anbar provinces, and a few scattered pockets elsewhere >>>

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