A record high of more than 70,000 people died of drug overdose deaths in 2017 and suicides climbed 3.7 percent, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics announced Thursday.

As a result, the average life span in America — seen as a key indicator of national health and prosperity — fell to 78.6 years. Statistics show a downward trend in life expectancy since 2014.

Bloomberg Philanthropies said the donation would help up to 10 states strengthen prevention and treatment efforts by addressing the root causes of opioid addiction and save lives over the next three years.

“We are experiencing a national crisis: For the first time since World War I, life expectancy in the US has declined over the past three years — and opioids are a big reason why,” said Bloomberg.

“We cannot sit by and allow this alarming trend to continue — not when so many Americans are being killed in what should be the prime of their lives.”

The billionaire announced the funding at The Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington.

Pennsylvania, which was the US state with the highest number of drug overdose deaths in 2017, will be the first to participate in the initiative.

Bloomberg, who served as New York mayor from 2002-2013 has an estimated worth of $47 billion, according to Forbes. He founded financial information and media company Bloomberg in 1981.

One of America’s leading philanthropists, he has donated billions to gun control and climate change, and has given lavishly to Democratic candidates.

Earlier this month, he announced $1.8 billion in financial aid for his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University to make an elite education more affordable to low- and middle-income students.

Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to expand offshore drilling, and ordered federal agencies to fast track permits for seismic airgun blasting.

Environmental groups have staunchly opposed the use of seismic airgun blasting, which research has shown can cause loud, far-traveling noise in the ocean that disrupts marine life, including fish and sea turtles.

The latest move would open a vast offshore area from New Jersey to Florida to underwater mapping for fossil fuel exploration, for the first time in decades.

“This action flies in the face of massive opposition to offshore drilling and exploration from over 90 percent of coastal municipalities in the proposed blast zone,” said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, an advocacy group.

“These permits were already denied because of the known harm that seismic airgun blasting causes.”

Last year, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management denied a series of applications for seismic blasting, saying the “value of obtaining the geophysical and geological information from new airgun seismic surveys in the Atlantic does not outweigh the potential risks of those surveys’ acoustic pulse impacts on marine life.”

The same agency issued a report several years ago that found airgun blasts could injure as many as 138,000 marine mammals, including dolphins and whales.

Airguns are toted underwater by boats and repeat loud blasts every 10-12 seconds, sometimes for months at a time, and a single ship may tow up to 96 airguns, Oceana says.

– ‘Incidentally’ harass marine mammals –

The announcement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries department authorizes five companies to “incidentally, but not intentionally, harass marine mammals” as they “conduct geophysical surveys in support of hydrocarbon exploration in the Atlantic Ocean.”

The actual permits for drilling offshore would be issued by a separate government office, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management. Those permits have not yet been issued.

NOAA experts said their decision allowed for geographical limits on where airgun blasting could take place, would offer protections for endangered right whales, and did not explicitly allow for the killing of any marine mammals.

While Benjamin Laws, a biologist at the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, acknowledged that seismic blasting could have “effects” on marine life, he said during a conference call with reporters: “Our analysis shows we shouldn’t expect there would be impacts greater than negligible on annual rates of recruitment or survival for these populations.”

Jolie Harrison, chief of the Permits and Conservation Division in the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, added: “We really went to great lengths here to make sure that we understood what the effects are.”

Extra steps by exploration operations are to include visual and acoustic monitoring to detect marine mammal sounds underwater before seismic blasts can begin.

NOAA also said its approval requires third-party observers to ride on geophysical survey vessels “to listen and watch for marine life and alert operators if a protected species comes within a certain distance.”

A NOAA spokeswoman said commercial operators would have to contract with third party observers, and “the observers have the authority to call for a shutdown when required.”

Trump and Moon, meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, “reaffirmed their commitment to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearization” of North Korea, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

They agreed on the need for “maintaining vigorous enforcement of existing sanctions to ensure the DPRK understands that denuclearization is the only path,” Sanders said, using the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

However, Trump made clear that he also wants to follow up on his historic June summit in Singapore as he tries to persuade the reclusive regime to give up its nuclear weapons.

“President Trump discussed his intention to have a second US-DPRK summit,” Sanders said, and the two leaders “restated their commitment to closely coordinate on next steps.”

Moon’s top press secretary, Yoon Young-chan, was quoted by Yonhap news agency saying that Trump “asked that South Korea and the US closely cooperate so the next summit will be another historical milestone in the process of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was due to meet with a top North Korean official in early November, but the meeting was abruptly put off, with North Korea insisting that the United States ease sanctions.

Southeast Bangladesh is home to around a million Rohingya, most of whom fled Myanmar last year following a military crackdown and are now in vast camps.

There are fears that with the current calmer weather, many may try to reach other more prosperous countries by boat by paying often unscrupulous traffickers.

The elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said it stopped the six young women and four men at Shah Porir Dwip, a coastal station, on Thursday night before they could board a boat on the Naf river estuary dividing Bangladesh and Myanmar.

“They were about to head to Malaysia through the Bay of Bengal. The girls won’t be aged more than 22 years. They were tempted that they can get married with well-off persons in Malaysia,” RAB Cox’s Bazar chief Mahedi Hasan told AFP.

People smugglers in recent years have taken tens of thousands of Rohingya to Malaysia before Bangladesh launched a crackdown in 2015 after Thai authorities discovered mass graves and overcrowded boats drifting at sea.

Hasan said the women paid $100 each to traffickers and the men paid nearly $250. “Each of them were supposed to pay another 200,000 taka (nearly $2,500) once the boat crosses Thai waters,” he said.

A Bangladeshi trafficker was also arrested, he added.

RAB said two of those who were arrested came to Bangladesh from Myanmar in 2000-2001. The rest were part of exodus of around 720,000 last year.

Early this month the Bangladeshi coastguard intercepted a boat in the Bay of Bengal carrying 33 Rohingya to Malaysia.

The sea tends to stay calm between November and March. During this time of year even small boats can travel long distances via the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

Amid warnings that children in poor countries are being shipped into the institutions to meet the lucrative demand for western volunteerism, a new law has been introduced to tackle the issue.

The Modern Slavery Bill was passed by both houses of parliament on Thursday and includes an explicit reference to “trafficking and/or exploitation of children in orphanages.”

Under the new law, so-called “orphanage trafficking” will be treated as a slavery and trafficking offence.

“Australia is the first country in the world to recognise orphanage trafficking as a form of modern slavery,” said Paul Ronalds of Save the Children Australia, a non-governmental lobby group.

It is estimated that around 80 percent of the eight million children in orphanages worldwide have parents or family who could take care of them.

Sometimes children are sent away, with their parents believing they will get a good education.

According to Save the Children, more than 50 percent of Australian universities advertised orphanage placements as a volunteering opportunity overseas.

Activists hope the legal change will cause Australians to more carefully vet where they volunteer overseas.