By the time drug enforcement agents swooped into his small medical office in Martinsville, Virginia, in 2017, Dr. Joel Smithers had prescribed about a half a million doses of highly addictive opioids in two years.

Patients from five states drove hundreds of miles to see him, spending up to 16 hours on the road to get prescriptions for oxycodone and other powerful painkillers.

"He's done great damage and contributed ... to the overall problem in the heartland of the opioid crisis," said Christopher Dziedzic, a supervisory special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration who oversaw the investigation into Smithers.

In the past two decades, opioids have killed about 400,000 Americans, ripped families apart and left communities — many in Appalachia — grappling with ballooning costs of social services like law enforcement, foster care and drug rehab.

Smithers, a 36-year-old married father of five, is facing the possibility of life in prison after being convicted in May of more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing drugs, including the oxycodone and oxymorphone that caused the death of a West Virginia woman. When he is sentenced Wednesday, the best Smithers can hope for is a mandatory minimum of 20 years.

Authorities in the U.S. Virgin Islands said they've expanded their search for Lucy Schuhmann, a 48-year-old from Kentucky who's been missing for more than a week.

Schuhmann was reported missing on Sept. 19 by the proprietor of her vacation rental in Coral Bay, on the island of St. John, after she didn't return home, local authorities said.

In recent days, local authorities and the Virgin Islands National Park Service began widening their search to additional hiking trails, roadsides and shorelines.

"I'm grateful for the diligence and care that our National Parks team on St. John have demonstrated," Stacey Plaskett, the Virgin Islands' Congressional delegate, said in a statement. "Our office will continue to support the team and are praying for Lucy and her family."

I have only ever known Julian Assange in detention. For nine years now, I have visited him in England bearing Australian news and solidarity. To Ellingham Hall I brought music and chocolate, to the Ecuadorian embassy I brought flannel shirts, Rake, Wizz Fizz and eucalyptus leaves, but to Belmarsh prison you can bring nothing — not a gift, not a book, not a piece of paper. Then I returned to Australia, a country so far away that has abandoned him in almost every respect.

Over the years I have learned to not ask, 'How are you?', because it's bloody obvious how he is: detained, smeared, maligned, unfree, stuck — in ever-narrower, colder, darker and damper tunnels — pursued and punished for publishing. Over the years I've learned to not complain of the rain or remark on what a beautiful day it is, because he's been inside for so long that a blizzard would be a blessing. I've also learned that it is not comforting but cruel to speak of sunsets, kookaburras, road trips; it's not helpful to assure him that, like me and my dog, he will find animal tracks in the bush when he comes home, even though I think it almost every day.

It is the prolonged and intensifying nature of his confinement that hits me as I wait in the first line outside the front door of the brown-brick jail. At the visitor centre opposite I've been fingerprinted after showing two forms of proof of address and my passport. Sure to remove absolutely everything from my pockets, I've locked my bags, keeping only £20 to spend on chocolate and sandwiches. Despite the security theatre that follows, the money gets nicked at some point through no fewer than four passageways that are sealed from behind before the next door opens, a metal detector, being patted down and having my mouth and ears inspected. After putting our shoes back on, we visitors cross an outdoor area and are faced with the reality of the cage: grey steel-mesh fencing with razor wire that is about 4 metres high all around. I hurry into the next building before going into a room where thirty small tables are fixed to the floor, with one blue plastic chair facing three green plastic chairs at each.

According to the latest Census Bureau figures released this month, real American incomes remained essentially flat in 2018 after three straight years of growth. Median household income was $63,179 in 2018, an uptick of 0.9% that census officials said isn't statistically significant from the prior year based on figures adjusted for inflation.

The new figures showed that the number of full-time, year-round workers increased by 2.3 million. When looked at by race and ethnicity, median household incomes in America were essentially flat in 2018 for all groups except Asians, who saw theirs rise 4.6% from the previous year in real dollars.

The good news is that while income were flat, the poverty rate in 2018 decline modestly to 11.8%, a decrease of a half percentage point from 2017, marking the fourth consecutive annual decline in the national poverty rate. It was the first time the official poverty rate fell significantly below its level at the start of the recession in 2007.

Nationals of Afghanistan vote on Saturday to elect the country's president in an election that saw around 9.5 million people registered for casting their ballots. However, the election process was repeatedly disrupted by the attacks launched by the Taliban group which vowed to disrupt the vote.

A child died while nine people were injured in missile attacks in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

At least 10 missiles were fired at the city of Lashkar Gah and Gereshk town in the province.

Local authorities have not officially confirmed the casualties.

Rushdi Baker, 56, tied his boat to a pillar on the seaport edge in Gaza and turned his rolled-up fishing net from one side to the other. "That is Bibi, [Netanyahu]" he said, before turning the net over to the other side. "And that is [Benny] Gantz. Both are well-woven, for one duty."

Then leaving the harbor with three boxes of small crabs, Baker pointed at the sky: "We need a Christ or a miracle to change the situation in Gaza, since all Israel's political parties seek to screw us up."

After Israelis went to the polls last week, I talked to Palestinians in Gaza about the results. I found that many wondered, 'How and When will Gaza be wiped out?' — no matter by 'Who'.

• Survey reveals about two in five Americans are stressed out by the political climate, and one in five say they're even losing sleep.
• Nearly a third of those surveyed feel views expressed on cable news channels are driving them "crazy."
• Study author believes problem is akin to a public health crisis in the country.

The past few years in American politics have been tumultuous, to say the least. Personal political beliefs aside, there is no denying that the U.S. has grown especially divided in the wake of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election victory. Between social media bots, partisan news coverage, and the president's frequent Twitter posts, it has never been harder for the average American to avoid being bombarded with some type of political message on an almost hourly basis.

It isn't a stretch to assume that at some point all of that polarization would have a negative effect on the collective well being of the nation, and a new study conducted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has effectively confirmed this assumption. According to researchers, the current U.S. political climate is literally making Americans physically sick, damaging friendships, and driving many people "crazy."

Thousands of protesters in Haiti took to the streets to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moise, setting businesses and government buildings ablaze in chaotic demonstrations prompted by claims of official corruption.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, demonstrators looted a police station and made off with ammunition, ballistics vests and even office furniture on Friday. Elsewhere in the city, homes and businesses were set on fire. A courthouse in the city of Jacmel was also torched.

Police responded to the unrest with tear gas as protesters hurled stones and other projectiles.

Opposition leaders in Haiti have called for President Moise's ouster for months, citing failure to investigate allegations of embezzlement of state funds by the president's allies in the previous administration. Food and energy shortages, as well as soaring inflation, have also fueled the protests, which have often descended into violence. In September alone, four were killed in clashes with security forces.

A New Orleans radio station is claiming a homophobic tweet sent from its official Twitter account was actually sent by the gay staffer the message was targeting.

Earlier this month, New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees was criticized for appearing in a video produced by Focus on the Family (FoF), an evangelical organization known for its zealous opposition to LGBT equality. The clip was promoting FoF's "Bring Your Bible to School Day" on October 3, but opponents slammed Brees for aligning at all with an organization that endorses conversion therapy and spent thousands to fight marriage equality.

Days later, Brees clarified he wasn't homophobic and didn't know about FoF's anti-gay agenda. In a video posted on Twitter, he claimed he did the PSA because he liked the message of people being "able to live out your faith with confidence."

A heartbroken mother pleaded for a New York City judge on Friday to give leniency to her Ivy League educated son, who was convicted for the execution-style murder of her husband.

Shelley Gilbert prepared a handwritten victim impact statement to read in Manhattan Supreme Court before Justice Melissa Jackson sentenced her son, Thomas Gilbert Jr., to 30 years to life in prison.

"My husband would still be alive today if we got him to a psychiatric hospital 15 years ago," Shelley Gilbert read, her voice cracking as Gilbert Jr. glanced at her over his right shoulder.

The 34-year-old Princeton University graduate was found guilty in June for killing his 70-year-old father, Thomas Gilbert Sr., on Jan. 4, 2015. Gilbert Sr., the founder of Wainscott Capital Partners, was found with a gunshot wound to the head inside the bedroom of his Beekman Place apartment.