Americans are "far" unhealthier than their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan, Britain, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany and eight other countries, according to a study from the National Academy of Sciences.

These findings come even though here in the U.S. we spend $8,600 a year per person on healthcare, which is more than twice as much Britain, France and Sweden, "even with their universal healthcare systems."

NBC News:

“The size of the health disadvantage was pretty stunning,” Woolf told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Americans did worse in nine areas: infant mortality; injury and homicide rates; teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases; the AIDS virus; drug abuse; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; lung disease; and disabilities.

And many of these affect young people, not the elderly. Americans are seven times more likely to be murdered than people in the other countries, and 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun.

"I don't think most parents know that, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the U.S. die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries,” Woolf said.

“For many years, Americans have been dying at younger ages than people in almost all other high-income countries,” the expert panel wrote.

We also have a higher infant mortality rate than the other countries, with 32.7 deaths per 100,000. Other countries have infant mortality rates between 15 and 25 deaths per 100,000.

The report wasn't all bad for the U.S., Americans have lower death rates from cancer, the No. 2 cause of death, and do better at controlling blood pressure and cholesterol. “Americans who reach age 75 can expect to live longer than people in the peer countries,” the report reads.

The experts who wrote the report suggested that our culture here in the U.S. has much to do with the negative findings, and suggested that "policymakers" take action to reverse the trend.

Experts are reshaping the way Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is viewed, in part because a growing number of US soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have sought treatment for it.

New research has established a link between PTSD and physical damage to the brain. In fact, the Canadian military has started calling it an "injury", instead of a disorder.

Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman reports from Washington, DC.

Occupy SF activists were back in the spotlight Sunday, taking over an unoccupied building owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco with plans to establish a "permanent occupation" that would serve as shelter and a center for services for homeless people.

The activists entered the building at 888 Turk St. Sunday evening, after a peaceful rally and march from Union Square earlier in the day.

About 100 activists and supporters took up residence in the two-story commercial structure, believed to be a former music building of nearby Sacred Heart Cathedral High School.

By Monday evening, police in riot gear conducted a raid and evicted and arrested approximately 80 Occupy activists who had taken over the building the night before and had stockpiled food and supplies with the apparent intention of staying long-term.

As the arrests got underway, two buses were there to take occupiers away. "Police with assault rifle on roof" noted @JoshuaHolland of Alternet as he live tweeted his observations from on the ground. He also noted that there was at least once occupier injured among the arrestees, a young man with a broken wrist whose pleas for medical assistance as he anguished in plastic cuffs.

This next video is a jail support march from Civic Center Plaza to the SF jail: the escapees, survivors and onlookers of the SFPD raid as well as some of the very recently released occupiers and supporters of the "San Francisco Commune" action at 888 Turk Street. The jail support team then holds an impromptu jail solidarity dance party. Where were you?