The Hmong are an ethnic group from the highlands of Laos. When a communist movement called the Pathet Lao began to gain power in Laos during the Vietnam War, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited the Hmong to fight the communists and attack North Vietnamese supply lines. The resulting conflict far outlasted the Vietnam War.
High suicide rate. Approximately 30,000 Japanese people commit suicide each year. Japan has the highest life expectancy rate in the world in part because of universal health insurance, compulsory primary education and a general healthy lifestyle, according to a new study.
By 1990, life expectancy for men had risen three years in a decade in Nagano prefecture, and 3.5 years for women. Nagano life spans continued to climb until they topped all of Japan by 2010. Rates of deaths due to cancer, heart and liver disease, and pneumonia now rank well below the national average.