newsarticles.media: Corporate Corruption News

2026 â€Dirty Dozen' produce: Nearly 100% tested positive for pesticides, including â€forever chemicals'

Leafy greens such as spinach and kale and perennial kid favorites such as strawberries and grapes held the highest levels of potentially harmful pesticide residues based on government tests, according to the 2026 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce. Nectarines, peaches, cherries, apples, blackberries, pears, potatoes and blueberries filled out this year's "Dirty Dozen" most pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables, according to the report released Tuesday by the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a health advocacy organization. Spinach, which holds the top spot, had more pesticide residue by weight than any other type of produce and contained, on average, four or more different types of pesticides. Samples of every produce type averaged four or more pesticides, except for potatoes, which averaged two. Consuming produce with multiple pesticides is concerning, experts say, because exposure to mixtures of pesticides may accumulate and raise risk. Children are especially susceptible to contaminants such as pesticides, even while in the womb. Pesticide exposure during pregnancy may lead to an increased risk of birth defects, low birth weight and fetal death," according to the AAP. "Exposure in childhood has been linked to attention and learning problems, as well as cancer." For the first time, the report found over 60% of all Dirty Dozen samples contain pesticides that are also "forever chemicals" called PFAS.

Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.

Ultra-processed food companies hindering health drives by suing countries, says WHO

The world's biggest ultra-processed food corporations are hindering global efforts to tackle the obesity crisis by suing governments that try to promote healthier diets, the head of the World Health Organization has said. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, accused global food companies of obstructing the adoption of vital public health measures and costing countries billions of dollars in healthcare and legal costs in the process. Almost 1 billion people worldwide are living with obesity, and unhealthy diets are one of the main drivers of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is soaring and now makes up half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia. Governments around the world, waking up to the health and economic impacts of the obesity crisis, have begun introducing measures designed to curb junk-food intake and promote healthier diets. These include front-of-pack warning labels, marketing and advertising restrictions on unhealthy products, and taxes on junk food. Publicly, the world's biggest UPF companies insist they back the policies. But an investigation ... found many of these same companies were taking governments to court to overturn, weaken or delay the policies. In total, 235 lawsuits were lodged over health policies targeting UPFs in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US and the UK from 2010 to 2025, the investigation found.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world.

Big Food vs. The People

Bad diets kill millions of people globally every year. Legislators and government officials have worked to rein in this public health crisis by enacting laws that require food companies to be transparent about their ingredients and limit the advertising of unhealthy foods. In public, the world's biggest and richest food companies ... say they want to be part of the solution. But behind closed doors, they have taken governments to court to delay, dilute, and derail public health laws, which the companies say violate their rights. 239 lawsuits were filed between 2010 and 2025 across Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US, the UK, and India against public health policies targeting food and beverages such as front of pack labelling, regulating advertising junk food to children, soda taxes, and taxes on ultra processed foods. The cases add up to 595 years of litigation, representing a significant burden on the governments defending their health policies. Of the cases brought by private companies where the plaintiff was identifiable, more than 1 in 3 came from just nine parent groups, led by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Mondelez. Their actions are not only prolonging the public health crisis but also cost countries billions of dollars in both legal and healthcare costs. In addition, they have a chilling effect on policymakers that wish to better their citizens' health but do not have the resources to engage in drawn-out legal fights with food companies.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

The Deck Is Stacked Against Healthy Eating

Big Food and Big Tech know that the products they are marketing to children are not healthy in a variety of ways. The tobacco giant Philip Morris – which owned Kraft Foods from 1988 to 2007 – used the research, development and marketing strategies it honed to sell cigarettes to hook schoolchildren on sodium-and-sugar-laden products. We know as much as we do about the way the food industry targets kids with unhealthy food because of the trove of documents released by lawsuits against tobacco companies. Through her years of work analyzing these documents, Laura A. Schmidt, a professor at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at U.C.S.F., discovered that Philip Morris used what the company called "technical synergies" between its tobacco and food products. Her paper in The American Journal of Public Health focuses on the development and marketing of Lunchables. Lunchables combine processed meats, cheeses and breads in stackable piles in a plastic tray. These "synergies" included chemical additives and "ďŹ‚avor encapsulation technology," also used in cigarettes and other packaged foods. "Philip Morris applied its â€better for you' reformulation strategy, ďŹrst used to create ďŹltered Marlboro cigarettes, to develop Low-Fat Lunchables in efforts to keep consumers worried about childhood obesity loyal to the brand" in the mid-90s, Schmidt's paper notes – but these "healthier" Lunchables weren't much more nutritious than the originals, even if they were lower in fat.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

For-Profit Corporations Are Buying Up More Psychiatric Hospitals. Some Flout Federal Law With Scarce Repercussions.

As the share of U.S. adults receiving mental health care treatment steadily grows, for-profit companies are playing an increasingly important role. More than 40% of inpatient mental health beds were operated by for-profit entities as of 2021. That's up from about 13% in 2010. (The number of mental health beds held relatively constant during that time.) Experts tie this growth to provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which made mental health care an essential health benefit that all insurance plans are required to cover. Wider access to and increased reimbursement of mental health services piqued the interest of for-profit corporations, said Eileen O'Grady, who until recently served as program director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. "Investors in for-profit entities see that as an opportunity to make money," she said, "in a space that had not historically been seen as super profitable." Shields and other researchers have repeatedly flagged concerns about lower quality of care at mental health facilities owned by for-profit corporations, in part due to efforts to cut staff and reduce costs. ProPublica reported Monday that over 90 psychiatric hospitals across the country have violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act in the past 15 years. The vast majority of them – around 80% – are owned by for-profit corporations. Yet only a handful have faced any consequences. About half of all the hospitals cited were owned by ... Universal Health Services and Acadia Healthcare.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and mental health.

Powerful US utilities secretly fund â€grassroots' groups to sway cities away from switch to public power

The utility industry is quietly dispatching a network of front groups to thwart the growing push for public power across the US – a push that comes amid mounting frustration over sky-high utility bills, electric outages, a slow transition to clean energy and private utilities' soaring profits. Communities from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to San Diego, California, and St Petersburg, Florida, are exploring municipalizing their grids to join the country's approximately 2,000 public power companies. Municipal utilities – or "munis" – are owned and operated by local authorities and broadly have lower rates, better reliability scores and are structurally more accountable to customers. The industry front group operations aim to counter that narrative in a high-stakes fight – private utilities stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue should communities municipalize. Advocates say the front groups at times have resorted to especially unusual measures – in St Petersburg, for example, the industry allegedly recruited some of their canvassers from the parking lots of plasma centers where people donate plasma for money. Federal data shows public power companies' bills, on average, are about 14% lower than private. That is in part because private utility profits that go to Wall Street investors are baked into customers' bills. Public power companies do not need to earn those profits, and excess revenue is typically invested in the grid or used to lower customers' bills.

Note: Read more about communities all over the country who are working to take over their local electric utility systems For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption.

Trump UFO advisors accuse private corporations of operating alien craft-retrieval programs

Avi Loeb, the leader of Trump's UAP Science Advisory Council, shockingly revealed on Congressman Eric Burlison's podcast "Fresh Freedom" that an executive of the $137 billion military contractor Lockheed Martin claimed the company operated a crashed-UFO retrieval program. "I had a [former] high level executive from Lockheed Martin visit my home and I asked him, â€Is there any truth to these claims?' And he said â€It's not wrong,'" Loeb revealed. Loeb claims retrieved tech would be enough to prove humans are not the only intelligent beings on Earth – and believes private corporations are ready to participate in the Trump administration's disclosure effort. "If such materials exist, we would love to analyze them. With just a gram of material, we will be able to determine if it originated outside the solar system," Loeb [said]. Former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program member Hal Puthoff suggested on the same podcast that Lockheed was ready to transfer materials to AATIP between 2008 and 2012 – but that plan was killed by the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. Luis Elizondo, who had a leadership role in AATIP, similarly claimed in congressional testimony that a craft of unknown origin was being held in Lockheed labs and was set to be transferred to the Navy's Pax River Facility in Maryland. Burlison, on his tour of government facilities rumored to be housing UFOs, visited Pax River earlier this year.

Note: Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a longtime UFO disclosure advocate, revealed in 2021 that he's been informed for decades that Lockheed Martin is in possession of fragments recovered from the US crash site of a UFO. Don't miss our new video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity w/ Daniel Sheehan and Amber Yang. For more along these lines, explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.

Exclusive: Emails reveal Palmer Luckey's political fundraising as his company wins sole-source contracts

Defense industry tycoon Palmer Luckey [is] the 33-year-old co-founder of sprawling weapons manufacturer Anduril Industries. A longtime GOP donor and activist who spoke on condition he not be identified in order to preserve his political relationships said Luckey was now the "godfather of Republican fundraising on the west coast". "If you're raising campaign money in California, you have to go to Palmer Luckey," he said. "Luckey is the top tier." Anduril, launched just nine years ago, has emerged as a major military contractor for the Trump administration, working on contracts for everything from drones to autonomous jet fighters to space-based interceptors. In March, the US army awarded a $20bn sole-source contract to Anduril for a variety of drones it sells, though it is not clear which of its weapons systems are operational or have been deployed for combat in US operations. Anduril, though it is not widely known as a space contractor, announced in May it would work, with a team of other companies, on what may be the mother of all contracting opportunities offered by the Trump administration, the so-called "Golden Dome" anti-missile space-based interceptor effort. Estimates for the Golden Dome range between $185bn and $1.2tn. Anduril says in Trump's first year in office it doubled its revenue – a growth rate of 100%, but still only reached $2.2bn for 2025, which is barely a blip in the Pentagon's trillion-dollar budget.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and warfare technology.

Tracking the Trump administration's favors to the pesticide industry

The pesticide industry has spent decades building a highly effective influence operation in Washington D.C. Its political influence did not begin with the Trump administration. But over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has delivered a string of victories to the pesticide industry that could reshape pesticide use and public health protections for years to come. U.S. Right to Know identified 26 administration officials with ties to the pesticide industry's lobbying or legal network, including 11 political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where former chemical industry lobbyists now occupy the four highest-ranking positions overseeing federal pesticide regulations. In June 2026, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and Bayer in a 7–2 decision likely to block thousands of state-level lawsuits alleging that Bayer failed to warn consumers that Roundup causes cancer. In February 2026, President Trump signed an executive order declaring glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus – a raw material used in glyphosate production and military weaponry – critical to national defense and directing the federal government to prioritize their domestic production. Bayer is the sole U.S. producer of both glyphosate and elemental phosphorus. In June 2025, USDA rescinded regulations that had required farmers to keep basic records documenting when, where and how they applied restricted-use pesticides.

Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Bayer/Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.

Chlorpyrifos: Pesticide tied to brain damage in children, chronic disease and other health problems

Scientific research shows that chlorpyrifos, a widely used insecticide, is strongly linked to brain damage in children. These and other health concerns led several countries and some U.S. states to ban chlorpyrifos years ago, but the chemical was still allowed for use by farmers in the U.S. after successful lobbying by its manufacturer. In August 2021, the Biden Administration acknowledged the danger to children and announced it would ban chlorpyrifos from agricultural use. However, in November 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit overturned the EPA's ban. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents more than 66,000 pediatricians and pediatric surgeons, has warned that continued use of chlorpyrifos puts developing fetuses, infants, children and pregnant women at great risk. Scientists have found that prenatal exposures to chlorpyrifos are associated with lower birth weight, reduced IQ, the loss of working memory, attention disorders, and delayed motor development. A population based case-control study found that, "Prenatal or infant exposure to a priori selected pesticides–including glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and permethrin–were associated with increased odds of developing autism spectrum disorder." According to an analysis published in July 2020, U.S. regulators relied on falsified data provided by Dow Chemical to allow unsafe levels of chlorpyrifos into American homes for years.

Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.

A.I. Bots Told Scientists How to Make Biological Weapons

A small group of experts [were] enlisted by A.I. companies to vet their products for catastrophic risks. Some have shared with The Times more than a dozen chatbot conversations revealing that even publicly available models can do more than disseminate dangerous information. The virtual assistants have described in lucid, bullet-pointed detail how to buy raw genetic material, turn it into deadly weapons and deploy them in public spaces, the transcripts show. The U.S. government has long planned for powerful adversaries unleashing deadly bacteria, viruses or toxins in the American population. Since 1970, there have been a few dozen, fairly small biological attacks around the world, such as the anthrax-laced letters that killed five Americans in 2001. Despite perennial warnings, a major catastrophe has not happened and remains unlikely, most experts say. But even if the probability is low, an effective biological weapon could have an enormous impact. Dozens of experts told The Times that A.I. is one of several recent technological advances that have meaningfully increased that risk by expanding the pool of people who could cause harm. Still, A.I. users would need some real-world expertise to follow a bot's instructions. Some research, including a study backed by A.I. companies, has found that while chatbots can help novices learn certain lab skills, the technology isn't particularly helpful for carrying out the range of complex tasks needed to make a virus from scratch.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI, biotech dangers, and science corruption.

Investigation of School Epstein Helped Finds Abuses Went Beyond Him

Dozens of former students of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, where Jeffrey Epstein is said to have encountered some of his earliest victims, told a law firm hired by the school that they had been sexually abused by teachers, staff members, trustees and others affiliated with the institution in episodes ranging from the 1950s to the 2010s. In a report released on Tuesday, after almost two years of interviews, the law firm presented firsthand accounts of Interlochen alumni, who said they had been subjected to misconduct ranging from grooming and flirting to intercourse. The report said that some 70 of the former students described physical abuse and identified the perpetrators as 47 adults affiliated with the center. The report, which is 97 pages long, said that some of the adults figured in multiple accounts that stretched over decades, but that a majority of the episodes had occurred several decades ago and claims of abuse had dropped sharply since 2000. In recent years, Interlochen also became known as the place where Mr. Epstein, a celebrated donor to the school, returned to mingle with students, several of whom later said they had been subjected to his grooming and abuse. Between 1990 and 2003, he [directed] more than $400,000 to Interlochen, including $200,000 to build the Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge, created to house visitors and parents. In 2009, Interlochen renamed the Epstein lodge.

Note: Don't miss part one and part two of our investigations into the Epstein files so far. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein.

Made in America: The Products of U.S. Prison Labor Are All Around Us

A freshman's dorm mattress at Mississippi State University. A Georgia Medicaid patient's eyeglasses. The goalpost padding at Bauxite High School in Arkansas. The burn ban flag at the Boerne Fire Department in Texas Hill Country. All of them were made by people incarcerated in American prisons. In the United States, prison labor is everywhere, a practice nearly as old as our nation itself. Incarcerated workers are responsible for producing over $2 billion in goods annually, much of which is sold via federal and state prison industries to public institutions. Incarcerated workers make between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour working for state-owned businesses – though in six states, prison workers aren't paid for their labor at all. Proponents of prison labor argue that these work programs are designed to be rehabilitative and beneficial for incarcerated people. But Carla Laroche, Felder-Fayard associate professor of law at Tulane University and the Murphy Institute, says it's more complicated. "Prison labor goes back to enslavement," she said. "Someone is being held in a facility, a prison, and told, â€You must work.' They don't have a choice whether they work or not, what skills they want to learn, or what kind of job they have. And some people might say, great – everybody has to work. Everybody has to pay their bills. But we have the ability to leave. We have the ability to choose. And we can work for ourselves. In some prisons, if you do not work, you will be held in solitary confinement."

Note: US prison labor is linked to hundreds of popular food brands. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.

How Jeffrey Epstein parlayed his elite network into a $25 million payday

When elite Swiss banker Ariane de Rothschild sought to extract her company from the teeth of a federal investigation into its role in helping high-end customers hide potentially billions from the IRS, documents show she turned to an unexpected American businessman for help: convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In this new role, Epstein appears to have helped Edmond de Rothschild, one of Europe's largest private banks, resolve a menacing Justice Department investigation, garnering him a $25 million fee. And in doing so, he displayed another facet of his ability to tap his network of wealthy and powerful patrons for his personal gain. As Epstein himself explained it in a Dec. 11, 2015, email to Rothschild, he had helped negotiate a deal for the bank to pay $45.5 million to the IRS, $10 million in legal fees, and $25 million to him. "All less than 80 [million dollars] pretty good," he wrote. The Swiss bank's American lawyer on that matter, Kathy Ruemmler, a former Obama White House attorney, will be appearing before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about her documented longstanding ties with Epstein. In June of 2014, Epstein sent an email to Rothschild, saying, "If I can be helpful, I would be glad to, I expect no, nor do I want any financial relationship of any kind. I am doing this as my way to do good. and to repay a deep debt that i feel I owe to edmonde." This appears to be a reference to her father-in-law Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild, the bank's founder, who died in 1997.

Note: Ruemmler acted as a key legal adviser to Epstein, which included killing an ABC News Interview with survivor Virginia Giuffre. In fact, Epstein's text messages show that he considered Ruemmler as his "great defender." Don't miss part one and part two of our investigations into the Epstein files so far. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein.

AI-powered military neurotech: Mind enhancement or control?

Neurable, a consumer neurotechnology startup, has partnered with the Air Force to study whether electrode-studded headphones can track service members' cognitive fitness. The $1.2 million project adds to the Pentagon's growing investment in the $3 billion market for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) – helmets, earbuds, other wearable devices and medical implants that use artificial intelligence to make sense of brain signals. Now, advances in AI enable BCIs to interpret or change brain activity with unprecedented accuracy and speed. So much so that some scientists and neuroethicists say the capacity to monitor signals that reveal a warfighter's or a veteran's mental states, visual perceptions or inner dialogue may outpace the ability to shield that data from misuse. "One could certainly imagine how enforced use of such devices could create a very dystopian basis for behavioral control," warned James Giordano, director of the National Defense University's Center for Disruptive Technology. Some neuroethicists, however, cautioned that the use of brain wearables may also invade troops' privacy and foster prejudice. "We need to be much more reflective on, much more concerned about and much more focused on the implications of altering a person's brainwaves," through neurofeedback training, "as compared to having them work out more or do more pull-ups," said Jared Genser, a lawyer and co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation.

Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI, biotech dangers, and mind control.

Jonathan Haidt Brings New Evidence to the Battle Against Social Media

Jonathan Haidt did not expect to become the face of a global movement against social media. As Haidt's influence has grown, so, too, have objections from critics. At issue is his central claim that smartphones and social media are causing a mental health epidemic in young people. In research released this week, Haidt and his co-author, Zachary Rausch, claim to demonstrate causal links between social media platforms and the harms they say they are doing to children. Not just harms like anxiety and depression, but also frequent sexual harassment and cyberbullying. "The biggest, clearest one, I think, is sextortion," [said Haidt]. "That's the one that just stands out like a sore thumb. Kids, if they're on social media, they can get sextorted. If they're not, they can't, really. And the kids who get sextorted are deeply shamed. They shared a picture of themselves – teenage boys usually – and then their lives are ruined, and some of them commit suicide. So I'm just saying that there are so many different mechanisms by which kids are getting harmed. Depression and anxiety are just two of the pathways. What parents want to know and what legislators want to know is: Is this consumer product, which all kids are consuming massive quantities of, is this consumer product hurting kids? And guess what? We have seven different lines of evidence saying, "Yes, it's hurting kids." And Meta – I mean, my God, the data they have on harm is astonishing."

Note: Read more about the dark side of social media and the sextortion rings where kids target kids. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.

Meta Contractors Posed as Teens to Prompt Rival Chatbots About Suicide, Sex, and Drugs

Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta were instructed to pose as minors online and probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, eating disorders, and other high-risk subjects, according to internal documents and five people familiar with the project. The prompts were often designed to push the chatbots toward responses their safety systems were supposed to refuse. A single round of testing completed in August 2025 saw more than 45,000 prompts run through the rival chatbots. The companies behind the chatbots weren't aware of the testing. Testing competitors' products is not, by itself, unusual in the artificial intelligence industry. Former contractors who worked on the project described several aspects as alarming. According to one former worker, employees feared the possibility they could be generating or preserving child sexual abuse material if a chatbot responded to certain sexual prompts involving minors. Another says they worried the project amounted to secretly taking material from competitors' systems to potentially feed back into Meta's system. While a dataset of thousands of youth-safety prompts could be useful for comparing how often chatbots refuse harmful requests, the scale and opacity of [this project, known internally as] Cannes, along with the lack of disclosure to the companies being tested, made it very different from other public safety benchmarks.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.

People Are Not Happy About Google's Plan to Release Millions of Bioengineered Mosquitoes Into the Wild

One of the wealthiest corporations in the world is seeking government permission to release 32 million mosquitoes throughout Florida and California. Called "Debug," the Google-owned company is attempting to flood disease-carrying mosquito populations with ... male mosquitoes that have been infected with a bacteria called Wolbachia that causes cytoplasmic incompatibility – meaning their sperm can't fertilize the eggs of uninfected females. Over time, the theory goes, this will disrupt the reproduction cycle, thereby increasing competition and decreasing the overall population. The American people aren't exactly thrilled with the idea of a tech company releasing millions of skeeters into the wild. "Ask yourself who is to benefit most from this, and why is it being done?" one anonymous citizen commented. "Corporations should not play a part in regulating or artificially altering ecosystems, that is the job of the EPA. This project should NOT be approved." Another unnamed commentator concurred, writing that "we are not experimental rats. A separate 2019 project in Brazil using genetically modified ... mosquitoes was found to have inadvertently introduced lab DNA into wild populations, because the mosquitoes began reproducing anyway. Debug's approach is substantially different, but the incident illustrates the highly experimental and uncontrollable nature of large-scale releases: the specter that a bug drop might not just fail, but backfire entirely.

Note: Oxitec, a biotech firm bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, has been authorized to release up to 2.4 billion genetically modified mosquitoes in California's Central Valley by 2024. A plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. These Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are engineered so that only non-biting males survive, supposedly to curb Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya. Yet California has had no significant outbreaks of these diseases, which means billions of engineered insects are being released into the environment without a genuine health crisis to justify it. Read more about the "Pandora's Box" of bioengineered insects.

Millions of Americans take on debt and drain savings to afford food

Millions of Americans are borrowing money or draining their savings to buy groceries, highlighting the financial strain many households face as the cost of living rises, new research has found. More than a quarter of working-age adults who relied on credit cards to buy groceries were either unable to pay their balance in full or missed their minimum payment, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. About one in 10 adults relied on so-called "buy now, pay later" loans to cover their groceries – of those, about a third missed a payment last year, the analysis found. About 20% of working-age adults said they had tapped long-term savings that weren't intended for everyday expenses, such as an emergency fund, at least once in the last 12 months to pay for groceries, the researchers said. Over the past five years, grocery prices have jumped 32%, making food affordability a top concern. In a May CBS News poll, more than three-quarters of Americans said their incomes aren't keeping up with inflation. About 12% of low- and middle-income adults who used credit cards to pay for groceries missed a minimum payment last year, triple the rate for higher-income consumers, the study found. Lower-earning households were also about four times as likely to miss a buy now, pay later payment as higher-income households.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.

Merck to Settle Bulk of Gardasil Suits for About $50 Million

Merck & Co. says it will settle a spate of lawsuits that blame the drugmaker's blockbuster Gardasil cancer vaccine for causing autoimmune ailments that affect young women's hearts and reproductive systems. Under the accord, Merck would pay more than $50 million to settle more than 200 cases. Merck, based in Rahway, New Jersey, said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News that it decided to "end the litigation in its entirety" by settling all the Gardasil litigation – except for one case. In mass-injury litigation like the Gardasil cases, companies can agree to pay a group of people claiming a product hurt them to resolve cases without saying that the product was harmful. Merck isn't admitting liability as part of settlement. An attorney in the Los Angeles case involving Jennifer Robi, a California woman who contended Gardasilshe got as a teenager caused a heart ailment that's left her in a wheelchair, declined to comment. Her case could have been the first against Merck over the vaccine to be decided by a jury. Merck said in its statement on the settlement that the amount it would pay is "considerably less than Merck's anticipated costs" in defending the cases. Merck avoided a showdown over Gardasil in North Carolina last year when a judge dismissed a group of more than 200 cases he concluded were preempted by the US Food and Drug Administration's approval of the vaccine's labeling.

Note: In a CBS News article, Dr. Diane Harper, a lead researcher involved in Gardasil's clinical trials, raised concernts that reports of serious side effects could pose greater risks than the disease it was designed to prevent, especially because cervical cancer is often caught early through routine Pap tests and treated successfully. For more, read about the FOIA government records showing that by 2013, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had paid nearly $6 million to Gardasil vaccine injury victims, including the families of two deaths. The report highlights that the original clinical trials were too short to determine whether the vaccines provided long-term protection against cervical cancer.

A probe into â€forever chemicals' in activewear lays bare fashion's greenwashing problem

Have you ever paid more for a product because a brand told you it was good for you and the planet? Many activewear shoppers do exactly this, trusting that the "healthy" image on the label matches what is actually in the fabric. The Texas Attorney General's office has launched a formal investigation into the activewear brand Lululemon. The question: does its activewear contain PFAS, a group of toxic "forever chemicals"? This sits uncomfortably with a brand built on wellness. Lululemon has denied the claims. It says it phased out PFAS in 2023. The case highlights a wider problem: a gap between what fashion brands promise and what is actually in their products. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are synthetic chemicals used to make fabrics resistant to water, stains and sweat. They earned the name "forever chemicals" because they do not break down easily in the environment or our bodies. Instead, they accumulate over time. The issue first came to wide attention in 2011, when Greenpeace's "Dirty Laundry" investigation named several global giants for links to dumping perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), now broadly classified as PFAS, into Chinese waterways. While most major brands promised to phase out PFAS by 2020, follow-up testing shows they still appear in leggings and sports bras across the sector. Exposure has been linked to serious health risks, including kidney and testicular cancers, hormonal disruption, and immune system damage.

Note: France has banned the use of forever chemicals in cosmetics and apparel. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.

False positives, real profits: the dark side of cancer screening

Medical care has overinvested in screening, to the detriment of human health. It doesn't reduce the overall number of deaths among those who are screened, and there are real human costs to getting ahead of symptoms. Patients are diagnosed with diseases not destined to bother them, and are subsequently harmed by unnecessary treatment, the side-effects of medication and complications of pointless procedures. Many more face abnormal test results, triggering cascades of more testing, procedures, complications and anxiety. Some are told that, while they don't have the disease, they are at "high risk" for it. More generally, screening relies on fear. To persuade asymptomatic people to be screened, they must first be made to worry about diseases they might get in the future. This undermines our sense of well-being, which lies at the very core of health. All of this costs time and money–and a lot of it. Cancer screening alone in the US has been estimated to cost $43 billion annually. For a variety of reasons, I think this is a low-ball estimate: the real number is closer to $100 billion. That kind of money could go a long way toward improving treatment for symptomatic patients or, more broadly, tackling the social determinants of health. And then there is a lot of magical thinking: not only do we assume that more screening will save more lives, but that testing large swaths of the population will somehow ... reduce disparities in healthcare outcomes.

Note: Read more about how harmless cancers are being overdiagnosed in the us. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering.

Matt Taibbi: To Protect Free Speech, I'm Suing the Man Who Defamed Me

Tech writer Eoin Higgins [recently] published Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. The main subjects of the book–fellow reporter Glenn Greenwald and myself–are [portrayed as] puppets controlled by Big Tech overlords such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks. Higgins's case against me concerns my involvement with the Twitter Files–a trove of the social media website's internal communications that Musk sent to reporters, including me, after he acquired the company in 2022. I took significant heat for my coverage, which included Twitter employees' deliberations about whether to suppress the report about Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 election. IRS agents made an unannounced visit to my home the day I testified in Congress about my findings, and delegate Stacey Plaskett falsely accused me of perjury and threatened to jail me. Despite this, Higgins says I sold out–literally–by working on the Twitter Files. He claims that I "fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power" after having "cash[ed] in" with my "benefactor," Musk. I've never taken money from Musk or any other "tech billionaire on the right," as Higgins implies. The trend of casual defamation that prevails on social media–where pseudonymous accounts blithely accuse people of rape or pedophilia all day, every day–has seeped into the regular press, where "reckless disregard" has become the norm.

Note: Read the complete article to learn how Matt Taibbi fell out of favor with mainstream media when he started questioning the lies underpinning the Russiagate narrative. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.

I Wrote a Book About Censorship. Then People Tried to Censor It.

Last week, I published a book called The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. It describes how, as technology has advanced, American politics and government have been transformed by the shift in societal power from visible laws and institutions to opaque forms of digital and informational control. One of the consequences of this shift has been the ability of the government-tech alliance–what I call "the information state"–to carry out mass censorship online. This point was noted in a generally positive review of the book that ran on March 24 in a left-wing magazine called The Baffler. So I could only savor the irony when, less than a day later, the magazine purged the review from its website. In place of the purged piece is an editor's note informing visitors that the magazine removed the review "after determining that it does not meet The Baffler's fact-checking standards." If a magazine publishes something that generates significant controversy ... the liberal thing to do is to publish a counterargument. To cite a "factchecking" error without elaborating what it is leaves the public even less informed than before. The book [describes how] smart and often decent people wound up being puppeteered by a vast technocratic apparatus for managing public opinion that had disastrous consequences. To them, the real censors are not the paragovernmental information regulators, but the authors whose books they disagree with.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.

Peter Thiel's secret society turns up in Epstein files

Just days after a leak exposed members of Peter Thiel's secretive Dialog society, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)-retrieved Jeffrey Epstein files have revealed multiple connections between the disgraced financier and the exclusive network founded by the billionaire investor. Among the documents is a February 2016 email in which Epstein discussed Thiel's interest in what he described as a "secret society idea." "peter thiel LOVED the secret society idea," Epstein wrote in an email to former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. "he has done alot of work on the concept. all failed so far." The email surfaced alongside another newly released record that references Dialog, the invitation-only organization Thiel launched in 2006 with entrepreneur Auren Hoffman. In a November 2012 email, renowned Harvard physicist Lisa Randall forwarded Epstein an invitation to attend Dialog 2014, an exclusive retreat held at Utah's Sundance Resort. Another email suggests the financier was receiving materials connected to the organization's retreats. In a September 2013 message, Boris Nikolic – the prominent biotechnology executive who later became one of Epstein's most well-known scientific associates – forwarded Epstein an email discussing a Dialog breakout session focused on bitcoin and foreign policy. "You should have someone print you various materials in links below," Nikolic wrote to Epstein.

Note: It appears that Jeffrey Epstein played a significant role in Peter Thiel's rise within some of the world's most powerful business and political networks. Read how Thiel worked with the CIA to influence the origins of Facebook, and how Palantir software helped the NSA spy on the entire planet. Watch a 7-min video with WTK Director Amber Yang and Joe Martino from Collective Evolution discussing the links between Thiel, Palantir, Jeffrey Epstein, the Rothschild banking family, and intelligence agency operations.

How the Peter Thiel-Linked Dialog Club Secretly Ranks Its Members

Dialog, the private network cofounded by Peter Thiel, grades its event attendees on a hidden scale, ranking them by wealth and fame, tracking their relationships, and using algorithms to help decide who they should meet, who they should sit with, and who no longer belongs. Founded in 2006 by Thiel and data broker Auren Hoffman, Dialog is a private club that convenes politicians, investors, entrepreneurs, military leaders, executives, academics, and journalists for invitation-only, off-the-record retreats. According to a Dialog document shared by a past participant, it has "over 1,000 paying members," and more than 2,500 people have attended its annual retreats. Dialog assigns people grades before they join. Of the 192 dossiers examined by WIRED, 130 are tagged as members. The rest are prospects with files bearing markings like "First Time Dialoger" or "Warm." Everyone–members and prospective invitees alike–is assigned a grade of A, B, or C. The "C" grade appears reserved for the most famous and influential; only one in seven received it. Most people–141 of 192–received a "B." The final tier, "A," appears primarily assigned to older, established members whom the graders consider less notable. The leak also points to a built-in matchmaking system that pairs members for both networking and dating. (Roughly 10 percent of respondents opted into a singles pool.) More than three-quarters already have a list of algorithm-suggested matches.

Note: Is this Dialog Society the Bohemian Grove of Big Tech? Read how Thiel worked with the CIA to influence the origins of Facebook, and how Palantir software helped the NSA spy on the entire planet.

The weirdest things a leak revealed about Peter Thiel's secret club

Well, data leaked by the Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew (who also brought us the justice department's no-fly list back in 2023) is shedding new light on Dialog, the private social club co-created by the former PayPal boss Peter Thiel and the angel investor Auren Hoffman. The network has been around since 2006, and regularly gathers politicians, entrepreneurs, foreign officials, academics, Silicon Valley founders and even Hollywood folks for invitation-only retreats. there are a few weird things we've discovered from this leak. Dialog grades its retreat attenders on a hidden scale, ranking them according to their wealth and fame. Everyone is assigned a grade of A, B or C, with the "C" grade being awarded to the most famous and influential. Lower-grade attenders are charged full-price roughly 70% of the time, while only about a quarter of VIPs have to shell out the bigger bucks. Planned events range from sessions like "Bring Back Nuclear" to others focused on "Disinformation and Deepfakes", "Contrarian AI Takes", "Democracy Under Surveillance" and "Money (Does?) Buy Happiness." The agenda also includes sessions on cult-building (moderated by the founder of the Christian site Pray.com, no less), one on "Navigating WWIII" and a session titled "How's Your Sex Life?" Dialog has a matchmaking system that pairs members for networking and dating. The data exposed in the leak includes home addresses, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, and other bio-datas.

Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said?

The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies. Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty. Away from Trump's bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force. Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg's speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump's brand of crony-capitalism. This year's conference had a wartime flavour: with the "Future of Warfare" on the agenda, and a participant list including the four-star admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. From the private sector there was a healthy contingent of military contractors and drone manufacturers.

Note: Is this Dialog Society the Bohemian Grove of Big Tech? Read more about the shadowy history of the Bilderberg secret society.

I watched as Meta's threats stopped Sarah Wynn-Williams from speaking – we must have stronger rights for whistleblowers

Former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams [was] silenced by Meta's legal threats to bankrupt her if she spoke. Wynn-Williams has written a book, Careless People, about her time at Meta (then Facebook), where she was an early director of global public policy. But Meta does not like the book. It has done everything in its power to stop it, including seeking an emergency arbitration order that prevents Wynn-Williams from promoting the book, and threatening punitive damages. These serve both to punish Wynn-Williams for writing it, and to send a warning to any future critic. A certain kind of libertarian responds by saying that Meta is not "censoring" Wynn-Williams, because only governments can censor. A certain kind of lawyer may say she brought this on herself by signing a contract agreeing not to criticise Meta. Private censorship is real and, in the time we live in, often more impactful than the public kind. Not all contractual provisions are, or should be, enforceable. You cannot write an enforceable contract to sell a child, to bind someone never to marry or to give up other fundamental rights. Why should the right to speak critically be any different? A contract in which someone agrees never to criticise their employer should be void and unenforceable. That is why we need legislation that makes clear a simple principle: that the free-speech right to criticise your employer is important, fundamental and cannot be sold.

Note: Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams once told US senators that the company targeted teenage girls with beauty and weight-loss advertisements during moments of heightened vulnerability such as after deleting a selfie. According to her testimony, Meta could detect when users were feeling "worthless," "helpless," or like a "failure," and then make that information available to advertisers. For more along these lines, read about a new nonprofit called Psst, which is designed to make it safer for Big Tech whistleblowers to report wrongdoing without immediately exposing themselves to retaliation.

I Co-Founded Wikipedia. Now I'm Banned for Life.

Twenty-five years ago, I co-founded Wikipedia, arguably the most important encyclopedia in human history. On Monday, I was indefinitely banned from the site. In early 2000, the internet was ... much freer. But it was also harder to use, and finding information took much longer. We needed a free, fair storehouse of knowledge: an encyclopedia built by, and open to, the public. It was exhilarating to build Wikipedia at that time. I watched in dismay as the site I'd created began to drift from its founding mission. Wikipedia has, over time, become decidedly globalist, academic, secular, and progressive. Important contributors have been blocked; facts censored in the name of "undue weight" and avoiding "fringe views"; and left-leaning outlets overwhelmingly favored. The Republican Party, for instance, is classified as being on the "right-wing to far-right" of the political spectrum. And the Democratic Party? "Center to center-left.". All this transpires with no mechanisms for real accountability. I was blocked from the site by one Wikipedia admin who declared that the consensus of the mob (the "community") favored my banning. Information is the most valuable currency in any society, and the ability of citizens to access, evaluate, and learn from a diversity of viewpoints is essential to a free civilization. Yet Wikipedia's yearslong shift away from that principle–toward ideological gatekeeping and narrative control–undermines the very purpose for which it was created. So, now that I am powerless to try to fix the platform from the inside, what should I do?

Note: Read how Wikipedia, one of the primary sources for AI chatbots and search summaries, is vulnerable to systematic manipulation by powerful PR firms, intelligence agencies, and billionaires seeking to suppress damaging information and shape public narratives. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.