Corporate Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Corporate Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

New York City's public hospital system is paying millions to Palantir, the controversial ICE and military contractor. Since 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has paid Palantir nearly $4 million to improve its ability to track down payment for the services provided at its hospitals and medical clinics. Palantir, a data analysis firm that's now a Wall Street giant thanks to its lucrative work with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, deploys its software to make more efficient the billing of Medicaid and other public benefits. That includes automated scanning of patient health notes to "increase charges captured from missed opportunities," contract materials reviewed by The Intercept show. It's Palantir's work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is drawing the most protest today. The company provides a variety of services to help the federal government find and deport immigrants. ICE's Palantir-furnished case management software, for example, "plays a critical role in supporting the daily operations of ICE, ensuring critical mission success," according to federal contracting documents. Palantir's contract with New York's public health care system allows the company to work with patients' protected health information, or PHI. With permission from New York City Health and Hospitals, Palantir can "de-identify PHI and utilize de-identified PHI for purposes other than research," the contract states.

Note: Listen to an audio clip of Jeffrey Epstein promoting Palantir to Ehud Barak. Read how Palantir helped the NSA spy on the entire planet. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

Donald Trump has signed an executive order protecting production of glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, which some bodies and studies have linked to cancer and which are the subject of widespread US litigation. The order also protects domestic production of phosphorus, which is used in making glyphosate and other agricultural chemicals, as well as a range of other products, including some in military defense. Ensuring "robust domestic elemental phosphorus mining and United States-based production of glyphosate-based herbicides is central to American economic and national security", the order states. Neither the executive order nor the fact sheet the White House put out accompanying the order discloses that glyphosate-based herbicides have been linked to an array of cancers and other health problems in multiple independent research studies and by cancer experts of the World Health Organization (WHO). The move by the White House comes as Roundup maker Bayer is facing tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging the company's glyphosate herbicides cause cancer and the company failed to warn farmers and other users of the risks. The company, which inherited the litigation when it bought Monsanto in 2018, has already paid out billions of dollars in settlements and jury verdicts and said this week it was proposing to pay $7.25bn in a class action settlement to try to head off future lawsuits.

Note: In addition to increasing cancer risk by 41%, glyphosate is linked to severe depression and cognitive decline. Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of 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.

The White House invokes the Defense Production Act to guarantee supplies of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Regulators reapprove dicamba, a Bayer herbicide twice blocked by federal courts, and clear the way for new pesticides containing toxic, persistent PFAS "forever" chemicals. And the U.S. Justice Department urges the U.S. Supreme Court to erase billions of dollars of Bayer's liability for its glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer – placing the weight of the executive branch on the side of a foreign company against thousands of Americans who say Bayer's products caused their cancers. Over the past year, the administration under President Donald J. Trump has delivered a string of victories to Bayer, the German agrichemical and pharmaceutical giant that merged with Monsanto in 2018 to become the world's leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds and pesticides. These favors to Bayer clash with Trump's promise to "Make America Healthy Again," which many supporters understood as a pledge to confront industries linked to chronic disease. Our review of Bayer's access in Washington found 22 key administration officials with ties to Bayer's lobbying or legal network. Bayer and its lobbyists have access to people in power at the White House, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and even those in high level positions closest to Trump.

Note: In addition to increasing cancer risk by 41%, glyphosate is linked to severe depression and cognitive decline. Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of 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.

The Trump administration yesterday handed Bayer another win, urging the Supreme Court in a new brief to side with the German pesticide company in a high-stakes legal case that could wipe out thousands of cancer lawsuits and potentially billions of dollars in liability tied to glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer. Three out of nine U.S. officials who signed the brief previously worked for law firms that have represented Bayer, raising questions about whether the Trump administration is providing special favors and benefits to Bayer and siding with a foreign corporation against Americans with cancer. In the new filing, the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency urged the Court to rule in Bayer's favor on the central legal issue: whether federal approval of a pesticide label under federal law preempts state failure-to-warn claims. If the Court accepts that argument, individuals would be barred from suing Bayer under state law for failing to warn that Roundup may cause cancer. The salvo for Bayer is the latest in a series of favorable actions the Trump administration has provided to Bayer. On February 18, the White House invoked the Defense Production Act to guarantee supplies of glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus, a raw element used in production of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and a wide range of industrial and military chemicals. Our Bayer lobby tracker provides information about ... 45 lobbyists registered to lobby for Bayer.

Note: In addition to increasing cancer risk by 41%, glyphosate is linked to severe depression and cognitive decline. Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of 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.

Investigative journalist Will Potter ... turns his lens on one of the most secretive and violent industries in the United States: factory farming. Little Red Barns is the product of a decade-long investigation into the hidden world of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – massive industrial sites where most meat, dairy, and eggs in the U.S. are produced. As a new wave of investigators began exposing the cruelty and pollution inside these facilities ... the industry fought back. Agricultural trade groups quietly drafted and lobbied for so-called "ag-gag" laws: legislation that makes it a crime for anyone, including journalists, to document what happens behind closed doors. Some ag-gag bills were literally written by the industry. In Idaho, for example, Mercy for Animals exposed Bettencourt Dairy, the state's largest dairy farm and a major supplier for Burger King and Kraft. Workers were shown dragging cows with chains around their necks and repeatedly punching them in the face. Footage was later released that showed workers sexually abusing animals. Publicly, Bettencourt said the farm has "zero tolerance for animal abuse in our dairies." Privately, he and the state's $2.5 billion dairy industry lobbied for a new ag-gag law that prohibited "audio or video recording" on an agricultural facility. It also made it illegal to "obtain records" without the farm owner's consent. Dan Steenson, a registered lobbyist for the Idaho Dairymen's Association, had drafted the ag-gag bill.

Note: In 2019, investigative reporting and court records showed that the FBI collaborated with the factory farming industry to place animal rights activists under weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) investigative frameworks, exploring criminal charges–including attempted use of a WMD–that could carry life sentences despite the absence of conventional weapons or mass casualties. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on factory farming.

In 2000 a study was published in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology that deemed the active ingredient in Roundup (glyphosate) was safe and not a human health risk. Since then, that study has been cited consistently as proof of Roundup's safety. Numerous other studies have shown that glyphosate could cause cancer and that the inert ingredients that are part of the patented Roundup formulation increase the toxicity of glyphosate. Further, the practice of using Roundup as a desiccant on small grain crops (oats, wheat and barley) prior to harvest, puts Roundup directly on grain that enters the human food chain. Since acquiring Monsanto in 2018, Bayer has paid out about $11 billion to settle almost 100,000 cancer-related lawsuits, with approximately 61,000 still pending. In December of 2025, another blow to the claimed safety of Roundup when the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology journal withdrew the 2000 article that had touted Roundup's safety. While the study claimed to be independent and peer reviewed, it has come to light that Monsanto's scientists played a significant role in conceiving and writing the article. Oops. For decades, Roundup has been sold as an effective herbicide, one that was safe to humans and the environment and without it, "consequences would be dire". Companies like Bayer ... claim to produce safe products that help farmers thrive– real independent research refutes that.

Note: In addition to increasing cancer risk by 41%, glyphosate is linked to severe depression and cognitive decline. Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of 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 corruption in science and toxic chemicals.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla says he used extreme team-motivating tactics to meet seemingly impossible deadlines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bourla admitted to using what he called "emotional blackmail" in order to create and deliver vaccines faster. Specifically, his team was tasked with creating a vaccine to combat the new illness from scratch. Once it was created, Pfizer needed to far exceed prior shipping and supply-chain constraints; at one point, it even had to produce its own dry ice because not enough was available externally. Prior to COVID, Pfizer had been producing only 200 million vaccine doses per year. That needed to scale quickly to 3 billion doses. All around the office, Bourla put up signs that read, "Time is life." On several occasions, employees came to him to say there would need to be a delay of several weeks in meeting deadlines. In response, Bourla asked them to calculate how many people would die during the additional weeks they requested. In April 2020, that would have meant about 1,800 Americans dying per day; any longer delay could mean tens of thousands of lives. He said he feels "a little bit" guilty about putting that much pressure on his workers. But he argues it was necessary, not only to save the "world, the economy, and society, but make them feel like the most important people on earth, those that were able to deliver." "They will never forget," Bourla added.

Note: Whistleblowers say that the speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. During Pfizer's pivotal COVID-19 vaccine trials, regional director Brook Jackson reported a long list of concerns: falsified data, unblinded participants, and unresolved safety issues to the FDA and was fired the same day. A short time later, the FDA gave Pfizer's emergency authorization for its vaccine to be used publicly. Despite Jackson's claims, the FDA only visited 9 of the 153 Pfizer trial sites, before giving Pfizer full approval for its vaccine.

Syngenta, maker of a controversial pesticide linked to Parkinson's disease, said on Tuesday that it would stop making its paraquat weed killer by the end of June. The announcement comes as the company is facing several thousand lawsuits brought by people in the US who allege they developed Parkinson's disease due to their exposure to Syngenta's paraquat products. The company did not mention the litigation in its announcement. Paraquat has been used in the US since 1964 as a tool to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses. Though banned in several countries, including throughout Europe, Syngenta's paraquat-based Gramoxone herbicide brand has remained popular with US farmers for use in growing soybeans, cotton and corn, as well as in growing grapes, pistachios, peanuts and many other crops. Numerous scientific studies have found that paraquat damages cells in the brain in ways that can lead to Parkinson's, and more than 8,000 lawsuits are pending in US courts over the Parkinson's allegations. The New Lede, in conjunction with the Guardian, obtained and revealed many of Syngenta's internal corporate files, which show that not only was Syngenta aware of research linking paraquat to Parkinson's decades ago, but it also sought to secretly influence scientific information and public opinion regarding those links. Lawmakers in multiple states have introduced legislation to ban paraquat, and several federal lawmakers have also called for bans.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.

The AI surveillance platform provider Palantir is no stranger to controversy. It brings in billions each year from controversial partnerships with groups like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Israeli Defense Forces, something CEO Alex Karp isn't keen on changing anytime soon. In an interview ... this week, Karp even took it a step further, arguing that legalizing US war crimes would open up a whole new market for Palantir. Unlike other moguls profiting off the military industrial complex who hide behind concepts like "democracy" and "national security," the Palantir CEO isn't afraid to put his mouth where his money is with disarmingly bombastic language. In a letter to shareholders earlier this year, for instance, Karp quoted hawkish political scholar Samuel Huntington in arguing that the "rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.'" While this could be seen as a damning indictment of Western civilization and its violent stranglehold over the world economy, Karp instead positions it as a source of inspiration. In another part of his interview ... the Palantir CEO reaffirmed his commitment to ICE, emphasizing the important role he plays in making immigrants lives worse. "I'm going to use my whole influence to make sure this country stays skeptical on migration and has a deterrent capacity that it only uses selectively," Karp said.

Note: Listen to an audio clip of Jeffrey Epstein promoting Palantir to Ehud Barak. Read how Palantir helped the NSA spy on the entire planet. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been googling himself regularly. We see Epstein shoot off emails to associates, complaining that his digital footprint includes factual information about his crimes. Epstein regularly directed his gripes at Al Seckel, a fixer type who appears over and over in Epstein files and promises to bury news articles and other content that mentions his abuse. SEO consultants, contacts in the sciences, and even unrelated acquaintances helped to obscure Epstein's past. In October 2010, Seckel laid out an overview of the group's plan of attack to defend Epstein's reputation online. The situation, as Seckel described it, was that a search surfaced "over 75+ pages of derogatory material," and that someone would be "very hard pressed to find any ‘positive' references." To "balance the only one-sided negative opinion that has been spread over a wide birth on the Internet," Seckel said, the team would need to flood the zone with content they can control, specifically pointing to spinning up websites with original content related to Epstein's connections to science and charities. A "Phillipine Crew" ... would spread flattering links around the web, and other tasks. Part of how Google decides which pages to rank highly in search results is by looking at whether other sites link to a page; Epstein's camp appears to have been trying to push down negative search results by securing valuable links from outside entities.

Note: Another email shows Al Seckel reporting to Jeffrey Epstein that they have successfully manipulated Google search results to bury negative news articles about Epstein, making it difficult to find information about him, even when searching terms like "pedophile." Read our latest in-depth Epstein files investigation, titled "Beyond Sex Trafficking–Zorro Ranch and a Darker Scientific Agenda." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring and Big Tech.

In October 2011, years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor, an adviser to Bill Gates named Boris Nikolic emailed Epstein about wanting to introduce him to a "cool guy." The message included a link to the Wikipedia page for 4chan founder Christopher Poole (who also goes by "moot"). Poole oversaw the platform until 2015. Four days later, Epstein responded to Nikolic about his meeting with Poole to say, "i liked mmot slot. i drove him home, he is very bright." The timing of the introduction is interesting. The same month that Nikolic introduced Epstein to Poole, 4chan launched a politically oriented forum called /pol/, which became popular with right-wing extremists. The site eventually became a cesspool of far-right extremism, violent rhetoric and propaganda, and incubated the pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Four days after Epstein met with Poole, Nikolic emailed Epstein again with a comment on 4chan's potential. "This article describes why I find moot interesting. The potential for manipulation is huge," Nikolic wrote, linking to a Washington Post article that discussed how 4chan had been used to foment bigotry, launch cyberattacks and fuel a "hive mind" mentality. Poole's name appears in Epstein emails later as well, including the next month, when Poole coordinates with one of Epstein's subordinates about meeting up in New York. "Chris, Jeffrey has also said to feel free to bring anyone you think is clever!" the email reads.

Note: QAnon originally launched on 4chan's /pol/ board in October 2017. Read our latest in-depth Epstein files investigation, titled "Beyond Sex Trafficking–Zorro Ranch and a Darker Scientific Agenda," which investigates Epstein's deep ties to the scientific elite and their active exploration of eugenics, designer babies, human cloning, social engineering, and other human experimentation practices. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring and Big Tech.

On July 31, 2019, just eleven days before Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell, his connection to the Rothschild banking dynasty became the subject of major public controversy. Anonymous sources informed Bloomberg of a 2015 visit to Epstein's New York mansion by baroness Ariane de Rothschild, the CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Group, a storied private bank and one of the largest Swiss financial institutions by assets under management. Newly released documents reveal that Epstein and de Rothschild's personal relationship was much closer than the bank previously acknowledged. According to emails released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee on November 12, Epstein planned to see a Broadway play with de Rothschild in January 2014, and scheduled a private trip with her to Montreal. A second set of documents–the leaked inbox of former Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak ... sheds light on Epstein's efforts to leverage his personal friendship with de Rothschild to raise funds for the development of Israeli cyberweapons. It's not clear whether the Rothschild bank ultimately participated directly in Epstein and Barak's cyberweapons efforts–but in October 2015, de Rothschild negotiated a $25 million contract with Epstein's Southern Trust Company, the same entity Epstein used to fund Barak's intelligence-linked security startup Reporty Homeland Security (now known as Carbyne) earlier that year.

Note: Read more about the vast influence of the Rothschild empire. Israeli cyberweapons have been sold to the FBI and used against journalists and activists. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring.

Newly surfaced audio recordings appear to capture Jeffrey Epstein advising former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak on the tech company Palantir, raising fresh questions about Epstein's global intelligence connections and influence. The recordings feature Epstein attempting to introduce Barak to Peter Thiel, Palantir's billionaire co-founder, describing the company and its potential board positions. Epstein's pitch highlighted the influence of major venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, positioning himself as the connector for powerful business and intelligence networks. Barak, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, later founded a security company reportedly invested in by Epstein, further fueling speculation about Epstein's ties to intelligence operations. Analysts note that Epstein's discussions with Barak blend technology advisory with geopolitical reach, suggesting that Palantir's capabilities may have been leveraged as part of broader influence operations. Previously released documents indicate he filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the CIA in 1999 and again in 2011, seemingly seeking acknowledgement of past affiliations. Additional FBI reports, now partially confirmed by the recordings, describe Epstein as a confidential human source with ties to both US and allied intelligence services. Conversations with Alan Dershowitz reportedly involved debriefs with Mossad.

Note: Read our latest in-depth Epstein files investigation, titled "Beyond Sex Trafficking–Zorro Ranch and a Darker Scientific Agenda." Listen to the audio clip of Jeffrey Epstein promoting Palantir to Ehud Barak. Read how Palantir helped the NSA spy on the entire planet. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring and intelligence agency corruption.

In mid-December, as negotiations to end Russia's war in Ukraine gathered pace, a group of Ukrainian officials sat in a conference room in New York for a meeting with senior executives at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. They had come to discuss a crucial element of a peace plan drafted by Kyiv and Washington: Ukraine's postwar recovery. BlackRock had been enlisted to help build a strategy for what President Volodymyr Zelensky has called an $800 billion "prosperity plan." The meeting, held at BlackRock's headquarters, kick-started work on identifying funding sources and investment priorities. BlackRock's role has generated more questions than answers, as the Trump administration steers plans for rebuilding Ukraine toward American business interests. Seven European and Ukrainian officials ... voiced doubts about BlackRock's ability to attract the enormous investments envisioned. The involvement in the talks of a private firm whose main business is to maximize financial returns has reinforced concerns that the Trump administration views Ukraine's reconstruction as a profit-making opportunity for the U.S. government and American companies, rather than as primarily a humanitarian or security matter. Last year, President Trump pushed for a deal granting the United States a stake in Ukraine's mineral wealth. In peace talks with Kyiv, the president's main negotiators have been real estate developers.

Note: First, Blackrock buys up government bonds used to finance military spending, meaning it directly profits from the debt created by war itself. Then, after the war, Blackrock is set to profit again – this time from reconstruction contracts, land grabs, and privatization efforts. Read about this and more with our Substack, Working Together To End the War On Peace in Ukraine, which challenges the dominant narrative on the Ukraine war, arguing that US and NATO policies, covert intelligence agency operations, media censorship, and corporate profiteering have fueled the conflict while blocking genuine peace efforts.

A Campbell's Soup Company executive has been put on temporary leave after he allegedly referred to the firm's offerings as "shit for fucking poor people" – a remark purportedly caught on an audio recording and attributed to him in a former employee's wrongful termination lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed last Thursday in Wayne county circuit court in Michigan by Robert Garza, who had joined Campbell's New Jersey headquarters remotely in September 2024 as a security analyst. Garza alleges he was fired in January after he raised concerns about comments made by Martin Bally, Campbell's vice-president of information technology – including referring to one of the company's ingredients as "bioengineered meat" while going off on a racist tirade. In audio recordings captured by Garza after sensing that "something wasn't right," which were later reviewed by the Michigan news outlet WDIV, a voice can be heard saying: "We have shit for fucking poor people." The voice adds: "Who buys our shit? I don't buy Campbell's products barely any more. It's not healthy now that I know what the fuck's in it ... bioengineered meat. "I don't wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer." Garza says he felt "pure disgust" after the meeting but kept the recording private until January, when he reported Bally's behaviour to supervisor JP Aupperle, according to WDIV. Garza said he was dismissed from Campbell's 20 days later and without any prior disciplinary action.

Note: Read our Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling the chronic health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

Even as US beef prices have continued to surge, American cattle ranchers have come under increased financial pressure–and a new report from More Perfect Union claims that this is due in part to industry consolidation in the meat-packing industry. Bill Bullard, the CEO of the trade association R-CALF USA, explained to More Perfect Union that cattle ranchers are essentially at the bottom of the pyramid in the beef-producing process, while the top is occupied by "four meat packers controlling 80% of the market." "It's there that the meat packers are able to exert their market power in order to leverage down the price that the cattle feeder receives for the animals," Bullard said. To illustrate the impact this has had on farmers, Bullard pointed out that cattle producers in 1980 received 63 cents for every dollar paid by consumers for beef, whereas four decades later they were receiving just 37 cents for every dollar. "That allocation has flipped on its head because the marketplace is fundamentally broken," Bullard [said]. Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, recently highlighted the role played by the four big meatpacking companies–Tyson, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS–in hurting US ranchers. Dan Osborn, an independent US Senate candidate running in Nebraska, has made the dangers of corporate consolidation a central theme of his campaign. "If you're a farmer, your inputs, your seed, your chemicals, you have to buy from monopolies," he said.

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

To understand how risky drugs could end up in your medicine cabinet, ProPublica spent more than a year and a half investigating the Food and Drug Administration's oversight of the foreign factories that make generic medications and have been cited for violating critical quality standards. It quickly became clear through our reporting that patients and doctors don't reliably have the information they need to make informed decisions about the medicines they take or prescribe. ProPublica has created Rx Inspector, a tool that aims to help. You can look up your generic prescription drugs, and we'll guide you to the specific facility that made them. We were able to link more than 80% of generic prescription drug products in our database to a factory that made them using databases of label information, manufacturing facilities and location data that we sued the FDA for. Additionally, we included the history of FDA actions at those facilities based on a trove of inspection records we assembled. The FDA publishes warning letters that detail "significant violation(s) of federal requirement(s)." We obtained these from the FDA's website going back to 2020. We used the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to find hundreds of import alert lists published by the FDA over more than 15 years. The lists identified factories banned from shipping drugs to the United States because the FDA found manufacturing violations.

Note: Try this tool for yourself here. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.

The 2018 legalization of sports betting gave rise to a host of apps making it ever easier to gamble on games. Kalshi and Polymarket offer that service, but also much more. They'll take your bets, for instance, on the presidential and midterm elections, the next Israeli bombing campaign, or whether Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg will get divorced. Tarek Mansour, the CEO of Kalshi, laid it out simply at a conference held by Citadel Securities in October. "The long-term vision," Mansour said, "is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion." It's as dystopian as it sounds. Betting apps have at times delivered better accuracy than polling results. For example, while pollsters clocked last year's presidential race as deadlocked in the days before the election, Polymarket gave Trump an edge at 58 percent. But whether they are consistently better is a whole other story. Consider the 2022 midterm elections: Up until election night, the major prediction markets "failed spectacularly" and "projected outcomes for key races that turned out to be completely wrong," according to one expert analysis. Prediction markets are also more prone to manipulation than they'd have you believe. And this can give deep-pocketed political actors another vessel for information warfare. Kalshi was even embroiled in a legal battle with federal regulators as recently as this summer for this very reason.

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

Bradley Birkenfeld is a former Swiss banker who helped the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recoup billions of dollars in tax revenues after exposing the largest tax fraud in U.S. history. Yet it was Birkenfeld who served 40 months at the Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution in Minersville, Pennsylvania, while his bosses who orchestrated the fraud and the wealthy investors who cheated the U.S. government never faced any jail time. Birkenfeld's boss, Christian Bovay, conceived the scam that Birkenfeld participated in by which UBS would charge a three percent management fee to its wealthy clients in exchange for helping them to evade paying taxes by placing it securely in one of the bank's secret off-shore accounts. Birkenfeld would make clients more money by investing, often in weapons manufacturers. Then when the clients needed their money, UBS would lend it back at a reasonable interest rate. Birkenfeld wrote in Lucifer's Banker that "UBS was making a fee for holding the guy's cash in the first place, then making another fee for loaning him his own damn money! And guess what? That guy's happy! He's getting his deal done, and he's still doing it with tax-free cash! I couldn't believe it, and you know what? It worked, over and over again." On October 5, 2005, Birkenfeld resigned from UBS and became an internal whistleblower. After a company review of its malpractice turned into a whitewash, Birkenfeld sued UBS.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the court system and in the banking industry.

A military contractor with a lineage going back to the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater will help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement track down a list of 1.5 million targeted immigrants across the country. ICE inked a deal with Constellis Holdings to provide "skip tracing" services, tasking the company with hunting immigrants down and relaying their locations to ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations wing for apprehension. Contractors will receive monetary bounties in exchange for turning over the whereabouts of specified immigrants as quickly as possible, using whatever physical and digital surveillance tools they see fit. Constellis was formed in 2014 through the merger of Academi, previously known as Blackwater, and Triple Canopy, a rival mercenary contractor. The combined companies and their subsidiaries have reaped billions from contracts for guarding foreign military installations, embassies, and domestic properties, along with work for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. spy agencies. In 2007, Blackwater mercenaries massacred 14 civilians in Baghdad; several of its contractors serving prison sentences for the killings were pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020. The government has so far paid Constellis $1.5 million, with the potential for the total to grow to more than $113 million by the contract's end in 2027. Constellis ... secured a $250 million construction contract at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, earlier this year.

Note: Erik Prince's Blackwater got caught systematically defrauding the government. Then Blackwater changed its name to Academi and made over $300 million off the Afghan drug trade. More recently, Prince was recruiting ex spies to infiltrate progressive activist groups. Furthermore, the bounty-based approach mirrors a core tactic of the War on Terror, when US forces offered cash rewards for tips that fueled mass detentions in Afghanistan and beyond. This swept up thousands of people who posed no threat and had no ties to terrorism.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.