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.

Larry Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle ... said AI will usher in a new era of surveillance that he gleefully said will ensure "citizens will be on their best behavior." Ellison made the comments as he spoke to investors earlier this week during an Oracle financial analysts meeting, where he shared his thoughts on the future of AI-powered surveillance tools. Ellison said AI would be used in the future to constantly watch and analyze vast surveillance systems, like security cameras, police body cameras, doorbell cameras, and vehicle dashboard cameras. "We're going to have supervision," Ellison said. "Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there's a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on." Ellison also expects AI drones to replace police cars in high-speed chases. "You just have a drone follow the car," Ellison said. "It's very simple in the age of autonomous drones." Ellison's company, Oracle, like almost every company these days, is aggressively pursuing opportunities in the AI industry. It already has several projects in the works, including one in partnership with Elon Musk's SpaceX. Ellison is the world's sixth-richest man with a net worth of $157 billion.

Note: As journalist Kenan Malik put it, "The problem we face is not that machines may one day exercise power over humans. It is rather that we already live in societies in which power is exercised by a few to the detriment of the majority, and that technology provides a means of consolidating that power." Read about the shadowy companies tracking and trading your personal data, which isn't just used to sell products. It's often accessed by governments, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies, often without warrants or oversight. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

In an exchange this week on "All-In Podcast," Alex Karp was on the defensive. The Palantir CEO used the appearance to downplay and deny the notion that his company would engage in rights-violating in surveillance work. "We are the single worst technology to use to abuse civil liberties, which is by the way the reason why we could never get the NSA or the FBI to actually buy our product," Karp said. What he didn't mention was the fact that a tranche of classified documents revealed by [whistleblower and former NSA contractor] Edward Snowden and The Intercept in 2017 showed how Palantir software helped the National Security Agency and its allies spy on the entire planet. Palantir software was used in conjunction with a signals intelligence tool codenamed XKEYSCORE, one of the most explosive revelations from the NSA whistleblower's 2013 disclosures. XKEYSCORE provided the NSA and its foreign partners with a means of easily searching through immense troves of data and metadata covertly siphoned across the entire global internet, from emails and Facebook messages to webcam footage and web browsing. A 2008 NSA presentation describes how XKEYSCORE could be used to detect "Someone whose language is out of place for the region they are in," "Someone who is using encryption," or "Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff." In May, the New York Times reported Palantir would play a central role in a White House plan to boost data sharing between federal agencies, "raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power."

Note: Read about Palantir's revolving door with the US government. As former NSA intelligence official and whistleblower William Binney articulated, "The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book "Careless People," told U.S. senators ... that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. In response to a question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Wynn-Williams admitted that Meta (which was then known as Facebook) had targeted 13- to 17-year-olds with ads when they were feeling down or depressed. "It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and [Meta] would take that information and share it with advertisers," Wynn-Williams told the senators on the subcommittee for crime and terrorism. "Advertisers understand that when people don't feel good about themselves, it's often a good time to pitch a product – people are more likely to buy something." She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time. As an example, she suggested that if a teen girl deleted a selfie, advertisers might see that as a good time to sell her a beauty product as she may not be feeling great about her appearance. They also targeted teens with ads for weight loss when young girls had concerns around body confidence. If Meta was willing to target teens based on their emotional states, it stands to reason they'd do the same to adults. One document displayed during the hearing showed an example of just that.

Note: Facebook hid its own internal research for years showing that Instagram worsened body image issues, revealing that 13% of British teenage girls reported more frequent suicidal thoughts after using the app. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.

The insecticide chlorpyrifos is a powerful tool for controlling various pests, making it one of the most widely used pesticides during the latter half of the 20th century. Like many pesticides, however, chlorpyrifos lacks precision. In addition to harming non-target insects like bees, it has also been linked to health risks for much larger animals – including us. Now, a new US study suggests those risks may begin before birth. Humans exposed to chlorpyrifos prenatally are more likely to exhibit structural brain abnormalities and reduced motor functions in childhood and adolescence. Progressively higher prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos was associated with incrementally greater deviations in brain structure, function, and metabolism in children and teens, the researchers found, along with poorer measures of motor speed and motor programming. This supports previous research linking chlorpyrifos with impaired cognitive function and brain development, but these findings are the first evidence of widespread and long-lasting molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain. Subjects in this urban cohort were likely exposed to chlorpyrifos at home, since many were born before or shortly after the US Environmental Protection Agency banned residential use of chlorpyrifos in 2001. The pesticide is still used in agriculture around the world. "Widespread exposures ... continue to place farm workers, pregnant women, and unborn children in harm's way," says senior author Virginia Rauh.

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.

There has been a surge of concern and interest in the threat of "surveillance pricing," in which companies leverage the enormous amount of detailed data they increasingly hold on their customers to set individualized prices for each of them – likely in ways that benefit the companies and hurt their customers. The central battle in such efforts will be around identity: do the companies whose prices you are checking or negotiating know who you are? Can you stop them from knowing who you are? Unfortunately, one day not too far in the future, you may lose the ability to do so. Many states around the country are creating digital versions of their state driver's licenses. Digital versions of IDs allow people to be tracked in ways that are not possible or practical with physical IDs – especially since they are being designed to work ... online. It will be much easier for companies to request – and eventually demand – that people share their IDs in order to engage in all manner of transactions. It will make it easier for companies to collect data about us, merge it with other data, and analyze it, all with high confidence that it pertains to the same person – and then recognize us ... and execute their price-maximizing strategy against us. Not only would digital IDs prevent people from escaping surveillance pricing, but surveillance pricing would simultaneously incentivize companies to force the presentation of digital IDs by people who want to shop.

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

Kenya's Gazette Supplement 181 of 2024 ... carrying the name of Kenya's minister of foreign affairs, announced that the Kenyan government had granted full diplomatic immunity to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. An organization must affirmatively ask Kenya's highest leadership for such privileges, which they can only grant through a vote of the full cabinet and with the support of the country's president. The immunity announcement ... did not say who at the foundation was being immunized or why. The Gates Foundation has assets in excess of $75 billion and has given out $91 billion in grants this century, making it the richest and most generous American charity in history. Since 2003, Gates has given 502 grants to organizations in Kenya, totaling over $1.9 billion. Gates has donated $870 million to AGRA, a Nairobi-based group attempting to introduce genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, and large-scale agriculture throughout Africa. In Kenya it is possible to see the results of his now-accelerating project, which comprises three distinct efforts: the introduction of a new vaccine against malaria, a far-reaching agricultural reform program, and a divisive campaign to vaccinate cattle. Gates has no democratic accountability to anyone in the U.S., Kenya, or any other country. The Gates Foundation ... exists outside of nations and constitutions and laws, and its money is so widely distributed and so embedded in so many different private and public entities that it practically disappears into the larger architecture of the global system. One thing that unites NPR, the Guardian, and the Chinese government is that they are, in some form or another, Gates-funded institutions.

Note: Gates has given over $250 million to major outlets including BBC, Guardian, NPR, and Al Jazeera. Bill Gates' hundreds of millions to WHO now give him outsized influence to prioritize corporate interests under the guise of public health philanthropy, which have led to mass suicides in India and worsening environmental degradation and poverty in Africa.

When it comes to pesticides, the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, Commission has a serious problem: The Commission's newly released strategy for addressing childhood chronic disease is better for the pesticide industry than for people. The US currently uses over a billion pounds of pesticides annually on our crops, about one-third of which is chemicals that have been banned in other countries. Many have been linked to serious health problems from cancer to infertility to birth defects. Those pesticides contaminate our air, our water, and our bodies. One cancer-linked pesticide, glyphosate, is now found in 80% of adults and 87% of children. [The Commission] barely mentions organic farming, despite the fact that organic is the clearest pathway to transforming our food system into one that is healthy and nontoxic. The US Department of Agriculture organic seal prohibits more than 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional agriculture. Just one week on an organic diet can reduce pesticide levels in our bodies up to 95%. Synthetic food dyes–a key issue for the MAHA movement–are all prohibited by the organic seal, along with hundreds of other food additives and drugs. The Commission's strategy ignores organic. Instead, it leans into promoting industry-friendly "precision agriculture"–the use of AI, machine learning, and digital tools on farms to optimize inputs–which primarily benefits corporate giants like Bayer.

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

Pesticides once appeared to be a clear target for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s desire to "make America healthy again." Before becoming the health secretary, he described Monsanto, the maker of the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, as "enemy of every admirable American value," and vowed to "ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries." Since he came to power, many of Kennedy's fans have waited eagerly for him to do just that. Kennedy has yet to satisfy them: In the latest MAHA action plan on children's health, released last week, pesticides appear only briefly on a laundry list of vague ideas. The plan says that the government should fund research on how farmers could use less of them, and that the government "will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence" in the EPA's existing pesticide-review process, which it called "robust." Several studies have found neurological impacts associated with pesticides. UC Davis's MIND Institute put out a study in 2014 that found autism risk was much higher among children whose mothers had lived near agricultural-pesticide areas while pregnant. A 2017 paper found that zip codes that conducted aerial spraying for mosquitoes–a pesticide–had comparatively higher rates of autism than zip codes that didn't. Others have linked pesticides to a range of behavioral and cognitive impairment in children.

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

Top regulatory officials met with agricultural and chemical industry representatives dozens of times in the first few months after President Donald Trump took office. [The meetings] were followed by a series of regulatory rollbacks and a downplaying of pesticide concerns by the administration's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) Commission. From February to mid-May, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leaders accepted meetings with representatives from at least 50 industry associations and companies, including agricultural and chemical giants such as Bayer, Corteva, BASF, Dow and the agrichemical lobbying group CropLife America, as well as the American Soybean Association, the National Cotton Council and others. Critics of the agrichemical industry said corporate influence in regulatory matters was underscored earlier this month when the Trump administration's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) Commission released its long-anticipated report on how to address chronic disease and clean up the food supply. The final version was significantly more friendly to the agricultural industry than a May MAHA report that cited the health risks posed by the widely used farm chemicals glyphosate and atrazine. The September report took aim at synthetic dyes and junk food, among other things, but deleted references to glyphosate and atrazine and made no mention of pesticide exposure routes or risks.

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

Two lawsuits aim to stop US federal regulators and industry from "illegally" hiding basic information about toxic chemicals used in consumer products. Companies often claim that toxic chemicals' health and safety data, and even their names, are "confidential business information" (CBI) because making the data public could damage their bottom line. The US Environmental Protection Agency frequently allows industry to use the tactic, which makes it virtually impossible for public health researchers to quickly learn about dangerous chemicals. It also bars most EPA staff and state regulators from accessing the information and criminal charges could be brought against those who do. That leaves regulators attempting to protect the public without essential information for some chemicals and in effect creates a "shadow regulatory government" in the EPA, said Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA attorney who is now director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a plaintiff in one of the suits. The ... suit alleges the EPA has narrowed Congress's definitions of what should be made public. The EPA is also withholding chemical safety test results that show health risks to the public or environment. Separately, Peer is suing the EPA for hiding health and safety data for chemicals made by Inhance Technologies, which produces plastic containers found to leach dangerous levels of PFOA, a highly toxic compound, into the containers' contents.

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

Environmental and Indigenous activists declared Thursday that "geoengineering fails again," welcoming the shutdown of a project that aimed to use "a reflective material to protect and restore Arctic sea ice." "While our climate impact simulations have shown promising results ... recent ecotoxicological tests have revealed potential risks to the Arctic food chain," the [Arctic Ice Project] team said. Panganga Pungowiyi, climate geoengineering organizer at Indigenous Environmental Network, called the decision "long overdue." "We are concerned for the community members in Utqiaġvik who were made to spread football fields of this material onto their frozen lake," Pungowiyi explained. "Our concerns about the reckless use of harmful materials were dismissed. We continually showed up in defense of free prior and informed consent, and made our presence known." "We continue to state firmly that nature is not a laboratory; it is a living entity we are in relationship with," the organizer added. "Geoengineering approaches do nothing to address the root causes of the climate crisis and instead delay real solutions, offering a free pass to polluters," [said Mary Church at the Center for International Environmental Law]. "Following the recent reaffirmation of the global moratorium on geoengineering at the U.N. biodiversity summit in Colombia, governments need to act to prevent harmful outdoor experiments."

Note: In our latest Substack, "Geoengineering is a Weapon That's Been Rebranded as Climate Science. There's a Better Way To Heal the Earth," we present credible evidence and current information showing that weather modification technologies are not only real, but that they are being secretly propagated by multiple groups with differing agendas. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on geoengineering.

Jeffrey Epstein was a very wealthy man, but exactly how wealthy and where that money came from remains shrouded in mystery. Newly unearthed emails last week shone light on Epstein's role as freelance client development officer, acting as a channel between political figures and business titans, greasing up the former with lifestyles they could not afford and the latter with avenues of political influence. Figures in Epstein's network of billionaires, politicians, celebrities, royalty and intellectuals were assembled into schemes of influence. The spheres of influence Epstein created, emails showed, relied simultaneously on access and gifts Between his collection of lavish homes in New York, Palm Beach and Paris, two private Caribbean islands, two jets and helicopter, Epstein held nearly $380m in cash and investments, according to his estate. That wealth arrived suddenly. Until the end of the 90s, Epstein was living in a two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side close to the river. It was only when Maxwell arrived from London that his lifestyle was dramatically elevated. Epstein moved to a townhouse on 68th Street and later to a 28,000-sq-ft mansion on 71st Street, later transferred to him by Wexner in 2011. Steven Hoffenberg, a former business partner of Epstein convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, claimed that Maxwell's father, the disgraced press baron Robert Maxwell, introduced his daughter to Epstein in the late 1980s. A 2022 Miami Herald exposé showed complex Maxwell family transactions passing through companies in Jersey, the British Virgin Islands and Panama that it called "a decades-long modus operandi of financial deception".

Note: There is significant evidence suggesting that Robert Maxwell was a superspy for Mossad, Israel's intelligence and covert operations unit. US attorney Alexander Acosta was once told Epstein "belonged to intelligence, and to leave it alone." Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

Jeffrey Epstein ... helped JPMorgan orchestrate an important acquisition. He introduced executives to men who would become lucrative clients, like the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. At Epstein's behest, JPMorgan set up accounts – into which he routinely transferred huge sums – for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. It wired his funds overseas. It even paid him millions of dollars. But in the summer of 2019, Epstein was arrested. Federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking. JPMorgan went into damage-control mode. It filed a report with federal regulators that retroactively flagged as suspicious some 4,700 Epstein transactions – totaling more than $1.1 billion and including hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Russian banks and young Eastern European women who were brought to the United States. Banks are required to file such reports in real time to alert law enforcement to things like money laundering, sex trafficking and drug dealing. Doing it after the fact might have provided JPMorgan with legal cover, but it did nothing to help identify Epstein's crimes as they were happening. The fallout for JPMorgan has been limited. In 2023, it paid $290 million to settle a lawsuit brought by roughly 200 of Epstein's victims and an additional $75 million to resolve related litigation brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Note: This article is also available here. According to a Guardian article, "Epstein introduced [JPMorgan] bank executives to some figures who would become clients, including the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, such as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the Emirati billionaire Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem." Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

The picture many people have of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is overwhelmingly positive. And yet there is now overwhelming evidence that governments have funded and in some cases created NGOs to demand politically-motivated, unconstitutional, and dangerously ideological censorship. Other journalists, researchers, and I have documented how government intelligence and security agencies have done this in the US, Europe, and Brazil. Those agencies work with existing or new NGOs to circumvent free speech protections, including the First Amendment, and legitimize what is politically and ideologically motivated as apolitical and non-ideological. This can accurately be described as "censorship-by-proxy." Censorship by proxy operates similarly in every nation. NGOs claiming to be independent of governments, but funded by, created by, and working with government agencies, demand censorship based on their "independent reports," "fact checks," and "analyses." Often, the NGO "fact checks" are themselves misinformation, including misrepresentations of opinions as facts. Twitter and Facebook created special "portals" for government-funded NGOs to "flag" posts they wanted censored. The NGOs, staffed with ostensibly former military and intelligence employees, sought and won mass censorship with an aim at promoting the narratives they wanted and stomping out narratives they didn't want.

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

Erb and his cousin raised money from investors, bought homes in places like the Chatham-Arch neighborhood in Indianapolis ... and rented them out. He was not the first New York finance person to profit from single-family rentals across the United States. The private equity firm Blackstone (commonly confused with BlackRock) more or less invented this buy-to-rent strategy in 2012. It's now a public company valued at more than $18 billion. The response to this development – of Wall Street buying Main Street ... has been bipartisan, populist and patriotic condemnation. Both JD Vance and Kamala Harris called for bans on these corporate landlords. Homeownership has been a primary way that middle-class families build wealth. But now private equity was outbidding aspiring homeowners, making it more expensive to buy a home and pocketing the appreciation in home values. During the Great Recession ... the U.S. had a glut of single-family homes in foreclosure. Many were auctioned off en masse, including by the federal government, which organized auctions for investors like Blackstone and even provided a $1 billion loan guarantee to encourage Blackstone to buy. This allowed private equity firms (which raise money from wealthy families, pension funds and other organizations to seek out profits, often by buying private companies) and real estate investors to efficiently and cheaply buy, say, a dozen similar homes located in the same Phoenix suburb.

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

Loneliness not only affects how we feel in the moment but can leave lasting imprints on our personality, physiology, and even the way our brains process the social world. A large study of older adults [found] that persistent loneliness predicted declines in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness–traits associated with sociability, kindness, and self-discipline. At the same time, higher levels of neuroticism predicted greater loneliness in the future, suggesting a self-reinforcing cycle. Although social media promises connection, a large-scale study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that it may actually fuel feelings of loneliness over time. Researchers found that both passive (scrolling) and active (posting and commenting) forms of social media use predicted increases in loneliness. Surprisingly, even active engagement–often believed to foster interaction–was associated with growing disconnection. Even more concerning was the feedback loop uncovered in the data: loneliness also predicted increased social media use over time, suggesting that people may turn to these platforms for relief, only to find themselves feeling even more isolated. Lonely individuals also showed greater activation in areas tied to negative emotions, such as the insula and amygdala. This pattern suggests that lonely people may be more sensitive to social threat or negativity, which could contribute to feeling misunderstood or excluded.

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

If you've been on social media lately, chances are you've heard about endocrine disruptors. People say they can interfere with your hormones, leading to serious health conditions. There are over 1,000 types of these chemicals, according to some estimates, and we are exposed to them daily: They can be found everywhere from your nonstick pan and canned foods to your shampoo and hair dye. The endocrine system consists of glands that secrete hormones, like estrogen, testosterone and cortisol, that then interact with targets (receptors) in the body to regulate our growth, development, reproduction, metabolism, energy balance and body weight. Chemicals that interfere with this complex communication system are called endocrine disruptors. These chemicals work in a variety of ways, including overstimulating receptors, blocking receptors so that normal hormones can't interact with them and altering hormone production or availability. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It belongs to the larger class of chemicals called bisphenols. The primary exposure for most people is through their diet: BPAs can leach into food or drinks from the protective, internal epoxy resin coatings of canned foods and from consumer products such as polycarbonate tableware, food storage containers and water bottles. Laboratory experiments ... have found that BPAs may cause cancer cell growth.

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

A major settlement announced this week brought an end to a lengthy battle between chemical manufacturer Monsanto and students, parents and staff of a Monroe school who were exposed to toxic PCBs for years. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are human-made chemicals that the Environmental Protection Agency has linked to some cancers and other illnesses. They festered at Sky Valley Education Center, an alternative school in Snohomish County, where fluorescent lights and building caulking were contaminated. The preservatives were once widely relied upon for building durability, but the EPA has since banned their use. More than 200 people from Sky Valley blamed their serious illnesses on exposure to the toxicant. This week's announcement marks the largest, and only significant, PCB personal injury settlement since Monsanto was acquired by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in 2018 And it appears to be among the largest, if not the largest, PCB settlement stemming from a single site containing the pollutant. The terms of the settlement, including the dollar amount, are confidential. But in July, before the agreement, Germany-based Bayer informed its investors that it had set aside 530 million euros, or about $618 million, for Sky Valley settlements and litigation costs. Sky Valley students, staff and others ... described devastating diagnoses, including various cancers, brain damage, autoimmune diseases and miscarriages. Some, including children, reportedly died.

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

French MPs gave themselves a round of applause for approving legislation to reintroduce a banned pesticide last month. A figure rose from the public gallery to shout: "You are supporters of cancer ... and we will make it known." Fleur Breteau made it known. Her outburst and appearance – she lost her hair during chemotherapy for breast cancer – boosted a petition against the "Duplomb law" to well over 2m signatures. On Thursday, France's constitutional court struck down the government's attempt to reintroduce the pesticide acetamiprid – a neonicotinoid banned in France in 2018 but still used as an insecticide in other EU countries as well as the UK – in a judgment that took everyone by surprise. The ruling said the legislature had undermined "the right to live in a balanced and healthy environment" enshrined in France's environmental charter. For Breteau, 50, a battle is won but the struggle goes on. "The law is a symptom of a sick system that poisons us. The Duplomb law isn't the real problem. It's aggravating an already catastrophic system," she said. "We are living in a toxic world and need a revolution to break the chain of contamination in everything ... If people don't react we'll find ourselves in a world where we cannot drink water or eat food that is uncontaminated, where a slice of buttered bread or a cup of tea poisons us. It will be a silent world, without animals, without insects, without birds."

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

The transparency of donations to the World Health Organization (WHO) Foundation–an independent body that seeks funds from across industry, civil society and governments, and awards grants to the WHO – has plummeted over its first 3 years of operations, a new analysis has found. The analysis found that the majority of donors are not publicly disclosed, including some unnamed gifts as big as $11 million, which raises concerns about the potential "level of outside influence and role of commercial interests in setting WHO priorities," the researchers wrote. In 2020, the foundation was set up to solicit funds from a wider range of donors than the WHO can directly accept, including wealthy individuals and corporations. Some academics and civil society organizations are concerned that accepting donations from industry, such as businesses selling alcohol and infant formula, poses a conflict of interest. Evidence suggests that some companies use donations "as opportunities to distract or reframe product harms.., and assist wider lobbying efforts against public health regulation," wrote the authors of the new analysis. Using a scale to judge transparency in donations developed by Open Democracy, an independent international media platform, the researchers gave the WHO Foundation a D grade. This grade is for organizations that only name a minority of funders and not in a systematic way, putting it on par with some ‘dark money' think tanks.

Note: Concerns about WHO's growing dependence on opaque funding are not abstract. Past investigations show how Purdue Pharma influenced WHO opioid guidelines to expand sales globally and how Coca-Cola–linked consultants shaped WHO's aspartame reviews. Bill Gates' hundreds of millions to WHO now give him outsized influence to prioritize corporate interests under the guise of public health philanthropy, which have led to mass suicides in India, worsening environmental degradation and poverty in Africa, and increasing corporate control over the media.

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.