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Revealing News For a Better World

Media Articles
Excerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of highly revealing media articles from the major media. Links are provided to the full articles on their media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These media articles are listed in reverse date order. You can also explore the articles listed by order of importance or by date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can build a brighter future.

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


Who's the real purveyor of disinformation? Your government
2024-07-18, The Hill
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4773496-government-disinformation-publ...

According to the American Psychological Association, "Misinformation is false or inaccurate information – getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead – intentionally misstating the facts." What we've seen over the past several years is our government purveying disinformation – deliberately misleading the public. When our government peddles disinformation, it undermines the public trust. That's why only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government. Hillary Clinton's campaign made and paid for the Russian collusion hoax, which asserted that Donald Trump had "worked with the Russians to try to rig the 2016 election," to quote then-House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). Clinton and her campaign ... were working behind the scenes with government agents – including the FBI and elected Democrats – to spread disinformation. Several operatives within the FBI were promoting the hoax and giving it the appearance of fact, which allowed the media to cover the issue ad infinitum. One FBI agent, Kevin Clinesmith, even lied to the FISA Court so the government could continue monitoring the phone calls of U.S. citizens. The hoax cost taxpayers millions of dollars, first with the Mueller Report and then the Durham Report. Yet no collusion was found, just disinformation. Retired Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ... [asserted] the natural origin of the COVID-19 virus. Several years later, there is a widespread assumption that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Virility Institute in China. Fauci did not want people to believe the lab-leak theory, perhaps because he and others had worked with and provided federal funds to that laboratory.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The bid to ensure that no one dies alone
2024-07-16, Positive News
https://www.positive.news/society/the-bid-to-ensure-that-no-one-dies-alone/

The No One Dies Alone (NODA) movement ... trains and supports volunteers to act as companions to people in the last hours of their lives. Award-winning Scottish nurse Alison Bunce was among the first to pioneer the concept in the UK, but as her team kept bedside vigils in homes, hospitals and hospices she began to ask herself: might they help people have good lives, too? "Being present and accompanying someone as they're dying is such a privilege – it's a profound, unique moment," says Bunce. "But over the years, people were speaking to me about social isolation and loneliness, and I realised this was about life as well as death." She set up Compassionate Inverclyde (CI) as a project funded by Ardgowan Hospice – where she worked as director of care – and recruited an initial 20 volunteers who could sit with people who were dying alone, initially in the hospice and a local hospital, but eventually in their own homes. Bunce soon realised her volunteers could do more and began curating a range of community care services which operate alongside healthcare professionals and support people at various stages of life. "Our very ethos is about being kind, and how ordinary people can make a difference together," she says. Volunteers might lend a hand and a friendly ear to new mums, create ‘back home parcels' for hospital leavers, visit socially isolated neighbours or keep the tea flowing out at CI's bereavement cafe.

Note: Explore more positive stories about human interest topics.


AI's ‘Oppenheimer moment': autonomous weapons enter the battlefield
2024-07-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/14/ais-oppenheimer-mo...

The Ukrainian military has used AI-equipped drones mounted with explosives to fly into battlefields and strike at Russian oil refineries. American AI systems identified targets in Syria and Yemen for airstrikes earlier this year. The Israel Defense Forces used another kind of AI-enabled targeting system to label as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants during the first weeks of its war in Gaza. Growing conflicts around the world have acted as both accelerant and testing ground for AI warfare while making it even more evident how unregulated the nascent field is. The result is a multibillion-dollar AI arms race that is drawing in Silicon Valley giants and states around the world. Altogether, the US military has more than 800 active AI-related projects and requested $1.8bn worth of funding for AI in the 2024 budget alone. Many of these companies and technologies are able to operate with extremely little transparency and accountability. Defense contractors are generally protected from liability when their products accidentally do not work as intended, even when the results are deadly. The Pentagon plans to spend $1bn by 2025 on its Replicator Initiative, which aims to develop swarms of unmanned combat drones that will use artificial intelligence to seek out threats. The air force wants to allocate around $6bn over the next five years to research and development of unmanned collaborative combat aircraft, seeking to build a fleet of 1,000 AI-enabled fighter jets that can fly autonomously. The Department of Defense has also secured hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to fund its secretive AI initiative known as Project Maven, a venture focused on technologies like automated target recognition and surveillance.

Note:Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI from reliable major media sources.


‘Forever chemicals' used in lithium ion batteries threaten environment, research finds
2024-07-14, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/14/forever-chemicals-...

Toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" used in lithium ion batteries essential to the clean energy transition present a dangerous source of chemical pollution that new research finds threatens the environment and human health. The multipronged, peer-reviewed study zeroed in on a little-researched and unregulated subclass of PFAS called bis-FASI that are used in lithium ion batteries. Researchers found alarming levels of the chemicals in the environment near manufacturing plants, noted their presence in remote areas around the world, found they appear to be toxic to living organisms, and discovered that waste from batteries disposed of in landfills was a major pollution source. PFAS are a class of about 16,000 human-made compounds most often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down and have been found to accumulate in humans. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems. The paper notes that few end-of-life standards for PFAS battery waste exist, and the vast majority ends up in municipal dumps where it can leach into waterways, accumulate locally or be transported long distances. It looked at the presence of the chemicals in historical leachate samples and found none in those from prior to the mid-1990s, when the chemical class was commercialized.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.


Smartphones are bad for kids – we don't need to call on scientific data to know it
2024-07-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/13/smartphones-are...

Jonathan Haidt is a man with a mission ... to alert us to the harms that social media and modern parenting are doing to our children. His latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness ... writes of a "tidal wave" of increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too. He sees two factors that have caused this. The first is the decline of play-based childhood caused by overanxious parenting, which allows children fewer opportunities for unsupervised play and restricts their movement. The second factor is the ubiquity of smartphones and the social media apps that thrive upon them. The result is the "great rewiring of childhood" of his book's subtitle and an epidemic of mental illness and distress. You don't have to be a statistician to know that ... Instagram is toxic for some – perhaps many – teenage girls. Ever since Frances Haugen's revelations, we have known that Facebook itself knew that 13% of British teenage girls said that their suicidal thoughts became more frequent after starting on Instagram. And the company's own researchers found that 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. These findings might not meet the exacting standards of the best scientific research, but they tell you what you need to know.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and mental health from reliable major media sources.


Stop mourning the Murthy case, start fighting the censorship-industrial complex
2024-07-11, The Hill
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4763829-big-tech-censorship-murthy-gove...

After government officials like former White House advisers Rob Flaherty and Andy Slavitt repeatedly harangued platforms such as Facebook to censor Americans who contested the government's narrative on COVID-19 vaccines, Missouri and Louisiana sued. They claimed that the practice violates the First Amendment. Following years of litigation, the Supreme Court threw cold water on their efforts, ruling in Murthy v. Missouri that states and the individual plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the government for its actions. The government often disguised its censorship requests by coordinating with ostensibly "private" civil society groups to pressure tech companies to remove or shadow ban targeted content. According to the U.S. House Weaponization Committee's November 2023 interim report, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency requested that the now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory create a public-private partnership to counter election "misinformation" in 2020. This consortium of government and private entities took the form of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). EIP's "private" civil society partners then forwarded the flagged content to Big Tech platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter. These "private" groups ... receive millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Science Foundation, the State Department and the U.S Department of Justice. Legislation like the COLLUDE Act would ... clarify that Section 230 does not apply when platforms censor legal speech "as a result of a communication" from a "governmental entity" or from an non-profit "acting at the request or behest of a governmental entity."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable sources.


The Companies Making It Easy To Buy In A West Bank Settlement
2024-07-09, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2024/07/09/west-bank-settlement-israel-real-estate/

Real estate companies are making an explicit appeal to wartime patriotism, leading with the conflict as a selling point and a reason to invest. In late June, a company called My Israel Home hosted an expo at a Los Angeles synagogue catering to a specific clientele: Jewish Americans looking to buy a new home in Israel – or on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Similar real estate fairs have popped up across North America this year ... and several have faced protests as the war on Gaza has brought the issue of Israeli settlements and Palestinian sovereignty to the fore. On websites largely tailored for Jewish American buyers looking to move to Israel, prospective homeowners can browse properties that include listings for homes in settlement communities, which offer the typical trappings of suburban life. Around a dozen real estate firms have participated in real estate fairs organized by My Israel Home across North America this year. Six of these firms are actively marketing at least two dozen separate properties for sale located within eight different West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, according to their online listings. Other real estate firms commonly list dozens of West Bank properties on their sites. West Bank settlements have long drawn criticism from the international community, which regards the settlements as illegal, in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions. Criticism of settlements have only intensified in recent months amid a spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied territory.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


In Fresh Hell, American Vending Machines are Selling Bullets Using Facial Recognition
2024-07-08, Futurism
https://futurism.com/vending-machines-bullets-facial-recognition

A growing number of supermarkets in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas are selling bullets by way of AI-powered vending machines, as first reported by Alabama's Tuscaloosa Thread. The company behind the machines, a Texas-based venture dubbed American Rounds, claims on its website that its dystopian bullet kiosks are outfitted with "built-in AI technology" and "facial recognition software," which allegedly allow the devices to "meticulously verify the identity and age of each buyer." As showcased in a promotional video, using one is an astoundingly simple process: walk up to the kiosk, provide identification, and let a camera scan your face. If its embedded facial recognition tech says you are in fact who you say you are, the automated machine coughs up some bullets. According to American Rounds, the main objective is convenience. Its machines are accessible "24/7," its website reads, "ensuring that you can buy ammunition on your own schedule, free from the constraints of store hours and long lines." Though officials in Tuscaloosa, where two machines have been installed, [said] that the devices are in full compliance with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' standards ... at least one of the devices has been taken down amid a Tuscaloosa city council investigation into its legal standing. "We have over 200 store requests for AARM [Automated Ammo Retail Machine] units covering approximately nine states currently," [American Rounds CEO Grant Magers] told Newsweek, "and that number is growing daily."

Note: Facial recognition technology is far from reliable. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence from reliable major media sources.


If You Don't Trust Media Now, Wait Until It's Government-Funded
2024-07-08, Reason
https://reason.com/2024/07/08/if-you-dont-trust-media-now-wait-until-its-gove...

In May, the New York State government agreed to subsidize news media. The legislation allows tax credits for up to half of journalists' salaries. Not every outlet can write off employment costs. Excluded ... are nonprofit operations as well as those owned by publicly traded companies. Governments have tried to suppress dissenting views. If a massive chunk of journalists' income comes from one reliable source–government coffers–they'll inevitably treat government as the audience to please rather than locals who've proven difficult to court and who distrust the press. Under such subsidies, the future of local media could be one of well-funded media outlets ignored by their nominal communities as they produce reports tailored for the tastes of bureaucrats with funding power. That's been an ongoing problem with publicly funded journalism. "In Europe, we have seen governments harm the reputation and independence of public media to the point of limiting their citizens' access to differing points of view," Freedom House research analyst Jessica White wrote. In December, a report from The Future of Free Speech, an independent think tank ... warned, "the global landscape for freedom of expression has faced severe challenges in 2023. Even open democracies have implemented restrictive measures." The report documented how obsession with "hate speech," "terrorist content," and "disinformation" are wielded as bludgeons by officials against critics of government officials and their policies.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Microsoft's climbdown over its creepy Recall feature shows its AI strategy is far from intelligent
2024-07-06, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/06/microsoft-recal...

Recall ... takes constant screenshots in the background while you go about your daily computer business. Microsoft's Copilot+ machine-learning tech then scans (and "reads") each of these screenshots in order to make a searchable database of every action performed on your computer and then stores it on the machine's disk. "Recall is like bestowing a photographic memory on everyone who buys a Copilot+ PC," [Microsoft marketing officer Yusuf] Mehdi said. "Anything you've ever seen or done, you'll now more or less be able to find." Charlie Stross, the sci-fi author and tech critic, called it a privacy "shit-show for any organisation that handles medical records or has a duty of legal confidentiality." He also said: "Suddenly, every PC becomes a target for discovery during legal proceedings. Lawyers can subpoena your Recall database and search it, no longer being limited to email but being able to search for terms that came up in Teams or Slack or Signal messages, and potentially verbally via Zoom or Skype if speech-to-text is included in Recall data." Faced with this pushback, Microsoft [announced] that Recall would be made opt-in instead of on by default, and also introducing extra security precautions – only producing results from Recall after user authentication, for example, and never decrypting data stored by the tool until after a search query. The only good news for Microsoft here is that it seems to have belatedly acknowledged that Recall has been a fiasco.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Marshals Find 200 Missing Children Across the Nation During 6-Week Special Operation
2024-07-04, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/u-s-marshals-find-200-missing-children-across...

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), along with federal, state, and local agencies led a six-week national operation that resulted in finding 200 critically missing children, which includes endangered runaways and those abducted by noncustodial persons. This is the second rendition of this coordinated effort, and so it was called Operation We Will Find You 2 (WWFY2). Running from May 20 to June 24 it focused on geographical areas with high clusters of missing children. WWFY2 resulted in the recovery and removal of 123 children from dangerous situations. An additional 77 missing children were located and found to be in safe locations, according to law enforcement or child welfare agencies. These so-called dangerous situations involved human trafficking, captivity by family relations, or situations of sexual exploitation, some involuntarily and others violently. "One of the most sacred missions of U.S. Marshals Service is locating and recovering our nation's critically missing children," said USMS Director Ronald L. Davis on completion of the case. "This is one of our top priorities as there remain thousands of children still missing and at risk." Some of the most notable and frightening cases can be read on the USMS release of the operation, and included kidnapping in Michigan, human trafficking in Miami-Dade, sex trafficking in Arizona, familial kidnapping in Oregon, and potential infanticide in North Carolina.

Note: Explore more positive stories about ending human trafficking.


OnlyFans vows it's a safe space. Predators are exploiting kids there.
2024-07-02, Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/onlyfans-sex-children/

OnlyFans makes reassuring promises to the public: It's strictly adults-only, with sophisticated measures to monitor every user, vet all content and swiftly remove and report any child sexual abuse material. Reuters documented 30 complaints in U.S. police and court records that child sexual abuse material appeared on the site between December 2019 and June 2024. The case files examined by the news organization cited more than 200 explicit videos and images of kids, including some adults having oral sex with toddlers. In one case, multiple videos of a minor remained on OnlyFans for more than a year, according to a child exploitation investigator who found them while assisting Reuters. OnlyFans "presents itself as a platform that provides unrivaled access to influencers, celebrities and models," said Elly Hanson, a clinical psychologist and researcher who focuses on preventing sexual abuse and reducing its impact. "This is an attractive mix to many teens, who are pulled into its world of commodified sex, unprepared for what this entails." In 2021 ... 102 Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on the Justice Department to investigate child sexual abuse on OnlyFans. The Justice Department told the lawmakers three months later that it couldn't confirm or deny it was investigating OnlyFans. Contacted recently, a department spokesperson declined to comment further.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Revolving door: You are free to influence us "behind the scenes," FDA tells staff leaving for industry jobs
2024-07-01, The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)
https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1418.short

During his final three years at the US Food and Drug Administration the physician scientist Doran Fink's work focused on reviewing covid-19 vaccines. But a decade after joining the agency Fink had accepted a job with Moderna, the covid vaccine manufacturer. As he left for the private sector, the FDA's ethics programme staff emailed him guidelines on post-employment restrictions, "tailored to your situation." The email, obtained by The BMJ under a freedom of information request, explained that, although US law prohibits a variety of types of lobbying contact, "they do not prohibit the former employee from other activities, including working ‘behind the scenes.'" The legal ability to work "behind the scenes" is enshrined in federal regulations and highlights a "critical, critical loophole" in US revolving door policy. Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the organisation Public Citizen, told The BMJ that the rules forbid various forms of direct lobbying contact but permit lobbying activity that is indirect. "So, people will leave government service and can immediately start doing influence peddling and lobbying," Holman explained. "They can even run a lobbying campaign, as long as they don't actually pick up the telephone and make the contact with their former officials." A majority of former FDA reviewers take up jobs in industry. Since 2000 every FDA commissioner, the agency's highest position, has gone on to work for industry.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.


Florida prosecutors knew Epstein raped teenage girls 2 years before cutting deal, transcript shows
2024-07-01, CNN News
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/us/jeffrey-epstein-grand-jury/index.html

Florida prosecutors heard graphic testimony about how the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal, according to transcripts released Monday of the 2006 grand jury investigation. Epstein's ties to the rich and the powerful seems to have allowed him to continue to rape and sex traffic teenagers. Transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid to find him more girls. After the grand jury investigation, Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors in 2008 that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to one and a half years in the Palm Beach County jail system, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender. According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Det. Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the initial investigation began when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter who was in high school at the time said she received $300 in exchange for "sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach," Recarey testified. Another teenager ... told detectives that she was 17 years old when she was approached by a friend who said she could make $200 by providing a massage at Epstein's home. Epstein told her that he would pay her if she brought other "girls" to his home. "And he told her, ‘The younger, the better,'" Recarey said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.


Pattern of Brain Damage Is Pervasive in Navy SEALs Who Died by Suicide
2024-06-30, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/30/us/navy-seals-brain-damage-suicide.html

David Metcalf's last act in life was an attempt to send a message – that years as a Navy SEAL had left his brain so damaged that he could barely recognize himself. He shot himself in the heart, preserving his brain to be analyzed by a state-of-the-art Defense Department laboratory in Maryland. The lab found an unusual pattern of damage seen only in people exposed repeatedly to blast waves. The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action. The damage pattern suggested that years of training intended to make SEALs exceptional was leaving some barely able to function. At least a dozen Navy SEALs have died by suicide in the last 10 years. A grass-roots effort by grieving families delivered eight of their brains to the lab. Researchers discovered blast damage in every single one. The damage may be just as widespread in SEALs who are still alive. A Harvard study ... scanned the brains of 30 career Special Operators and found an association between blast exposure and altered brain structure and compromised brain function. The more blast exposure the men had experienced, the more problems they reported with health and quality of life. Doctors treating the injured troops give them diagnoses of psychiatric disorders that miss the underlying physical damage. Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


This 12-year-old memorized the periodic table at age 2. He's heading to NYU after finishing high school in just 2 years
2024-06-30, CNN News
https://www.cnn.com/us/new-york-12-year-old-college-trnd/index.html

Recent high school graduate Suborno Isaac Bari, 12, plans to start studying math and physics at New York University in the fall. "I hope to graduate college at 14 in spring 2026," said Suborno, who recently became the youngest graduate from his Long Island high school. The gifted tween, who memorized the periodic table at 2 years old and has taught lectures at colleges in India since he was 7, graduated on Wednesday from Malverne High School in Nassau County, New York. The bright young student, whose family says he's also skilled in painting, debate and playing the piano, could also be making history at NYU when he begins pursuing his bachelor of science degree. A university spokesperson informed the Bari family "NYU is unaware of anyone younger than Suborno being admitted," according to a copy of an email shared with CNN. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama sent Suborno a letter praising the bright student for his hard work and accomplishments. The family shared a copy of the letter with CNN. In 2020 when he was 7, Suborno began receiving invitations from colleges in India to teach, which he does three times a year. "That gives him lots of chances to have conversations with different levels of expertise, students, faculties, college presidents, so many people," [father] Rashidul Bari said. Suborno plans to continue his family's trend of teaching by one day becoming a math and physics professor.

Note: Explore more positive stories about human interest topics.


Supreme Court opioid case makes it harder to shield wealth in bankruptcy
2024-06-29, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/29/bankruptcy-supreme-court-p...

A Supreme Court ruling against the opioid company Purdue Pharma ... substantially raised the bar for executives and owners trying to shield their wealth. Johnson & Johnson, Boy Scouts of America and Rite Aid are among the entities trying to handle a vast number of lawsuits in bankruptcy court, seeking to resolve all claims in a single settlement. These proceedings have echoes of the Purdue Pharma case decided by the Supreme Court on Thursday, in which the Sackler family, which owns the bankrupt opioid-maker, offered plaintiffs about $6 billion of the $11 billion they extracted from the company. In exchange, family members would have received immunity from future lawsuits, without filing for bankruptcy themselves. A 5-4 Supreme Court held that settlement was inadequate. Its ruling threw the massive bankruptcy case against Purdue Pharma into doubt after years of court battles over the company's role in the nation's opioid epidemic. The decision also adds a fresh wrinkle to a controversial legal strategy, called the Texas two-step, in which companies use a Texas law to split into separate companies and shift a large volume of legal claims onto the newly created entity. In the second step, the entity carrying the lawsuits files for bankruptcy and seeks to release its parent organization from all liability in exchange for a payout. Johnson & Johnson transferred some of its assets and all of the legal claims against it over asbestos-tainted talcum powder into a new legal entity that filed for Chapter 11. Boy Scouts of America ... agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle claims of sexual abuse in bankruptcy court, a deal that shields from future litigation insurance companies as well as schools, churches and community organizations involved with the nonprofit.

Note: For more like this, read about how powerful corporations use the bankruptcy system to dodge lawsuits over sexual abuse and deadly products. Along US opioid industry lines, read how the industry operated like a drug cartel. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the deadly War on Drugs protects the activities of the rich and powerful: military-intelligence interests within the US government, big banks, Big Pharma, and drug cartels.


Mexican cartels boast of increased lethal firepower, including some weapons from the U.S.
2024-06-29, USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/06/29/mexican-cartels...

"El Flaco" ... works as a mercenary, he said, and had come to discuss a closely guarded secret of Mexico's most powerful cartels: The FGM 148 Javelin infrared-guided, missile launcher. El Flaco maintains he has been trained to perform special operations using shoulder-fired weapons, including the Javelin. He said he now trains others to use it as well. If El Flaco is telling the truth, Javelins would be among the most extreme examples of the escalation in the arms race between cartels and Mexican military. Cartels' arsenals now include belt-fed gatling guns, drone bombs and land mines. The U.S.-made Javelin is the most sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launcher in the world, with a range of a mile and a half. Its main purpose is to destroy military tanks, but it also has the capacity to take down low-flying helicopters. There are holes in the U.S. tracking system. During the Iraq War in 2003, the department lost track of 35 Javelins provided to Iraqi allied forces. ISIS was found to have a Javelin in Syria, Kurdish fighters there also obtained a Javelin and the weapon was found at a Libyan warlord base. Since 2018, the Mexican government has reported seizing a dozen rocket launchers and 56 grenade launchers from cartels. Thomas Brandon with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was clear that "criminal organizations and drug cartels based in Mexico continue to look towards the United States as a source of supply for firearms and in this case military grade weapons such as grenades, machine guns, and Man-Portable Air Defense."

Note: American officials allowed thousands of illegal guns to be trafficked into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.


Turning Brownfields to Blooming Meadows, With the Help of Fungi
2024-06-27, Yale Environment 360
https://e360.yale.edu/features/danielle-stevenson-interview

Danielle Stevenson ... has been pioneering a nature-based technique for restoring contaminated land, using fungi and native plants to break down toxins like petroleum, plastics, and pesticides into less toxic chemicals. The usual way of dealing with tainted soil is to dig it up and cart it off to distant landfills. In a recent pilot project funded by the city of Los Angeles, Stevenson ... working with a team of UC Riverside students and other volunteers, significantly reduced petrochemical pollutants and heavy metals at an abandoned railyard and other industrial sites in Los Angeles. Stevenson says she believes her bioremediation methods can be scaled up to clean polluted landscapes worldwide. "Decomposer fungi can degrade petrochemicals the same way they would break down a dead tree," [said Stevenson]. "And in doing so, they reduce the toxicity of these petrochemicals and create soil that no longer has these contaminants or has much reduced concentrations of it. They can also eat plastic and other things made out of oil. People who live in a place impacted by pollution need to have a say in how their neighborhood is being cleaned up. We need to empower them with the tools to do this. That's why along with doing these studies and pilot projects, I've been running workforce development programs. Potentially, they could bring economic opportunities and benefits to the community in addition to cleaning up the contaminated site."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.


More Than 10 Years Later, The Senate Torture Report Is Still Secret
2024-06-27, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/27/senate-torture-report-cia-lawsuit/

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submitted its 6,700-page "torture report" about the CIA to the White House in April 2014. More than 10 years later, the full report remains secret after a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit I filed in the hopes of forcing its release. The document "includes comprehensive and excruciating detail" about the CIA's "program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques," the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate intelligence committee at the time, wrote in a 2014 summary. "The full report details how the CIA lied to the public, the Congress, the president, and to itself about the information produced by the torture program," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. So far, efforts to obtain the torture report using the federal Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful. In late 2016, despite the CIA director's objections, former President Barack Obama placed a copy in his presidential papers. But that copy is not subject to FOIA until 2029 – 12 years after Obama left office. The CIA and a handful of federal agencies also have copies of the torture report, although the Trump administration returned several of these to the Senate intelligence committee vaults in 2017. The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all fought strenuously against FOIA requests for these agencies' copies.

Note: The above was written by media law attorney Shawn Musgrave. No one been charged in connection with the unethical CIA torture program. Many of the architects and enablers of the program are now in powerful and esteemed positions in academia, high levels of government, the federal judiciary, and more. For more, read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture" and check out our summary on US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


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