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.

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

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

In the latest UFO files release from the Pentagon, it was revealed that security radar and armed patrols detected an unidentified object in the sky near a Texas nuclear weapons facility. According to a document titled "Pantex Unidentified Object Incident Report," a "diamond-shaped" object was spotted over the Pantex nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility located in Amarillo, Texas, on Sept. 1, 2015. The object was described as hovering in a "non-threatening" manner in a "northerly trajectory at approximately 10-15 mph" for several minutes at close range. Plant personnel were made aware of the flying object and began to follow it in a vehicle for several miles until the object was no longer visible. Some personnel described the "diamond-shaped" flying object as "approximately 4-feet tall and 2-feet wide at the bottom," and "thinner at the top." Per the report, there was conflicting color of the UFO, with some eyewitnesses citing it as black while others described it as blue, red and silver. A video of the incident was obtained by the Ground Surveillance Radar Tower (GSR) and reviewed by Sandia National Labs, a U.S. Department of Energy research and engineering facility. It was noted the object did not come near any "sensitive assets" at the nuclear power plant nor was it maneuvering in a threatening manner and stayed over "unpopulated areas of the plant." The video and report was given to the FBI.

Note: Read more about the long history of UFO interference with nuclear missiles. Don't miss our new video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity w/ Daniel Sheehan and Amber Yang.

Jolly West, a doctor and MKUltra contractor, reported in 1956 that, through the use of LSD and other drugs, he could "speed the induction of the hypnotic state and deepen the trance," after which he could replace "true memories" with "false ones" in people's minds without them knowing it. Two years earlier, a 34-year-old Air Force sergeant with no history of violent or criminal behavior murdered a three-year-old girl in an apparent trance state. West was assigned to be the man's psychiatric expert. It turned out that the sergeant had been, ostensibly, undergoing an experimental treatment for his migraine headaches at the base. The son of Andrija Puharich – an American physician, scientist, and inventor who used teenagers in his psychic experiments – gave documentary filmmaker Greg Mallozzi access to his father's archive, which includes numerous recordings. "I worked as a consultant to the CIA," Puharich says in one of them. "My boss was the chief medical director who's in charge of all the dirty tricks stuff when it came to drugs and hypnosis and all the mind manipulation stuff." Toward the end of his life, Puharich became a whistleblower and publicly lectured about the dangers of the experiments and the US government's role. Annie Jacobson, author of Phenomenon, confirmed that Puharich "was there in the very first moments when this all took off in the late 1940s and early 50s." A 1957 FBI memo reported that Puharich "uses various electronic equipment and drugs in his experiments and appears to be dedicated to the study of the science of transmitting messages from one person to another through mental telepathy." The memo notes that Puharich served in the Army Medical Corps at the Army Chemical Center at Edgewood, Maryland, the installation at the center of the military's early LSD work. Puharich's work, which covered both drugs and psychic phenomena, may have bridged two separate government programs, MKUltra and the Stargate Project, which investigated the use of extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis from 1972 to 1995. Former President Jimmy Carter revealed that the CIA had, on at least one occasion in the late 1970s, effectively used a psychic. "We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic – a twin-engine plane, a small plane. And we couldn't find it," Carter told GQ in 2005. "The director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California who claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went into a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellite over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.

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

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

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

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

The Department of Justice (DOJ) declined Thursday to release additional unredacted records from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, telling a federal judge that it has already adequately complied with the law. The DOJ's response came in the final hours of a court-ordered deadline to remove redactions in at least a dozen documents or "show cause" why it could not. Those documents included "at least eight email exchanges with Mr. Epstein regarding a ‘torture video' and sexual activity with young women, including minors" and interviews with a woman who claims she was abused by President Trump as a minor. The filing pointed to exemptions in the law that allowed the DOJ to withhold or redact records that contained victims' identities and information that could jeopardize a federal investigation, among a few other exceptions. The Justice Department argued that it should not be forced to release any further records to the public but offered to share additional details with the judge in closed-door proceedings. It also asked for a 60-day extension so that the solicitor general can consider a possible appeal, if further action is demanded. The filing comes in a lawsuit from attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang, in which she alleged that the DOJ has violated the transparency law by withholding information. [Attorney General Todd] Blanche has repeatedly defended the administration's handling and rollout of the files.

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

A former CIA officer on Tuesday said that he does not believe that the agency's research on individuals through Project MKUltra ever stopped. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets received testimony during a hearing earlier in the day focused on MKUltra. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has led the push to reveal more about the program, which started under former CIA Director Allen Dulles's orders in 1953. Asked how the human experimentation program was kept quiet for so long, [Tracy Walder, former CIA staff operations officer], pointed to the destruction of much of MKUltra's documentation as the reason. Responding to Watergate, former CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all records related to MKUltra, according to a research paper. "You are absolutely not supposed to do that," she continued. "But I think some of this started coming to light because individuals want justice for what happened to them." Luna resumed the congressional hearings on the experimentation program after a ... new report stating that the CIA added a new document to its reading room about the agency studying mind control. "Administering drugs to people without their knowledge or consent, subjecting humans to psychological torture, and using prisoners and hospital patients as nonconsenting research subjects," Luna said as she opened the hearing. "These are crimes against humanity."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.

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

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

Earlier this week, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth observed what he called a successful test of "directed energy weapons" against drone and cruise missile attacks as part of the Trump administration's "Golden Dome for America" project. These new weapons, also known as "DEWs," promise defensive measures that can counter drone and missile attacks. They also offer applications against human targets, both on the battlefield and, more controversially, off it. The weapons ... damage their targets not with physical projectiles but with highly concentrated electromagnetic energy fired at the speed of light in the form of sound and particle beams, microwaves and, most famously, lasers. Shooting down such drones with conventional missiles is a drain on resources that favors the attacker. DEWs offer a means to counter this strategy without straining the defender's financial resources. With cheap drone attacks, "your enemy can bankrupt you, so we have to deploy these lasers," former U.S. Navy pilot Matthew "Whiz" Buckley [said]. "The economics are starting to level the battlefield here." Their long-term health impacts on human targets are also not yet clear, which has been a source of controversy following the use of DEWs to disperse crowds, including protesters, and the belief that such weapons may have been used covertly on U.S. officials both at home and abroad, resulting in those attacked suffering from what's been called "Havana syndrome."

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and non-lethal weapons.

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

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

In 2023, a stroke transformed Naresh Shanbhag, a 53-year-old smooth-talking sales professional in Bengaluru, into someone who was unable to speak words, let alone sentences. Initially, when a doctor friend suggested music therapy, Shanbhag thought it would be interesting, but was skeptical that listening to songs would help him recover. That skepticism disappeared right away. "From the very first session, I was hooked," he says. In a soundproof room in India's first music cognition lab at Bengaluru's National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Shanbhag was given simple rhythms and beats to emulate. When his therapist noted that he could sing more fluently than he could talk, he asked Shanbhag to sing sentences. "One year later, I still do this," he laughs. "Every morning when I go to fetch milk and groceries, my shopping list is a song that I belt out!" The lab is run by Shantala Hegde, a professor of neuropsychology as well as a trained classical vocalist. She and her team of researcher-collaborators and PhD scholars provide rehabilitation services to dozens of patients per month who have brain injuries like Shanbhag. "Music is a powerful tool for neuropsychological rehabilitation because you engage the entire brain to engage with it," Hegde says. "We give them specific musical exercises that engage the entire brain, activate different brain areas and strengthen the connections between them," Hegde clarifies.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the power of art.

The Supreme Court on Thursday restricted a massive wave of lawsuits claiming the chemical giant Monsanto had a duty to warn consumers of alleged cancer risks from the world's most popular weed killer, Roundup. The justices ruled that federal law preempts cancer victims from bringing lawsuits against Monsanto in state courts, where most such claims are filed. The justices [also] ruled Monsanto was not required to offer a warning because the Environmental Protection Agency holds that Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, is not a cancer risk. "EPA has not required glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup to include a cancer warning on their labels," Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. "Therefore, as a matter of federal law, Monsanto legally must use a label without a cancer warning unless and until EPA approves or requires a change." Monsanto has marketed Roundup as safe to spray in a t-shirt and shorts. The EPA has repeatedly found that glyphosate, which was first marketed in the 1970s, does not cause cancer. Glyphosate is used on about 300 million acres of farmland in the United States. In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is associated with the United Nations and World Health Organization, found glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic to humans." The agency found a likely link between non-Hodgkin lymphoma and glyphosate.

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

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

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

A woman with severe Alzheimer's disease who spent years communicating in monosyllables started initiating conversations after receiving a large dose of psilocybin. The woman, who also had urinary incontinence and was unable to get around without assistance, also regained control of her bladder and experienced improved mobility in the weeks after taking the drug. The case report, published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, adds to evidence that psychedelics can acutely alter cognition and brain function. The woman, who has not been named, is 83 and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease 10 years ago. With the consent of her son, the woman was given 5 grams of the Enigma strain of the highly potent magic mushroom species Psilocybe cubensis, administered orally. She initially began sweating profusely and entered a prolonged deep sleep-like state. But around 19 hours later, her son reported her initiating a conversation that included her memories and reflections, which lasted around 4 hours. Over the subsequent days and weeks, Lago and his colleagues observed her regaining urinary continence, dressing herself and spontaneously entering conversations. The researchers have stressed that her Alzheimer's has not been reversed, but she may have some residual functional capacity that psychedelics can tap into. We know that psilocybin activates serotonin receptors in the brain, which is thought to boost its plasticity.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on psychedelic medicine.

Last year, a middle-aged man was filmed approaching a woman in a shopping centre. It was a sting. The man had expected to meet a woman he had been chatting to online who was offering up her three young children to be abused. But she was, in fact, a paedophile hunter – a decoy. He ran, and was captured on film. The decoy was part of a media organisation known as Dumpen (literally, "the dump"), set up in 2021 to highlight the terrible shortcomings of Sweden's laws on child abuse and defamation by exposing predators. As with every sting executed by Dumpen, both the film of the man being confronted and the numerous messages between him and the decoy were uploaded to its website. This particular individual was given the moniker "Mr Grey". Weeks after posting on Facebook, Angeliqa received a letter from the police, telling her to present herself at a station across the city for questioning. "I took a lawyer with me, and was interrogated about my victimisation of this man," [she said]. She is now one of a few people in Sweden to have been prosecuted for defamation, and is campaigning for a change to the law. Crucially, truth alone is not a defence: a statement can be defamatory under Swedish law even if it is accurate. Further, an archaic clause grants precedence to a person's dignity and honour – even if that person has been convicted of child abuse – over someone else's right to name them as a sexual predator of children.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on judicial system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

"Kids don't go on social media because they love social media per se," the children's author and National Year of Reading 2026 ambassador, Rob Biddulph says. "They go there looking for connection and for belonging – and for entertainment and inspiration." The challenge, he says, is not to replace social media itself, it is to replace the things it provides. At the Scouts, Simon Carter says one of their biggest attractions is that they bring young people into contact with others outside their friendship circles. Film clubs, youth theatres and music projects offer similar opportunities: BFI film clubs bring young people together to make films in teams. Youth Music-supported projects include everything from DJing, podcasting and gaming to organising gigs. Libraries and bookshops can play a similar role: many now host gaming sessions, manga clubs, creative workshops, reading groups and book clubs. Youth organisations are not the only route to connection. Wilson recommends environmental activism for older children. John Glancy, of the National Trust, believes parents should start by asking their children why their favourite social media platform and video game appeals to them. "The answer might reveal they're searching for a sense of identity, stimulation or a sense of achievement," he says. "Once you know which it is, it becomes easier to find alternatives." Joe Doherty, of Outward Bound ... recommends activities that offer rewards – be it novelty, progression or excitement.

Note: A 2025 study found that cutting social media use for just one week significantly reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia in young adults. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining education and healing social division.

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

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

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

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

A trove of internal records from a secret society for powerful figures in US politics, finance, and tech was left exposed online. The group, called Dialog, is a private, invitation-only organization cofounded in 2006 by the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. It convenes US officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats. Dialog has spent two decades declining to disclose its members. A directory in the website's code was first revealed by the Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew. Known for exposing the US government's No Fly List and breaching the surveillance-camera company Verkada, crimew tells WIRED the directory surfaced via an anonymous tip. The registration records list General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe and the head of US European Command, who took the post in July 2025 and is recorded on the leaked list as having attended Dialog gatherings since 2021. The website directory names sitting Trump administration officials, two US senators, six members of the Paypal Mafia, a former Middle East chief of intelligence, and a sitting ambassador to the United States, along with the founders and directors of many of the country's largest surveillance, data-broker, and advertising-data companies. What ties the roster together more than any title or office is a shared preoccupation with artificial intelligence, longevity, and the near future.

Note: Read how Thiel worked with the CIA to influence the origins of Facebook. Watch a 7-min video with WTK Director Amber Yang and Joe Martino from Collective Evolution discussing the links between Thiel, Palantir, Jeffrey Epstein, the Rothschild banking family, and intelligence agency operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech.

Scientists have mapped the Earth's entire underground fungal network, showing that it's so extensive that if it were stretched into a straight line, it would reach other star systems – and span a sizable chunk of the Milky Way galaxy, for that matter. The groundbreaking work, published in a study in the journal Science, focused on microorganisms known as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Forming the hidden backbone of our planet's soil, they circulate water and nutrients and regulate the climate by locking away vast stores of carbon. Altogether, the global fungal network weighs around 300 megatons, the study found, which is four to six times more than the biomass of all human beings. Around 40 percent of that fungal mass resides in high-altitude or flooded grasslands, like the Everglades in Florida. The authors hope that their work will highlight the indispensable but overlooked role that these fungal networks play in the Earth's ecosystems, with around 70 percent of all ground-based plant life depending on the fungi. In all, the model found that the planet is lined with more than 110 quadrillion kilometers of hyphae, or 68 quadrillion miles, which is almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. On a cosmic ruler, that equals nearly 12,000 light years, or about a tenth the diameter of our galaxy. It's the clearest picture yet of just how much fungal networks underpin our terrestrial ecosystems.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and the mysterious nature of reality.

Important 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.