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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.

The Environmental Protection Agency just hid data that mapped out the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical facilities, after chemical industry lobbyists demanded that the Trump administration take down the public records. The webpage was quietly shut down late Friday ... stripping away what advocates say was critical information on the secretive chemical plants at highest risk of disaster across the United States. The data was made public last year through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s Risk Management Program, which oversees the country's highest-risk chemical facilities. These chemical plants deal with dangerous, volatile chemicals – like those used to make pesticides, fertilizers, and plastics – and are responsible for dozens of chemical disasters every year. The communities near these chemical facilities suffer high rates of pollution and harmful chemical exposure. There are nearly 12,000 Risk Management Program facilities across the country. For decades, it was difficult to find public data on where the high-risk facilities were located, not to mention information on the plants' safety records and the chemicals they were processing. But the chemical lobby fiercely opposed making the data public – and has been fighting for the EPA to take it down. After President Donald Trump's victory in November, chemical companies donated generously to his inauguration fund.

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

The Trump administration plans to take action to remove artificial food dyes from the nation's food supply, according to a media advisory sent by the US Department of Health and Human Services. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary will share more about the administration's plans on Tuesday. In January ... the FDA announced that it had banned the use of red dye No. 3 in food, beverages and ingested drugs. The move came more than 30 years after scientists discovered links to cancer in animals. The Trump administration appears poised to take action on a broader set of petroleum-based synthetic dyes that are used to make food and beverages brightly colored. In March, Kennedy joined West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey to support newly signed legislation to ban certain synthetic dyes in food. The state was the first to institute a sweeping ban on synthetic food dyes, which have been tied to issues with learning and behavior in some children and of which Kennedy has been an outspoken critic. Lawmakers in more than half of states – both Republican- and Democrat-led – are pushing to restrict access, according to a tracker by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental health organization, reflecting a bipartisan push toward a safer food system. Red No. 3, red No. 40, blue No. 2 and green No. 3 all have been linked with cancer or tumors in animals.

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

Recently declassified CIA documents revealed a strange and disturbing history of covert operations that veered into the surreal. One of the most unusual plans, dating back to the 1950s, involved airdropping extra-large condoms labelled "small" or "medium" over Soviet territories to intimidate enemy soldiers and lower morale. In another covert attempt at psychological warfare, the CIA in 2005 commissioned GI Joe creator Donald Levine to design an Osama Bin Laden action figure with a face that would peel off in sunlight to reveal a demonic visage. Only three prototypes were ever made. Among the most notorious CIA initiatives was Project MKUltra, launched in 1953, which aimed to explore mind control through 149 secret experiments. Some of these were conducted without subjects' consent. In one extreme case, a Kentucky patient was allegedly given LSD for 179 consecutive days. Another experiment involved hypnotising women to commit acts of violence, with no memory of the events afterwards. Most MKUltra files were destroyed in 1973, but the surviving records paint a grim picture of unethical and at times criminal behaviour. One of the CIA's most controversial programmes was Operation Paperclip, launched after World War II. It brought over 1,600 former Nazi scientists – including SS officers – into the United States. Figures like Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus were instrumental in the US space programme, despite their Nazi affiliations.

Note: Learn more about the MKUltra Program in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.

American police departments ... are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on "college protesters," "radicalized" political activists, suspected drug and human traffickers ... with the hopes of generating evidence that can be used against them. Massive Blue, the New York–based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an "AI-powered force multiplier for public safety" that "deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels." 404 Media obtained a presentation showing some of these AI characters. These include a "radicalized AI" "protest persona," which poses as a 36-year-old divorced woman who is lonely, has no children, is interested in baking, activism, and "body positivity." Other personas are a 14-year-old boy "child trafficking AI persona," an "AI pimp persona," "college protestor," "external recruiter for protests," "escorts," and "juveniles." After Overwatch scans open social media channels for potential suspects, these AI personas can also communicate with suspects over text, Discord, and other messaging services. The documents we obtained don't explain how Massive Blue determines who is a potential suspect based on their social media activity. "This idea of having an AI pretending to be somebody, a youth looking for pedophiles to talk online, or somebody who is a fake terrorist, is an idea that goes back a long time," Dave Maass, who studies border surveillance technologies for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The problem with all these things is that these are ill-defined problems. What problem are they actually trying to solve? One version of the AI persona is an escort. I'm not concerned about escorts. I'm not concerned about college protesters. What is it effective at, violating protesters' First Amendment rights?"

Note: Academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race to create undetectable deepfakes for the Pentagon. Historically, government informants posing as insiders have been used to guide, provoke, and even arm the groups they infiltrate. In terrorism sting operations, informants have encouraged or orchestrated plots to entrap people, even teenagers with development issues. These tactics misrepresent the threat of terrorism to justify huge budgets and to inflate arrest and prosecution statistics for PR purposes.

Emerging in the 1950s, preppers were animated by a variety of often overlapping fears: some were troubled by the increasingly networked, and therefore fragile, nature of contemporary life. Early adopters ... went off-grid; hoarded provisions, firearms and ammunition, and sometimes constructed hidden bunkers. They championed individual fortitude over collective welfare. Not all of them are conservatives. Liberals make up about 15% of the prepping scene, according to one estimate, and their numbers appear to be growing. Some ... [are] steeped in the mutual aid framework of the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: a rejection of individualism and an emphasis on community building and mutual aid. The question is less whether we survive than how we maintain our humanity in the face of calamity, how we cope with loss, and how we use the time we have. Elizabeth Doerr, co-host of the Cramming for the Apocalypse podcast, agreed: "Researchers talk a lot about how your ability to survive a disaster or thrive post-disaster is contingent on really knowing your neighbors – because when they don't see you, they're gonna come check on you." Rather than an effort to defend ... against a nightmare future, it's a part of a commitment to living meaningfully in the present. Genuine prepping requires not only "outer resilience", as [community organizer David] Baum puts it, but an inner kind as well. "Survival is not the goal," he told me afterward. "The relationship and the wisdom and the love that one discovers by approaching nature with respect – that's the goal."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on climate change and healing social division.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, in a brief announcement unveiling new staff hires on Monday, released a blurb about Kelsey Barnes, her recently appointed senior advisor. Barnes is a former lobbyist for Syngenta, the Chinese state-owned giant that manufactures and sells a number of controversial pesticide products. Syngenta's atrazine-based herbicides, for instance, is banned in much of the world yet is widely used in American agriculture. It is linked to birth defects, low sperm quality, irregular menstrual cycles, and other fertility problems. The leadership of USDA is filled with personnel with similar backgrounds. Scott Hutchins, the undersecretary for research, is a former Dow Chemical executive at the firm's pesticide division. Kailee Tkacz Buller, Rollins's chief of staff, previously worked as the president of the National Oilseed Processors Association and Edible Oil Producers Association, groups that lobby for corn and other seed oil subsidies. Critics have long warned that industry influence at the USDA creates inherent conflicts of interest, undermining the agency's regulatory mission and public health mandates. The revolving door hires also highlight renewed tension with the "Make America Healthy Again" agenda promised by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans may serve as a test of whether establishment industry influence at the agencies will undermine MAHA promises.

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

The West African nation of Ivory Coast ... has navigated through two civil wars so far in this century. And it struggles with widespread poverty. Despite all that, it stands out in Africa for its economic progress. Growth in its gross domestic product has lately been 6% to 7% a year. Inflation is low at about 4%. Most of all, it has seen a one-third decline in the percentage of Ivorians living below the poverty line. An underlying cause is an effort by religious and political leaders to build social trust. Interfaith initiatives are frequent. Organizations quickly address misinformation or grievances at the community level to avert wider conflagration. A Christian-Muslim dialogue in January called on "all citizens to promote messages of peace, fraternity, and unity." President Alassane Ouattara himself seems inclined toward pragmatic peacemaking. He took office amid violence that erupted after former President Laurent Gbagbo vehemently contested Mr. Ouattara's 2010 electoral victory. More than 3,000 people died in that civil war, fueled by politicization over a concept of nationality that excludes a large portion of the population. Mr. Ouattara's programs on infrastructure, jobs, and land tenure have targeted previously ignored northern regions susceptible to extremism. But now they're expanding. Other projects aim to serve and "reintegrate" youth. The nation's ranking in a global corruption index continues to improve. Regional and local elections have become more credible.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

In the summer of 1982, seven heroin users were admitted to a California hospital paralyzed and mute. They were in their 20s, otherwise healthy – until a synthetic drug they had manufactured in makeshift labs left them frozen inside their own bodies. Doctors quickly discovered the cause: MPTP, a neurotoxic contaminant that had destroyed a small but critical part of the brain, the substantia nigra, which controls movement. The patients had developed symptoms of late-stage Parkinson's, almost overnight. Until then, Parkinson's was thought to be a disease of aging, its origins slow and mysterious. But here was proof that a single chemical could reproduce the same devastating outcome. And more disturbing still: MPTP turned out to be chemically similar to paraquat, a widely used weedkiller that, for decades, had been sprayed on farms across the United States and Europe. Parkinson's disease has more than doubled globally over the past 20 years, and is expected to double again in the next 20. It is now one of the fastest-growing neurological disorders in the world. In a 2024 paper co-authored with U.S. neurologist Ray Dorsey, [Bas] Bloem wrote that Parkinson's is "predominantly an environmental disease" – a condition shaped less by genetics and more by prolonged exposure to toxicants like air pollution, industrial solvents and, above all, pesticides. "Parkinson's was a very rare disease," Bloem says. "Then with the ... explosion of pesticide use, rates started to climb."

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

Parents with small children, teenagers, and senior citizens clustered outside the door and waited to hear their ticket numbers called. They weren't there for books. They came to shop for groceries. Connected to the [Enoch Pratt Library], the brightly painted market space is small but doesn't feel cramped. Massive windows drench it in sunshine. In a previous life, it was a cafĂ©. Now, shelves, tables, counters, and a refrigerator are spread out across the room, holding a mix of produce and shelf-stable goods. On any given day, there's a range of produce, like collard greens, apples, onions, radishes, potatoes, and cherry tomatoes, plus eggs, orange juice, rice, bread, and treats like cookies and peanut butter crackers. As they exited, shoppers did not need to pull out their wallets: No one pays at Pratt Free Market. Launched in the fall of 2024, Pratt Free Market opens its doors every Wednesday and Friday and serves around 200 people per day. Anyone can pick up food at the store without providing identification or meeting income requirements. For Baltimore residents, 28 percent reported experiencing food insecurity last year–twice the national average. Pratt Free Market ... offers a mix of everything–from healthy, fresh produce to sweets. And every fourth Friday, the marker turns into "Pantry on the Go!", a farmers' market-style setup outside the library that offers fruits and vegetables. Last month ... they handed out onions, sweet potatoes, watermelons, celery, and apples.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.

On March 21, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that U.S. shell companies and their owners can once again conceal their identities – a move critics warn could weaken national security and spur illicit financial activity that puts the American public at risk. Treasury's initial beneficial ownership information (BOI) disclosure requirement for all companies with less than 20 employees garnered bipartisan support and Trump's approval during his first administration, but it was short-lived. Officially brought into force last January 2024, and then stymied by lawsuits, the requirement passed its final legal roadblock in February 2025 – only to be shelved a month later by the administration. Now, when a U.S. citizen sets up a shell company in the U.S., they do not have to disclose their identity or the identities of the company's "beneficial owners," or the individuals who profit from the company or control its activities. American beneficial owners of foreign shell companies that register in the U.S. have been granted the same anonymity. Under the latest limited regulation, only non-American owners will be required to register with the U.S. government. U.S. shell companies have been successfully used as cover for illegal arms sales for decades. Hints of a business's true breadth and depth only emerge when a trafficker is apprehended, such as the case of Pierre Falcone who used secret accounts in Arizona to hide his proceeds from arms trafficking to Angola.

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

The number of American children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. more than doubled in the early 1990s, from fewer than a million patients in 1990 to more than two million in 1993, almost two-thirds of whom were prescribed Ritalin. Despite Ritalin's rapid growth, no one knew exactly how the medication worked or whether it really was the best way to treat children's attention issues. The diagnosis rate ... kept rising, hitting 5.5 percent of American children in 1997, then 6.6 percent in 2000. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 11.4 percent of American children had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., a record high. That figure includes 15.5 percent of American adolescents, 21 percent of 14-year-old boys and 23 percent of 17-year-old boys. From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat A.D.H.D. increased in the United States by 58 percent. For a significant percentage of people diagnosed with A.D.H.D., [clinical psychologist Joel] Nigg says, "there's nothing neurobiologically notable about them. Instead, their symptoms are situational or conditional. They may have had a hard life, or they have a lack of social support, or they're in the wrong niche in life." Amphetamines can be powerfully addictive, and last year, a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry found that even a medium-strength daily dose of Adderall more than tripled a patient's likelihood of developing psychosis or mania. [UC Irvine research psychologist James Swanson] acknowledges that medication can often produce short-term improvements in children's behavior. But, he says, "there is no long-term effect. The only long-term effect that I know of has been the suppression of growth."

Note: We recommend reading the full article to explore the complex rise in ADHD diagnoses–and the growing concerns around stimulant medications. According to the scientists interviewed in this article, stimulants neither treat the root causes of ADHD nor improve academic achievement or long-term success. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on mental health.

A declassified Cold War-era file from the CIA has gone viral over its coverage of a supposed clash between Soviet soldiers and a UFO. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CIA acquired a 250-page KGB report recounting the events that transpired after a platoon fired at a flying saucer over Ukraine. The report included eyewitness accounts and pictures of the aftermath. The report claims Soviets conducting a training exercise in Ukraine spotted a "low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer" soaring above their heads. During the encounter, one of the Soviets fired a surface-to-air missile, which struck the UFO and sent it crashing to the ground. "It fell to Earth not far away, and five short humanoids with ‘large heads and large black eyes' emerged from it," the report claims. After escaping the debris of their ruined ship, the beings huddled together and "merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape," the surviving soldiers recalled. "In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that very instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned into ... stone poles," the report states. "Only two soldiers who stood in the shade and were less exposed to the luminous explosion survived," it added. The KGB allegedly took custody of the "petrified soldiers" and the ruined spacecraft, which were transported to a secret base near Moscow.

Note: Explore our YouTube playlist of original UFO/UAP videos. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.

A pavilion of towering windows in a Mexico City urban park is nearly packed. Everyone here wants the same thing: to dance freely, at no cost, without harassment or prejudice. Twenty-somethings, children with their mothers, teenagers and elderly couples gather around the disc jockey's console. "This is an open invitation for everyone to move as they wish in a safe space!" said Axel MartĂ­nez, one of the collective's founders, as he grabs a microphone and cheers the revelers on. At their own pace, each person is carried away by the music – and no one seems surprised by the moves of others. From experimental jazz pieces and smooth Egyptian hip-hop to the more familiar pulse of cumbias grooved with an electronic touch, people dance to it all. The party was organized by the Nueva Red de Bailadores or NRB (New Network of Dancers), a collective that aims to create spaces where people can gather to dance freely. There's no cover charge, no booze, and no pressure to do the "right" moves. As organizers pointed out, their parties forgo police and security, fostering a sense of collective care where attendees look out for one another. Isabel Miraflores, a 73-year-old retired high school assistant principal, came with her husband and said she enjoyed both the dancing and the presence of people of different ages. "I think it's wonderful because it's a free event," she said. "We get together with people from all parts of society and we have fun without any trouble."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the power of art and healing social division.

She has been at the bedside of over 1,000 people globally in their last moments of life–from her home in the U.S. to Thailand and Zimbabwe. O'Brien, a registered nurse, had an impulse to move into hospice care over two decades ago and has since worked as an oncology nurse and a death doula, supporting those at the end of life. O'Brien's recent book, The Good Death, aims to normalize the realities of death and the need to plan for the end. At the end of life, many people share what they didn't do but knew they always wanted to do, O'Brien says."We all are here for a purpose, and we all have gifts, and when we don't share them and act upon those, that's where the huge regret comes," O'Brien says. Not "dipping into the unknown" or trying something new is a factor of having an abundance mindset, she says. When we consider our time sacred and limited, we are less afraid to take action on something that may excite us. "One of the things we don't know is how many days we have," she says. "When you get that feeling, or you have something that you want to do, don't let your ego, the fear part of you, shut it down." Many people at the end of life regret not being vulnerable enough to let themselves be loved and give love. They often share that they could not reach a level of forgiveness with someone else or themselves, O'Brien says. It's essential to extend ourselves grace, know when to take ownership, and release guilt, she says. O'Brien encourages patients to envision the time they're struggling to let go of and ask themselves if they did what they could in the moment with the information and resources they had.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and meaningful lessons from near-death experiences.

Millions of people across the United States could be drinking water contaminated with dangerous levels of substances created when utilities disinfect water tainted with animal manure and other pollutants. An analysis of testing results from community water systems in 49 states found that nearly 6,000 such systems serving 122 million people recorded an unsafe level of chemicals known as trihalomethanes at least once during testing from 2019 to 2023. The chemicals are byproducts created when chlorine or other disinfectants used by water systems interact with organic matter, such as decaying leaves, vegetation, human or animal waste and other substances. One or more of these chemicals – chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane, and bromoform – have been linked to various human health risks, including cancers. Texas water systems had the highest prevalence of water systems with unsafe levels of TTHMs, with more than 700 such systems serving over 8.6 million people reporting the contaminants above the EPA's 80 ppb, according to the report issued April 10 by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). "Manure from factory farms is polluting our water supplies, and when utilities try to make that water safe to drink, they unintentionally create another public health hazard that increases the risk of cancer and birth defects," Anne Schechinger, EWG's Midwest director, said.

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

On March 12th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a press release about an "enhanced" operation that the agency had conducted the previous week in New Mexico. Forty-eight people were arrested in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Roswell. Twenty of them had been "arrested or convicted of serious criminal offenses," which included homicide, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and shoplifting. Others had committed "immigration violations such as illegal entry and illegal re-entry," and twenty-one had final orders of removal issued by an immigration judge. On March 16th, the New Mexico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with two oversight agencies within the Department of Homeland Security: the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. "ICE has not identified any of the 48 individuals," the letter said. "ICE has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them." In the past two and a half months, ICE has ended a long-standing policy discouraging arrests at schools, places of worship, and hospitals; its officers have also allegedly entered residences without warrants, arrested U.S. citizens by mistake, and refused to identify themselves while whisking people away on the streets of American cities.

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

2,500 US service members from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit [tested] a leading AI tool the Pentagon has been funding. The generative AI tools they used were built by the defense-tech company Vannevar Labs, which in November was granted a production contract worth up to $99 million by the Pentagon's startup-oriented Defense Innovation Unit. The company, founded in 2019 by veterans of the CIA and US intelligence community, joins the likes of Palantir, Anduril, and Scale AI as a major beneficiary of the US military's embrace of artificial intelligence. In December, the Pentagon said it will spend $100 million in the next two years on pilots specifically for generative AI applications. In addition to Vannevar, it's also turning to Microsoft and Palantir, which are working together on AI models that would make use of classified data. People outside the Pentagon are warning about the potential risks of this plan, including Heidy Khlaaf ... at the AI Now Institute. She says this rush to incorporate generative AI into military decision-making ignores more foundational flaws of the technology: "We're already aware of how LLMs are highly inaccurate, especially in the context of safety-critical applications that require precision." Khlaaf adds that even if humans are "double-checking" the work of AI, there's little reason to think they're capable of catching every mistake. "‘Human-in-the-loop' is not always a meaningful mitigation," she says.

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

In Cape Cod, Massachusetts ... hidden away from the picturesque beaches was the town landfill, including lagoons of toxic waste from septic tanks, which was being left to seep into the groundwater below. So [John] Todd, then a 45-year-old biologist, decided to design a solution. Next to the lagoons, he assembled a line of 15 clear-sided fiberglass tanks, each about the height of a person, and filled them with water containing all the different life forms he could find from local ponds, marshes and streams – plants, bugs, bacteria, fungi, general gunk. The water could be pumped from one tank to the next, and the living matter inside them soon organised itself into a series of different ecosystems. Todd found that he could put in polluted water from the lagoons at one end of the line of tanks and by the time it came out the other end, 10 days later, it was clean enough to drink. "To see that water, and to see all the organisms in the tanks, including fishes, looking and being so healthy, I was just amazed," he says. Todd ... would later discover that various microorganisms were finding uses for the toxins and heavy metals. Todd calls it "biological intelligence". Todd christened his invention the "eco-machine", and spent the next four decades ... applying it to everything from treating wastewater to growing food to repairing damaged ecosystems. Todd founded his own ecological consultancy, Ocean Arks International. It has designed and built more than 100 eco-machine systems to treat problems of pollution, wastewater and food production around the world, from the US to China, Australia, Brazil and Scotland. Todd's eco-machines are cheaper and more effective than industrial alternatives ... and are even capable of treating chemicals that have been impossible to break down using conventional methods, such as grades of crude oil and mining waste. They are also far more sustainable – powered almost entirely by sunlight.

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

Since the Israel-Hamas war, relationships between some students have been nowhere near brotherly, let alone collegial. Some students just aren't accustomed to contrary or controversial ideas and believe that even hearing them is harmful. What hasn't made headline news is the spike in civil discourse initiatives at campuses. Here's one gauge. At the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a coalition of College Presidents for Civic Preparedness went from a handful of participants prior to Oct. 7, 2023, to well over 100 afterward. The likes of Harvard, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have launched civil discourse initiatives since the deadly Hamas attack that sparked the Israeli invasion of Gaza. One success story is the Dialogue, Inclusion, and Democracy (DID) Lab at Providence College in Rhode Island, run by Dr. Bevely and Professor Nick Longo. "With Mutual Respect" events feature two people on opposing sides of an issue. Panelists don't so much debate as endeavor to foster mutual understanding. In December 2020, Vanderbilt [University's] women's basketball team elected to protest for racial justice by staying inside the locker room during the national anthem. Vanderbilt ... facilitated structured dialogue between the basketball players and military veterans on the Nashville, Tennessee, campus. Some athletes shared experiences of racism and discrimination. Young men and women, some of whom had combat experience, explained why they felt so strongly about serving their country. The culture of civil discourse needs to be rooted in a relationship of trust. "If as a student, I'm challenging something, or I say something controversial, I'm going to have to trust you that you're not excluding me," says [Chancellor] Dr. Diermeier.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and reimagining education.

Perhaps you're in hospital recovering from surgery, as I was only a little time ago. When a friend arrived with a posy of flowers, I found myself smiling for the first time since leaving home. More than ever, we could all use some green relief, as we deal with a world that seems to only grow more anxiety-inducing and uncertain. In most cultures throughout history, medicine and botany have been closely entwined, and gardens have been associated with healing the body, mind, and spirit. Inevitably, the creep of urbanisation saw the garden landscapes of [healing] institutions greatly reduced. There has been a trend towards banning flowers from hospital wards. Reasons include a suspicion bacteria lurk in the flower water, as well as ... patients or nursing staff knocking over vases during night shifts. An explanation for the uplifting effect of those flowers in my hospital room may be found in numerous studies that have shown, post-surgery, patients in rooms with plants and flowers have shorter recovery times, require fewer analgesics, and experience lower levels of anxiety. Partly, it is a response to beauty. Our compulsion to turn towards the natural world is known as "biophilia". [German–American social psychologist and psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm] ... described it as "the passionate love of life and all that is alive", speculating that our separation from nature brings about a level of unrecognised distress. Doctors in some countries are writing green prescriptions, rather than scripts for medication. And not just for mental health problems, but for physical conditions such as high blood pressure.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.

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.