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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.


Germany Taps Universities in Its Push for Green Energy
2014-05-11, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/world/europe/germany-taps-universities-in-i...

Germany has set an ambitious goal: to run its economy almost entirely on renewable energy by 2050. The energy push, known as the Energiewende, or energy transformation, is often compared in scope to the country’s postwar reconstruction. It will require wide-ranging changes in German society — not just in energy supply but in architecture and agriculture, urban planning, and economic markets. Treading onto this unknown territory, Germany has called on its universities to help make the transformation work. While Germany is supporting university research into solar power and other clean energy, perhaps the biggest innovation in higher education is how the Energiewende has triggered the creation of new interdisciplinary approaches, pushing institutions to develop new courses, degrees and departments. Green technology is not necessarily where the breakthroughs need to happen, said Karl-Friedrich Ziegahn, head of the renewable energy department at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s School of Energy. In terms of the transformation, Germany’s biggest challenges today, he said, “are socioeconomic in nature: public awareness, cost and community involvement.” Germany has already made enormous strides in clean energy generation. In roughly a decade, it has expanded its green power supply to account for a quarter of its electricity — which is twice the United States’ share of renewables. On especially sunny and windy days, when wind farms and solar parks churn out power at peak volume, more than two-thirds of the country’s electricity needs are covered by renewables.

Note: For more on promising alternative energy developments, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


CrowdMed wants to bring crowdsourcing to medicine
2014-05-10, Star Tribune/San Jose Mercury News
http://www.startribune.com/business/258540431.html

What Wikipedia has done for knowledge, a San Francisco company called CrowdMed is betting it can do for medicine. Send your symptoms and a nominal fee to CrowdMed.com, and dozens of medical professionals, students and average Joes will “crowdsource” — that is, share their knowledge and expertise — to help diagnose what’s wrong with you. The company isn’t out to replace your family doctor, but instead take advantage of the reach of social media to tap into an age-old medical practice: seeking second opinions. Or, in this case, hundreds of them. At the UC-Berkeley/UC-San Francisco Joint Medical Program, Dr. Amin Azzam, director of the “problem-based learning” curriculum, wants to use CrowdMed “to push the boundaries of how we train medical students.” Instead of teaching first- and second-year students with “pretend patients,” as is done now, Azzam is proposing adding CrowdMed’s cases to the curriculum. “They might even be more motivated to learn because it’s a real patient,” he said. Within 90 days of a consumer putting a case online, CrowdMed’s algorithm generates a list of the most probable diagnoses submitted by its “medical detectives,” along with their explanations. Patients are asked to give those suggestions to their physicians for consideration. Once it’s confirmed that the suggestions were helpful, the patients are refunded their $50 deposit and the detective who made the correct diagnosis gets his or her reward.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Vermont just passed the nation’s first GMO food labeling law. Now it prepares to get sued.
2014-05-09, Washington Post blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/04/29/how-vermont-plans-t...

Vermont on [May 8] became the first state in the nation to require the labeling of genetically engineered foods. Gov. Peter Shumlin signed that mandate into law on Thursday afternoon, saying in a statement “we believe we have a right to know what’s in the food we buy.” The new law represents a significant victory for advocates who have for years pushed such measures at the state and local level. But there remains one more hurdle to overcome: a likely lawsuit. Legislators, officials and advocates are preparing for the state to be sued over the new law. Last month, state Attorney General Bill Sorrell told Vermont Public Radio that he would be “very surprised” if the state isn’t sued. And officials were so sure of a challenge that the measure itself creates a $1.5 million legal defense fund, to be paid for with settlements won by the state. “The threat of a lawsuit worked for a while, but now it doesn’t work anymore,” says Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, whose organization has for years worked with activists and lawmakers in Vermont on the issue. At least 25 states have considered such legislation, according to a recent report on labeling requirements from the nonprofit Council for Agricultural Science and Technology. And advocates are hopeful they will get a measure on the Oregon ballot this year. Proponents argue that the science behind genetically modified food is far from conclusive and ask why consumers should take risks without knowing what they’re eating. If companies truly stand behind the safety of GMO foods, they shouldn’t worry about having to identify them, advocates for labeling argue.

Note: For many major media articles laying bare the serious risks and dangers of GMOs in our food, click here. For more on the major risks from GMO foods, see the deeply revealing summary available here.


Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds
2014-05-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/09/honeybees-dying-insecticid...

The mysterious vanishing of honeybees from hives can be directly linked to insectcide use, according to new research from Harvard University. The scientists showed that exposure to two neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used class of insecticide, lead to half the colonies studied dying, while none of the untreated colonies saw their bees disappear. "We demonstrated that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering 'colony collapse disorder' [CCD] in honeybee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter," said Chensheng Lu, an expert on environmental exposure biology at Harvard School of Public Health [who led the study]. The loss of honeybees in many countries in the last decade has caused widespread concern because about three-quarters of the world's food crops require pollination. The decline has been linked to loss of habitat, disease and pesticide use. In December 2013, the European Union banned the use of three neonicotinoids for two years. In the new Harvard study, published in the Bulletin of Insectology, the scientists studied the health of 18 bee colonies in three locations in central Massachusetts from October 2012 till April 2013. At each location, two colonies were treated with realistic doses of imidacloprid, two with clothianidin, and two were untreated control hives. "Bees from six of the 12 neonicotinoid-treated colonies had abandoned their hives and were eventually dead with symptoms resembling CCD," the team wrote. "However, we observed a complete opposite phenomenon in the control colonies."

Note: For more on mass deaths of many species of animal, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


White House Reinstalls Solar Panels For First Time in Nearly 30 Years
2014-05-09, Time Magazine
http://time.com/94067/white-house-solar-panels/

The Obama Administration has installed solar panels on the White House for the first time in nearly 30 years. Of course, they could eventually be taken down again, as President Jimmy Carter’s were in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan. [In] the meantime, however, they serve as a a symbol of the clean energy revolution. “Solar panels in the White House ... are a really important message that solar is here, we are doing it, we can do a lot more,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz said in a White House video about the panels released [May 9]. “I am very bullish on the future of solar energy as a key part of our energy future.” “Everything from the solar components, to the inverter technology, to the labor that put the panels on the roof, was all American,” added Cyrus Waida, an assistant director of clean energy at the White House. “Every four minutes, some small business or homeowner is going solar. We’re going through a transition here and the industry is going through a transition that we’re just seeing the beginning of.”

Note: For more on promising alternative energy developments, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Now That’s Rich
2014-05-09, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/opinion/krugman-now-thats-rich.html

The 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers ... made a combined $21 billion in 2013. In particular, let’s think about how their good fortune refutes several popular myths about income inequality in America. Apologists for soaring inequality almost always try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent. Instead of talking about the 1 percent or the 0.1 percent, they talk about the rising incomes of college graduates. The goal of this misdirection is to soften the picture, to make it seem as if we’re talking about ordinary white-collar professionals who get ahead through education and hard work. But many Americans are well-educated and work hard. The vast gulf that now exists between the upper-middle-class and the truly rich didn’t emerge until the Reagan years. Second, ignore the rhetoric about “job creators” and all that. Conservatives want you to believe that the big rewards in modern America go to innovators and entrepreneurs, people who build businesses and push technology forward. But that’s not what those hedge fund managers do for a living; they’re in the business of financial speculation. Once upon a time, you might have been able to argue with a straight face that all this wheeling and dealing was productive, that the financial elite was actually providing services to society commensurate with its rewards. But, at this point, the evidence suggests that hedge funds are a bad deal for everyone except their managers; they don’t deliver high enough returns to justify those huge fees, and they’re a major source of economic instability. We’re still living in the shadow of a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry.

Note: For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Vermont governor signs GMO food labeling into law
2014-05-08, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/08/health/vermont-gmo-labeling

Vermont's governor on [May 8] signed a bill into law that will require the labeling of genetically modified foods -- hailing it as the first such law in the nation. Under the new law, food offered for retail sale that is entirely or partially produced with genetic engineering must be labeled as such by July 2016. "Vermonters take our food and how it is produced seriously, and we believe we have a right to know what's in the food we buy," said Gov. Peter Shumlin. "More than 60 countries have already restricted or labeled these foods, and now one state -- Vermont -- will also ensure that we know what's in the food we buy and serve our families." In the absence of federal action, other states have introduced similar legislation or ballot initiatives, according to the non-profit Center for Food Safety. Maine and Connecticut passed laws requiring labeling, but they won't go into effect until other states pass GMO-labeling laws. Vermont is the first to pass a "no strings attached" bill, the watchdog group said. Supporters of the law expect it will be challenged in court. "I can make no predictions or promises about how the courts will ultimately rule but I can promise that my office will mount a vigorous and zealous defense of the law that has so much support from Vermont consumers," said Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service approved a non-GMO label for meat and liquid egg products in June, the first time the department has approved such a label from a third party. GMO foods were approved for human consumption in 1995.

Note: For more on the major risks from GMO foods, see the deeply revealing summary available here. For many major media articles laying bare the serious risks and dangers of GMOs in our food, click here.


Keith Alexander Unplugged: on Bush/Obama, 1.7 million stolen documents
2014-05-08, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/08/keith-alexander-unplugged-busho...

Back in December, 60 Minutes broadcast a now-notorious segment of pure access journalism in which they gullibly disseminated one false NSA claim after the next. The program claimed that Snowden “is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked”. Ever since then, that Snowden “stole” 1.7 or 1.8 million documents from the NSA has been repeated over and over again by US media outlets as verified fact. The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus, citing an anonymous official source, purported to tell readers that “among the roughly 1.7 million documents he walked away with — the vast majority of which have not been made public — are highly sensitive, specific intelligence reports”. Reuters frequently includes in its reports the unchallenged assertion that “Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents.” In fact, that number is and always has been a pure fabrication, as even Keith Alexander admits. The claimed number has changed more times than one can count: always magically morphing into randomly chosen higher and scarier numbers. The reality, in the words of the General, is that the US Government ”really [doesn't know] what he actually took with him” and they ”don’t have an accurate way of counting”. All they know is how many documents he accessed in his entire career at NSA, which is a radically different question from how many documents he took. But that hasn’t stopped American media outlets from repeatedly affirming the inflammatory evidence-free claim that Snowden took 1.7 million documents.

Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Why both sides of the political aisle are turning against Wall Street
2014-05-07, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2014/0507/Why-both-sides-of-th...

More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business and their enablers in Washington. We’re five years into a so-called recovery that’s been a bonanza for the rich but a bust for the middle class. “The game is rigged and the American people know that. They get it right down to their toes,” says Senator Elizabeth Warren. Which is fueling a new populism on both the left and the right. While still far apart, neo-populists on both sides are bending toward one another and against the establishment. And it’s not only the rhetoric that’s converging. Populists on the right and left are also coming together around six principles: 1. Cut the biggest Wall Street banks down to a size where they’re no longer too big to fail. 2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking and thereby preventing companies from gambling with their depositors’ money. 3. End corporate welfare – including subsidies to big oil, big agribusiness, big pharma, Wall Street, and the Ex-Im Bank. 5. Scale back American interventions overseas. 6. Oppose trade agreements crafted by big corporations. Two decades ago Democrats and Republicans enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since then populists in both parties have mounted increasing opposition to such agreements. Left and right-wing populists remain deeply divided over the role of government. Even so, the major fault line in American politics seems to be shifting, from Democrat versus Republican, to populist versus establishment — those who think the game is rigged versus those who do the rigging.

Note: For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Vatican Defrocks 848 Priests in 10 Years of Abuse
2014-05-06, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/vatican-defrocks-848-priests-10...

The Vatican revealed [on May 6] that over the past decade, it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties, providing the first ever breakdown of how it handled the more than 3,400 cases of abuse reported to the Holy See since 2004. The Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a U.N. committee monitoring implementation of the U.N. treaty against torture. Tomasi insisted that the Holy See was only obliged to abide by the torture treaty inside the tiny Vatican City State, which has a population of only a few hundred people. But significantly, he didn't dispute the committee's contention that sexual violence against children can be considered torture. Legal experts have said that classifying sexual abuse as torture could expose the Catholic Church to a new wave of lawsuits since torture cases in much of the world don't carry statutes of limitations. The Vatican in 2001 required bishops and religious superiors to forward all credible cases of abuse to Rome for review after determining that they were shuffling pedophile priests from diocese to diocese rather than subjecting them to church trials. Only in 2010 did the Vatican explicitly tell bishops and superiors to also report credible cases to police where local reporting laws require them to. The Vatican statistics ... showed that far from diminishing in recent years, the number of cases reported annually to the Vatican has remained a fairly constant 400 or so since 2010.

Note: For more on sexual abuse by Catholic priests, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Do Not Take Daily Aspirin if You Haven’t Had a Heart Attack, Says FDA
2014-05-06, Time Magazine
http://time.com/89681/do-not-take-daily-aspirin-if-you-havent-had-a-heart-att...

If you've never had a heart attack, the FDA says you can put down the aspirin bottle. Taking a daily aspirin is not necessary for people with no history of heart problems, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says. In a newly released consumer update bound to cause a stir for the 40 million Americans who take aspirin every day, the FDA says it has combed the evidence and concluded that people who have not had heart problems, even if they have a family history of it, will not benefit from taking a daily aspirin. The announcement comes after the FDA denied Bayer’s request to change its aspirin labels to say aspirin can aid in the prevention of heart attacks in people without a history of heart disease. On its website, the FDA has written, “FDA has concluded that the data do not support the use of aspirin as a preventive medication by people who have not had a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular problems, a use that is called ‘primary prevention.’ In such people, the benefit has not been established but risks — such as dangerous bleeding into the brain or stomach — are still present.” Dr. Robert Temple, deputy director for clinical science at the FDA, said in the recommendation that since the 1990s there has been clinical data showing that people who have undergone a heart attack, stroke or any blood vessel disease in the heart can benefit from taking a daily low dose of aspirin and can lower the risk of having another adverse heart event. This is what the FDA refers to as “secondary prevention.”

Note: Read a mercola.com article on this for more.


California tax plan could rein in CEO pay
2014-05-02, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/California-tax-plan-could-rein-in...

Until the 1980s, corporate CEOs in America were paid, on average, 30 times what their typical worker was paid. Since then, CEO pay has skyrocketed to 280 times the pay of a typical worker; in big companies, to 354 times. Meanwhile, over the same 30-year span, the median American worker has seen no pay increase at all, adjusted for inflation. Even though the pay of male workers continues to outpace that of females, the typical male worker between the ages of 25 and 44 peaked in 1973 and his pay has been dropping ever since. Wages of the median male worker across all age brackets have dropped 10 percent, after inflation, since 2000. CEOs and other top executives use their fortunes to fuel speculative booms followed by busts. CEOs and top corporate executives in Europe, Canada and Japan don't get paid vast multiples of what their employees earn. At the same time, their workers are starting to command better pay than the typical American. The median wage in Canada is already higher than the median wage in the United States. There's no easy answer for reversing this trend, but ... a bill introduced in the California Legislature ... creates the right incentives. The proposed legislation sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company's typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break. Those with high ratios get a tax increase. For the last 30 years, almost all the incentives for companies have been to lower the pay of their workers while increasing the pay of their CEOs and other top executives. It's about time some incentives were applied in the other direction.

Note: For more on income inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Snowden: Why hasn’t the Director of National Intelligence been punished for lying to Congress
2014-05-01, Washington Post blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/01/snowden-why-hasn...

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, and one of the reporters who first broke the news of Snowden's documents, Laura Poitras, received a Ridenhour Truth-Teller prize [on April 30] to a standing ovation at the National Press Club. Snowden leaked classified documents that exposed the NSA's massive global surveillance programs. Snowden ... compared his actions with that of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, who denied that the NSA was "wittingly" collecting data on millions of Americans in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last spring -- a claim at odds with revelations about domestic phone records collection as a result of documents provided by Snowden. "The oath that I remember is James Clapper raising his hand, swearing to tell the truth and then lying to the American public," Snowden said. "I also swore an oath, but that oath was not to secrecy, but to defend the American Constitution." While Clapper has accused Snowden of perpetrating the most "massive and damaging theft of intelligence" in U.S. history, Snowden argues his actions were serving a larger public interest that superseded the national intelligence need for secrecy. Later in the speech, he described Clapper as having "committed a crime by lying under oath to the American people," and questioned why charges were never brought against the director. By contrast, Snowden said, charges were brought against him soon after he revealed himself as the source of the leaks.

Note: For more on the construction of a total surveillance state, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Pipe Explosion at Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant Site
2014-05-01, NBC Right Now (KNDO-TV, Eastern WA NBC affiliate)
http://www.nbcrightnow.com/story/25408984/pipe-explosion-at-hanford-plutonium...

Hanford union workers tell NBC Right Now there was an explosion at the plutonium finishing plant cleanup site weeks ago, but the event wasn't shared with the public. The Hanford union representative says it happened when workers were cutting some pipe as part of the demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant. The union representative wants to remain anonymous and says workers are concerned management isn't putting worker safety first. "Having a pipe explode at probably the most contaminated facility in the United States. This is one of the most hazardous buildings in the U.S." said the Union representative. PFP is where the plutonium was manufactured for one of the atomic bombs dropped in World War II. Workers describe the explosion as a spark then flames that shot out of a pipe and a loud bang that vibrated the pipe and the worker. "Management continues to call it a small pop even though the workers say no this thing was a big, loud bang like a shot gun blast," said the union representative. Workers say they think the contractor is playing down the explosion and possible safety concerns to protect themselves from fines and work delays. The union representative says if the pipe broke, workers would have inhaled plutonium particles that could have possibly deadly health effects.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing nuclear cover-ups news articles from reliable major media sources.


More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over to judge
2014-04-30, Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/30/4090497/more-secret-911-documents-ident...

Contradicting an earlier assertion made under oath by a senior FBI official, an attorney for the Justice Department said [on April 30] that the FBI has identified four more boxes of “classified” 9/11 documents held by its Tampa field office. The government, however, has yet to comply with a federal judge’s orders ... that it turn over copies of that massive 9/11 file — now said to total 27 boxes — for his personal inspection. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch issued those orders in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by BrowardBulldog.org seeking records about the FBI’s investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota. Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has said that the FBI did not disclose the existence of the Sarasota investigation to either the Joint Inquiry or the subsequent 9/11 Commission. The documents state that the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” One document lists three individuals, with names blacked out, and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained.

Note: For solid evidence that many more were involved in 9/11 than is generally admitted, see the revealing newspaper article at this link. For an excellent documentary focused on the Venice, Florida flight school which all but proves a major cover-up involving US citizens involved in the planning of 9/11, click here. And for a treasure trove of reliable information showing a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.


British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA’s Data Pools
2014-04-30, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/04/30/gchq-prism-nsa-fisa-uns...

Britain’s electronic surveillance agency, Government Communications Headquarters [GCHQ], has long presented its collaboration with the National Security Agency’s massive electronic spying efforts as proportionate, carefully monitored, and well within the bounds of privacy laws. But according to a top-secret document in the archive of material provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, GCHQ secretly coveted the NSA’s vast troves of private communications and sought “unsupervised access” to its data as recently as last year. The document, dated April 2013, reveals that GCHQ requested broad new authority to tap into data collected under a law that authorizes a variety of controversial NSA surveillance initiatives, including the PRISM program. PRISM is a system used by the NSA and the FBI to obtain the content of personal emails, chats, photos, videos, and other data processed by nine of the world’s largest internet companies, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Skype. The arrangement GCHQ proposed would also have provided the British agency with greater access to millions of international phone calls and emails that the NSA siphons directly from phone networks and the internet. The Snowden files do not indicate whether NSA granted GCHQ’s request, but they do show that the NSA was “supportive” of the idea, and that GCHQ was permitted extensive access to PRISM during the London Olympics in 2012. The request for the broad access was communicated at “leadership” level.

Note: For more on the construction of a total surveillance state, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


Minnesota teen's YouTube song strikes emotional, viral chord
2014-04-30, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/257412031.html

An Austin teen is getting some big attention online for belting out an original song on YouTube. Molly Kate Kestner,18, posted a video on April 20 of herself singing "His Daughter." Since then, the song has garnered more than 1.3 million views (and climbing fast). Among those who have noticed: the Huffington Post and social media star George Takei shared the video on his Facebook page. Reached by phone ..., Mary Jane Kestner said her daughter was taking the sudden Internet fame in stride (but was exhausted from the attention and taking a nap). The Austin High School student is in the midst of graduating and also preparing to participate in the Distinguished Young Women of America scholarship program in a couple weeks (in Mobile, Alabama). She said her daughter hopes to record the song soon and release it on iTunes. Kestner said Molly hopes to one day be a motivational speaker, which is in line with the song's faith-centric vibe. "She's definitely more than just a pretty voice. The song is really showing something about her character," Mary Jane Kestner said. "She has a real interest in helping young girls discover their value."

Note: Don't miss this touching video about a father with a drinking problem who left his daughter and how it changed her life. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.


Hundreds of U.S. inmates sentenced to death are innocent, researchers say
2014-04-29, Chicago Tribune/Reuters
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-29/news/sns-rt-us-usa-crime-death-...

As many as 300 people who were sentenced to death in the United States over a three-decade period were likely innocent. Dozens of defendants sentenced to death in recent years have been exonerated before their sentences could be carried out, but many more were probably falsely convicted, said University of Michigan professor Samuel Gross, the study's lead author. "Our research adds the disturbing news that most innocent defendants who have been sentenced to death have not been exonerated," Gross wrote in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their research, Gross and his colleagues examined the 7,482 U.S. death sentence convictions between 1973 and 2004. Of those, 117 had been exonerated in recent years, thanks to the efforts of numerous groups and a tide of public attention to issues surrounding the death penalty. Gross and his co-authors ... estimated that about 4 percent of those sentenced to death were actually innocent, nearly three times the number exonerated during that period. Once inmates' sentences are commuted to life, they are far less likely to be exonerated, mostly because there are fewer legal resources given to their cases, Gross said. "If you were never sentenced to death, you never had the benefit - if you call it a benefit - of that process," he said. Although the study focuses on a period ending 10 years ago, the percentage of false death sentence convictions likely holds true today, Gross said.

Note: For more on the terrible injustices within the corrupt prison-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


The staggering cost of silence: child abuse victims and stolen innocence
2014-04-29, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/04/29/staggering-cost-silence-child-abuse...

The CDC estimates that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. Worldwide 550 million children are survivors of child abuse according to the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that there are currently 617,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and typically 100,000 of those are unaccounted for. Other pedophiles are not on records or in databases. Research has shown that an average victim of child sex abuse has to tell at least seven adults before being believed. According to the Journal for the American Medical Association only 1 in 20 cases of child abuse are reported. It is critically important that every parent and adult responsible for the care of a child educate and empower themselves with the knowledge to stop predators. If we work together we can stop the stolen innocence of our children and that of others by spending a few hours educating ourselves. There is no greater tragedy than to live a life plagued by the shattered hopes and dreams of a vandalized childhood. To learn more about the education and prevention of child abuse go to the following websites: Joyful Heart Foundation, Childhelp, Stop Abusing Your Children and Arrow Child and Family Ministries.

Note: For more on what is being done to fight against the sexual abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


The Koch Attack on Solar Energy
2014-04-27, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-ene...

At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new tax they can support. Naturally it’s a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels. For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they don’t need back to electric utilities. So they’ve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive. Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved such a surcharge at the behest of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group that often dictates bills to Republican statehouses and receives financing from the utility industry and fossil-fuel producers, including the Kochs. [The] group is trying to repeal or freeze Ohio’s requirement that 12.5 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2025. Twenty-nine states have established similar standards that call for 10 percent or more in renewable power. These states can now anticipate well-financed campaigns to eliminate these targets or scale them back. The coal producers’ motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their businesses.

Note: For more on the growth of the solar energy industry, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


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