Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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.
At the age of nine, Felix Finkbeiner hatched a plan to plant a million trees in his native Germany. Now he's a global eco-superhero. Felix, from the unremarkable town of Pöcking, near Munich, is an environmental superstar at the helm of a global network of child activists whose aim is to mitigate climate change by reforesting the planet. His organisation, Plant for the Planet, recently achieved its target of planting one million trees in Germany; now, Felix is spreading his message around the world. Plant for the Planet is up and running in 131 countries, and the British chapter was established last month, with the aim of planting a million trees here over the next few years. Individuals or planting groups can either 'pledge’ to plant a certain number of trees or make a cash donation – €1 buys one tree. The results are logged on the Plant for the Planet website. Plant for the Planet started as a school project four years ago. 'I was supposed to give a presentation on a Monday,’ Felix says, 'so over the weekend I Googled stuff on climate change and came across Wangari Maathai’s campaign.’ Maathai, the daughter of Kenyan farmworkers..., began her own tree-planting campaign, the Green Belt Movement, in 1977 as a method of tackling soil erosion and encouraging local communities, particularly women, to stand up for themselves, not only environmentally but also politically. In 2004, 45 million trees later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. 'She achieved so much with so little,’ Felix says. 'So I had the idea that we children could also do something.’
Note: For inspiring reports from major media sources, click here.
Via the Clean Energy Act of 2007, the new "go-green" eco-friendly standards are set to thrust mandatory use of CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs) upon American citizens by the year 2013 or 2014. Some reports say the mercury-filled CFLs are harmful to humans. Are CFL bulbs eco-friendly but human hazards? What about the economy of cleaning up the the new bulbs, and the erosion of our American "choices"? Information has circulated that CFLs will be dangerous to humans due to mercury content. It seems to have started with a 2007 claim by a family who was gung-ho to "go green." They installed CFLs in their home but broke one, resulting in various illnesses for a child and a $2,000 clean-up process that could only be done by experts. According to EPA guidelines [in 2007] there were 16 steps to cleaning up a broken, mercury-filled CFL bulb and then cleaning up the cleaning materials used. According to the EPA website today, there are only eight steps. The process appears toned down. The EPA claims that breakage of one bulb is not dangerous to occupants. Clean-up doesn't have to cost $2,000. Energy Star, a division of the EPA, ... acknowledges certain health and environmental hazards, stating "we must be responsible in cleaning up." They offer several sheets of directions, including this: Humans must leave the premises for three hours after removing a broken bulb. Livestrong.com is a leading go-to health and wellness website. Its research about CFLs shows that prolonged exposure to fluorescent lighting causes migraines, eye strain and other eye discomfort.
Note: For a CBS affiliate report confirming these hazards, click here.
Convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan was manipulated by a seductive girl in a mind control plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bullets did not kill the presidential candidate, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers. The documents filed this week in federal court detail extensive interviews with Sirhan during the past three years, some done while he was under hypnosis. The papers point to a mysterious girl in a polka-dot dress as the controller who led Sirhan to fire a gun in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. But the documents suggest a second person shot and killed Kennedy while using Sirhan as a diversion. For the first time, Sirhan said under hypnosis that on a cue from the girl he went into "range mode" believing he was at a firing range and seeing circles with targets in front of his eyes. "I thought that I was at the range more than I was actually shooting at any person, let alone Bobby Kennedy," Sirhan was quoted as saying during interviews with Daniel Brown, a Harvard University professor and expert in trauma memory and hypnosis. He interviewed Sirhan for 60 hours with and without hypnosis, according to the legal brief. The story of the girl has been a lingering theme in accounts of the events just after midnight on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was gunned down in the hotel pantry after claiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.
Note: For many key reports from major media sources on political assassinations in the US, click here.
Severe storms and tornadoes moving through the U.S. Southeast dealt a severe blow to the Tennessee Valley Authority [on April 27], causing three nuclear reactors in Alabama to shut and knocking out 11 high-voltage power lines, the utility and regulators said. All three units at TVA's 3,274-megawatt Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama tripped about 5:30 EDT after losing outside power to the plant, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. A TVA spokeswoman said the station's backup power systems, including diesel generators, started and operated as designed. External power was restored quickly to the plant but diesel generators remained running Wednesday evening, she said. The Browns Ferry units are among 23 U.S. reactors that are similar in design to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan where backup generators were swept away in the tsunami that followed the massive earthquake on March 11.
Note: And what might have happened if one of those tornadoes happened to hit a nuclear power plant?
To call what the Hyde family has been through a "parent's worst nightmare" sounds like a horrible cliche. But, it's hard to imagine what else you could call it. Their two-year-old son Cash was diagnosed last year with a stage 4 brain tumor; he nearly died more times than they can count. He was miserable from the chemotherapy coursing through his body until his dad made a controversial decision to give cannabis to his young son. The doctors had no answers, so Mike found his own. It was relief for Cashy in the form of cannabis oil. It's illegal to possess without authorization from a medical professional. It's something doctors wouldn't even discuss. Mike got authorization to give Cashy the oil and, without telling them why, told the doctors to wean Cashy off the anti-nausea cocktail. Inserted through Cashy's feeding tube, a tiny amount of oil replaced all those drugs. The result, Mike said, was almost immediate. Mike Hyde, though, doesn't care about the controversy or the political battle over this drug. He cares that his son survived and is convinced not only did the cannabis help Cashy feel better, it prevented long-term damage to his organs. For Mike, the proof is in his vibrant two-year old boy. "It's very controversial, it's very scary. But, there's nothing more scary than losing your child." A few weeks ago, Cashy was back in Salt Lake City for scans and found out he's cancer-free.
Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell today reported first-quarter profit increases of 69 percent and 30 percent, respectively, from the same period last year. With rising gas and oil prices, analysts expected the five biggest oil companies -- with Exxon as the largest -- to report that they are swimming in revenue. Exxon earned $10.7 billion in the first quarter, up from $6.3 billion. Shell announced profit of $6.3 billion in the first quarter this year, up from $4.8 billion. ConocoPhillips said its first quarter earnings increased 43 percent to $3 billion from $2.1 billion in the same period last year. BP's first quarter earnings dipped this year -- $5.48 billion compared with $5.60 billion during the first quarter a year ago -- including a charge of $384 million related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Valero Energy, based in San Antonio, Texas, and the largest independent U.S. refiner, announced ... a first quarter profit of $98 million "primarily due to higher margins for diesel and jet fuel," compared to a first quarter loss last year of $113 million.
Note: Why are oil companies raising their profit margins to drive gas prices even higher? For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
The Supreme Court gave corporations a major win [on April 27], ruling in a 5-4 decision that companies can block their disgruntled customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit. The ruling arose from a California lawsuit involving cellphones, but it will have a nationwide impact. In the past, consumers who bought a product or a service had been free to join a class-action lawsuit if they were dissatisfied or felt they had been cheated. By combining these small claims, they could bring a major lawsuit against a corporation. But in [the] decision, the high court said that under the Federal Arbitration Act companies can force these disgruntled customers to arbitrate their complaints individually, not as part of a group. Consumer-rights advocates said this rule would spell the end for small claims involving products or services. Justice Antonin Scalia said companies may require buyers to sign arbitration agreements, and those agreements may preclude class-action claims. But the dissenters said a practical ban on class action would be unfair to cheated consumers. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the California courts had insisted on permitting class-action claims, despite arbitration clauses that forbade them. Otherwise, he said, it would allow a company to "insulate" itself "from liability for its own frauds by deliberately cheating large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money."
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured, the first official study of its kind has found. A detailed review of the medical records and case files of nine Guantanamo inmates has concluded that medical personnel at the US detention centre were complicit in suppressing evidence that would demonstrate systematic torture of the inmates. The review is published in an online scientific journal, PLoS Medicine, and is the first peer-reviewed study analysing the behaviour of the doctors in charge of Guantanamo inmates who were subjected to "enhanced interrogation" techniques that a decade ago had been classed by the US government as torture. [The report] concluded that no doctor could have failed to notice the medical signs and symptoms of the extreme interrogation techniques and unauthorised assaults that other physicians would recognise as torture, such as severe beatings resulting in bone fractures, sexual assaults, mock executions, and simulated drowning by "waterboarding". Many of the prisoners said they were also subjected to unauthorised abuses resulting in severe and prolonged physical and mental pain.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on torture committed by US forces and approved by the highest levels of government, click here.
More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers ... reveal how ... many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759 Guantánamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there. The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim. The documents also reveal: • US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation. • Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantánamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide. • A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members.
Note: For many key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
Files obtained by the website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives. The files, published in US and European newspapers, are assessments of all 780 people ever held at the facility. They show that about 220 were classed as dangerous terrorists, but 150 were innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. The Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) ... give little information on the allegations of harsh treatment and interrogation techniques at the camp. But the files show that US military analysts considered only 220 of those ever detained at Guantanamo to be dangerous extremists. Another 380 detainees were deemed to be low-ranking guerrillas. At least 150 people were revealed to be innocent Afghans or Pakistanis - including drivers, farmers and chefs - rounded up during intelligence gathering operations in the aftermath of 9/11. The detainees were then held for years owing to mistaken identity or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the memos say. In many cases, US commanders concluded there was "no reason recorded for transfer".
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the prison at Guantanamo and other black sites where torture and false allegations are the norm, click here.
When Max Fraser started collecting footage and stories about how Sept. 11, 2001, played out in the Yukon capital of Whitehorse, he set out to make a point-of-view documentary about the terrifying spectre of 2 supposedly hijacked jumbo jets landing in — or on — Whitehorse. What Fraser ended up with is the mysterious tale of how Korean Air Flight 085, bound for New York City, came to land at the then-Whitehorse International Airport at 11:54 a.m. that day, instead of descending at one of the many better-equipped Alaskan runways it passed on its way. And even more mysterious is why 2 Korean planes were transmitting a hijack "squawk" (a satellite code that can be discreetly set by a pilot to alert authorities on the ground of a hostile takeover), even though all was well on board the flights. In response, American and Canadian fighter jets were deployed to accompany those planes to the Whitehorse airport. That inspired the local filmmaker to make the 45-minute documentary titled "Never Happen Here — the Whitehorse 9/11 Story." It premiered [on April 24] at the Dawson City Short Film Festival. "Nowhere else in the world on 9/11 was a community under an evacuation order and nowhere else were emergency authorities told to prepare for a mass casualty incident involving a hijacked airliner," Fraser said. "What we experienced, what we went through, is a story that should be told the world over."
Note: For many unanswered questions about the unexplained happenings on 9/11 raised by highly respected professionals and officials, click here and here.
U.S. officials set up a human-intelligence laboratory at Guantánamo that used interrogation and detention practices they largely made up as they went along. The secret summaries, which were obtained via WikiLeaks, help explain why in May 2009 President Obama, after ordering his own review of wartime intelligence, called ... Guantánamo "quite simply a mess." The documents ... show an intelligence operation that was tremendously dependent on informants — both prison-camp snitches repeating what they'd heard from fellow captives, and self-described, at times self-aggrandizing, former al-Qaida insiders turned government witnesses who Pentagon records show have since been released. Intelligence analysts are at odds with each other over which informants to trust, at times drawing inferences from prisoner exercise habits. They ordered DNA tests, tethered Taliban suspects to polygraphs and strung together tidbits in ways that seemed to defy common sense. The documents also show that in the earliest years of the prison camp's operation, the Pentagon permitted Chinese and Russian interrogators into the camps — information from those sessions are included in some captives' assessments — something American defense lawyers working free for the foreign prisoners have alleged and protested for years.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the prison at Guantanamo and other black sites where torture and false allegations are the norm, click here.
If you had been on the Strand in London on the day that the high court was considering how to proceed with scores of civil actions against the News of the World for its phone-hacking escapades, you would have seen a peculiar sight. About 30 people were gathered on the steps of the court, the palms of their hands painted red, bearing banners that read: "Murdoch's men caught red-handed." On the same day, ... another group of 25 people had gathered. They were leafleting shoppers about the News of the World scandal and calling on the government to delay approval of Rupert Murdoch's bid to takeover BSkyB until a full public inquiry could be held. Both events were the work of one of the most successful of a new breed of internet campaigner, in this case a global activism network called Avaaz, which means voice in Urdu and several other languages. Avaaz, formed in 2007, has more than eight million members in 193 countries and can claim to be the largest online activist community in the world. This year alone it has attracted an extra one million members and it is now wholly self-funding with about $20m (Ł12m) raised so far in online donations. "We have no ideology per se," says director Ricken Patel. "Our mission is to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want. Idealists of the world unite!"
A U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan region killed at least 25 people on [April 22], sending a clear sign that Washington's use of drones against militants along the Afghan border will continue despite rising opposition from Islamabad's top civilian and military leaders. The strike in the village of Spinwam came two days after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, held tense talks with Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani amid a pall of mistrust that has weakened relations between Washington and Islamabad in recent months. Pakistan intensified its criticism of the drone campaign after a March 17 strike killed more than 40 people in the North Waziristan village of Datta Khel. Pakistani military leaders said that missile strike killed civilian tribal elders meeting to discuss a dispute over local mining rights, though the U.S. maintains that the people killed were militants. The Datta Khel strike came a day after the release of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor whose arrest in connection with the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis brought relations between Washington and Islamabad to one of their lowest points in years. Officials in North Waziristan said [the April 22] strike killed 18 suspected militants, though seven of the dead were civilians - three women and four children. Four missiles were fired, two of which struck a guest house with the suspected militants, the officials said. The other two missiles hit another building where the women and children were.
Note: Imagine if another country were flying unmanned flights in the US and killing US citizens who they suspected were terrorists along with innocent civilians as collateral damage. There would be an uproar. Why isn't anyone talking about the legality of a foreign country killing citizens of another country without any judicial process at all, especially when the government of the invaded country opposes the attacks?
The strangest aspect of the United Nations' "no-fly zone" war over Libya is the involvement of the United Nations itself. While Congress' approval was all but an afterthought, the Obama administration devoted intense diplomatic energy to winning the approval of the United Nation's Security Council. No one asked why the U.N. is in the business of approving military actions at all. The United Nations, created to end wars, now prolongs and enlarges them. It is time to take a hard look at the U.N.'s war-ending, peace-making record. After all, the promotion of peace is supposed to be its main duty. The U.N. bureaucracy [has] lost its way. The U.N. has sanctioned two wars against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and now has approved the aerial bombardment of Libya. Whatever the merits of these wars, they are wars. And the U.N. approved them, as opposed to stopping them. It has morphed from a war-ending mission to a war-sanctioning vote. The people who are going to pay for or fight in these U.N. approved wars have no way to hold U.N. representatives accountable and too many of the war-making discussions at the U.N. are held in secret.
Note: For a powerful two-page summary of a top US general's words revealing the major corruption behind almost all wars, click here.
A story that combines UFO cover-ups with the assassination of John F. Kennedy is ... just what author William Lester says he uncovered while conducting research for a new book on Kennedy: a memo written by JFK and addressed to the CIA in which the president requests confidential information about UFOs. In the never-before-seen, top secret memo supposedly written on Nov. 12, 1963, the president ordered the CIA director to organize the agency's intelligence files relating to UFOs, and to debrief him on all "unknowns" by the following February. Ten days later, Kennedy was assassinated. Lester, a paranormal researcher and author of the new book A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier ... said he obtained the memo along with two others from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act. "The government regularly declassifies documents after a certain amount of time goes by, and then you have to file a request for those documents," Lester [said]. "When I was in the process of filing, those letters had just become declassified and released to the public." This happened in 2006 or 2007, Lester said. "At the time, I think other people were getting them too." Some archivists question its authenticity. A research technician at the JFK Library in Boston, who asked not to be named, was unable to find a carbon copy of it in its presidential archive, which holds copies of all of JFK's letters.
Note: Fred made an FOIA request for this document and received response, "the CIA Information Act ... exempts CIA operational files from the search, review, publication, and disclosure requirements of the FOIA." Very interesting. To see the memo and more, click here. For an excellent selection of news article excerpts suggesting a major cover-up of UFOs, click here. For an abundance or resources from reliable sources on UFOs, see our UFO information center available here.
FRONTLINE reveals a little-known chapter of the Catholic Church sex abuse story: decades of abuse of Native Americans by priests and other church workers in Alaska. In "The Silence," FRONTLINE producer Tom Curran and reporter Mark Trahant examine the legacy of abuse by a number of men who worked for the Catholic Church along Alaska's far west coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They would leave behind a trail of hundreds of claims of abuse, making this one of the hardest hit regions in the country. "I was just a kid," Ben Andrews tells FRONTLINE of the years of abuse he suffered at the hands of Father George Endal and Joseph Lundowski, a layman who was training to be a deacon. "Father Endal and Joseph Lundowski, they couldn't stop molesting me once they started. It was almost an everyday thing. Father Endal kept telling me that it would make me closer to God." "I'm still having nightmares of Joseph Lundowski molesting, having sex with me," says Peter "Packy" Kobuk. "I get up sweating, angry, feel like I could hurt somebody." "This was 1970," says Anchorage attorney Ken Roosa, who represented the Alaska victims in a class action lawsuit against the church. "There was nowhere for the kids to hide. There was no one they could talk to. The adults believed the abusers over their own children. It was a perfect storm for molestation."
Note: For a transcript of this revealing program, click here.
Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised. The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program. For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010. "Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers. Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on [April 20]. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on threats to privacy, click here.
Dozens of Israel’s most honored intellectuals and artists have signed a declaration endorsing a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders and asserting that an end to Israel’s occupation “will liberate the two peoples and open the way to a lasting peace.” The signers plan to announce their position on [April 21] from the same spot in Tel Aviv where the Jewish state declared its independence in the spring of 1948. The page-long declaration is expected to be read there by Hanna Maron, one of the country’s best-known actresses and a winner of the Israel Prize, the country’s most prestigious award. “The land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people where its identity was shaped,” the statement begins. “The land of Palestine is the birthplace of the Palestinian people where its identity was formed.” It goes on to say that now is the time to live up to the commitment expressed by Israel’s founders in their Declaration of Independence to “extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness.” Two weeks ago, another group of several dozen prominent Israelis, many of them from the fields of security and business, issued what they called the Israeli Peace Initiative, a more detailed but somewhat similar plan for a two-state solution. Both groups say they are upset by their government’s policies in this regard, which they consider insufficient.
The gold price has risen above $1,500 an ounce for the first time after concerns about global economic recovery lifted the metal's appeal as a haven. In Hong Kong trade, gold hit a record $1,500.70 an ounce, which traders said was mainly due to Standard & Poor's downgrade of its outlook on US debt. Silver also touched a 31-year high of $44.34 an ounce. But analysts were divided about whether the price could go higher and are waiting to see if trading in Europe and the US continues the momentum seen in Asia. Some market watchers see gold consolidating at its current level as it waits for the next reason to push higher. Silver continued to soar, rising to a 31-year high for the fifth consecutive session. Not only is silver increasingly seen as a haven, but there is also rising demand for industrial consumption.
Note: Gold is one of the most highly manipulated of all commodities. As a glaring example, when gold first broke the $1,000 mark in Feb. 2009, just over two years before this article was published, almost no media reported on this major news. In 2004, gold was around $400 an ounce and has been soaring ever since. For reliable charts showing this, see the bottom of the webpage at this link. Key individuals with inside information on precious metal manipulations, like whistleblower Catherine Austin Fitts (Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George H. W. Bush), have been predicting this rise for years.
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.