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Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of little-known, yet highly revealing news articles from the media. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore these articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves, we can build a brighter future.

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Thessy Mehrain founded the Women in Blockchain community in 2016. One of Mehrain's most consistent messages is that gender equity in blockchain–and tech in general–isn't a women's issue. "Men become allies once they understand the benefits," she says. "Most companies, especially in the early blockchain days, were run by men." ETHDenver ... hosted a session featuring Njambi Njoroge, Operations Director of Grassroots Economics Foundation in Kenya. The organization has been pioneering community-driven economies by digitizing traditional mutual-aid systems with blockchain. "Njambi talked about how collaboration has always been at the core of Kenyan communities," Mehrain explains. "For centuries, people have come together to build houses, till land, and share resources. Now, with blockchain, they can track these commitments and scale them beyond their immediate community. In the West, our economies are increasingly relying on central authorities–where ‘trusted middlemen' own everyone's data and hold the power. But in many places, economies are rooted in collaboration. One of the features of technologies like blockchain is to add a trust infrastructure that allows to remove central entities, and create cooperative economies." "It's not about gender–it's about mindset," she explains. "The masculine principle is about domination–the winner is who gets there first at any price. The feminine principle is about collaboration–winning is defined by getting there first as well but accounts also for the impact on others. You only win together.

Note: Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.

In many parts of the world, building a house or farming a field means taking out loans. But in Kenya, a time-tested system of mutual aid ... has long been the foundation of local economies. Now, Grassroots Economics Foundation is bringing this age-old practice into the digital age. At the helm of this transformation is Njambi Njoroge, Operations Director at Grassroots Economics. Grassroots Economics is built on a concept called "commitment pooling," inspired by indigenous economic systems. Traditionally, in Kenyan villages, neighbours would come together to build houses, farm land, or provide childcare, repaying each other in labor rather than money. These informal debts balanced themselves over time, ensuring that no one was left behind. "We're not inventing anything new," Njoroge says. "We're automating what has always existed." Using blockchain, Grassroots Economics formalizes these commitments into digital vouchers–secure, trackable tokens that represent labor, goods, or services. The blockchain-powered system functions as a local exchange, where people contribute their skills and pull from a shared pool of community resources. The technology ensures that every commitment has a unique digital signature, preventing fraud and allowing real-time tracking of transactions. "On our platform, Sarafu.network, you can see all the transactions happening in a village–how many houses were built, how many farms were tilled, how much labor was exchanged," Njoroge explains. With blockchain, communities can see tangible data showing how much work they've accomplished together.

Note: Grassroots Economics won the 2019 Newsweek Blockchain Impact award for its innovative use of blockchain. Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.

In April of 1972, Russell Targ, a Columbia-trained physicist with an unusual interest in the paranormal, met with the Office of Scientific Intelligence, a secretive branch of the CIA that monitored biological warfare, nuclear weapons and guided missiles during the Cold War. Their Soviet enemies, who had likely been experimenting with drugs, hypnotism, yoga and black magic, were now reportedly moving inanimate objects with their minds. From a military standpoint, the implications were horrifying. So the U.S. government brokered a deal: For an initial investment of $874, or just under $7,000 in today's dollars, Targ and his colleague, fellow physicist Harold Puthoff, would test the feasibility of using psychic spies at their Menlo Park lab. The operation, called Stargate, would go on to explore whether ordinary civilians could locate clandestine military facilities across the world using their hidden third eye. According to archived news reports, in total, officials spent $20 million on the secret program. Almost immediately, "curious" data started to emerge: Subjects began describing secret locations thousands of miles away with frightening accuracy. Others reportedly levitated small weights with their minds, while some allegedly controlled temperatures and read information inside sealed envelopes. One man, Patrick Price, who later became known as the SRI's "psychic treasure," was especially prolific. "We want to make it clear," [Targ] told reporters in 1976, "that the functioning is ordinary, rather than extraordinary. It is a regular human capability."

Note: Read more about the CIA's psychic spies. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the mysterious nature of reality.

In some cities, as many as one in four office spaces are vacant. Some start-ups are giving them a second life – as indoor farms growing crops as varied as kale, cucumber and herbs. In countries including Canada and Australia, landlords are struggling to fill vacant office spaces as companies embrace remote and hybrid work. In the US, the office vacancy rate is more than 20%. "Vertical farms may prove to be a cost-effective way to fill in vacant office buildings," says Warren Seay, Jr ... who authored an article on urban farm reconversions. There are other reasons for the interest in urban farms, too. Though supply chains have largely recovered post-Covid-19, other global shocks, including climate change, geopolitical turmoil and farmers' strikes, mean that they continue to be vulnerable – driving more cities to look for local food production options. Workers are currently aiming to transform a floor of 32-story historic Niels Esperson building in Houston, Texas, into an indoor farm. In September 2024, US indoor farm startup 80 Acres, which opened its first indoor farm inside a vacant building in Hamilton, Ohio, developed a 200,000-sq-ft (18,600-sq-m) facility inside a former commercial building in Florence, Kentucky. Overall, vertical farms have the potential to outperform regular farms on several environmental sustainability metrics like water usage, says [director of the Arell Food Institute] Evan Fraser.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it's banning the use of Red No. 3, a synthetic dye that gives food and drinks their bright red cherry color but has been linked to cancer in animals. The dye is still used in thousands of foods, including candy, cereals, cherries in fruit cocktails and strawberry-flavored milkshakes, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group that petitioned the agency in 2022 to end its use. More than 9,200 food items contain the dye, including hundreds of products made by large food companies. The FDA is not prohibiting other artificial dyes, including Red No. 40, which has been linked to behavioral issues in children. The FDA's decision is a victory for consumer advocacy groups and some U.S. lawmakers who have long urged it to revoke Red No. 3's approval, citing ample evidence that its use in beverages, dietary supplements, cereals and candies may cause cancer as well as affect children's behavior. "At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy," said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the CSPI. The agency banned the additive in cosmetics in 1990 under the Delaney Clause, a federal law that requires the FDA to ban food additives that are found to cause or induce cancer in humans or animals. Food manufacturers will have until Jan. 15, 2027, to reformulate their products.

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

A secret list of more than 300 people who belonged to a network that called publicly for the legalisation of sex with children has been handed to the BBC. A small number of those named on the list may still have contact with children. They were all members of a group called the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The Metropolitan Police had the list for about 20 years from the late 1970s. Most PIE members were based in the UK - but there are also details of people in other parts of western Europe, Australia and the US. The BBC has established that a small number of the men are still alive and may currently be in contact with, or have care of, children through paid work or volunteering. PIE was formed in 1974. Its leaders sought to further their cause by attempting to align themselves with feminist, anti-racist and gay rights movements. It was not an illegal organisation and cost Ł4 a year to join, and to receive its members' magazine. Over a decade, PIE spokesmen gave interviews to the media arguing that adults and children had a human right to have sex with each other. Four years old, they argued, was an age at which most children could give consent. Records ... for 45% of the people on the list [showed] that half of them had been convicted or cautioned (or had been charged and died before trial) for sexual offences against children. Charges included distributing abuse images, kidnap and rape.

Note: Margaret Thatcher herself protected top diplomat Sir Peter Hayman from an investigation into his involvement with child sex abuse material. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.

One day last spring, the investigative journalist Alex Renton received an unusual email. It contained a scan of a typewritten document marked with the dates 1983/1984, which appeared to be an authentic list of members of an organisation known as the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). PIE operated legally in the UK for a decade from 1974 until the mid-1980s, lobbying publicly for a change in the age of consent – proposing in 1977 that there shouldn't be one at all. PIE members received a magazine, Magpie, which included news, non-nude photographs of children and a "contact page". PIE was disbanded in 1984 after several prosecutions relating to child pornography and conspiracy to promote indecent acts via the contact page. There were more than 300 names on the member list that Renton now had in his possession, a number of which he already knew. The police had the list from the late 1970s, Renton says. He and his team were able to find further information for around 45 per cent of the names on the list and discovered that half of these had convictions or cautions, or had been charged and died before trial, for sexual offences against children. And 65 members, Renton notes, "worked in what we now call regulated professions, which are child facing. "We've got about 30 teachers, as well as social workers, clergy, doctors. There's a number of eminent psychologists and quite a large sector of people in youth work."

Note: Margaret Thatcher herself protected top diplomat Sir Peter Hayman from an investigation into his involvement with child sex abuse material. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.

We published the piece on February 22, [2020], under the headline "Don't Buy China's Story: The Coronavirus May Have Leaked from a Lab." It immediately went viral, its audience swelling for a few hours as readers liked and shared it over and over again. I had a data tracker on my screen that showed our web traffic, and I could see the green line for my story surging up and up. Then suddenly, for no reason, the green line dropped like a stone. No one was reading or sharing the piece. It was as though it had never existed at all. Seeing the story's traffic plunge, I was stunned. How does a story that thousands of people are reading and sharing suddenly just disappear? Later, the [New York Post's] digital editor gave me the answer: Facebook's fact-checking team had flagged the piece as "false information." I was seeing Big Tech censorship of the American media in real time, and it chilled me to my bones. What happened next was even more chilling. I found out that an "expert" who advised Facebook to censor the piece had a major conflict of interest. Professor Danielle E. Anderson had regularly worked with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology ... and she told Facebook's fact-checkers that the lab had "strict control and containment measures." Facebook's "fact-checkers" took her at her word. An "expert" had spoken, Wuhan's lab was deemed secure, and the Post's story was squashed in the interest of public safety. In 2021, in the wake of a lawsuit, Facebook admitted that its "fact checks" are just "opinion," used by social media companies to police what we watch and read.

Note: Watch our brief newsletter recap video about censorship and the suppression of the COVID lab leak theory. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.

MANNA [is a] nonprofit that provides free, medically-tailored meals (MTMs) and education about how nutrition affects health conditions to Philadelphians who need it. Last month, the journal BMC Nutrition released research ... showing that its clients achieved a "significant decrease in malnutrition risk" and meaningful changes in conditions like diabetes and hypertension. "This is the first of its kind," explains Jule Anne Henstenburg, PhD, director of The MANNA Institute. "There has never been research involving an in-depth evaluation of a functioning medically tailored meal program." Of the clients at risk for malnutrition when starting the program, 56 percent experienced a clinically significant reduction in malnutrition risk by program finish; 62 percent of clients with hypertension reduced their blood pressure by five or more units; among clients with diabetes, median hemoglobin A1C dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent, indicating improved blood sugar control. Body mass index (BMI) remained stable or decreased for 88 percent of clients who started the program with obesity. Clients can be referred to MANNA either by their medical care provider or through their health insurance plan. The majority of MANNA's clients are low-income, a population that often lives in food deserts, where healthy food is already hard to come by, and health literacy (the kind of insight needed to understand medically complex diets) can be low. "I see MANNA as the pharmacy for your prescription diet," [Chief executive officer of MANNA Sue] Daugherty says. "Imagine getting a prescription for your high blood pressure medicine and not having a pharmacy to fill it – that's what happens every day when folks are discharged with complex diets." The top five illnesses MANNA serves are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV / AIDS and congestive heart failure. Originally created in 1990 to provide comfort foods to patients with AIDS, MANNA overhauled its menu and began expanding its reach to anyone with a life-threatening illness 10 years later.

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

More than a dozen chemicals used in popular weed killers like Roundup could be raising the risk of prostate cancer, shocking new research has revealed. In a report published in the journal Cancer, researchers analyzed 300 pesticides and found that 22 were directly linked to the development of prostate cancer, and four were shown to increase the probability of death. The study comes after Bayer AG was ordered to pay $2.25 billion in January after a Pennsylvania jury unanimously ruled that its Roundup weed killer gave a man cancer. In the new study, researchers assessed data related to the annual usage of pesticides between 1997 and 2001 as well as between 2003 and 2006. Taking into account the slow-growing disposition of prostate cancer, they then compared those figures against diagnoses made between 2011 and 2015 and between 2016 and 2020, respectively. The team said that 19 of the 22 pesticides linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer have not previously been associated with the disease. Deaths from prostate cancer are expected to jump 136% from 2022 to 2050. Pesticide consumption has grown nearly 60 percent since 1990, reaching 5.86 billion pounds by 2020. Roundup – the most widely used weed killer in the US – reportedly contains 41% of the herbicide glyphosate, a known endocrine disruptor. Endocine disruptors interfere with hormone systems, causing ... infertility, birth defects, developmental disorders and increased cancer risk.

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

The explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine on April 26, 1986 remains the worst nuclear disaster in human history. It left a 30-kilometer exclusion zone–a deserted landscape where high radiation levels remain even now, decades after the incident–where human settlement and habitation are restricted. Within this zone, however, scientists have discovered an unlikely survivor: a resilient black fungus called Cladosporium sphaerospermum. After the Chernobyl disaster, scientists observed patches of blackened growths on the walls of the No. 4 reactor–fungi that seemed to thrive where the radiation was highest. This fungus has adapted to a level of radiation that would be lethal for most life forms. Even more fascinating is its ability to "feed" on this radiation, using it as a source of energy, similar to how plants use sunlight for photosynthesis. Cladosporium sphaerospermum belongs to a group of fungi known as radiotrophic fungi. Radiotrophic organisms can capture and utilize ionizing radiation to drive metabolic processes. In radioactive sites like Chernobyl, where conventional cleanup methods are challenging and hazardous, radiotrophic fungi can provide a safer, natural alternative, according to an April 2008 article published in FEMS Microbiology Letters. Scientists are exploring the feasibility of deploying these fungi to contain and potentially reduce radiation levels in contaminated areas.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.

Preschools and funeral homes, car washes and copper mines, dermatologists and datacentres – private equity is anywhere and everywhere that money changes hands. If it can in any way be marketed or monetised, private equity firms have bought it. By some estimates, these firms now control more than $13tn invested in more than 50,000 companies worldwide. "We cannot overestimate the reach of private equity across the global economy," Sachin Khajuria, a former partner at Apollo Global Management, which manages half a trillion dollars in assets, wrote in 2022. More and more people, especially the relatively poor, may live almost their entire lives in systems owned by one or another private equity firm: financiers are their landlords, their electricity providers, their ride to work, their employers, their doctors, their debt collectors. Private equity firms and related asset managers "increasingly own the physical as well as financial world around us," the scholar Brett Christophers writes. "All of our lives are now part of their investment portfolios." In order to drive up profits, private equity-controlled dental chains have induced children to undergo multiple unnecessary root canals. One child even died as a result. Some of the most heinous accounts have come from private equity-owned treatment centres for young people with behavioural problems, where children have been physically abused, raped and killed. These cases are extreme, but they are not isolated.

Note: BlackRock and Vanguard manage over $11 trillion and $8 trillion respectively–an unprecedented concentration of financial power. We hear outrage about billionaires and oligarchs, but rarely about private equity firms, who are backed by both political parties and are drastically reshaping our economy, contributing to environmental destruction, and extracting wealth from communities in the US and all over the world. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of financial inequality and financial industry corruption.

Financed partly with US taxpayers dollars, [a] firm in Missouri called v-Fluence [was] founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne. [v-Fluence] established a "private social network" to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. A profile of former New York Times food writer Mark Bittman ... includes a description of where he lives, details of two marriages and personal hobbies, and an extensive Criticisms section. Bittman said that it was a "terrible thing," for taxpayer dollars to be used to help a PR agency "work against sincere, legitimate, and scientific efforts to do agriculture better." Syngenta signed a contract with v-Fluence in 2002 to help the company deal with negative information coming to light about its paraquat herbicides. v-Fluence went on to help Syngenta create false or misleading online content that was "Paraquat-friendly," used search engine optimization to suppress negative information about paraquat in Internet searches and investigated the social media pages of victims who reported injuries to Syngenta's crisis hotline. Syngenta's internal research found adverse effects of paraquat on brain tissue decades ago but the company withheld that information from regulators, instead working to discredit independent science linking the chemical to brain disease and developing a "SWAT team" to counter critics. In its response to those stories, Syngenta asserted that no "peer-reviewed scientific publication has established a causal connection between paraquat and Parkinson's disease."

Note: Read more about how v-Fluence was used to censor the web and silence dissenting voices. "Trust the science" sounds noble–until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest.

Industry advocates have established a "private social network" to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa, Europe and other parts of the world, while also denigrating organic and other alternative farming methods. In 2017, two United Nations experts called for a treaty to strictly regulate dangerous pesticides, which they said were a "global human rights concern", citing scientific research showing pesticides can cause cancers, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and other health problems. Derogatory profiles of the two UN experts, Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak, are hosted on an online private portal for pesticide company employees and a range of influential allies. [These] efforts were spearheaded by a "reputation management" firm ... called v-Fluence. The company then launched a platform called Bonus Eventus, named after the Roman god of agriculture whose name translates to "good outcome". Bonus Eventus is invite-only and counts more than 1,000 members. They include executives from the world's largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, as well as academics, government officials and high-profile policymakers. The individuals profiled in the portal include more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and GM crops. Many profiles include personal details such as the names of family members, phone numbers, home addresses and even house values. The profiling is part of an effort – that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars – to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking. More than 30 current government officials are on the membership list, most of whom are from the US Department of Agriculture.

Note: Read about how pesticide companies dominate Google News searches. For more along these lines, explore summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.

A federal court in California ruled late Tuesday against the Environmental Protection Agency, ordering officials to take action over concerns about potential health risks from currently recommended levels of fluoride in the American drinking water supply. The ruling by District Court Judge Edward Chen ... deals a blow to public health groups in the growing debate about whether the benefits of continuing to add fluoride to the water supply outweighs its risks. While Chen was careful to say that his ruling "does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health," he said that evidence of its potential risk was now enough to warrant forcing the EPA to take action. "In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States," the judge wrote in his ruling. The judge's ruling cites a review by the National Institutes of Health's toxicology program finalized last month, which concluded that "higher levels" of fluoride is now linked to lowered IQ in children. Chen said he left it up to the EPA which of a number of options the agency could take in response to his ruling. They range from a warning label about fluoride's risks at current levels to taking steps towards tightening restrictions on its addition to drinking water.

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

Audrey Tang ... is determined that digital technology will once again become a force for good – a supreme listening tool for humanity, bringing us together by celebrating difference and uniting over what we have in common. Tang spent eight years in Taiwan's government (the last two as the world's first minister of digital affairs), putting her theory into practice – and it has worked, from a fantastically efficient response to Covid to countering misinformation about electoral fraud. In 2012, she was part of the digital community that created g0v, pronounced Gov Zero. The project ran in parallel with the official government and was there to support it, even if ministers didn't initially think so. Through g0v, government websites were examined and rewritten to make them more comprehensible and reachable. "We created a parallel web around which citizens could have a normal conversation. For example, when we did the ministry of education dictionary project, we copied everything from the official website, but turned it into something more accessible." The thinking is simple, she says: the more clearly information is displayed, the more people will know, and the easier it becomes to have a conversation about what is and isn't working in a democracy. After g0v came vTaiwan, an online forum allowing people to discuss and petition on issues of public interest. Once there were 5,000 signatures, the petition was taken to the government to be addressed.

Note: Read more about how vTaiwan is changing the game. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.

Honduras's former president Juan Orlando Hernández has been jailed in the US for drug trafficking. But the narco-state he ran was a product of US foreign policy and of the US-backed coup against Manuel Zelaya's left-wing government. By the time Hernández was extradited to the United States on April 22, 2022, the former director of the Honduran police was already in US custody. Juan Carlos Bonilla, known as "El Tigre" and trained and educated at Fort Moore, Georgia, was on August 2 sentenced to nineteen years in prison in the United States. Bonilla had been a "highly trusted" torpedo loyal to the Hernández tribe. According to a Justice Department press release, the president and his brother had "El Tigre" shielding their drug shipments while also conducting "special assignments, including murder" of a rival trafficker. In heading the Honduran police, Bonilla also organized the return of death squads, tasked with "socially cleansing" Honduras of environmental activists, indigenous spokespersons, and investigative reporters. Hernández began his second term in 2017 atop a heap of killed and tear-gased protesters. [Honduras] was, according to Honduras scholar Dana Frank, "the first domino that the United States pushed over to counteract the new governments in Latin America." After Honduras, a parliamentary coup took place against Paraguay's progressive president Fernando Lugo in 2012, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2015, and Brazil's current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to a now-annulled prison sentence in 2017. Obama, hailed as the US president of "hope" and "change," oversaw all three modern coups that overthrew left-leaning governments in favor of undemocratic, conservative, and US-friendly replacements.

Note: Bonilla was trained at the School of the Americas at Fort Moore, Georgia (now known as The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), which graduated more than 500 human rights abusers all over the world. For more along these lines, watch our latest Mindful News Brief on who's really behind the deadly war on drugs.

Many sweeping attempts to reform policing have faltered. But one proposal that has taken hold across the country, and continues to spread, is launching alternative first response units that send unarmed civilians, instead of armed officers, to some emergencies. In Dayton, Ohio, trained mediators are dispatched to neighbor disputes and trespassing calls. In Los Angeles, outreach workers who have lived through homelessness, incarceration or addiction respond to 911 calls concerning people living on the street. In Anchorage, Alaska, trained clinicians and paramedics are showing up to mental health crises. Researchers have tracked over 100 alternative crisis response units operating across the U.S. Some distinguish between mobile crisis teams, which exclusively send clinicians to mental health emergencies, and community responder programs, which send civilians to a wider range of calls. The key tenets are that they can be the first response to an emergency situation and that they arrive without armed officers. There have been no known major injuries of any community responder on the job. Eventually, a large portion of current police work could be handed off to alternative responders. A 2020 review of 911 calls ... estimates that up to 68% of calls "could be handled without sending an armed officer," according to a report by the Center for American Progress and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.

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

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

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

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

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.