News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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A US company that was secretly profiling hundreds of food and environmental health advocates in a private web portal has said it has halted the operations in the face of widespread backlash, after its actions were revealed by the Guardian and other reporting partners. The St Louis, Missouri-based company, v-Fluence, said it is shuttering the service, which it called a "stakeholder wiki", that featured personal details about more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. The profiles – part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars – often provided derogatory information about the industry opponents and included home addresses and phone numbers and details about family members, including children. They were provided to members of an invite-only web portal where v-Fluence also offered a range of other information to its roster of more than 1,000 members. The membership included staffers of US regulatory and policy agencies, executives from the world's largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, academics and others. The profiling was one element of a push to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports. "I'm quite familiar with corporate harassment of scientists who produce unwelcome research, and sometimes this includes dredging up personal information on the scientist to make their work look less credible," [law professor Wendy] Wagner said.
Note: When the Guardian initially reported this story, it specified that v-Fluence was funded through a contract with a USAID program to promote GM crops in Africa and Asia. Read how Monsanto employed shadowy networks of consultants, PR firms, and front groups to spy on and influence reporters. For more, explore our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals.
Is President Trump pushing gender-confused kids to commit suicide? This shocking claim hit mainstream and social media within minutes of the president's Jan. 28 executive order banning federal funding for child sex-change treatments. The way the argument goes, if kids can't get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, their mental health will deteriorate to the point of no return. But as I've seen while working with more than 1,000 such kids, there are deeper reasons why they're so unhappy – and giving them powerful experimental drugs and irreversible surgeries is more likely to worsen their condition. From 2018 to 2022, I worked as a case manager for the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital. As kids kept coming back for follow-up check-ins and treatment – almost every kid who begins puberty blockers goes on to receive cross-sex hormones – I realized something was very wrong. When my colleagues and I asked about their mental health, they usually reported that it was the same or better. But as soon as we dug deeper, it became clear that the real answer was no – that their mental anguish was worsening. We ignored or explained away co-morbidities like autism, depression and bipolar disorder while using every new development or difficulty in a kid's life to justify continuing down the sex-change road. In my experience, kids typically find the "treatment brings happiness" mantra of their doctors, nurses and case managers hard to see through. Some literally couldn't look themselves in the mirror, even if they physically looked the part of a boy-turned-girl or vice-versa. While activists insist that kids simply "know who they are," reality is more complicated.
Note: This article was written by Jamie Reed, a queer woman married to a trans man. Many transgender medical care experiences can indeed be life-changing and even life-saving, yet not all experiences align with the mainstream narratives. Reed isn't the only whistleblower who's worked in the field of youth transgender medicine. Even advocates who publicly promote gender medicine for kids question its ethics behind closed doors. Watch our nuanced 25-minute Mindful News Brief on the controversy surrounding youth gender medicine. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on transgender medicine.
The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there. But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory. There is no new intelligence behind the agency's shift, officials said. John Ratcliffe, the new director of the C.I.A., has long favored the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that needs to be understood and that it has consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations. The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency "on the sidelines" of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Even in the absence of hard intelligence, the lab leak hypothesis has been gaining ground inside spy agencies. But some analysts question the wisdom of shifting a position in absence of new information. Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic. But they said that they had only low-confidence in their assessment. Until now, two agencies, the F.B.I. and Department of Energy, thought a lab leak was more likely. But their theories are different.
Note: For years, the lab leak hypothesis was labeled as "racist," " thoroughly debunked," and "something out of a comic book." If intelligence agencies are just now admitting the lab leak is â€more likely,' does that mean they were ignoring or covering up evidence–or just waiting for the political winds to shift? Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19.
The payment scheme for people injured by vaccines has cost taxpayers more to run than it has paid out to victims, official figures suggest, fuelling calls for "urgent reform". The Government has spent more than Ł25 million since Nov 1 2021 on medically assessing thousands of claims that vaccinations have left people seriously disabled. It is more than the total Ł23.6 million that since that date has been paid out to 197 victims, with each claim worth Ł120,000. The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) was established in 1979 and pays tax-free cash to those deemed to have suffered life-changing injuries as a result of certain vaccinations – including those against Covid-19. It awards a one-off Ł120,000 tax-free payment to people who have been severely injured, or to the families of those who have died, as a result of a vaccination. The scheme has been heavily criticised for being too slow to assess cases. Victims also claim that the payouts are insufficient and that the threshold claimants must meet to qualify for a payout is too harsh a measure. Kate Scott, whose husband was left with permanent brain damage after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19, criticised the imbalance between the money the scheme costs to run and the sums paid out. Public hearings for the fourth module of the Covid-19 inquiry started in London on Tuesday. It will hear issues around vaccine safety from families of those who suffered side effects from Covid jabs.
Note: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 38,264 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,658,330 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports. Our Substack dives into the complex world of COVID vaccines with nuance and uncensored investigation.
Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called "real-time bidding" (RTB). This process does more than deliver ads–it fuels government surveillance, poses national security risks, and gives data brokers easy access to your online activity. RTB might be the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you've never heard of. The moment you visit a website or app with ad space, it asks a company that runs ad auctions to determine which ads it will display for you. This involves sending information about you and the content you're viewing to the ad auction company. The ad auction company packages all the information they can gather about you into a "bid request" and broadcasts it to thousands of potential advertisers. The bid request may contain personal information like your unique advertising ID, location, IP address, device details, interests, and demographic information. The information in bid requests is called "bidstream data" and can easily be linked to real people. Advertisers, and their ad buying platforms, can store the personal data in the bid request regardless of whether or not they bid on ad space. RTB is regularly exploited for government surveillance. The privacy and security dangers of RTB are inherent to its design. The process broadcasts torrents of our personal data to thousands of companies, hundreds of times per day.
Note: Clearview AI scraped billions of faces off of social media without consent and at least 600 law enforcement agencies tapped into its database. During this time, Clearview was hacked and its entire client list – which included the Department of Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Interpol, retailers and hundreds of police departments – was leaked to hackers. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Five men are given lengthy jail terms [in 2010] after they are found guilty of grooming teenage girls in Rotherham for sex. The same year, police finally act on sexual grooming in Rochdale – going back years – with a series of arrests. Police and child protection agencies in Rotherham had extensive knowledge of these activities for a decade, yet a string of offences went unprosecuted. [In 2014], Professor Alexis Jay publishes her devastating report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report describes how more than 1,400 children were sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in the South Yorkshire town. It is scathing about a culture among police and council officials which ignored the industrial scale of abuse, instead treating the victims as troublesome teenagers. A gang of men who embarked on a "campaign of rape and other sexual abuse" against vulnerable teenage girls in Huddersfield were given lengthy jail sentences [in 2018]. The pattern of large-scale exploitation of mainly white girls by groups of men of mainly Pakistani heritage uncovered by West Yorkshire Police in Huddersfield mirrors what has happened in a number of other towns including Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford. Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins apologises [in 2020] to the children abused "in plain sight" by the grooming gangs his officers failed to bring to justice.
Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
Campaigners have accused Facebook parent Meta of inflicting "potentially lifelong trauma" on hundreds of content moderators in Kenya, after more than 140 were diagnosed with PTSD and other mental health conditions. The diagnoses were made by Dr. Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Kenya's capital Nairobi, and filed with the city's employment and labor relations court on December 4. Content moderators help tech companies weed out disturbing content on their platforms and are routinely managed by third party firms, often in developing countries. For years, critics have voiced concerns about the impact this work can have on moderators' mental well-being. Kanyanya said the moderators he assessed encountered "extremely graphic content on a daily basis which included videos of gruesome murders, self-harm, suicides, attempted suicides, sexual violence, explicit sexual content, child physical and sexual abuse ... just to name a few." Of the 144 content moderators who volunteered to undergo psychological assessments – out of 185 involved in the legal claim – 81% were classed as suffering from "severe" PTSD, according to Kanyanya. The class action grew out of a previous suit launched in 2022 by a former Facebook moderator, which alleged that the employee was unlawfully fired by Samasource Kenya after organizing protests against unfair working conditions.
Note: Watch our new video on the risks and promises of emerging technologies. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
Too many people are being prescribed antidepressants to deal with stressful life events or social problems, according to a growing chorus of doctors and researchers. More than 14% of Australians are currently taking antidepressants, one of the highest rates in the world. Dr Matt Fisher, who researches wellbeing and the impact of stress, says while he has heard health workers talk about this "as a good thing, because it means more people are getting access to help", he doesn't see it as a success story. Fisher ... is concerned Australia's high use of antidepressants "constitutes a failed attempt to medicate away what are, in fact, social problems". He says while "antidepressants may be of benefit to some people suffering persistent psychosocial distress," they should not be the default, first response. Chronic stress, where people are exposed to an ongoing, recurrent stressor without any easy or accessible way to resolve it – increasing the risk of isolation, exclusion, humiliation and harm – is a significant driver of mental distress in Australia. The common causes of chronic stress include things such as being in debt, having a low income, poor working conditions, or being exposed to racism or domestic violence. "Governments evade the problem by persisting with individualised, medicalised, drug-based strategies," he says. "These strategies aren't reducing high rates of mental distress, sometimes do harm, and marginalise attention on social causes."
Note: The UK's medicines regulator is launching a review of over 30 commonly prescribed antidepressants, including Prozac, amid rising concerns about links to suicide, self-harm, and long-term side effects like persistent sexual dysfunction–especially in children. Our latest Substack, Lonely World, Failing Systems: Inspiring Stories Reveal What Sustains Us, dives into the loneliness crisis exacerbated by the digital world and polarizing media narratives, along with inspiring solutions and remedies that remind us of the true democratic values that bring us all together.
Portugal has a life expectancy nearly four years longer than the U.S. despite spending 20% of what the U.S. does on health care per person. According to the 2021 Global Security Index, which measures the ability to respond to pandemics, Portugal ranked third out of 195 countries in providing access to affordable health care. The United States ranked 183rd. Portugal has a national health care system, entitling every resident to free or very low-cost health care. It embraces innovative programs such as "social prescribing" that expand the boundaries of what is considered health care, while progressive laws on drug use and treatment have been credited with driving down overdose deaths, even as they rose in the U.S. In the 1990s, Portugal had one of the highest rates of heroin use and fatal overdoses anywhere. In 2001, the country not only decriminalized the use and possession of drugs, but also, in partnership with several non-governmental organizations such as Crescer, created a network of mostly free inpatient and outpatient treatment centers and mobile street teams that seek out drug users to provide medical care, clean needles, and support to enter addiction programs. Two decades later, drug overdose deaths have fallen sharply, from one per day to about 70 to 80 per year. New Jersey, with a smaller population than Portugal, sees 3,000 a year. HIV infection rates have dropped dramatically, too.
Note: Read our Substack to learn about social prescribing and other inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis ravaging the world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing our bodies.
Within Meta's Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations team, [Hannah] Byrne helped craft one of the most powerful and secretive censorship policies in internet history. She and her team helped draft the rulebook that applies to the world's most diabolical people and groups: the Ku Klux Klan, cartels, and terrorists. Meta bans these so-called Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, or DOI, from using its platforms, but further prohibits its billions of users from engaging in "glorification," "support," or "representation" of anyone on the list. As an armed white supremacist group with credible allegations of human rights violations hanging over it, Azov [Battalion] had landed on the Dangerous Organizations list. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Meta not only moved swiftly to allow users to cheer on the Azov Battalion, but also loosened its rules around incitement, hate speech, and gory imagery so Ukrainian civilians could share images of the suffering around them. Within weeks, Byrne found the moral universe around her inverted: The heavily armed hate group sanctioned by Congress since 2018 were now freedom fighters resisting occupation, not terroristic racists. It seems most galling for Byrne to compare how malleable Meta's Dangerous Organizations policy was for Ukraine, and how draconian it has felt for those protesting the war in Gaza. "I know the U.S. government is in constant contact with Facebook employees," she said. Meta's censorship systems are "basically an extension of the government," Byrne said. "You want military, Department of State, CIA people enforcing free speech? That is what is concerning."
Note: Read more about Facebook's secret blacklist, and how Facebook censored reporting of war crimes in Gaza but allowed praise for the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade on its platform. Going deeper, click here if you want to know the real history behind the Russia-Ukraine war. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
The Department of Justice secretly launched a grand jury investigation into a US nonprofit that steered American taxpayer funding to the Chinese lab suspected of leaking the COVID-19 virus and causing the global pandemic. Scientific experts and former federal officials have suggested that EcoHealth Alliance's grants to the China's Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) funded gain-of-function research that could have led to a lab leak – but records requests have repeatedly been blocked by the National Institutes of Health. The details of the apparent federal investigation of EcoHealth Alliance remain secret – and members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which released [a] 520-page report on the origins of and response to the pandemic, have declined to talk about it, citing concerns about interfering in any potential DOJ investigation. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies awarded millions of dollars' worth of grants to the now-suspended public health nonprofit – including a $4 million NIH project titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." More than $1.4 million dollars flowed from NIH and USAID to the WIV for that project, which the agency's principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak later acknowledged was gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses modified with SARS and MERS viruses to become 10,000 times more infectious.
Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and biotech dangers.
Former US Air Force officer Robert Salas recently stirred conversation during a congressional hearing when he suggested that extraterrestrials are trying to send a clear, three-word message regarding nuclear weapons: "WTF." Salas, who served as a USAF captain, shared his views in a discussion with Congresswoman Nancy Mace. He recounted incidents where unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were seen near nuclear facilities around the world. These UFO sightings did not inflict any serious damage on the weapons systems but did disrupt their navigation systems. One of the most striking claims from Salas is regarding an incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where he alleged a UFO disabled ten warheads. In this encounter, he described the UFO as having an eerie red glow as it sped through the night sky on March 24, 1967. The then-26-year-old lieutenant reported that the UFO pilots appeared to have an in-depth understanding of the missile systems. At the time of the incident, Malmstrom was in control of Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Salas believes the extraterrestrial visitors aren't hostile but rather a "pacifist species," implying their intention is peaceful rather than aggressive. This incident wasn't isolated; Salas claimed his crew commander had experienced a similar encounter just eight days earlier. He emphasized that in both situations, no significant damage was reported.
Note: More than 100 former or retired US Air Force officers came forward to share their personal experiences of UFOs near nuclear weapon storage and testing grounds. To dive deeper into this subject, explore our resources on the long history of UFO interference of nuclear missiles. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs.
The Church of England is facing its biggest crisis in modern times, and there is no clear pathway to recovery. The archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to resign, other senior figures are facing calls to quit and the church is reeling from its shameful failures over a prolific and sadistic child abuser. A 253-page report detailing the appalling brutality of the late barrister John Smyth, repeated cover-ups and omissions by church figures, and the lifelong trauma suffered by victims has triggered an "existential crisis" for the C of E, according to Linda Woodhead ... at King's College London. "It's seismic," said Tim Wyatt, who writes ... a weekly newsletter about the Church of England. The context to the report on Smyth was, he said, "more than 10 years of damning investigations into C of E abuse failures. Bishops, clergy and senior lay volunteers have been exposed as abusers, and church figures knew about the abuse in some instances and failed to stop it or report it to the police." In the C of E, since Welby became archbishop of Canterbury almost 12 years ago, report after report has detailed sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse stretching back half a century or more. Welby has made repeated apologies for the church's failures, and under his watch millions of pounds have been pumped into improving safeguarding. In 2012 ... average weekly church attendance was more than a million people. By 2023, the figure had fallen to 685,000.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority," wrote Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in a 1995 ruling affirming Americans' constitutional right to engage in anonymous political speech. That shield has weakened in recent years due to advances in the surveillance technology available to law enforcement. Everything from social media posts, to metadata about phone calls, to the purchase information collected by data brokers, to location data showing every step taken, is available to law enforcement – often without a warrant. Avoiding all of this tracking would require such extrication from modern social life that it would be virtually impossible for most people. International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers, or Stingrays, impersonate cell phone towers to collect the unique ID of a cell phone's SIM card. Geofence warrants, also known as reverse location warrants ... lets law enforcement request location data from apps on your phone or tech companies. Data brokers are companies that assemble information about people from a variety of usually public sources. Tons of websites and apps that everyday people use collect information on them, and this information is often sold to third parties who can aggregate or piece together someone's profile across the sites that are tracking them. Companies like Fog Data Science, LexisNexis, Precisely and Acxiom possess not only data on billions of people, they also ... have information about someone's political preferences as well as demographic information. Surveillance of social media accounts allows police to gather vast amounts of information about how protests are organized ... frequently utilizing networks of fake accounts. One firm advertised the ability to help police identify "activists and disruptors" at protests.
Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
A health department in Idaho has voted to halt its COVID-19 vaccination program, joining the growing number of regional governments pushing back against federal vaccination recommendations. Board members at Southwest District Health, outside of Boise, questioned the vaccine's safety during their Oct. 22 meeting and narrowly voted to stop providing the shot in the six counties they serve. Health departments in Texas, Florida and Michigan ... have also pushed back against the COVID-19 vaccine. Last year, Texas policymakers banned health departments and other organizations funded by the state government from using funds to promote their vaccination efforts. The Florida Department of Health issued guidance in September warning Floridians not to get mRNA COVID-19 shots. In Michigan, commissioners in Ottawa County turned down a $900,000 grant for their health department in September. Joe Moss, chair of the commission, said at the time he was "opposed to accepting any COVID grants." The [Idaho] board's physician representative, Dr. John Tribble, questioned the vaccine's safety and cited COVID-19's "diminishing risk" as a reason for the agency's decision to discontinue the shot. "We weighed the risks versus the benefits for all individuals considering the shots," Tribble wrote. "We could not, in good faith, continue to offer a pharmaceutical product that does more harm than good."
Note: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 38,068 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,652,230 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports. Our Substack dives into the complex world of COVID vaccines with nuance and uncensored investigation.
Guards are using prison work assignments at correctional facilities across the United States to lure and rape female inmates, a shocking investigation by the Associated Press has found. Many complaints follow a similar pattern: Accusers are retaliated against, while those accused face little or no punishment. In all 50 states, the AP found cases where staff allegedly used inmate work assignments to lure women to isolated spots, out of view of security cameras. The prisoners said they were attacked while doing jobs like kitchen or laundry duty inside correctional facilities or in work-release programs that placed them at private businesses like national fast-food restaurants and hotel chains. Things were so bad at FCI Dublin in California that prisoners and staff named it 'the rape club,' a 2022 AP investigation found. At least two men who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse were work supervisors: Nakie Nunley targeted at least five female prisoners who worked at the federal government's call center ... and Andrew Jones abused women who worked for him in the kitchen. A civil lawsuit filed in September said that officer Jose Figueroa-Lizarraga moved cameras in an Arizona state facility and raped a prisoner who was on a job assignment, forcing her inside the guard's control room. After reporting the incident, the woman was attacked again. She became pregnant and nearly died after hemorrhaging during childbirth.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.
Ask "is the British tax system fair", and Google cites a quote ... arguing that indeed it is. Ask "is the British tax system unfair", and Google's Featured Snippet explains how UK taxes benefit the rich and promote inequality. "What Google has done is they've pulled bits out of the text based on what people are searching for and fed them what they want to read," [Digital marketing director at Dragon Metrics Sarah] Presch says. "It's one big bias machine." The vast majority of internet traffic begins with a Google Search, and people rarely click on anything beyond the first five links. The system that orders the links on Google Search has colossal power over our experience of the world. You might choose to engage with information that keeps you trapped in your filter bubble, "but there's only a certain bouquet of messages that are put in front of you to choose from in the first place", says [professor] Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. A recent US anti-trust case against Google uncovered internal company documents where employees discuss some of the techniques the search engine uses to answer your questions. "We do not understand documents – we fake it," an engineer wrote in a slideshow used during a 2016 presentation. "A billion times a day, people ask us to find documents relevant to a query… We hardly look at documents. We look at people. If a document gets a positive reaction, we figure it is good. If the reaction is negative, it is probably bad. Grossly simplified, this is the source of Google's magic. That is how we serve the next person, keep the induction rolling, and sustain the illusion that we understand." In other words, Google watches to see what people click on when they enter a given search term. When people seem satisfied by a certain type of information, it's more likely that Google will promote that kind of search result for similar queries in the future.
Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on Big Tech from reliable major media sources.
The fusion of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology has generated excitement, but both fields face fundamental limitations that can't be ignored. What if these two technologies, each revolutionary in its own right, could solve each other's greatest weaknesses? Imagine a future where blockchain networks are seamlessly efficient and scalable, thanks to AI's problem-solving prowess, and where AI applications operate with full transparency and accountability by leveraging blockchain's immutable record-keeping. This vision is taking shape today through a new wave of decentralized AI projects. Leading the charge, platforms like SingularityNET, Ocean Protocol, and Fetch.ai are showing how a convergence of AI and blockchain could not only solve each other's biggest challenges but also redefine transparency, user control, and trust in the digital age. While AI's potential is revolutionary, its centralized nature and opacity create significant concerns. Blockchain's decentralized, immutable structure can address these issues, offering a pathway for AI to become more ethical, transparent, and accountable. Today, AI models rely on vast amounts of data, often gathered without full user consent. Blockchain introduces a decentralized model, allowing users to retain control over their data while securely sharing it with AI applications. This setup empowers individuals to manage their data's use and fosters a safer, more ethical digital environment.
Note: Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and technology for good.
Anthony Fauci detailed how the research portfolio of his longtime former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not distinguish between "biodefense efforts" and "naturally occurring" pathogens in a fall 2017 presentation. Fauci described "the joining with and ultimate indistinguishing of biodefense efforts and efforts directed at naturally occurring emerging and re-emerging infections. "Gain-of-function" research (GOF) makes viruses more pathogenic or transmissible. Much of this gain-of-function research is considered "dual use research of concern" (DURC) because it can be applied toward benevolent civilian aims or misapplied toward the development of bioweapons. Fauci's biodefense legacy has taken on a new significance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics, especially those who believe the pandemic is likely to have resulted from a lab accident, say the global proliferation of maximum security labs and GOF/DURC has made the world less safe. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, amid concerns about alleged "weapons of mass destruction," including biological weapons, former President George W. Bush asked Congress to invest billions in building maximum security labs capable of combating bioterrorism. By the late 2000s, fears of bioterrorism from the Middle East had faded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's conclusion that a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick had been responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks stoked a new kind of fear – of an expanding population of scientists with classified knowledge and access to pathogens. Counter-bioterrorism research at the National Institutes for Health surged from $53 million in 2001 to at least $1.6 billion in 2004. GAO reports uncovered major biosecurity breaches.
Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci admitted to congress that there was no scientific basis for many pandemic policies. Can anything he's said about gain-of-function research be trusted?
An ex-FDA employee has revealed what he claims is the most harmful breakfast cereal on the US market. Dr. Darin Detwiler, who previously served as a food safety expert for the agency, [said] that Kellogg's Froot Loops is the worst of the bunch, pointing out that the rainbow rings are "heavily processed and contain high levels of added sugars, artificial dyes and preservatives, which are linked to health concerns." Given the laundry list of bad-for-you ingredients in the bagged cereal, Detwiler says excess sugar is the least odious. A 1-cup serving of Froot Loops contains 12.35 grams of sugar, nearly half of the recommended daily allowance for children. However ... that serving size is unrealistic as most kids eat more than the recommended single cup. The bright red hue found in Froot Loops comes courtesy of Red 40, a controversial additive linked to a slew of health problems. A 2022 study yielded "alarming" results about the effects of Red 40 – sometimes called Allura red – on the human digestive tract. Researchers from McMaster University ... claimed the synthetic dye could potentially trigger irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease after observing the biomarkers of damage in the gut cells of mice. The good doctor's revelation comes as more than 1,000 cereal lovers and health activists marched on Kellogg's Michigan headquarters on Tuesday, demanding the end of "harmful additives" being injected into US batches of products like Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.
Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis. Read our latest Substack for a deep dive into who's behind the chronic disease epidemic that's threatening the future of humanity. For more along these lines, explore summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
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