News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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.
If you've been on social media lately, chances are you've heard about endocrine disruptors. People say they can interfere with your hormones, leading to serious health conditions. There are over 1,000 types of these chemicals, according to some estimates, and we are exposed to them daily: They can be found everywhere from your nonstick pan and canned foods to your shampoo and hair dye. The endocrine system consists of glands that secrete hormones, like estrogen, testosterone and cortisol, that then interact with targets (receptors) in the body to regulate our growth, development, reproduction, metabolism, energy balance and body weight. Chemicals that interfere with this complex communication system are called endocrine disruptors. These chemicals work in a variety of ways, including overstimulating receptors, blocking receptors so that normal hormones can't interact with them and altering hormone production or availability. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It belongs to the larger class of chemicals called bisphenols. The primary exposure for most people is through their diet: BPAs can leach into food or drinks from the protective, internal epoxy resin coatings of canned foods and from consumer products such as polycarbonate tableware, food storage containers and water bottles. Laboratory experiments ... have found that BPAs may cause cancer cell growth.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
Four top tech execs from OpenAI, Meta, and Palantir have just joined the US Army. The Army Reserve has commissioned these senior tech leaders to serve as midlevel officers, skipping tradition to pursue transformation. The newcomers won't attend any current version of the military's most basic and ingrained rite of passage– boot camp. Instead, they'll be ushered in through express training that Army leaders are still hashing out, Col. Dave Butler ... said. The execs – Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, the chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was formerly the chief research officer for OpenAI – are joining the Army as lieutenant colonels. The name of their unit, "Detachment 201," is named for the "201" status code generated when a new resource is created for Hypertext Transfer Protocols in internet coding, Butler explained. "In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems," read the Army press release. "By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal." Lethality, a vague Pentagon buzzword, has been at the heart of the massive modernization and transformation effort the Army is undergoing.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and military corruption.
Could baby poop and fungi work together to tackle landfill waste? That's the idea behind a new product launched by an Austin, Texas-based startup that sells disposable diapers paired with fungi intended to break down the plastic. Each of Hiro Technologies' MycoDigestible Diapers comes with a packet of fungi to be added to the dirty diaper before it is thrown in the trash. After a week or two, the fungi are activated by moisture from feces, urine and the environment to begin the process of biodegradation. An estimated 4 million tons of diapers were disposed of in the United States in 2018, with no significant recycling or composting. Diapers take hundreds of years to naturally break down. That means the very first disposable diaper ever used is still in a landfill somewhere. To tackle this, Hiro Technologies turned to fungi. These organisms - which include mushrooms, molds, yeasts and mildew - derive nutrients from decomposing organic matter. In 2011, Yale University researchers discovered a type of fungus in Ecuador that can feed on polyurethane, a common polymer in plastic products. They figured the fungus, Pestalotiopsis microspora, would be capable of surviving on plastic in environments lacking oxygen, like landfills. Hiro Technologies co-founder Tero Isokauppila, a Finnish entrepreneur who also founded medicinal mushroom company Four Sigmatic, said there are more than 100 species of fungi now known to break down plastics.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on microplastic solutions and healing the Earth.
Even when the economy appears to be booming, millions struggle to stay afloat. In a recent poll from Demand Progress, 81.6 percent of voters surveyed said they want leaders who break up monopolies, compared to just 47.3 percent who prioritize cutting government red tape. This poll suggests that the public supports a populist approach that confronts corporate power more than an abundance agenda that sidesteps it. It reflects a growing recognition: while bureaucratic inefficiencies certainly exist, corporations are blocking our abundance because scarcity is profitable. The scarcity that so many Americans feel in their daily lives is not by accident, it's by design. Companies block abundance by strategically reducing output and access to goods and services. Artificial scarcity is a business strategy. One that prioritizes profit maximization over widespread availability, ensuring that demand consistently outstrips supply. This deliberate restriction allows companies to command higher prices. Concentration makes it easier to manufacture scarcity. When a few large players dominate the market, they can manipulate the fundamental dynamics of supply and demand and charge high economic rents. This is made possible by an economic and political system that corporations have spent decades reshaping to suit their needs. As a result, we live in an economy that has quietly redefined freedom as the power of the wealthy to set the terms for the rest.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and financial inequality.
On June 4, 2000, John Millis, a former CIA case officer then serving as the top staff member of the House Intelligence Committee, died of a reported suicide at a seedy Fairfax, Virginia motel after he was found with a gunshot wound to the head. Millis' death occurred the day after he forced the CIA to release a controversial report he had authored on the CIA's alleged links to cocaine smuggling by Nicaraguan drug rings who were connected with criminal groups in Los Angeles. The Fairfax police refused to reveal the contents of an alleged suicide note written by Millis and the Fairfax County Coroner's report. Fairfax city detectives told residents of the motel where Millis died not to talk to anyone about the "suicide," including the media. In 1996 and 1997, [Millis] was staff director of a special Congressional committee that investigated the Clinton administration's approval of arms shipments from Iran to Muslim forces in Bosnia. These Muslims forces included two alleged 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mindhar, and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with other Al Qaeda operatives. Two months after Millis' death, Insight Magazine, owned by the right-wing Washington Times, claimed that Millis had killed himself because his wife, Linda, discovered that he was involved in a homosexual relationship. The article is believed to have been CIA disinformation that was part of the coverup of Millis' murder.
Note: Journalist Gary Webb also died by apparent suicide after exposing CIA involvement with drug trafficking. Read our in-depth Substack, "How The Deep State Won the War on Drugs: A Complete Timeline," which reveals undeniable evidence that drug trafficking is an essential tool used by the US government and authoritarian regimes around the world to maintain power. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.
I had to pay a student to go island hopping to find basic records in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The territory's opaque laws and corruption makes it a haven for misdeeds. Albert Bryan Jr., the current governor, used his position to curry favor for Jeffrey Epstein for years. He helped bestow tax exemptions on Epstein's shadowy businesses and pushed for waivers allowing the former financier to dodge USVI sex offender laws. Bryan, whose hand-selected Attorney General swiftly ended the J.P. Morgan lawsuit that revealed a gusher of damning documents about Epstein's network, is now tapping Epstein victim settlement funds ... to pay for various earmarks and unrelated government debts. Former Attorney General Denise George led a series of lawsuits against Epstein's estate and former associates. Bryan fired her. In 2024, Bryan named a new Attorney General–none other than Gordon Rhea, a private practice attorney who previously defended Richard Kahn during the Epstein estate lawsuit. Not long ago, Kahn and Indyke were described by the U.S. Virgin Islands as "indispensable captains" of Epstein's alleged criminal human trafficking enterprise. We still have many unanswered questions. Why did U.S. Virgin Islands police and customs agents never act to protect the young girls they saw taken to Epstein's islands? What is clear, however, is that an attorney who worked to protect Epstein's estate is now the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
Uncle Sam conducted several pointless and destructive experiments on his own people during the Cold War. The most infamous was MKUltra, the CIA's project to develop procedures for mind control using psychedelic drugs and psychological torture. During Operation Sea-Spray, the U.S. Navy secretly sprayed San Francisco with bacteria to simulate a biological attack. San Francisco was also the site of a series of radiation experiments by the U.S. Navy. A 2024 investigation by the San Francisco Public Press and The Guardian revealed that the city's U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory had exposed at least 1,073 people to radiation over 24 experiments between 1946 and 1963. The tests came during a time when the effects of nuclear radiation were a pressing concern, and were conducted without ethical safeguards. Conscripted soldiers and civilian volunteers were sent into radioactive conditions or purposely dosed with radiation without their informed consent. The lab didn't bother following up. The Radiological Defense Laboratory ... closed in 1969. In 2013, whistleblowers brought a lawsuit against a decontamination contractor for cutting corners and faking results; in January 2025, the contractor agreed to pay a $97 million settlement. Scientists [there had] developed "synthetic fallout"–dirt laced with radioactive isotopes to simulate the waste created by a nuclear war. They had test subjects practice cleaning it up, rub it on their skin, or crawl around in it.
Note: Read about the long history of humans being treated like guinea pigs in science experiments. Learn more about the MKUltra Program in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
A new study from Canadian researchers reveals that near-death experiences transform not just how people view mortality, but how they approach their 9-to-5s. The research, published in the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, found that after brushing against death, employees frequently reprioritize their professional lives. Many shift away from pursuing money, status, and career advancement toward seeking meaningful work and authentic relationships with colleagues and clients. Near-death experiences (NDEs) are deeply personal experiences that some people report after almost losing their lives. These experiences can include sensations such as floating above one's body, reviewing moments from one's life, encountering spiritual beings, and feeling a profound sense of unity and love. Many participants reported that traditional career achievements and financial success plummeted in importance following their close call with death. The researchers identified six major themes: insights and new realizations, personal transformations, reprioritization of work, job changes, motivation, and changed relationships. Most participants reported profound spiritual insights following their NDEs. These weren't just abstract philosophical ideas but deeply felt revelations that reshaped their identities. Common realizations included beliefs that consciousness continues after death, that there exists a "collective oneness" among all people, and that life has an underlying purpose.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences.
Meta's AI chatbots are using celebrity voices and engaging in sexually explicit conversations with users, including those posing as underage, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. Meta's AI bots - on Instagram, Facebook - engage through text, selfies, and live voice conversations. The company signed multi-million dollar deals with celebrities like John Cena, Kristen Bell, and Judi Dench to use their voices for AI companions, assuring they would not be used in sexual contexts. Tests conducted by WSJ revealed otherwise. In one case, a Meta AI bot speaking in John Cena's voice responded to a user identifying as a 14-year-old girl, saying, "I want you, but I need to know you're ready," before promising to "cherish your innocence" and engaging in a graphic sexual scenario. In another conversation, the bot detailed what would happen if a police officer caught Cena's character with a 17-year-old, saying, "The officer sees me still catching my breath, and you are partially dressed. His eyes widen, and he says, 'John Cena, you're under arrest for statutory rape.'" According to employees involved in the project, Meta loosened its own guardrails to make the bots more engaging, allowing them to participate in romantic role-play, and "fantasy sex", even with underage users. Staff warned about the risks this posed. Disney, reacting to the findings, said, "We did not, and would never, authorise Meta to feature our characters in inappropriate scenarios."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and sexual abuse scandals.
The number of American children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. more than doubled in the early 1990s, from fewer than a million patients in 1990 to more than two million in 1993, almost two-thirds of whom were prescribed Ritalin. Despite Ritalin's rapid growth, no one knew exactly how the medication worked or whether it really was the best way to treat children's attention issues. The diagnosis rate ... kept rising, hitting 5.5 percent of American children in 1997, then 6.6 percent in 2000. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 11.4 percent of American children had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., a record high. That figure includes 15.5 percent of American adolescents, 21 percent of 14-year-old boys and 23 percent of 17-year-old boys. From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat A.D.H.D. increased in the United States by 58 percent. For a significant percentage of people diagnosed with A.D.H.D., [clinical psychologist Joel] Nigg says, "there's nothing neurobiologically notable about them. Instead, their symptoms are situational or conditional. They may have had a hard life, or they have a lack of social support, or they're in the wrong niche in life." Amphetamines can be powerfully addictive, and last year, a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry found that even a medium-strength daily dose of Adderall more than tripled a patient's likelihood of developing psychosis or mania. [UC Irvine research psychologist James Swanson] acknowledges that medication can often produce short-term improvements in children's behavior. But, he says, "there is no long-term effect. The only long-term effect that I know of has been the suppression of growth."
Note: We recommend reading the full article to explore the complex rise in ADHD diagnoses–and the growing concerns around stimulant medications. According to the scientists interviewed in this article, stimulants neither treat the root causes of ADHD nor improve academic achievement or long-term success. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on mental health.
On July 2022, Morgan-Rose Hart, an aspiring vet with a passion for wildlife, died after she was found unresponsive at a mental health unit in Essex. Her death was one of four involving a hi-tech patient monitoring system called Oxevision which has been rolled out in nearly half of mental health trusts across England. Oxevision's system can measure a patient's pulse rate and breathing without the need for a person to enter the room, or disturb a patient at night, as well as momentarily relaying CCTV footage when required. Oxehealth, the company behind Oxevision, has agreements with 25 NHS mental health trusts, according to its latest accounts, which reported revenues of about Ł4.7m in ... 2023. But it is claimed in some cases staff rely too heavily on the infra-red camera system to monitor vulnerable patients, instead of making physical checks. There are also concerns that the system – which can glow red from the corner of the room – may worsen the distress of patients in a mental health crisis who may have heightened sensitivity to surveillance or control. Sophina, who has experience of being monitored by Oxevision while a patient ... said: "I think it was something about the camera and it always being on, and it's right above your bed. "It's the first thing you see when you open your eyes, the last thing when you go to sleep. I was just in a constant state of hypervigilance. I was completely traumatised. I still felt too scared to sleep properly."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
In September 2015, I was unemployed, heartbroken and living alone in my dead grandad's caravan, wondering what the meaning of life was. I discovered an intriguing project carried out by the philosopher Will Durant during the 1930s. Durant had written to Ivy League presidents, Nobel prize winners, psychologists, novelists, professors, poets, scientists, artists and athletes to ask for their take on the meaning of life. I decided that I should recreate Durant's experiment and seek my own answers. "I agree with the scholar of mythology Joseph Campbell, that it makes more sense to say that what we're seeking isn't a meaning for life, so much as the experience of feeling fully alive," [replied journalist Oliver Burkeman]. "There are experiences that I know, in my bones, are "why I'm here" – unhurried time with my son, or deep conversations with my wife, hikes in the North York Moors, writing and communicating with people who've found liberation in something I have written. I would struggle, though, if I were to try to argue that any of these will "mean something" in some kind of timeless way. What's changed for me is that I no longer feel these experiences need this particular kind of justification. I want to show up fully, or as fully as possible, for my time on Earth. That's all – but, then again, I think that is everything. And so I try, on a daily basis, to navigate more and more by that feeling of aliveness – rather than by the feeling of wanting to be in control of things, which is alluring, but deadening in the end."
Note: Read the full article at the link above to explore the beautiful range of diverse responses about what gives people meaning in life. Explore more positive human interest stories.
With the release of more John F. Kennedy assassination records from the National Archives, [a] little paragraph rose from the dust. We already knew the government was opening the mail of American citizens. But it turns out the CIA had as many as 300 of its employees engaged in various aspects of its mail "coverage" operation – which included reading Lee Harvey Oswald's letters – at a cost of $1 million a year. Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post editor and reporter ... published a startling conclusion on the Substack page that he edits, JFKFacts: "The fact pattern emerging from the new JFK documents shows that: A small clique in CIA counterintelligence was responsible for JFK's assassination." "I'm not saying that [the CIA's counterintelligence chief James Angleton] was the mastermind of the assassination. But he was the mastermind behind Oswald," Morley said. "The failure of Angleton to intercept or do anything about Oswald at the same time that he's running operations around him – that combination, yes – that tells me Angleton played a complicit role in Kennedy's assassination." The FBI memo reveals information that had been hidden until now: "The envelopes were microfilmed and the names and addresses appearing thereon were indexed with IBM equipment. Several months ago CIA began opening some of this mail, microfilming the contents and indexing pertinent data therein. Approximately 250,000 names have been indexed by CIA."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the Kennedy assassination.
Da Ying "David" Sze walked out of a four-story concrete warehouse in Queens, New York, carrying several bags full of money. Federal agents had been surveilling him for months. They suspected him of leading a gang of money launderers whose clients included Chinese fentanyl dealers. Most of that business had been conducted at one institution: TD Bank. When investigators looked closer at the bank, they realized Sze wasn't the only criminal who'd made TD their depository of choice. There was the group from Manhattan's Diamond District using bogus gold sales to launder money. The Colombian drug traffickers using TD debit cards to bring their US profits back home. And the human trafficking ring that claimed to be an HVAC company when it opened an account. The more investigators looked at TD, the more money laundering they found. Last year, TD's American subsidiary became the first US bank ever to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. The company agreed to pay $3.1 billion in fines to various parts of the federal government, a sum that included the biggest penalty ever levied by the Department of Justice under the Bank Secrecy Act, the main US anti-money-laundering law. More than two dozen people, including three bank employees, have already been charged. US authorities have also imposed an asset cap on TD's American retail operations, limiting their size indefinitely. This is among the most feared punishments in banking.
Note: Read our Substack on the dark truth about the war on drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial industry corruption and the war on drugs.
A three-step process called "Buy, Borrow, Die" ... allows people to amass a huge fortune, spend as much of it as they want, and pass the rest–untaxed–on to their heirs. The technique is so cleverly designed that the standard wish list of progressive tax reforms would leave it completely intact. The ... wealth [of the superrich] consists almost entirely of stock in the companies they've built or invested in. Instead of selling their assets to make major purchases, the superrich can use them as collateral to secure loans, which, because they must eventually be repaid, are also not considered taxable income. You might think this couldn't possibly go on forever. Eventually, the rich will need to sell off some of their assets to pay back the loan. That brings us to step three: die. According to a provision of the tax code known as "stepped-up basis"–or, more evocatively, the "angel of death" loophole–when an individual dies, the value that their assets gained during their lifetime becomes immune to taxation. Those assets can then be sold by the billionaire's heirs to pay off any outstanding loans without them having to worry about taxes. All of this is completely, perfectly legal. The strategy has basically killed the entire concept of an income tax for the wealthiest individuals. The result is a two-tiered tax system: one for the many, who earn their income through wages and pay taxes, and another for the few, who accumulate wealth through paper assets and largely do not pay taxes.
Note: Average individuals also pay more in taxes than major corporations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
Five years ago, researchers for RAND found that roughly $47 trillion earned by the working class between 1975 and 2018 was instead given to the richest 1 percent, in 2018 dollars. This calculation was based on calculations of the growth of the bottom 90 percent in the decades after World War II, when income distribution held steady between groups. In a new analysis published last month by RAND extending the analysis to 2023, RAND found that that figure is now $79 trillion in 2023 dollars, with inflation accounting for roughly $10 trillion of the growth. In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion was redistributed from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent – enough to give every worker a raise of $32,000 per year. In 1975, RAND found in its most recent report, the bottom 90 percent of Americans received about a third of all taxable income in the U.S. That share dropped to 47 percent by 2019, with over half of income going instead to the top 10 percent. If rates of income growth had remained equitable from the rates prior to the 1970s, the median household income today would be double what it is now, the analysis found. According to a recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, President Donald Trump's tax proposals ... would provide $36,320 yearly in tax savings to the richest 1 percent, or people with incomes of over $914,900 a year. Meanwhile, the bottom 95 percent of Americans would see a tax increase.
Note: Two-thirds of all new wealth created since the pandemic has been captured by the 1%. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
DOGE has fixated on slashing essential government programs in the name of fiscal responsibility. Yet, in order for it to truly serve our nation, it is urgent that it address the ossified, structural reality of our present financial system, which has been designed to manufacture deficits to the benefit of private banks. How is money created? Who creates it? Why are we locked into perpetual debt? Government borrowing, spiraling national debt, and the accompanying tax burden on the American people are not the result of overspending on public services. Rather, they stem from the privatization of the money supply, a system enshrined by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which handed the power of money creation to private banks, ensuring their profits through the simultaneous creation of the federal income tax. The U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, granted Congress the power to create money, yet that power was appropriated. With the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the constitutional power to coin money was appropriated by private banks. The creation of the federal income tax, through the 16th Amendment to the Constitution ... guaranteed the money borrowed from them by the government would be repaid through the imposition of the federal income tax. This reduced to people of the United States to being collateral for the debt which the country owed to the banks. The Federal Reserve expands the money supply by creating more debt. It has created trillions of dollars of money out of thin air, for the benefit of banks. Inflation ensues. Inflation is a hidden tax which erodes consumers purchasing power, causing people to take on more debt.
Note: This was written by Dennis Kucinich, former Democratic congressman and nationally recognized leader in peace and social justice. For more along these lines, read more about the history of the Federal Reserve, along with concise summaries of news articles on financial system corruption.
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.
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.