News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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Experienced professionals are increasingly scared to openly discuss their views on the treatment of children questioning their gender identity. This was the conclusion drawn by Hilary Cass in her review of gender identity services for children this week, which warned that a toxic debate had resulted in a culture of fear. Her conclusion was echoed by doctors, academic researchers and scientists. Some said they had been deterred from pursuing what they believed to be crucial studies, saying that merely entering the arena would put their reputation at risk. Others spoke of abuse on social media, academic conferences being shut down, biases in publishing and the personal cost of speaking out. Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology ... received abuse after publishing a systematic review of studies that investigated the impact of puberty blockers on brain development. Her review found that "critical questions" remained around the nature, extent and permanence of any arrested development of cognitive function linked to the treatment. The paper, which summarised the state of relevant research, was met with an immediate backlash. "I've been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away," Baxendale said. "Imagine what it's like if that is the first thing that comes up when people Google you? Anyone who publishes in this field has got to be prepared for that."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
A robust British review found guidelines for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria ignored standards and are based on flimsy foundations. Pediatrician Hilary Cass' much-anticipated report found no reliable evidence on which to base gender-affirming care for youth; the rationale for blocking puberty in young children remains unclear and muddled and that the use of cross-sex hormones in the under-18s presents numerous unknowns. Cass said published studies suffer from "remarkably weak evidence," that results are "exaggerated or mispresented" by people on both sides of the debate over transgender health care to bolster their own viewpoint. Cass found that there is no solid evidence on the long-term outcomes of any of the interventions. Cass said the toxicity of the debate has been exceptional. "There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop," Cass wrote. The systematic review on puberty blockers found no evidence the drugs improve body image or dysphoria. The drugs might temporarily or permanently disrupt adolescent brain maturation, "which could have a significant impact on the young person's ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as having possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences," according to the Cass report.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
By the time I was 24 years old, my life was in complete shambles. I had long-standing substance abuse problems. I sold drugs and trafficked guns. My addiction and illegal business culminated in an incident in which an innocent bystander was killed. I was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to just under 30 years to life. Once in prison ... I lost even more of myself in drugs, violence and jailhouse politics. I knew that I had to change, but I didn't think it was possible. Furthermore, I didn't know how to start. Then one day, at age 30, I did the most benign-seeming thing that changed everything: I quit drinking soda. I had read some articles about how soda can contribute to health issues like diabetes and obesity, and how it can weaken tooth enamel. This was the first time in my life that I had made that kind of change. Quitting soda was my step one. That simple act allowed me to trace the catastrophic outcomes of my life back to my lack of self-discipline, and it convinced me that change was possible. Step two was to make more behavioral changes related to self discipline, like lifting weights and learning to play chess. By choosing relatively minor changes at first, and implementing them incrementally, they were easy for me to sustain. This led to step three: My new behaviors becoming habits, and those habits elevating my level of self-discipline. This elevation allowed me to tackle more significant behavioral changes like quitting smoking and drugs.
Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and find out how people are repairing criminal justice.
Jaye Rochon struggled to lose weight for years. But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating "health at every size" – urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her "mental hunger." In two months, she regained 50 pounds. As her weight neared 300 pounds, she began to worry about her health. The videos that Rochon encountered are part of the "anti-diet" movement, a social media juggernaut that began as an effort to combat weight stigma and an unhealthy obsession with thinness. But now global food marketers are seeking to cash in on the trend. General Mills, maker of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has launched a multipronged campaign that capitalizes on the teachings of the anti-diet movement. General Mills has toured the country touting anti-diet research it claims proves the harms of "food shaming." It has showered giveaways on registered dietitians who promote its cereals online with the hashtag #DerailTheShame, and sponsored influencers who promote its sugary snacks. The company has also enlisted a team of lobbyists and pushed back against federal policies that would add health information to food labels. Since the 1980s, the U.S. obesity rate has more than doubled, according to federal data. Nearly half a million Americans die early each year as a result of excess body weight, according to estimates in a 2022 Lancet study. The anti-diet approach essentially shifts accountability for the health crisis away from the food industry for creating ultra-processed junk foods laden with food additives, sugars and artificial sweeteners.
Note: For more along these lines,explore summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Americans are constantly told we are hopelessly divided. Our politicians relentlessly accuse the other side of undermining democracy and endangering the vulnerable, while our legacy media, which no longer even pretends to be objective, consistently portrays its side's enemies in the starkest of terms. A 2019 study by James Druckman and Matthew Levendusky in Public Opinion Quarterly found that individuals harbor more animus toward the other party's elites than they do toward people who vote for the other party. I spent one year interviewing working-class Americans across the country from every political persuasion for my new book, and what I found was a remarkable consensus on the issues. The partisan claims of a polarized America ring especially false to working-class Americans. Two-thirds of Americans agree that abortion should be rare and also legal. This is because–unlike the college-educated elites who run the country–they don't identify with the full list of policy proposals produced by either party. Working-class Americans across the country ... want higher wages. They want better healthcare–or really, just affordable healthcare. They want stable jobs that reward their immense efforts with [what] top income brackets take for granted: a home. And yet, neither political party represents these positions that unify most Americans. They know that the way they vote reflects only a portion of their political views, and extremely little of their larger identities. There is no party that represents the American Dream, in which a life of hard work is rewarded by a home, retirement, the occasional vacation, and a better life for one's kids. In other words, a life free from the precariousness that plagues the working class today. It's led to a working-class electorate that feels alienated from both parties.
Note: A groundbreaking 2022 study by More in Common revealed that Americans significantly overestimated the extremity of the beliefs held by those with differing viewpoints. Read our powerful Substack on healing the polarization poisoning our conversations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
Hardware that breaks into your phone; software that monitors you on the internet; systems that can recognize your face and track your car: The New York State Police are drowning in surveillance tech. Last year alone, the Troopers signed at least $15 million in contracts for powerful new surveillance tools. Surveillance technology has far outpaced traditional privacy laws. In New York, lawmakers launched a years-in-the-making legislative campaign last year to rein in police intrusion. None of their bills have made it out of committee. A report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, put it succinctly: "The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits." That report called specific attention to the "data broker loophole": law enforcement's practice of obtaining data for which they'd otherwise have to obtain a warrant by buying it from brokers. The New York State Police have taken greater and greater advantage of the loophole in recent years. They've also spent millions on mobile device forensic tools, or MDFTs, powerful hacking hardware and software that allow users to download full, searchable copies of a cellphone's data, including social media messages, emails, web and search histories, and minute-by-minute location information.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Have you heard about the new Google? They "supercharged" it with artificial intelligence. Somehow, that also made it dumber. With the regular old Google, I can ask, "What's Mark Zuckerberg's net worth?" and a reasonable answer pops up: "169.8 billion USD." Now let's ask the same question with the "experimental" new version of Google search. Its AI responds: Zuckerberg's net worth is "$46.24 per hour, or $96,169 per year. This is equivalent to $8,014 per month, $1,849 per week, and $230.6 million per day." Google acting dumb matters because its AI is headed to your searches sooner or later. The company has already been testing this new Google – dubbed Search Generative Experience, or SGE – with volunteers for nearly 11 months, and recently started showing AI answers in the main Google results even for people who have not opted in to the test. To give us answers to everything, Google's AI has to decide which sources are reliable. I'm not very confident about its judgment. Remember our bonkers result on Zuckerberg's net worth? A professional researcher – and also regular old Google – might suggest checking the billionaires list from Forbes. Google's AI answer relied on a very weird ZipRecruiter page for "Mark Zuckerberg Jobs," a thing that does not exist. The new Google can do some useful things. But as you'll see, it sometimes also makes up facts, misinterprets questions, [and] delivers out-of-date information. This test of Google's future has been going on for nearly a year, and the choices being made now will influence how billions of people get information.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI technology from reliable major media sources.
A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy. Houston-based Inhance manufactures an estimated 200m containers annually with a process that creates, among other chemicals, PFOA, a toxic PFAS compound. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December prohibited Inhance from using the manufacturing process. But the conservative fifth circuit court of appeals court overturned the ban. The judges did not deny the containers' health risks, but said the EPA could not regulate the buckets under the statute it used. The rule requires companies to alert the EPA if a new industrial process creates hazardous chemicals. Inhance has produced the containers for decades and argued that its process is not new, so it is not subject to the regulations. The EPA argued that it only became aware that Inhance's process created PFOA in 2020, so it could be regulated as a new use, but the court disagreed. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds [that] have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems. A peer-reviewed study in 2011 found Inhance's containers leached the toxic compounds into their contents.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
Private donors including big-box stores, fossil fuel companies, and tech giants are secretly giving hundreds of millions of dollars annually to law enforcement agencies and related foundations, allowing police to buy specialized weapons and technology with little public oversight. Experts say this huge deluge of police "dark money" funding, detailed in a new University of Chicago working paper ... leaves law enforcement beholden to the companies and powerful donors bankrolling them, rather than the communities that officers are sworn to serve. The study, which analyzed a database of nonprofit tax returns, found that from 2014 to 2019, more than 600 private donors and organizations collectively funneled $461 million to police and to other nonprofits supporting police. The Baltimore Police Department for years used private money to fund a secret aerial surveillance program that could track the locations of people throughout the city in real time. The program ... was eventually ruled unconstitutional in court. In Los Angeles, the city's police department used money from Target ... routed through a local police foundation – to purchase software from Palantir, venture capitalist Peter Thiel's data analytics company, that provides police massive amounts of sensitive data and purports to identify crime "hot spots." For the most part, the millions in dark-money funding that police agencies receive each year is perfectly legal. There are largely no laws or policies governing foundation donations to the police.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
The FBI spends "every day, all day long" interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that's what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity. Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad's house and said that they had been given "screenshots" of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident. "Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent in a gray shirt said in the video. "So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" replied Abdeljawad. "No, we totally do. That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything," a second agent in a red shirt added. "We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will." Shibly says that he doesn't know which Facebook post caught the agents' attention, and that it was the first time he had heard of Facebook's parent company, Meta, preemptively reporting posts to law enforcement. [Abdeljawad] made multiple angry posts per day about the war in Gaza, referring to Israel as "Israhell." But none of the posts on her feed call for violence. Ironically, Abdeljawad had also posted a warning about exactly the kind of government monitoring she was later subjected to. "Don't fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up," Abdeljawad wrote.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
The Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK) has tyrannically ruled Haiti since 2011. The U.S. State Department, who unilaterally picked Ariel Henry to be Haiti's prime minister in July of 2021, has now decided Henry no longer fits their interests and has forced him to step down. Henry was prevented from returning to Haiti on March 5 by paramilitary gangs who attempted to take the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, opening fire and hitting a plane bound for Cuba. The imperial forces responsible for over half a million illegal U.S. guns in Haiti that fuel this unparalleled violence are now preparing their next move to keep Haiti subdued. For the past 18 months, the Biden administration has sought to facilitate what will be the fourth U.S.-led foreign invasion and occupation of Haiti in the last 100 years by deputizing Kenya, Benin, the Bahamas, and other western neocolonies to carry out the occupation. The CIA remains active as well seeking a neocolony the U.S. can deputize to carry out this invasion. The only Haitian representatives that can be considered for the U.S.-led transitional government have to agree to the occupation. U.S. policy empowers and works with corrupt political leadership in Haiti because they can be relied upon to do the U.S.'s bidding. Meanwhile, those leaders who refuse to sell out to imperial interests are repressed and murdered. The ruling PHTK [has] bragged about being "legal bandits" above the law and employing ... government death squads armed with hundreds of thousands of U.S. weapons.
Note: The US government wants Ariel Henry out to purportedly prevent a full scale civil war. Is the US now trying to address Haitian stability and violence that US policies have helped create? Read about US involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel MoĂŻse. Learn more about the role the arms industry plays in global conflicts in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
A Silicon Valley defense tech startup is working on products that could have as great an impact on warfare as the atomic bomb, its founder Palmer Luckey said. "We want to build the capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter," he [said]. The Anduril founder didn't elaborate on what impact AI weaponry would have. But asked if it would be as decisive as the atomic bomb to the outcome of World War II he replied: "We have ideas for what they are. We are working on them." In 2022, Anduril won a contract worth almost $1 billion with the Special Operations Command to support its counter-unmanned systems. Anduril's products include autonomous sentry towers along the Mexican border [and] Altius-600M attack drones supplied to Ukraine. All of Anduril's tech operates autonomously and runs on its AI platform called Lattice that can easily be updated. The success of Anduril has given hope to other smaller players aiming to break into the defense sector. As an escalating number of global conflicts has increased demand for AI-driven weaponry, venture capitalists have put more than $100 billion into defense tech since 2021, according to Pitchbook data. The rising demand has sparked a fresh wave of startups lining up to compete with industry "primes" such as Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) for a slice of the $842 billion US defense budget.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.
It prides itself on offering an "assortment of family-friendly programming." For Alexa Nikolas, however, Nickelodeon's claims concealed a darker truth. She says young stars were exploited into taking part in sexually suggestive scenes. "Kids are groomed into thinking that the lines that they're doing are pretend, that it's not real life," the star, who played Nicole Bristow on the Nickelodeon TV series Zoey 101, [said]. Nikolas spoke out in the wake of docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which aired on the Investigation Discovery channel ... and exposed the "toxic culture" and alleged abuse on the set of some of Nickelodeon's biggest shows. In addition to Nikolas, several former child stars have spoken out, claiming sexual assault and harassment while working for the channel. Drake & Josh star Drake Bell speaks publicly for the first time about being repeatedly molested by his dialogue coach, Peck, when he was 15. "I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him... I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was...he was sexually assaulting me." Bell claimed the abuse occurred more than once and said he was scared to report it. He explained: "And it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and I was just trapped. I had no way out. The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal." The four-part docuseries documents the child sexual abuse committed by assistant Jason Handy, dialogue coach Brian Peck, and studio freelancer Ezel Channel, as well as the alleged abusive and misogynistic behavior of showrunner Dan Schneider.
Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
The FDA has agreed to delete and never republish several social-media posts suggesting that ivermectin, a drug that some doctors used to treat COVID-19, is for animals and not humans. While the FDA still does not approve of using ivermectin to treat COVID, it settled Thursday a lawsuit brought by three doctors who sued it, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Xavier Becerra, and FDA secretary Robert Califf. All parties have settled. The lawsuit, filed on June 2, 2022, was brought by doctors Mary Talley Bowden, Paul Marik and Robert Apter, each of whom claimed the FDA was interfering with their ability to practice medicine. The case was initially dismissed on the grounds the FDA had "sovereign immunity," though a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the lower court's decision saying that the "FDA is not a physician." The appeals court also said that, "Even tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond the FDA's statutory authority." The FDA will retire a Consumer update titled, "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." The FDA also will delete and not republish posts to Twitter (now X), LinkedIn and Facebook that read: "You are not a horse. Your are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it." Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X: "The FDA is biased against many low-cost, generic, and/or natural therapies with low profit potential. Could it be because half its funding comes from Big Pharma?"
Note: A US Senate Committee hearing on evidence of Ivermectin's benefits was once censored on Youtube. Explore a comprehensive look into the benefits and uses of ivermectin, despite establishment media's concerted effort to discredit its efficacy and safety.
A man filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging he was paralyzed and needed his legs amputated after police officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, put him in restraints, placed him in the back of a police van without a seatbelt and then drove in a reckless manner. Heriberto Alejandro Sanchez-Mayen filed the lawsuit in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida against the city of St. Petersburg and officers Sarah Gaddis and Michael Thacker. After being handcuffed, Sanchez-Mayen was placed in the back of [a police] van where there were no seatbelts. Thacker allegedly drove "in a reckless manner and at an unsafe rate of speed," before he suddenly came to a hard stop at an alleged red light, the suit states. The hard stop caused Sanchez-Mayen to be thrown forward, and his head struck a metal partition. After driving to the Pinellas County jail, Thacker opened the rear doors of the van and found Sanchez-Mayen "lying face down, motionless, unconscious, and unresponsive," the suit states. The officer unsuccessfully attempted to wake him up and then dragged his limp body out of the van, causing Sanchez-Mayen to hit his head on the bumper, the door and the concrete floor. Sanchez-Mayen suffered spinal cord injuries that left him a quadriplegic, or paralyzed in all of his limbs, and resulted in the amputation of both of his legs. The lawsuit states Sanchez-Mayen should not have been arrested in the first place, noting the criminal trespassing charge was later dismissed.
Note: New Haven, Connecticut has agreed to a $45 million settlement with Randy Cox, another man who was paralyzed while being transported handcuffed and without a seat belt in the back of a police van. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.
On March 8, the Department of Defense published the most significant report on UFOs in at least two generations – a congressionally mandated historical review of U.S. government involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP. Unfortunately, the report from the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) contains an array of striking omissions and one particularly egregious misrepresentation. The result is a misleading report which, like so much government UFO-related propaganda over seven decades, tells the reader just to move on, nothing to see here. AARO has not provided a plausible explanation for naval aviators' more recent encounters – including one harrowing near-collision – with spherical objects exhibiting extraordinary flight characteristics. Worst of all, AARO's review misrepresents the most exhaustive, comprehensive historical analysis of UFO incidents, conducted on behalf of the Air Force by the Battelle Memorial Institute in the early 1950s. According to AARO, the resulting report found that "all cases that had enough data were resolved and explainable." But this is not what Battelle's analysis found at all, and AARO's misrepresentation of its conclusions speaks volumes. According to the Battelle analysis ... of the UFO cases considered "Excellent" and with sufficient data to draw a conclusion, 33 percent were categorized as having "unknown" origin.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our new UFO Information Center.
Over the past year, Neha Wadekar and I unearthed a whistleblower's shocking claim of a cover-up of a child sex abuse scandal, a who's who of international do-good financiers, and a for-profit education chain operating mostly in Africa called Bridge International Academies. An investigator working for the World Bank was stymied and retaliated against. We got notes from a critical phone call between World Bank officials and company executives showing a plan to "neutralize Adler" – the lead internal investigator who had uncovered the allegations – and to slow down the process. "Time matters," as one person on the call put it. "Need to delay until Series F." (That's a name for a financing round.) Following our reporting, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., sent multiple letters to the World Bank, warning the new president that how he responded to the scandal would be used by Congress as a proxy for his broader seriousness about reforming the bank. "We view the Bridge case as a litmus test for the conversation currently taking place around IFC's responsibility to remedy social and environmental harm caused by its projects, especially those where IFC is not following its own policies," the senators wrote. Bridge International Academies was backed by the World Bank's IFC, as well as prominent Silicon Valley and venture capital leaders, including private funds linked to Bill Ackman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Pierre Omidyar.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States–fairly stable in the 2000s–rose by more than 50 percent in many studies. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent. Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity–all were affected. There's an important backstory, beginning ... when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends. By 2019, young people's time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck. Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry.
Note: The author of this article is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and ethics professor who's been on the frontlines investigating the youth mental health crisis. He is the co-founder of LetGrow.org, an organization that provides inspiring solutions and ideas to help families and schools support children's well-being and foster childhood independence. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on mental health.
In November 2020 ... a ballot initiative known as Measure J passed with 57 percent support, amending the LA County charter so that jailing people before trial would be treated as a last resort. In June, LA County signed over the handling of changes to pretrial detention under Measure J to the consulting firm Accenture, a behemoth in the world of biometric databases and predictive policing. Accenture has pushed counterterror and policing strategies around the globe: The company built the world's biggest biometric identification system in India, which has used similar technologies to surveil protesters and conduct crowd control as part of efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party to investigate the citizenship of Muslim residents. Accenture ballooned into a giant in federal consulting over the course of the "war on terror," winning hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative contracts from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security for projects from a "virtual border" to recruiting and hiring Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents. In 2006, Accenture won a $10 million contract for a DHS biometric ID program, the world's second biggest, to collect and share biometric data on foreign nationals entering or leaving the U.S. Several LA-based advocates told The Intercept that the contract is yet another development that calls into question the county's commitment to real criminal justice reform.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
High levels of a chemical known to cause cancer have been found at "unacceptably high levels" in popular acne products from brands like Proactive, Target's Up & Up, Clinique, and Clearasil, according to a recent report by independent laboratory Valisure. Benzene, a known human carcinogen, was found to develop in products with benzoyl peroxide, a chemical used to treat acne, at a level of over 800 times the concentration limit of 2 parts per million set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the March 6 report said. The drug product was found to be "fundamentally unstable" especially when stored at high temperatures. The report found a Proactiv product left in 158 degrees Fahrenheit of a hot compact car resulted in the detection of benzene at around 1,270 times the Environmental Protection Agency's calculated threshold for increased cancer risk. "There is not a safe level of benzene that can exist in any skin care product, over the counter or prescription," Christopher Bunick, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Dermatology at Yale University, said in a statement for Valisure. The report also found that benzene can leak out of packaging and "pose a potential inhalation risk" to consumers, according to the report. The company sent a citizen petition to the FDA on Tuesday describing its report and requesting "recalls and a suspension of sales for products containing the active pharmaceutical ingredient benzoyl peroxide."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
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