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Revealing News For a Better World

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Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media


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

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


Chinese Couple Created ‘Cancer Kitchen' in Their Alley to Let Family Members Cook for Loved Ones in Nearby Hospital
2024-10-14, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/chinese-couple-honored-for-their-cancer-kitch...

In the city of Nanchang, in an alleyway near a cancer hospital, two senior citizens run a "community cancer kitchen" to support those caring for their loved ones. Wan Zuocheng and Hong Gengxiang have been doing this charity work for two decades. "No matter what life throws at you, you must eat good food," Mr. Wan told South China Morning Post. For just 3 RMB, the equivalent of around $0.32, anyone can use the kitchen spaces they've set up in the alleyway to cook meals. Sometimes it's for the patients so they can eat something familiar rather than hospital food, while sometimes it's for the people who care for the patients. "There was a couple who came to us with their child," Wan said, talking about the day in 2003 they decided to start their charity kitchen. "They said he didn't want treatment, he just wanted a meal cooked by his mom. So we let them use our kitchen." As time passed they added more utensils, appliances, stoves, and ovens to their stall. This came with gradually increasing use of water, electricity, and coal, but as the costs rose, so too did the community, supporting the couple and their efforts to provide the invaluable service they relied on. Donations began to outpace expenditures, and now nearly 10,000 people come to cook in the cancer kitchen. It's been thoroughly observed in medicine that the odds of beating cancer can be improved with positivity, and what could be more positive than a loved one bringing you a home-cooked meal?

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


I'm a doctor on the frontlines of America's colon cancer crisis - I believe two ingredients found in 'healthy' foods are to blame
2024-09-26, Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13890137/doctor-colon-cancer-crisi...

Dr Maria Abreu is on the cutting edge of one of the biggest health tragedies in a generation. Over the past decade, the Miami gastroenterologist has diagnosed an increasing number of young people with colon cancer - once considered an old person's disease. Dr Abreu [said] she believes two additives that became common in the 1970s ... are seldom talked about in relation to the colon cancer crisis. The first is high-fructose corn syrup, a liquid sweetener uniquely common to the United States and not used in other countries. High fructose corn syrup was introduced in the 1970s as a bid to stabilize food prices. At the time, President Richard Nixon authorized subsidizing corn crops. High-fructose corn syrup ... became cheaper to produce than sugar. The other ingredient is emulsifiers, which is used to give foods a creamy texture and found in healthy foods such as low-fat yogurts, cottage cheese, and peanut butter. Dr Abreu said these ingredients wreak havoc on the microbiome, a network of healthy bacteria in our guts, [reducing] our ability to protect the digestive tract from pathogens that irritate our cells and create inflammation. Chronic inflammation can also lead to inflammatory bowel conditions like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, which Dr Abreu said 'significantly' raises the risk of colon cancer. The introduction of high-fructose corn syrup and emulsifiers in the 1970s and 80s could explain why so many adults in their 40s are getting colon cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City [found that] the rate of colorectal cancers grew 500 percent among children ages 10 to 14 and 333 percent among teenagers aged 15 to 19 years. Rates rose by 71 percent among people 30 to 34 to seven cases per 100,000 people.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. Yet what if the negative news overload on America's chronic illness crisis isn't the full story? Check out our Substack article to learn more about the inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis!


‘I was the Pentagon's UFO chief – I've held alien matter in my hands'
2024-09-07, i News
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/pentagons-ufo-chief-alien-matter-hands-3258387

Luis Elizondo [was the] director of the [Pentagon's] Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme (AATIP). He claims to have been told categorically by senior fellow researchers that the notorious Roswell incident in New Mexico in 1947 really did involve a UAP crash, perhaps involving two flying saucers – and that "four deceased non-human bodies" were recovered from the wreckage and examined. Asked what happened to these supposed bodies, he says on our video call: "We know where they were. We don't know where they are." He adds: "I've got to be careful what I say here, to not get in trouble – I still have my security clearance." Other bodies have also been retrieved from subsequent incidents. He accuses major aerospace companies of trying to obtain crashed UAPs, to "reverse-engineer" the advanced machinery and replicate it. He warns that UAPs appear to be attracted to nuclear technology, sometimes interfering with weapons. He claims to have once even discussed setting a "trap" to catch a UAP by using US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines as bait. And he believes that UAPs have already cost lives. Ten people are said to have died in the "Colares incidents" after being harmed by lasers on a Brazilian island in the 1970s. Many of Elizondo's assertions rely on unnamed people, who he describes as "credible sources." But he also believes he's seen pieces of a UAP himself – and that he's even handled "alleged alien implants found in humans".

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year's 10th anniversary of the world's largest UFO/UAP conference. 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 UFO Information Center.


Ex-Pentagon official Luis Elizondo alleges US recovered nonhuman specimens: report
2024-08-23, New York Post
https://nypost.com/2024/08/23/us-news/ex-pentagon-official-luis-elizondo-alle...

"The United States has been involved in the recovery of objects, vehicles of unknown origin that are neither from our country or any other foreign country," former senior US government intelligence Luis Elizondo told NewsNation. Elizondo claimed that one of the two spacecraft the Department of Defense has is from the alleged 1947 unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) crash in Roswell, New Mexico. "We as a nation have been interested in not only the vehicles themselves but the occupants of these vehicles; to include biological specimens. "We are not alone in this universe. The US government has been aware of that fact for decades." Elizondo claims: "I saw a technical device that had been removed, excised by the Department of Veterans Affairs by a surgeon, a trained physician, from a US military service member who claimed to have a UAP encounter," he told the outlet. "The physician claimed that the object tried to run on him or evade being excised." Elizondo ... graduated from the University of Miami with majors in microbiology and immunology, with studies in parasitology. After a stint in the army, he claims to have "served as a special agent in counterintelligence" for the US and was tasked with helping protect "advanced aerospace technology" from falling into the wrong hands. In 2008, however, Elizondo claims he took "a new position at the Pentagon," where he was later "approached by two individuals who were part of a program I hadn't heard of before," who knew his "background" and were considering him to join their "organization." "After meeting the director and several other individuals, I agreed to take on a role in their program, which was called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a niche program under the umbrella of AWSAPP," he wrote. He would eventually make his way up the chain in the AATIP, where a "typical day" would be investigating UAP reports, "primarily from the Navy," specifically in incidents where they "came dangerously close to our aircraft."

Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year's 10th anniversary of the world's largest UFO/UAP conference. 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 UFO Information Center.


Pesticides as big a cancer risk as smoking, study finds
2024-07-25, The Hill
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4792919-pesticides-cancer-link-...

Pesticides may cause cancer on a level equivalent to smoking cigarettes, a new study has found. The widespread use of pesticides may lead to hundreds of thousands of additional cancer cases in major corn-producing states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio – even for Americans who don't work on farms, according to findings published ... in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society. In February, scientists from the Endocrine Society and the International Pollutants Elimination Network raised concerns that there was no safe level of exposure to many common pesticides. Research ... has tended to focus on specific pesticides, regions or cohorts of the population (like farm workers) – which obscures the fact that pesticides are used across the country, and that those exposed to any of them tend to be exposed to many of them, creating a greater compound risk. The researchers found a difference of 154,000 cancer cases per year, adjusted for population, between the area with the lowest pesticide use – the Great Plains – and that with the highest, the corn belt of the inner Midwest, where hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate are applied each year across millions of acres. When it came to individual cancers, pesticide use seemed to have the strongest association with blood cancers like leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Half again as many cases of the latter appeared to be "caused by pesticides compared to smoking," the researchers wrote.

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


Toxic Harvest
2024-07-25, The Lever
https://www.levernews.com/toxic-harvest/

A new study found the amount of pesticides used on farms was strongly associated with the incidence of many cancers – not only for farmers and their families, but for entire communities. The just-released analysis showed that "agricultural pesticides can increase your risk for some cancers just as much as smoking," says co-author Isain Zapata. Living in places with high pesticide use increased the risk of colon and pancreatic cancers by more than 80 percent. Pesticides are currently an integral part of the country's industrialized agricultural system. About a million pounds of pesticides are used each year, across nearly every state in the country. These chemicals make their way through the food system: a pesticide linked to infertility, for example, is widely found in household staples like Cheerios. When a pesticide is first registered with federal regulators, the vast majority of the information available about it is science conducted by the company who made it. "The presumption in the U.S. is in favor of the safety of the chemical," Burd says. Elsewhere, like the European Union, "chemicals are not presumed safe, they adopt a much more precautionary approach." There's also a revolving door between the [Environmental Protection Agency] and the industry it regulates. Alexandra Dunn, the former assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, for example, is now running CropLife America, the pesticide industry's leading lobbying group. She's only the latest; since 1974, all of the office's directors went on to work for pesticide companies.

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


Social prescribing: why purpose is good for your health
2024-07-23, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240723-how-volunteer-social-prescribing-...

Akeela Shaikh is a natural carer. But the care jobs she loved so much started to tax her physically. She tried antidepressants, then counselling although neither worked for her. But then a nurse gave Shaikh a different kind of medicine: "She gave me a card that read 'social prescribing'." The card led to a phone call with Joanne Gavin, at the time a link worker with Bolton Community and Voluntary Services. Instead of asking "what's the matter with you", link workers ask patients "what matters to you" and find suitable community activities that fit their answer. It was clear what mattered to Shaikh was really another chance to take care of someone. Gavin intuited this. And when she asked Shaikh what she thought might help her feel better, she honoured her answer: "a job". Gavin prescribed the perfect gig for Shaikh: a shift at the office of Lagan's Foundation, a non-profit providing caregiving to children with complex needs. After Gavin intervened, Shaikh says she started feeling more like herself. "It was a way for Akeela to still be involved with the care inside, without the heavy lifting." The power of social prescribing – helping patients to improve their health and wellbeing by connecting them to community resources and activities – is increasingly backed by scientific studies. Prescriptions can cover everything from art classes and cycling groups to food and heating bills. One particularly surprising 2019 study of nearly 7,000 older Americans found that life purpose was significantly inversely linked with all-cause mortality. In other words, having a high sense of life-purpose could help you live longer than those who lack one. "My approach is to listen to someone's story and look at not just what's going on now but what they were like before they started to feel depressed or anxious," says Gavin.

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


Who's the real purveyor of disinformation? Your government
2024-07-18, The Hill
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4773496-government-disinformation-publ...

According to the American Psychological Association, "Misinformation is false or inaccurate information – getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead – intentionally misstating the facts." What we've seen over the past several years is our government purveying disinformation – deliberately misleading the public. When our government peddles disinformation, it undermines the public trust. That's why only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government. Hillary Clinton's campaign made and paid for the Russian collusion hoax, which asserted that Donald Trump had "worked with the Russians to try to rig the 2016 election," to quote then-House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). Clinton and her campaign ... were working behind the scenes with government agents – including the FBI and elected Democrats – to spread disinformation. Several operatives within the FBI were promoting the hoax and giving it the appearance of fact, which allowed the media to cover the issue ad infinitum. One FBI agent, Kevin Clinesmith, even lied to the FISA Court so the government could continue monitoring the phone calls of U.S. citizens. The hoax cost taxpayers millions of dollars, first with the Mueller Report and then the Durham Report. Yet no collusion was found, just disinformation. Retired Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ... [asserted] the natural origin of the COVID-19 virus. Several years later, there is a widespread assumption that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Virility Institute in China. Fauci did not want people to believe the lab-leak theory, perhaps because he and others had worked with and provided federal funds to that laboratory.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


The FDA Just Quietly Gutted Protections for Human Subjects in Research
2024-07-08, Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/fda-just-quietly-gutted-protections-human-subjects-r...

Late last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly introduced a regulation that may be one of the most important shifts in how [clinical research organizations, universities large and small, pharma companies, and multi-billion dollar corporations] conduct future medical and public health research. A bedrock of ethical research design is the universal requirement of informed consent for any medical procedure, treatment, or intervention. These measures have generally been strengthened since the Nuremberg Trials, formally adopted across the U.S. government through the institutional review board (IRB) system. An IRB is a committee of specialists and administrators at each institution that oversees research design and assures the protection of research subjects. At its core, the new FDA rule change allows any IRB to broadly assume the FDA's own exemption power, dubiously granted under the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, to grant exemptions to informed consent requirements based on "minimal risk." Based on vague guidelines, it effectively gives thousands of IRB committees the unilateral ability to determine that researchers need not obtain true informed consent from research participants. The relaxed standards could facilitate the quick approval of controversial research projects. The Gates Foundation-backed Oxitec program is currently releasing millions of genetically modified mosquitos in the Florida Keys. Another application of the relaxed standards is to government-funded studies of online posts designed to identify "misinformation." Entities like the Stanford Internet Observatory have laundered government demands for censorship of speech–even true speech–in online settings like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). The literal purpose of this research is to harm its research subjects by censoring their speech and labeling them as purveyors of misinformation. In 2021, a conservative journalist sued Stanford University for slandering him via this research project, which never sought his informed consent to be a subject of their study. Under the new FDA rule, IRBs everywhere would feel no compunction to require it.

Note: Read about the shocking history of human experimentation. See a disturbing timeline of corporate and government experiments that treated people like guinea pigs. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science from reliable major media sources.


Kansas Sues Pfizer Over Covid-19 Vaccine's Safety, Efficacy
2024-06-17, Bloomberg
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/kansas-sues-pfizer-over...

Kansas on Monday sued Pfizer Inc., accusing the pharmaceutical giant of misrepresenting the safety of its Covid-19 vaccine and violating the state's consumer protection law. The lawsuit was filed by state Attorney General Kris Kobach in Kansas District Court, Thomas County. The suit alleges the drugmaker misled the public when it said it had a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine. "Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths," the state wrote in the complaint. The company administered more than 3.5 million vaccine doses in Kansas as of Feb. 7, 2024, according to the lawsuit. The complaint also said Pfizer maintained its own adverse events database, separate from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a national early warning system managed by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to detect possible safety problems in US-licensed vaccines. Pfizer's database contained cases of adverse events reported spontaneously to Pfizer, cases reported by the health authorities, and cases published in the medical literature, according to the suit. "Pfizer's adverse events database contained more adverse event data than VAERS because it included both information in VAERS and information not in VAERS," Kobach wrote.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Intelligence Officials Secretly Paid by Big Tech to Fight Antitrust Reforms
2024-06-14, Lee Fang on Substack
https://www.leefang.com/p/intelligence-officials-secretly-paid

High-level former intelligence and national security officials have provided crucial assistance to Silicon Valley giants as the tech firms fought off efforts to weaken online monopolies. John Ratcliffe, the former Director of National Intelligence, Brian Cavanaugh, a former intelligence aide in the White House, and [former White House National Security Advisor Robert] O'Brien jointly wrote to congressional leaders, warning darkly that certain legislative proposals to check the power of Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple would embolden America's enemies. The letter left unmentioned that the former officials were paid by tech industry lobbyists at the time as part of a campaign to suppress support for the legislation. The Open App Markets App was designed to break Apple and Google's duopoly over the smartphone app store market. The companies use their control over the app markets to force app developers to pay as much as 30 percent in fees on every transaction. Breaking up Apple and Google's hold over the smartphone app store would enable greater free expression and innovation. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act similarly encourages competition by preventing tech platforms from self-preferencing their own products. The Silicon Valley giants deployed hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to stymie the reforms. For Republicans, they crafted messages on national security and jobs. For Democrats, as other reports have revealed, tech giants paid LGBT, Black, and Latino organizations to lobby against the reforms, claiming that powerful tech platforms are beneficial to communities of color and that greater competition online would lead to a rise in hate speech.The lobbying tactics have so far paid off. Every major tech antitrust and competition bill in Congress has died over the last four years.

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


Scientists document remarkable sperm whale 'phonetic alphabet'
2024-05-08, NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/scientists-document-remarkable-s...

The various species of whales inhabiting Earth's oceans employ different types of vocalizations to communicate. Sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whales, communicate using bursts of clicking noises – called codas – sounding a bit like Morse code. A new analysis of years of vocalizations by sperm whales in the eastern Caribbean has found that their system of communication is more sophisticated than previously known, exhibiting a complex internal structure replete with a "phonetic alphabet." The researchers identified similarities to ... human language. "The research shows that the expressivity of sperm whale calls is much larger than previously thought," said Pratyusha Sharma ... lead author of the study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. "Why are they exchanging these codas? What information might they be sharing?" asked study co-author Shane Gero, Project CETI's lead biologist. "I think it's likely that they use codas to coordinate as a family, organize babysitting, foraging and defense," Gero said. Variations in the number, rhythm and tempo of the clicks produced different types of codas, the researchers found. The whales, among other things, altered the duration of the codas and sometimes added an extra click at the end, like a suffix in human language. "All of these different codas that we see are actually built by combining a comparatively simple set of smaller pieces," said study co-author Jacob Andreas.

Note: Explore more stories about amazing marine mammals.


Latin America has two models for eradicating violent crime. One is rooted in dignity and forgiveness.
2024-04-29, Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0429/A-tender-way...

Latin America is the world's most dangerous region due to cartel and gang violence. It has 9% of the global population but one-third of the world's homicides. Kidnapping and extortion are on the rise. The trend is driving a turn toward increasingly militarized solutions. El Salvador, for example, has incarcerated some 75,000 people – nearly 2% of its population – in recent years on suspicion of being involved in gangs. In Colombia, by contrast, exchanging the threat of arrest for dialogue is a key part of the government's painstaking strategy of negotiating peace simultaneously with some 20 armed factions to end 60 years of conflict. That process, known as Paz Total ("total peace") and launched less than two years ago by President Gustavo Petro, has been marked by reversals and unintended effects. But a key distinction lies in its emphasis on both empathy and the rule of law. The strategy's first example of "restorative incarceration," launched earlier this month, shows how. In exchange for admitting guilt for violent acts and seeking forgiveness from victims and the families, 48 military and former guerrilla leaders are now serving "sentences" by planting trees and helping heal the communities they once dominated through fear. "We're going to sow life to try to make amends and build peace," [said] Henry Torres, a former army general. As Colombia's new attorney general put it, "our mission will be ... a mission for the dignity and well-being of our people." Peace requires patience, said Juan Manuel Santos, a former president who negotiated a 2016 peace accord with Colombia's main guerrilla faction that still serves as a template for Mr. Petro's broader peace plan. "You need to convince, to persuade, to change people's sentiments, to teach them how to forgive, how to reconcile," he told The Harvard Gazette.

Note: A prison in Brazil with low recidivism rates uses a humane approach, where there are no armed guards and inmates have the keys to their own cells. Explore more positive stories like this about repairing criminal justice.


When the Prescription Is for a Dance Class, not a Pill
2024-04-17, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/well/mind/social-prescription-health-medic...

A practice called social prescribing is being explored in the United States, after being adopted in more than 20 other countries. Social prescriptions generally aim to improve health and well-being by connecting people with nonclinical activities that address underlying problems, such as isolation, social stress and lack of nutritious food, which have been shown to play a crucial role in influencing who stays well and for how long. For Ms. Washington, who is among thousands of patients who have received social prescriptions from the nonprofit Open Source Wellness, the experience was transformative. She found a less stressful job, began eating more healthfully and ... was able to stop taking blood pressure medication. At the Cleveland Clinic, doctors are prescribing nature walks, volunteering and ballroom dancing. In Newark, an insurance provider has teamed up with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to offer patients glassblowing workshops, concerts and museum exhibitions. A nonprofit in Utah is connecting mental health patients with community gardens and helping them participate in other activities that bring them a sense of meaning. Universities have started referring students to arts and cultural activities like comedy shows and concerts. Research on social prescribing suggests that it can improve mental health and quality of life and that it might reduce doctor visits and hospital admissions.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing social division.


At four, I was kidnapped and sex-trafficked for years. Now I fight for the powerless – and win every case
2024-03-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/25/at-four-i-was-kidnapped-...

Although it happened more than 60 years ago, Antonio Salazar-Hobson remembers every detail of his kidnapping. After being snatched from his back yard, he is taken into a nightmarish landscape of sex trafficking, violence and exploitation. Rather than being broken by what he experienced, he instead rose from the ashes of his stolen childhood to accomplish extraordinary academic feats and become one of the US's most successful labour rights attorneys, representing vulnerable and powerless communities, and dedicating his life to justice and compassion. "I chose not to be obliterated by the abuse and trauma I was forced to endure," he says. "Instead of being swallowed by the darkness, I survived by walking towards the light." He has taken on multibillion-dollar corporations, represented First Nation people and LGBTQ+ farm worker communities, and won every case. "I'm used to people underestimating me, this poor Chicano boy going up against rooms full of corporate lawyers in suits, but I always prevail," he says. He now plans to dedicate the rest of his life to the anti-trafficking movement. "It is my hope that somehow my story can be of service to the community of survivors of sexual assault and trafficking; what happened to me can show other kids that they don't have to be ashamed, that they can rise up to become whoever they want to be. I want to show them that I refused to be broken and, in the end, I ... made it home."

Note: Explore more positive stories about ending human trafficking.


Poland appears torn by abortion. Research hints divide isn't so deep.
2024-02-09, Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2024/0209/Poland-appears-torn-by-abort...

The issue of abortion has neatly cleaved the Polish political class, yet researchers find that Poles themselves feel much more empathy around it than their elected leaders. And the idea that people hold compassion around many divisive issues presents an opportunity to bridge a societal divide, says Zofia WĹ‚odarczyk, a researcher at the social science think tank More in Common, which published a study. "We basically only talk [in politics] about abortion – are you for, or are you against, but there's so much in between that's gray," she says. And when she and her colleagues interviewed voters of all stripes, they saw the gray. Even among the most staunchly conservative, religious group – about 6% of those surveyed – about a third of men and women surveyed would support someone close to them getting an abortion. The vast majority of Polish men and women of all persuasions oppose punishing women who choose abortion. Anna WĂłjcik, a legal scholar ... says people are ready to move past what she calls "civil war conditions," after eight years in which the conservative majority questioned loyalty to country for simply expressing divergent views. "I feel that Polish people are tired of this polarizing political scene and division," says Ms. WĂłjcik. "Basically people want to move forward, to be able to discuss topics in democracy that we have conflicting views on, like energy transition and education and stuff like that."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.


Blind Jazz Sax Teacher Inspires Students to ‘Feel' Their Instruments, Uses His Disability as Teaching Tool
2024-02-09, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/blind-jazz-sax-teacher-inspires-students-to-f...

From a Tampa performing arts conservatory comes the story of a blind jazz saxophonist who uses his disability as a teaching tool. He encourages his students to act on instinct; to feel the music through their instruments, and not let the waking world deceive them. "Welcome to every day of my life," says Matthew Weihmuller in his jazz improvisation class after turning the lights off. "Then we have a big laugh," he adds. When Weihmuller started playing, he needed braille sheet music, and pieces would take months; even years to learn. As if that weren't difficult enough, few people in the country were capable of providing braille music, so he started "brailling" his own, with the help of his mom. "They can't look at their instrument. Now, they have to feel their instrument with their fingers and hands, right?" Weihmuller told Fox 13. "Now, we've got to listen to the music. We can't read it. It forces the students to use their other senses." During improvisational sessions, a musician has to be ready for sudden changes in time signature or key. This is nearly impossible to express through sheet music. At least in this regard, the children are learning in the best way for this unorthodox, yet traditional form of jazz music. As an educator with blindness, Weihmuller stresses turning any disadvantage into an advantage, a teaching philosophy that has led some students to tell the man that he has changed the way they look at life.

Note: Read more inspiring news articles on the power of art. For more, explore our uplifting Inspiration Center, which focuses on solutions and the best of humanity and life.


National Science Foundation spent millions on AI censorship tools to quash ‘misinformation'
2024-02-06, Washington Times
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/feb/6/national-science-foundation-s...

The National Science Foundation spent millions of taxpayer dollars developing censorship tools powered by artificial intelligence that Big Tech could use "to counter misinformation online" and "advance state-of-the-art misinformation research." House investigators on the Judiciary Committee and Select Committee on the Weaponization of Government said the NSF awarded nearly $40 million ... to develop AI tools that could censor information far faster and at a much greater scale than human beings. The University of Michigan, for instance, was awarded $750,000 from NSF to develop its WiseDex artificial intelligence tool to help Big Tech outsource the "responsibility of censorship" on social media. The release of [an] interim report follows new revelations that the Biden White House pressured Amazon to censor books about the COVID-19 vaccine and comes months after court documents revealed White House officials leaned on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites to remove posts and ban users whose content they opposed, even threatening the social media platforms with federal action. House investigators say the NSF project is potentially more dangerous because of the scale and speed of censorship that artificial intelligence could enable. "AI-driven tools can monitor online speech at a scale that would far outmatch even the largest team of 'disinformation' bureaucrats and researchers," House investigators wrote in the interim report.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and censorship from reliable sources.


Predator or prey? Undercover federal agents target vulnerable teens
2024-01-26, Denver Post
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/01/26/opinion-predator-or-prey-undercover-fed...

A disturbing trend of undercover federal agents engaging minors online to plan acts related to terrorism abroad, then arresting them shortly after they turn 18, ought to raise eyebrows as well as outrage, given that many of these targets are teens who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities. The most recent case in Colorado involves Humzah Mashkoor, an 18-year-old from Westminster charged with "attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization," according to a U.S. Department of Justice December 2023 press release. Months earlier, in July last year, FBI agents arrested Davin Daniel Meyer, 18, of Castle Rock, charged with the same crime, which can carry a stiff penalty of decades in prison. And in June, 18-year-old Mateo Ventura of Massachusetts was charged with a similar crime of intention after being in contact not with terrorists but with undercover FBI agents. A fourth case occurred last year in Philadelphia. When you look at the striking similarities of these cases, it's not unreasonable to conclude that federal agents are failing morally and ethically by seemingly coaxing and cajoling minors – including two Colorado children with limited intellectual capacity and no history of harming anyone – to cross a line. The FBI agents then "get their man" – even before these individuals are in fact men. Enough time has gone by to show the human element to this story, but no reporters seem to be interested.

Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.


Can a Big Village Full of Tiny Homes Ease Homelessness in Austin?
2024-01-08, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/headway/homelessness-tiny-home-austin.html

On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, what began as a fringe experiment has quickly become central to the city's efforts to reduce homelessness. To Justin Tyler Jr., it is home. Mr. Tyler, 41, lives in Community First! Village, which aims to be a model of permanent affordable housing for people who are chronically homeless. In the fall of 2022, he joined nearly 400 residents of the village, moving into one of its typical digs: a 200-square-foot, one-room tiny house furnished with a kitchenette, a bed and a recliner. Eclectic tiny homes are clustered around shared outdoor kitchens, and neat rows of recreational vehicles and manufactured homes line looping cul-de-sacs. There are chicken coops, two vegetable gardens, a convenience store ... art and jewelry studios, a medical clinic and a chapel. In the next few years, Community First is poised to grow to nearly 2,000 homes across three locations, which would make it by far the nation's largest project of this kind, big enough to permanently house about half of Austin's chronically homeless population. Many residents have jobs in the village, created to offer residents flexible opportunities to earn some income. Last year, they earned a combined $1.5 million working as gardeners, landscapers, custodians, artists, jewelry makers and more. Ute Dittemer, 66, faced a daily struggle for survival during a decade on the streets before moving into Community First five years ago with her husband. Now she supports herself by painting and molding figures out of clay at the village art house. A few years ago, a clay chess set she made sold for $10,000 at an auction. She used the money to buy her first car.

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