News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., will lead a new task force focused on the declassification of federal secrets – including records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other documents in the public interest. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., appointed Luna to chair the "Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets." Comer and Luna sent letters to the State Department, Department of Energy and the CIA for documents relating to the origins of COVID-19; the National Security Agency and CIA for records relating to JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations; the Department of Defense and the CIA for 9/11 files; and to the Justice Department for documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein. The creation of the task force comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order telling the director of national intelligence ... to present a plan for the full and complete release of all JFK assassination records within 15 days. He also ordered that officials immediately review the records relating to RFK and MLK assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days. "We have spent years seeking information on the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government secrets without success," Luna told Fox News Digital. "It is time to give Americans the answers they deserve."
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigations covering the dark truths behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.
Drugs were the elephant in the room during the failed U.S. war in Afghanistan. Because opium was such a large part of the poor and war-torn country's economy, the fighting between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan republic often looked more like a turf war between rival narco gangs, with the U.S. military protecting some opium fields and bombing others. Afghan farmers were happy to take USAID's help while continuing to grow opium. For example, opium cultivation increased by 119 percent in the Kandahar Food Zone between 2013 and 2015, after USAID helped expand the irrigation systems there. A USAID-funded charity in Kenya allegedly covered up rampant sex abuse of children, and USAID funded a second charity in the Central African Republic a month after a major sex abuse scandal broke. The Children of God Relief Institute, which ran an orphanage for Kenyan children affected by AIDS and similar projects, received high praise from the U.S. government. From 2013 onward, USAID gave the institute $29.3 million. In 2021, a whistleblower told USAID that the charity was harboring a dark secret. USAID's inspector general soon determined that Children of God Relief Institute officials "knew or should have known of multiple incidents" of child sex abuse "but failed to take effective remedial measures to address the abuse." In some cases, the victims were forced to apologize for provoking their own abuse, The Washington Post reports.
Note: Watch our latest video on government waste, where we take a thoughtful look at the current political landscape and explore powerful solutions that have the potential to tackle wasteful spending and restore financial freedom. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the war on drugs.
High-level executives with the NFL's New Orleans Saints football team and the NBA's Pelicans basketball team had a deeper role than previously known in connection with a list of priests and deacons faced with credible allegations of child molestation. According to highly sensitive emails ... one top executive even described a conversation with the New Orleans district attorney at the time that allowed them to remove clergy names from the list. The initial allegations about the emails led to local and national media investigations, including by Sports Illustrated and the Associated Press, that highlighted a fierce closeness between the sports franchises and the Catholic church in New Orleans. [Senior vice president of communications for the Saints and Pelicans Greg] Bensel sought to convince media outlets to limit their scrutiny of a list that turned out to be so incomplete it eventually precipitated a joint federal and state law enforcement investigation into whether the archdiocese spent decades operating a child sex-trafficking ring whose crimes were illegally covered up. After first seeing the so-called Saints emails in 2019 through a subpoena, abuse survivors' attorneys alleged that the two franchises' top officials had a significant hand in trying to minimize what was then a public-relations nightmare for the city's archdiocese – but has since triggered a full-blown child sex-trafficking investigation aimed at the church by law enforcement. A [2019] newspaper article about a local deacon and alleged serial child molester thrust [New Orleans archbishop Gregory] Aymond into the center of the global Catholic church's clergy-abuse scandal. The article questioned how the deacon, George Brignac, had been allowed to keep reading scripture at masses ... after he'd been arrested multiple times on child molestation charges.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
The Duke of York was in contact with the US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein longer than he had previously admitted, emails published in court documents appear to show. "Keep in close touch and we'll play some more soon!!!!" said an email sent to Epstein from a "member of the British Royal Family", believed to be Prince Andrew. The court documents, from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), show the email as being sent in February 2011. In his BBC Newsnight interview, Prince Andrew had said he had not seen or spoken to Epstein after going to his house in New York in December 2010. Prince Andrew is believed to have first met Epstein in 1999, through Epstein's friend Ghislaine Maxwell. The following year, in June 2000, Epstein and Maxwell were among guests at a party at Windsor Castle. Later that year, Prince Andrew held a birthday party for Maxwell at Sandringham, with Epstein in attendance. The relationship appeared to continue, with Epstein attending another Windsor Castle party in July 2006. Between those times, in 2008, Epstein was convicted in the US for procuring a minor for prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. After Epstein left prison, Prince Andrew met him in New York in 2010. Andrew said this meeting was to end their relationship. In July 2019, Epstein was arrested on charges of the sex trafficking of minors. He died in prison. In November that year, Prince Andrew ... stepped down from royal duties.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
The Donald Trump administration has started sending flights of undocumented migrants in the United States to Guantanamo Bay. The US has ... previously used a Guantanamo Bay camp to detain certain migrants, but Trump's use is different, immigration experts have said. On January 29, Trump signed a memo directing the departments of defence and homeland security to expand the Migrant Operations Centre at Guantanamo Bay to "provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States". Historically, the US has used Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants stopped at sea. Now, Trump is sending people who were detained on US soil. Trump says he plans to detain 30,000 people. That many people haven't been detained at Guantanamo Bay since the 1990s. Migrants at Guantanamo Bay lack "access to basic human necessities, appropriate medical care, education, and potable water," the [International Refugee Assistance Project] said in [a] report. Migrants don't have access to unmonitored calls with lawyers and can't candidly speak about poor conditions at the naval base. "The US government intentionally uses Guantanamo in hopes of avoiding oversight and the public eye, which makes the facility ripe for abuse," [interim senior policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project Hannah] Flamm said.
Note: Explore our comprehensive news database on the dark history of Guantanamo Bay. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.
I'm really annoyed, on behalf of the journalist Charles Piller, about the release date of his book "Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's." Piller ... presents copious evidence of severe fraud, negligence, and buck-passing in Alzheimer's research. From fabricated images published in major research journals (many of them still unretracted) to data manipulation conducted by pharmaceutical companies to complete negligence on the part of federal watchdogs, Piller's reporting demonstrates indisputably that the field of Alzheimer's research is in sorry shape. Journals ... have proved quite reluctant to retract papers that seem to plainly warrant it, while universities have frequently closed ranks around researchers credibly suspected of fraud rather than engage in prompt and thorough investigations. Journals and individual researchers not only are loath to correct or explain errors but are often unwilling to even respond to basic questions about their work. That's the problem with demanding that people "trust" science just because it calls itself science, or just because it's being conducted by an institution or an individual bearing impressive-seeming credentials. More deference is not the answer, because undue deference lies at the root of almost every major scandal in science. Why should you trust a journal that refuses to correct its errors or a university that protects a star researcher credibly accused of fraud?
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.
Logan Sowell's suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving the Marine Corps' stable of drill instructors, according to military casualty reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2023, three occurred at Parris Island within less than three months. A study completed by the Marine Corps in 2019 found that during the previous decade, 29 drill instructors either ended their lives or openly acknowledged they had contemplated doing so – an aberration the study's authors characterized as startlingly high compared with the occurrence of suicidal ideation among Marines who had never held that job. Rates of addiction and divorce among drill instructors also were higher, researchers found. Critics and relatives of those who died accuse the Marine Corps of fostering an environment that contributed to their deaths. They describe routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job's requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones. Others detailed bouts of depression or alcohol dependency. The Marine Corps lacks adequate services for those who are struggling and need help, and tacitly condones a culture that stigmatizes those who seek it. "We put a drastic expectation on them to act perfect," said a Marine officer who has supervised dozens of drill instructors. This top-down pressure ... "causes this stress that trickles into their home life."
Note: Read about the tragic suicides and traumas of military drone operators. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and mental health.
In January 2024, The GivingBlock, one of the largest crypto donation platforms, reported that crypto donations had reached more than $2 billion, projected to exceed $10 billion by 2032. Crypto donors, who are largely millennials, contribute on average 128 times more per donation than cash donors. By leveraging tax incentives like capital gain offsets to eliminate taxes on donations, crypto giving is as financially smart as it is impactful. But the benefits of crypto giving go far beyond the financial incentives. Social impact is embedded in the foundation of Web 3. This new economy is fueled by cutting out traditional middlemen, banks, and allowing transparent, secure, and borderless peer-to-peer payments. No ID or passport is needed. This allows people, especially the unbanked, to have full control of their assets with minimal fees. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has championed using memecoin momentum for good, saying, "I want to see quality fun projects that positively impact the ecosystem and the world." He donated nearly $2 million in memecoin winnings to charities, including $532,000 to the Effective Altruism Fund's Animal Welfare Fund and over $1 million to the United Humanitarian Front, an organization providing grants to humanitarian relief initiatives in Ukraine. New Story, a nonprofit building homes to alleviate homelessness worldwide, partnered with artist Brian Ku to release a limited edition series of NFTs where each sale provided a 3D house for a family in Latin America.
Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
Bitcoin usage in emerging markets is increasing rapidly. And while it's true that Bitcoin can be a better alternative for unbanked peoples who don't have the means, access, or even the basic proof of identity to open a bank account, it turns out its biggest benefit today for many people is that Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. In other words, government cannot throttle, control or monitor your behavior as they can in the legacy financial world. In 2020, protests against the government erupted in Lagos and across Nigeria because of the brutal and illegal actions of a unit in the police force. Within days, groups supporting the protesters had their bank accounts frozen. With no other option, they turned to Bitcoin, raising funds that sustained the movement. Peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions can be zero-fee, a big break from the much higher fees many in Africa are forced to pay for basic financial services, such as those for remittances, which are on average closer to 9%. Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, has identified a number of other countries, including China, Russia, Belarus, and Myanmar, where the government uses the monetary and banking systems to silence dissidents. Recent deplatforming by big social media companies of certain groups and individuals ... has raised concerns about similar risks in financial services, where banks can limit access to bank accounts, credit cards, and so forth.
Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
The arrest of Telegram's founder and the takedown of Simply Bitcoin's Youtube channel for violating Youtube's "harmful and dangerous" policy ... speaks to the power of corporations to mediate the reach of speech. French authorities have claimed that Durov was arrested, for among other things, providing "cryptology" tools. States couch their control of virtual space as an extension of their physical authority. Platforms and individuals are held to account for "crimes" being perpetuated on virtual space. One common thread is ... the idea of "misinformation." Another is to use the most heinous crimes in a witch hunt - child abuse sexual material for example. Another favorite is "terrorism." Networks like Bitcoin and Nostr are more needed than ever. They both give people geographic arbitrage, the ability to operate without corporate leadership, and a hedge against state repression. The network cannot be shut down or threatened to change its rules as quickly and as easily as arresting one CEO. Is the idea of "decentralization" possible in a world where states can arrest CEOs and founders? Nothing can prevent somebody from exchanging funds with one another using Bitcoin or expressing something on Nostr. Usage of these networks in a peer-to-peer manner with an array of self-custody wallets and clients shows a popular demand for privacy, encryption, and transmitting value without the prying eyes of the state.
Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
Cryptocurrencies represent the marriage of decentralized networks (what we commonly know as the internet today) and assets like money. [Cryptocurrency] uniquely enables new solutions to otherwise intractable technological and social problems. Users often lose control over their personal information online, either all at once through platform hacks or bit-by-bit in the opaque world of online advertising and data brokers. A major issue is that the business model of big tech firms is advertising, creating an incentive to aggregate data into a single database, creating a "honeypot" for hackers. Blockchains can enable a new form of digital identity document for the web. Using these credentials, users can authenticate for services without having to divulge as much personal information. Traditional payment systems are often slow, costly and inaccessible to many. Cryptocurrencies backed by real-world currencies, dubbed "stablecoins," provide an efficient alternative for global transactions. In 2023, stablecoins accounted for $4.5 trillion of crypto transaction volume on blockchain networks. Even digital payments giant PayPal announced the launch of its stablecoin earlier this year. Traditional humanitarian aid often suffers from inefficiency, lack of transparency and corruption, undermining its effectiveness and trustworthiness. Blockchain offers a solution by providing a transparent, traceable and secure system for humanitarian aid. A recent UN pilot [provided] aid directly to families affected by the war between Russia and Ukraine. The entertainment industry is famously concentrated, causing writers and actors to recently go on strike ... demanding better pay and new contract clauses. Blockchain technology enables more democratic digital economies through non-fungible token (NFTs) marketplaces like Zora, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) like CreatorDAO, allowing creators and artists to take advantage of online marketplaces and earn fair compensation for their contributions.
Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
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.
Dr. Anthony Fauci writes in his new "tell-all" that those who argue the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, potentially due to experiments funded by US grants, are promoting a "conspiracy theory" – contradicting his own recent testimony before Congress. NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak told members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last month that US taxpayers did fund gain-of-function research on bat SARS viruses at the WIV. Manhattan-based EcoHealth has denied that its work met the controlling definition for that research – or that the experiments could have led to the pandemic. Earlier this week, two scientific experts testified before another Senate committee that evidence points to the experiments at the Wuhan lab as the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. NIH, which oversees NIAID, awarded more than $500,000 to EcoHealth between 2014 and 2020 that was funneled toward risky viral research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The research resulted in a modified virus that was 10,000 times more infectious in lungs, 1 million times more infectious in brains and three times more lethal in humanized lab mice, [Rutgers University molecular biologist Dr. Richard] Ebright testified earlier this week, based on NIH disclosures of the experiment. Another EcoHealth proposal, which was never funded, is seen as a potential way in which the virus could have been created.
Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID and corruption in biotech.
A former CIA operative has revealed the agency pursues people with a certain mental disorder as it makes them the best agents. John Kiriakou, who had a 14-year career as a CIA officer, said ... 'A CIA psychiatrist told me one time that the CIA looks to hire people with sociopathic tendencies–not sociopaths because sociopaths have no consciences,' said Kiriakou, speaking to The Real News Network. A 'sociopath' is someone who lacks empathy, disregards the feelings of others and may manipulate or harm people without remorse, often for their own personal gain. 'Sociopaths are impossible to control,' said Kiriakou. 'They slip through the cracks because they have no conscience and they pass the polygraph very easily because they don't feel guilty. The CIA has admitted that spies have pathological personality features that help them with their espionage efforts, such as a sense of entitlement or a desire for power and control. While employed by the CIA, Kiriakou was involved in critical counterterrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He was involved in the capture of terrorist Abu Zubaydah. However, he refused to be trained in so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' Kiriakou has claimed that he never authorized or engaged in these techniques. After leaving the CIA, he appeared on ABC News where he said the CIA waterboarded detainees and labeled the action as torture. The interview led to Kiriakou being arrested in 2012 and charged with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Note: Learn more about the rise of the CIA and the dark realities of modern American torture practices in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.
On an episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" released Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a picture of Biden administration officials berating Facebook staff during requests to remove certain content from the social media platform. "Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse," Zuckerberg told ... Joe Rogan. "It just got to this point where we were like, 'No, we're not gonna, we're not gonna take down things that are true. That's ridiculous.'" In a letter last year to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the White House "repeatedly pressured" Facebook to remove "certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire." Zuckerberg said Facebook, which is owned by Meta, acquiesced at times, while suggesting that different decisions would be made going forward. On Rogan's show, Zuckerberg said the administration had asked Facebook to remove from its platform a meme that showed actor Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV screen advertising a class action lawsuit for people who once took the Covid vaccine."They're like, 'No, you have to take that down,'" Zuckerberg said, adding, "We said, 'No, we're not gonna. We're not gonna take down things that are, that are true.'" Zuckerberg ... also announced that his platforms – Facebook and Instagram – would relax rules related to political content.
Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
Instagram has released a long-promised "reset" button to U.S. users that clears the algorithms it uses to recommend you photos and videos. TikTok offers a reset button, too. And with a little bit more effort, you can also force YouTube to start fresh with how it recommends what videos to play next. It means you now have the power to say goodbye to endless recycled dance moves, polarizing Trump posts, extreme fitness challenges, dramatic pet voice-overs, fruit-cutting tutorials, face-altering filters or whatever other else has taken over your feed like a zombie. I know some people love what their apps show them. But the reality is, none of us are really in charge of our social media experience anymore. Instead of just friends, family and the people you choose to follow, nowadays your feed or For You Page is filled with recommended content you never asked for, selected by artificial-intelligence algorithms. Their goal is to keep you hooked, often by showing you things you find outrageous or titillating – not joyful or calming. And we know from Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen and others that outrage algorithms can take a particular toll on young people. That's one reason they're offering a reset now: because they're under pressure to give teens and families more control. So how does the algorithm go awry? It tries to get to know you by tracking every little thing you do. They're even analyzing your "dwell time," when you unconsciously scroll more slowly.
Note: Read about the developer who got permanently banned from Meta for developing a tool called "Unfollow Everything" that lets users, well, unfollow everything and restart their feeds fresh. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.
In the nineteen-fifties, the Leo Burnett advertising agency helped invent Tony the Tiger, a cartoon mascot who was created to promote Frosted Flakes to children. In 1973, a trailblazing nutritionist named Jean Mayer warned the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs that ... junk foods could be described as empty calories. He questioned why it was legal to apply the term "cereals" to products that were more than fifty-per-cent sugar. Children's-food advertisements, he claimed, were "nothing short of nutritional disasters." Mayer's warnings, however, did not lead to a string of state bans on junk food. Advertising continued to target children, and consumers of all ages were free to buy and consume any amount of Frosted Flakes. This health issue was ultimately seen as one that families should manage on their own. In recent years, experts have been warning that social media harms children. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist who became a whistle-blower, told a Senate subcommittee that her ex-employer's "profit optimizing machine is generating self-harm and self-hate–especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls." "It is time to require a surgeon general's warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents," Vivek Murthy, whose second term as the U.S. Surgeon General ended on Monday, wrote in an opinion piece last year.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
More than 30 of the most common antidepressants used in the UK are to be reviewed by the UK's medicines regulator, as figures point to hundreds of deaths linked to suicide and self-harm among people prescribed these drugs. The medicines, which include Prozac and are prescribed to millions of patients, will all be looked at by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). It follows concerns raised by families in Britain over the adequacy of safety measures in place to protect those taking the drugs, such as warnings about potential side effects. There has been a huge rise in the use of antidepressants in England, with 85 million prescriptions issued in 2022-23, up from 58 million in 2015-16, according to NHS figures. Nigel Crisp, a crossbench peer and chair of the Beyond Pills all-party parliamentary group, [said]: "Overprescribing of antidepressants has an enormous cost in terms of human suffering, because so many people become dependent and then struggle to get off them – and it wastes vital NHS resources." More than 515 death alerts linked to these drugs, involving suicidal ideation and self-harm, have been made to the MHRA since the year 2000. Some antidepressants have been given to children as young as four, and the total cost of the medication to the NHS in 2022-23 was more than Ł231m. Side effects of many antidepressants can include suicidal thoughts and anxiety, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Note: A UK coroner has issued a warning about the effects of antidepressants and how their use could lead to more deaths without a change in guidance and labeling about the risks. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on mental health and Big Pharma corruption.
Alzheimer's ... afflicts nearly seven million Americans, about one in every nine people over the age of 65, making it a leading cause of death among older adults. Up to 420,000 adults in the prime of life – including people as young as 30 – suffer from early-onset Alzheimer's. The annual number of new cases of dementia is expected to double by 2050. Yet despite decades of research, no treatment has been created that arrests Alzheimer's cognitive deterioration, let alone reverses it. Over the past 25 years, Alzheimer's research has suffered a litany of ostensible fraud and other misconduct by world-famous researchers and obscure scientists alike. These deceptions have warped the trajectory of Alzheimer's research and drug development, prompting critical concerns about how bad actors, groupthink and perverse research incentives have undermined the pursuit of treatments and cures. This may have jeopardized the well-being of patients. I asked a team of brain and scientific imaging experts to help me analyze suspicious studies by 46 leading Alzheimer's researchers. Collectively, the experts identified nearly 600 dubious papers from the group that have distorted the field – papers having been cited some 80,000 times. Many of the most respected Alzheimer's scholars – whose work steers the scientific discourse – repeatedly referred to those tainted studies to support their own ideas. This has compromised the field's established base of knowledge.
Note: Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.
The Environmental Protection Agency said last week that it needed more time to study the health impacts of paraquat, a powerful herbicide that has drawn scrutiny for its possible links to Parkinson's disease, a move that would allow it to remain on the market. Several advocacy groups had sued the EPA over an interim registration decision it issued in 2021 ... on the grounds that it was not protective enough. In a statement, the EPA said additional data was necessary to resolve uncertainty around the risks of inhaling the herbicide. For as long as David Jilbert could remember, he wanted to be a farmer. For five years, Jilbert personally mixed, loaded and sprayed paraquat to control weeds in his vineyard. Then he began having difficulty tying his shoes and buttoning his shirts. He started to walk with a slow, shuffling gait around the winery. He was soon diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neurological disorder that affects motor functions and causes cognitive impairment, despite having no family history or genetic predisposition to the disease. He and his doctors blame paraquat. Jilbert is among the nearly 6,000 Americans who have filed lawsuits against Syngenta and Chevron, which distributed paraquat products in the United States until 1986. The suits allege that the companies failed to warn consumers about paraquat's substantial health risks. Paraquat ... is among the most widely used pesticides in the United States.
Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America's health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.