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.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s pledge Thursday to keep American troops in Afghanistan through 2016 was the last thing Mary Hladky wanted to hear. “It’s what we were dreading,” said the mother of three, whose son Ryan is in the National Guard after serving in the Army from 2009 to 2013 and in Afghanistan during the surge in 2011. She said announcements such as the one Obama made last week no longer surprise her, but they are still very upsetting. In May 2014, Obama said it was “time to turn the page on ... the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” saying he would withdraw the last American troops from the former country by 2016. Thursday, the president reversed course, saying the U.S. would keep at least 9,800 troops in the Central Asian nation through most of 2016, with at least 5,500 of them there at the end of next year. Obama ... was joined by Vice President Joe Biden and top military leaders when he made the announcement in Washington. After her son’s deployment, Hladky joined a group called Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), which has for years urged lawmakers to bring U.S. troops back from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although Obama said last week he opposes the idea of what he called “endless war,” it appears the decision to conclude what is now a 14-year-old conflict in Afghanistan will no longer be his to make, given the end of his term in office in January 2017. Meanwhile, his move has resulted in a tremendous amount of anger and betrayal being felt among many military families.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
A former MP is to be interviewed under caution by police over claims that he was part of a paedophile ring who repeatedly sexually assaulted a young girl in the 1980s and 1990s. The man has been in communication with Staffordshire police, who are investigating. The alleged victim, Esther Baker, waived her right to anonymity to make the claims public in May. She has said her abusers possibly included a peer and a judge, and that the abuse went on for four years from the age of six, in the woodland and at other locations, often while police officers stood guard. Baker has also alleged that she was sexually abused at a flat in London, which she now believes to be Dolphin Square – the location at the centre of the Metropolitan police’s Operation Midland inquiry into the alleged murders of three children by high-profile individuals in a paedophile ring. The former politician, who has not been named ... is one of 1,400 high-profile individuals who have been or are under police investigation across the country for child abuse dating back decades. They include 76 politicians, alive and dead, 135 celebrities and 43 people from the music industry. The case has been referred to Operation Hydrant, a national team coordinating the investigations taking place across the country, which was set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile revelations and the increase in reporting of child sexual abuse which followed.
Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team titled "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this sad subject.
A former Australian prime minister is on a list of "alleged paedophiles" that Liberal senator Bill Heffernan claims forms part of a police document. Senator Heffernan used a Senate estimates committee hearing on Tuesday to discuss the list of 28 people. Many ... named in the documents were "prominent". Senator Heffernan had shown the documents to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse but was told they were not part of its terms of reference. The commission, which was established in 2014, has inquired into child abuse in a wide range of institutions, including sporting groups, churches and after-school care services. It has power to look at abuse that occurs in an institutional context. Senator Heffernan called for the commission's terms to be changed to include the "institution of the law". He accused former royal commissioner Justice James Roland Wood of refusing to investigate lawyers who had allegedly attended a Kings Cross "boy brothel". "I did ask the commissioner why. He said he'd deny if I ever mentioned it," Senator Heffernan said. "[The commissioner] said, 'We've decided not to revisit that issue because the public would lose confidence in the judiciary.'" The senator said he had a list of all of the lawyers who allegedly attended the club, some of whom were still practising.
Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team titled "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this sad subject. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
The Federal Communications Commission voted to cap the price that phone companies can charge for calls to and from prison inmates, which they say can run up to a staggering $14 per minute. The rates for prison phone calls far exceed those of the general public, with the financial burden falling on the families of the more than 2 million incarcerated Americans. Under the new rules, scheduled to go into effect in early 2016, most prison inmates will not be charged more than 11 cents per minute for any call. The rules will ... also curb the extra charges that can often tack on up to an extra 70 percent, according to the commission. “The truth is that each of us is paying a heavy price for what is now a predatory, scaled market regime,” said Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “Not one of us here would ever consider paying $500 a month for a voice-only service where calls are dropped routinely for no reason.” While they don’t ban them outright, the new FCC rules also strongly discourage what they describe as kickbacks, the commission phone companies usually pay correctional facilities to win lucrative phone service contracts. “Incarceration is a policy choice, and it’s imminently unfair to then ask the families to pay for the correctional budgets,” said Aleks Kajstura, legal director at the Prison Policy Initiative ... citing the case of one inmate who faced a $56 bill for a four-minute conversation with a pro bono attorney.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison industry corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
School lunches are undergoing a big change in Marin County [CA]. In fact, one school might be making food history. This is school lunch as a fine dining experience, with fresh flowers on each table and the chef sitting down to personally explain his menu; one he's made from scratch. And everything is 100 percent organic and non-genetically modified. The Marin City School District is said to be the first in the nation to offer that. "It's literally the best we can get, that's the starting point," said Judi Shils, director of Turning Green. "That's how we can begin to start making bodies healthy and minds healthy." Turning Green is a nonprofit that launched the Conscious Kitchen at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in 2013 and this year added a second site. Some of the produce comes from the school's own garden. Because many of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, the federal government picks up the tab for the meals. But the Conscious Kitchen also has an influential local partner. Justin Everett, the acclaimed Executive Chef at Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, consults on menus and mentors some of the students. "Food speaks to everybody and that's this great way that we can connect with kids," said Everett. For some, it's a learning process. "I didn't like everything," said one student. But most like the switch from pre-packaged foods. "It's fresh, doesn't have pesticides in it," said another student. A healthy breakfast and a snack are also served and educators say they've seen improvement in behavior and grades.
Note: This article neglected to mention that teachers at the school have reported that as a result of the dietary change, they have seen increased leadership qualities exhibited by students, improved academic performance, and a huge 67% decrease in disciplinary cases.
Free Money Day, being celebrated today, is an annual event where people hand out money to strangers, two notes or coins at a time, asking them to pass half on to someone else. Using fun and intrigue, the day encourages conversations about our broken financial system and how its very design increases inequality. The Free Money Day project began in 2011 when a number of researchers at the Post Growth Institute were looking for a way to engage the broader population in a conversation on financial reform. Four years later, more than 200 Free Money Day events spanning 41 countries have been held, and more than US$10,000 (Ł6,500) has been distributed. In Moerewa, New Zealand, for example, buskers Emma and Derek handed out money to people listening to their music. In Mexico City, Axel gave his money to people living on the streets with a request that they in turn pass half on to strangers. In Utah, Roger handed out two $1 bills to each of his restaurant co-workers. Others have taken the experiment beyond money. In 2012, Gonçalo’s video store in Lisbon, Portugal, for example, offered free movie rentals. In the same year, Layne and Patcharin in Chiang Mai, Thailand, were so inspired by the Free Money Day concept that they gave away half of their 14-acre land holding to begin a land trust for permaculture farmers. By exploring the real value of money, Free Money Day encourages people to consider how they can put it to better use.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Ra Paulette ... has been scraping and shaping New Mexico's sandstone into man-made caves of art. He calls them his wilderness shrines - massive in scale, poetic in their design. "I see this as an environmental project; I'm trying to open up people's feelings," he said. He has no degree in sculpting. He's not a structural engineer, and he's not an architect. He is simply a man who found his passion. "Most of the wonder that I feel is in the actual making of the caves," he said. "Once they're made, I move on, if I want fresh wonder." He's found that fresh wonder digging about a dozen caves so far, most commissioned by nearby residents who want a piece of livable art. One cave along the Rio Grande River even has power, a wood floor, and a colorful bathtub with running water. It took Paulette two years to dig. He charged a mere $12 an hour in labor. "You don't do this for the money, you're not getting rich off making these beautiful places," said Cowan. "No, it's the process, you know? I'm having the time of my life." Recently ... documentary filmmaker heard of the caves, and spent three years following Paulette as he dug. The result was a film so unique it was nominated for an Academy Award. Suddenly, Ra Paulette was a caveman with a following. Showing us his latest project, [he said], "This is the largest thing I've ever done." At 67, he'll be well into his 70s before he shares this cave with the world. He hopes those who come here will find in its solitude what Ra Paulette already has: a sense of peace, and purpose.
Note: These caves bear some similarity to the intriguing carved caves in New Mexico allegedly created by a group called the WingMakers.
Two movies on similar missions are opening within weeks of each other this season, “Racing Extinction” and “This Changes Everything,” both exploring the devastation humanity has wrought on the natural world. Yet rather than focusing only on what is dying and lost, both films offer messages of hope, profiling people who have helped stop ... the pillaging of wildlife and land. Naomi Klein, who adapted “This Changes Everything,” based on her book of the same name, said a film salesman ... told her that he would market the movie only if there was no reference to climate change in the marketing. If you beat people over the head with shame, guilt and despair ... people turn away and try to forget about it. Cognizant of such aversion, the teams behind each film ... developed similar plans: target the people most passionate about what’s at stake, and bank on them to draw in others. “We want to make sure we approach the core audience directly,” said Richard Abramowitz, whose company, Abramorama, is distributing both films. “Racing Extinction” got a head start with its message this summer when the director and his collaborators projected images of endangered animals onto the Empire State Building. “This Changes Everything”... focuses on grass-roots movements that thwarted oil companies and communities that embraced renewable energy. It’s all part of the effort to get people to see the movie and then take an action.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
They are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago. The 158 families each contributed $250,000 or more in the campaign through June 30. An additional 200 families gave more than $100,000. Together, the two groups contributed well over half the money in the presidential election - the vast majority of it supporting Republicans. “The campaign finance system is now a countervailing force to the way the actual voters of the country are evolving and the policies they want,” said Ruy Teixeira, a political and demographic expert. The donor families’ wealth reflects, in part, the vast growth of the financial-services sector and the boom in oil and gas. They are also the beneficiaries of political and economic forces that are driving widening inequality. Together, the [energy and finance] industries accounted for well over half of the cash contributed by the top 158 families.
Note: What does it mean for democracy when billionaire oligarchs have their own political party? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Elections Information Center.
In the past year, global wealth reversed a steady upward climb and fell by $12.4 trillion, largely due to currency fluctuations. But worldwide wealth inequality continued its upward march: The top 1 percent of households “account for half of all assets in the world,” according to the 2015 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report. That’s a first since the Swiss bank began compiling the data in 2000, and a level “possibly not seen for almost a century,” the researchers write. For those on the other end of the wealth spectrum, meanwhile, the numbers are reversed. The poorest half of the world’s population owns just 1 percent of its assets. Financial assets have seen a 6 percent rise in the share of total wealth since 2008, benefiting the wealthy, who hold a disproportionate amount of capital. The overall rise in global wealth continued to be driven in large part by China and the emerging markets, which have doubled their aggregate wealth since 2000. China, whose wealth has grown fivefold since the beginning of the century, was shaken by market turmoil in the middle of the year but still managed to add $1.5 trillion in wealth. In 2015, a household net worth of $759,000 will put you in the ranks of the global one-percenters. The cutoff for the top 10 percent stood at $68,800.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
What if belief in God and prejudice against immigrants could be altered by magnetic energy? That’s the question researchers sought to explore in a study published Wednesday in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. The “magnetic energy” comes in the form of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive procedure that uses a metal coil to send pulses to the brain. By activating certain regions of the brain, doctors have used it for things like measuring the damage of a stroke or treating depression. These researchers sought ... to temporarily disable one part of the brain: the part that responds to threats. Shutting down the [posterior medial frontal cortex] — they theorized — would reduce the need to believe in God. A similar model was used to test group prejudice. In both cases, their predictions rang true. In the participants whose pMFC was temporarily shut down, 32.8 percent fewer expressed belief in God, angels, or heaven. Some 28.5 percent more displayed a positive response toward the immigrant who was critical of America, compared with the control group. The University of York’s Keise Izuma says, “People often turn to ideology when they are confronted by problems."
Note: The above article fails to mention the mind control applications of this fascinating new research.
Saudi Arabia is having a bad year on the human rights front. In the past few months, the U.S. ally has drawn widespread condemnation for sentencing a blogger to 1,000 lashes with a cane for writing about free speech (only 50 lashes have been delivered so far), and for its plans to execute a young political dissident by beheading him and publicly crucifying his body afterward. The same week ... a watchdog group drew attention to the fact that Saudi Arabia had been selected to oversee an influential U.N. panel on human rights. That panel "selects top officials who shape international human rights standards and report on violations worldwide," said UN Watch, the watchdog group based in Geneva. Saudi Arabia had earlier this year sought the leadership slot of the entire Human Rights Council of the U.N.. The kingdom routinely comes in at the bottom of Freedom House's rankings of world freedom. UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement, "This UN appointment is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief, and underscores the credibility deficit of a human rights council that already counts Russia, Cuba, China, Qatar and Venezuela among its elected members." Some observers have questioned why Saudi Arabia has a seat at the 47-member Human Rights Council at all.
Note: Watch an incredibly eye-opening video report by Abby Martin showing how the choice of Saudi Arabia as head of the UN rights panel s reveals just how much money trumps ethics. This brutal regime, run by a king and an all-powerful monarchy without any democracy, is one of four countries to still allow public executions, often by beheading. Women must ask permission of their husbands to work and do almost anything in public. Workers from foreign countries are treated like slaves. The list goes on. Yet the UN chose this country to head up a panel on human rights.
FBI Director James B. Comey said Wednesday, speaking to a private gathering of more than 100 politicians and top law enforcement officials, ... that the federal government has no better data on police shootings than databases assembled this year by The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper. “It is unacceptable that The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper from the U.K. are becoming the lead source of information about violent encounters between police and civilians. That is not good for anybody,” he said. The FBI has for years collected information about people killed by police officers, but reporting is voluntary and only 3 percent of the nation’s 18,000 police departments comply. As a result, the data is virtually useless. The Post’s database, for example, shows that 758 people have been shot and killed by police so far this year — nearly double the number recorded in a single year by the FBI. The vast majority of those killed were armed with a deadly weapon. However, blacks represent a disproportionate percentage of those who were unarmed when they were killed, the database shows.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert is expected to plead guilty in a hush-money case stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct. Federal prosecutors have accused him of agreeing to pay $3.5 million to an unidentified person from his hometown of Yorkville, Illinois, to conceal past misconduct. He was a teacher at Yorkville High School in the 1960s and 1970s. That person has not surfaced publicly, but anonymous law enforcement sources have told several media outlets that Hastert was trying to cover up sexual abuse of a male student when he worked as a high school teacher and wrestling coach. Hastert's agreement, to change his plea to guilty from not guilty in the case, is expected to be submitted to U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin on Monday, attorneys for Hastert said. "One of the best side effects of taking the plea is that material regarding reported sexual abuse will not come out," said [attorney Amy] Richardson, of the firm Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis. According to the indictment, Hastert withdrew $1.7 million in cash from his bank accounts from 2010 to 2014. He is charged with structuring $952,000 of the withdrawals, taking the funds out in increments of under $10,000 to evade a requirement that banks report large cash transactions. Hastert then told the FBI that he was keeping the cash for himself, which the indictment said was a false statement.
Note: Read more about this powerful politician's sexual misconduct cover up. If you want to understand how pedophile rings have infiltrated the highest levels of government, don't miss the powerful Discovery Channel documentary on this available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Many watched in disbelief: There he was, Pope Francis, calling people in Osorno, a city in southern Chile, “dumb” for protesting against a bishop accused of being complicit in clerical sexual abuse. “The Osorno community is suffering because it’s dumb,” Pope Francis told a group of tourists on St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Don’t be led by the nose by the leftists who orchestrated all of this,” the pope said. The video, filmed by an Argentine tourist in May, was obtained by a Chilean television station and broadcast Friday, quickly instilling doubts here about the pope’s commitment to protecting victims of sexual abuse. Bishop Barros was appointed by the pope to head the Diocese of Osorno this year, despite reports that he had covered up sexual abuses committed by the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a prominent priest in Santiago, the capital. Bishop Barros spent over 30 years alongside Father Karadima, who was found guilty of sexual abuses by the Vatican in 2011 and ordered to a life of seclusion, prayer and penitence. According to some of Father Karadima’s victims, Bishop Barros was witness to and complicit in the abuses.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
General Augusto Pinochet directly ordered the 1976 assassination of a Chilean diplomat who was killed in a car bomb in Washington DC, according top secret US intelligence documents declassified by the Obama administration. The documents ... also show that the former dictator was so concerned with covering up his role in the murder that he planned to assassinate his own head of intelligence, General Manuel Contreras. Orlando Letelier, a former defence and foreign minister under President Salvador Allende, was tortured and incarcerated after Pinochet’s 1973 coup. He later fled to the US and worked at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington DC. Letelier, who had once been Chile’s ambassador to the US, was murdered on 21 September 1976 by a car bomb planted under the driver’s seat of his vehicle just a mile from the White House. Ronni Moffitt, an American colleague, was also killed in the blast. Letelier’s son, Senator Juan Pablo Letelier, confirmed to the Guardian that he had received copies of the newly released documents, which ... include papers from the CIA. Speculation that the CIA was aware of the plot to kill Letelier is based on previously declassified records showing that Manuel Contreras was paid by the CIA before the bombing and was in regular contact with top officials at the spy agency. Contreras, who died in August, always denied responsibility and blamed the CIA for the bombing.
Note: Members of Pinochet's brutal regime were strongly supported by Washington until very recently. George H.W. Bush was head of the CIA when the assassination described above was carried out. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about intelligence agency corruption.
Survivors of CIA torture have sued the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era. In an extraordinary step, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen now face a federal lawsuit for their role in convincing the CIA to subject terror suspects to mock drowning, painful bodily contortions, sleep and dietary deprivation and other methods long rejected by much of the world as torture. In practice, CIA torture meant disappearances, mock executions, anal penetration ... and at least one man who froze to death, according to a landmark Senate report last year. On behalf of torture survivors ... as well as a representative of the estate of Gul Rahman – who froze to death in a CIA black site in Afghanistan – the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the suit against Mitchell and Jessen on Tuesday in a federal court in Washington state. The suit calls the torture program a “joint criminal enterprise” and a “war crime” in which the CIA, Mitchell and Jessen colluded and from which Mitchell and Jessen financially profited. Although numerous US government investigations have pierced the veneer of secrecy around the torture program, the program’s government architects have faced no legal reprisal. A Justice Department inquiry ended in 2012 without prosecutions. The new lawsuit, aimed not at government officials but the contractors Mitchell and Jessen, aims to break the trend.
Note: For more along these lines, read about how the torture program fits in with a long history of human experimentation by corrupt intelligence agencies working alongside unethical scientists. For more, see this list of programs that treated humans as guinea pigs.
On October 3, a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontičres in Kunduz, Afghanistan, partially destroying it. The U.S. has repeatedly attacked civilian facilities in the past but the targets have generally not been affiliated with a European, Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian organization such as MSF. On the seventh day of Operation Desert Storm, [a] U.S.-led coalition bombed the Infant Formula Production Plant in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad. The CIA’s own investigation later concluded the site had been bombed “in the mistaken belief that it was a key BW [Biological Weapon] facility.” In 1998, the Clinton administration targeted the Al Shifa [pharmaceutical] factory with 13 cruise missiles [claiming] the plant was “associated with the bin Laden network” and was “involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.” The Clinton administration never produced any convincing evidence. The plant had produced 90 percent of Sudan’s major pharmaceutical products. Due to its destruction “tens of thousands of people ... have suffered and died. At the beginning of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. attacked the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul. Then the U.S. bombed the same complex again. The second attack destroyed warehouses containing tons of food and supplies for refugees. Several weeks after the Red Cross attacks, the U.S. bombed the Kabul bureau of Al Jazeera, destroying it and damaging the nearby office of the BBC.
Note: Yet the US military claims it has incredible accuracy with its bombings and the information on which they are based. The link above provides a list of major recent US military attacks on civilian institutions. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
Until now, parents of children with autism who have spoken up about their fears that their child's disorder came on the heels of vaccination have been given the status of heretic. But it turns out that the increase in autism we have been witnessing over the last few decades could also be a result of the over-all increase in the body burden caused by mercury in our air and water, and by proxy the fish we eat, our vaccines and dental fillings, and now, in our high fructose corn syrup, a substance marketed and consumed most often by those most at risk: children. In 2004, a study ... compared the rate of special education programs in Texas and the amount of mercury found in the environment: "On average, for each 1000 lb of environmental mercury released, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism." The news on Monday that HFCS contains mercury is ... alarming. First, the FDA had evidence of this in 2005 and did absolutely nothing - no testing, no warning the companies using the tainted HFCS to produces their ketchup, chocolate syrup, cereal bars and soda. Therefore, more time has passed when mercury could bio-accumulate in our bodies. Second, there has been a previous association made between diet and autistic functionality - and specifically HFCS has been singled out as a cause for worsening the disorder. This means that there has been a growing body of evidence relating mercury to autism for some time, in which HFCS is only a new development.
Note: Read a carefully researched essay showing the FDA and CDC (Centers for Disease Control) have consciously concealed solid evidence of a link between mercury in vaccines and the rise in autism.
Medicine Hat, a city in southern Alberta, pledged in 2009 to put an end to homelessness. Now they say they've fulfilled their promise. No one in the city spends more than 10 days in an emergency shelter or on the streets. If you've got no place to go, they'll simply provide you with housing. "We're pretty much able to meet that standard today. Even quicker, actually, sometimes," [said] Mayor Ted Clugston. Clugston admits that when the project began in 2009, when he was an alderman, he was an active opponent of the plan. "I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't,'" he says. "However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense." Clugston says that it costs about $20,000 a year to house someone. If they're on the street, it can cost up to $100,000 a year. "This is the cheapest and the most humane way to treat people," he says. "Housing First puts everything on its head. It used to be, 'You want a home, get off the drugs or deal with your mental health issues,'" Clugston says. "If you're addicted to drugs, it's going to be pretty hard to get off them, if you're sleeping under a park bench." And the strategy has worked. In Medicine Hat, emergency room visits and interactions with police have dropped. But there was one change that initially surprised Clugston — court appearances went up. "They end up dealing with their past, atoning for their sins," he says. Clugston believes that no one on the streets is unreachable.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
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.