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.
A Florida medical examiner’s office said [on July 16] that the FBI has ordered the office not to release its autopsy report of a Chechen man fatally shot by a Boston FBI agent in May. The medical examiner’s office said it completed the autopsy report on Ibragim Todashev, a friend of [a] suspected Boston Marathon bomber, on July 8 and that the report was “ready for release.” The agent shot and killed Todashev on May 22 in his Orlando apartment during an interrogation related to the Boston Marathon bombings. Critics have called for an independent inquiry, questioning the blanket of secrecy surrounding the case. The FBI and the Massachusetts State Police sought out Todashev after the Marathon bombings, but have refused to release details of the shooting. Media reports have provided conflicting accounts: Some said Todashev attacked the agent with a blade during an interrogation, while others said Todashev was unarmed. Another said he lunged at the agent with a metal pole or a broomstick. The agent shot Todashev multiple times, according to family members who released photos of Todashev’s dead body as part of their call for an inquiry into his death. Family members and advocacy groups have questioned the media accounts, pointing out that Todashev had repeatedly cooperated with the FBI. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the ACLU have called for independent inquiries into the shooting. According to CAIR in Florida, which is conducting its own investigation into Todashev’s slaying, Todashev had spoken to the FBI at least three times at their offices after the Marathon bombings.
Note: What are they hiding here?
A cadre of six government and non-government experts who served the National Transportation Safety Board when that independent federal agency investigated the explosion of a Boeing 747 off the coast of Long Island in July 1996 ... are the protagonists of a new documentary, "TWA Flight 800". After four years of investigation, the NTSB claimed the cause of Flight 800's explosion was a mechanical defect, but the new documentary, written and directed by journalist Kristina Borjesson, claims the FBI, NTSB and other government agencies may have covered up that the plane was brought down by a missile strike. Participants in the film have called on the NTSB to reopen the case based on altered physical evidence, suppressed data, and unexamined testimony from hundreds of eyewitnesses. [The] book Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent—and How to Reclaim Our Skies ... published last year ... thanked “the brave men and women who are Federal Aviation Administration, Transportation Security Administration, and airline whistleblowers.” These whistleblowers confirmed such problems as defective airline maintenance outsourcing, FAA oversight failures, TSA waste, and many other important findings. After watching the documentary, I believe there are enough smoking guns to warrant an unbiased reexamination. Last week one major news site was in near hysterics about the documentary, employing the term “conspiracy” ten times. Kristina Borjesson ... wasn’t surprised, noting that reexamining hot topics “discredits previous reporting.”
Note: Kristina Borjesson is a long-time supporter of WantToKnow.info who has written a great piece on Flight 800, which we have posted at this link. She's also the editor of what may be the best book ever on media corruption and manipulation, Into the Buzzsaw. You can find an excellent two-page summary of the book at this link. For the engaging trailer to this film, click here.
This Reuters article ... purports to summarize an interview I gave to the daily newspaper La Nacion of Argentina. Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. I made three points in this La Nacion interview, all of which are true: 1) The oft-repeated claim that Snowden's intent is to harm the US is completely negated by the reality that he has all sorts of documents that could quickly and seriously harm the US if disclosed, yet he has published none of those. When he gave us the documents he provided, he repeatedly insisted that we exercise rigorous journalistic judgment in deciding which documents should be published in the public interest and which ones should be concealed on the ground that the harm of publication outweighs the public value. 2) The US government has acted with wild irrationality. The current criticism of Snowden is that he's in Russia. But the reason he's in Russia isn't that he chose to be there. It's because the US blocked him from leaving: first by revoking his passport (with no due process or trial), then by pressuring its allies to deny airspace rights to any plane they thought might be carrying him to asylum (even one carrying the democratically elected president of a sovereign state), then by bullying small countries out of letting him land for re-fueling. 3) I said that [forcing his plane down] would be completely counter-productive given that ... such an attack could easily result in far more disclosures than allowing us as journalists to vet and responsibly report them, as we've [been] doing.
Note: The above article was written by brave journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Snowden story. For more on the NSA surveillance scandal, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The [UK] Government has issued more than 3,000 export licences for military and intelligence equipment worth a total of Ł12.3bn to countries which are on its own official list for human rights abuses. The existence of one licence to Israel and the Occupied Territories [is] worth Ł7.7bn. The scale and detail of the deals emerged after a forensic investigation by a committee of MPs, who also discovered that strategically controlled items have been sent to Iran, China, Sri Lanka, Russia, Belarus and Zimbabwe – all of which feature prominently on the Foreign Office’s list of states with worrying civil rights records. There are even three existing contracts for Syria, notwithstanding the fact that the UK is sending equipment to rebels fighting the Assad regime and is considering arming them. There are also 57 for Argentina, which is not on the list, but which remains in confrontation with Britain over the Falklands. The Government had stated that it would not issue export licences for goods “which might be used to facilitate internal repression” or “might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts”. However, the report by the Committees on Arms Export Controls found there were 62 licences for selling to Iran, ... overwhelmingly cryptographic equipment. This also features heavily in the 271 licences for Russia, along with biotechnology equipment, sniper rifles, laser weapons systems, weapon sights and unmanned air vehicles (drones).
Note: For more on war profiteering, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Law enforcement officials announced [on July 15] that a recent five-week sweep snared more than 250 suspected child predators, including nine teachers and three clergymen. Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton said that 255 child predators were arrested and 61 child victims were rescued in so-called "Operation iGuardian," which targeted online sexual abusers as well as those who possess, produce or trade child pornography. Morton said that the international investigation, which ran from May 28 to June 30, revealed that online sexual abuse is pervasive and growing. The majority of the rescued child victims were girls, Morton said. Twenty-two of the victims were 9 years old or younger -- including four under the age of 3. The remaining 39 children were between the ages of 10 and 17. Of those arrested, 20 people were charged with online sexual enticement of a minor, with the remaining 235 people charged with child pornography production, possession or distribution of child pornography, traveling with the intent to have sex with a minor, or other offenses, including rape. Only four of the suspected predators nabbed in the investigation were women. Investigators have arrested 1,674 people in similar investigations this fiscal year alone, ICE officials said.
Note: For more on sex abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Call it high-tech hijacking. Thieves now have the capabilities to steal your credit card information without laying a hand on your wallet. It’s new technology being used in credit and debit cards, and it’s already leaving nearly 140 million people at-risk for electronic pickpocketing. It all centers around radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. It’s supposed to make paying for things faster and easier. You just wave the card, and you’ve paid. But now some worry it’s also making life easier for crooks trying to rip you off. In a crowd, Walt Augustinowicz blends right in. And that’s the problem. “If I’m walking through a crowd, I get near people’s back pocket and their wallet, I just need to be this close to it and there’s [their] credit card and expiration date on the screen,” says Augustinowicz demonstrating how easily cards containing RFID can be hacked. Armed with a credit card reader he bought for less than $100 on-line and a netbook computer ... for about an hour he patrolled Beale Street, looking for RFID chips to read, and credit card information to steal. Even scarier, Augustinowicz says bad guys could work a crowd, stealing numbers and then e-mail them anywhere in the world. It’s not just your credit and debit cards at-risk. While they are harder to hack, all US passports issued since 2006 contain RFID technology that can be read, and swiped. “It gives me a lot of personal information like your date of birth, your photo if I wanted to make some sort of ID,” said Augustinowicz demonstrating with his reader.
Note: For an excellent video showing how easy it is for someone to hijack your credit card information if the card has an RFID, click here.
NM Rothschild, one of the City's oldest merchant banks, has decided that profit takes precedence over history and is to withdraw from London's gold market. The move is part of Rothschild's plans to halt all commodities trading out of London as it becomes less profitable. Last year, the business generated just 2.2% of the bank's income, down from more than 8% five years earlier. Rothschild's departure will leave a big gap, not least because it hosts the twice-daily gold price fixing. Started in 1919, it is a prized and bizarre tradition. Every day at 1030 and 1500 local time, five representatives of investment banks meet in a small room at Rothschild's London headquarters on St Swithin's Lane. They are charged by the London Gold Market to agree a price for the bullion on offer. Each sits behind a desk and gets a phone and small Union Jack. In the centre is the chairperson, who for the past 85 years has come from Rothschild. A price is given and relayed via phone lines to customers. Then the haggling begins. When the price is right and buyers are matched with sellers, the flags are lowered and the price is fixed. While the whole process harks to a bygone age, the economics of the modern gold market are far less quaint. Many producers are no longer hedging their exposure to both currency and commodity price movements and that has taken a large chunk of business off the table. According to bank chairman David de Rothschild, "our income from commodities trading in London has fallen as a percentage of our total income in each of the past five years".
Note: For more on commodity price rigging, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The news that the bankers Rothschild are to withdraw from the gold market, in which they have been a major player for two centuries, has been hailed as the end of an era. In one sense, of course, it is. But in another way it marks out the continuation of an even older tradition - the ability of the family which has founded one of the world's largest private banking dynasties to sustain their secretive fortune, which industry insiders count not in billions but in trillions, and keep it within the family. Secrecy has been a hallmark of the Rothschilds from the outset. The Rothschilds created the world of banking as we know it today. [They] invented, or at any rate popularised, the government bond, which allowed investors, big and small, to buy bits of the debts of sovereign states by purchasing fixed-interest bearer bonds. It brought investment in railways, the industrial revolution and ventures like the Suez Canal. The Rothschilds got a cut of everything. They made billions in the 1980s from Margaret Thatcher's privatisations of state-owned industries on which they advised. In France after their bank was nationalised by the Socialist president Francois Mitterrand they slowly built a new business which, under Baron David de Rothschild, has risen to the top ranks of the merger and acquisition league tables. They have pulled out of retail fund management - into which they went with much fanfare only three years back - and now they are pulling out of oil and gold in favour of the higher-margin areas of private banking and wealth management
Note: For some reason this article was removed from the website of the Independent, which is why the above link takes you to a cached version of this revealing article. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A simian virus known as SV40 has been associated with a number of rare human cancers. This same virus contaminated the polio vaccine administered to 98 million Americans from 1955 to 1963. Federal health officials see little reason for concern. A growing cadre of medical researchers disagree. A breakthrough in the war against polio had come in the early 1950s, when Jonas Salk took advantage of a new discovery: monkey kidneys could be used to culture the abundant quantities of polio virus necessary to mass-produce a vaccine. But there were problems with the monkey kidneys. In 1960 Bernice Eddy, a government researcher, discovered that when she injected hamsters with the kidney mixture on which the vaccine was cultured, they developed tumors. Eddy's superiors tried to keep the discovery quiet, but Eddy presented her data at a cancer conference in New York. She was eventually demoted, and lost her laboratory. The cancer-causing virus was soon isolated by other scientists and dubbed SV40, because it was the fortieth simian virus discovered. Alarm spread through the scientific community as researchers realized that nearly every dose of the vaccine had been contaminated. In 1961 federal health officials ordered vaccine manufacturers to screen for the virus and eliminate it from the vaccine. Worried about creating a panic, they kept the discovery of SV40 under wraps and never recalled existing stocks. For two more years millions of additional people were needlessly exposed -- bringing the total to 98 million Americans from 1955 to 1963.
Note: This fascinating report on modern research into SV40's role in human cancers is well worth reading in its entirety at the link above. It is most strange that the CDC posted a webpage stating "it has been estimated that 10–30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of vaccine" and much more, but the webpage was then taken down. Using the Internet Archive, you can still see the revealing page that has been removed at this link.
The European Parliament has voted for sweeping reforms of the controversial EU Common Fisheries Policy [CFP]. The package includes measures to protect endangered stocks and end discards - the practice of throwing unwanted dead fish into the sea. Wasteful discards are reckoned to account for a quarter of total catches under the current quota system. With an estimated 75% of Europe’s stocks overfished, there has been enormous public and media pressure over this latest attempt to shake up the CFP. The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin says the vote is something of a victory for citizen power, following organised lobbying of MEPs by ordinary people, as well as by high-profile celebrity chefs and environmentalists. The reform package was presented to the full parliament in Strasbourg by the German Social Democrat MEP Ulrike Rodust. She said the reforms “will bring an end to the December ritual of fisheries ministers negotiating until 4am, neglecting scientific advice and setting too high fishing quotas. “As of 2015, the principle of maximum sustainable yield shall apply, which means that each year we do not harvest more fish than a stock can reproduce. Our objective is that depleted fish stocks recover by 2020. Not only nature will benefit, but also fishermen: bigger stocks produce higher yields.” MEPs have made some tough choices. For instance, they had an option to vote for maximum sustainable yield - that is taking as much fish as the sea can reproduce annually. They demanded instead that fisheries should be allowed to grow, rather than to stay at their current depleted level.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Collaboration on the web is an area of exponential growth. Crowdfunding, or collaborative funding via the web, is one of the standouts for growth in this evolving collaborative economy. There are 2 main models or types of crowdfunding. The first is what’s called donation-based funding. The second and more recent model is investment crowdfunding. Business owners are using different crowdfunding sites than musicians. Musicians are using different sites from causes and charities. Below is a list of crowdfunding sites that have different models and focuses. 1. Kickstarter -- is a site where creative projects raise donation-based funding. These projects can range from new creative products, like an art installation ... to pre-selling a music album. It’s not for businesses, causes, charities, or personal financing needs. 2. Indiegogo -- approves donation-based fundraising campaigns for most anything — music, hobbyists, personal finance needs, charities and whatever else you could think of (except investment). 3. Crowdfunder -- is the crowdfunding platform for businesses, with a growing social network of investors, tech startups, small businesses, and social enterprises (financially sustainable/profitable businesses with social impact goals). 4. RocketHub -- powers donation-based funding for a wide variety of creative projects. 5. Crowdrise -- is a place for donation-based funding for Causes and Charity. They’ve attracted a community of do-gooders and and fund all kinds of inspiring causes and needs.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
This is a story about a fickle little hormone that plays a large role in our lives. The name of the hormone is oxytocin, and until recently it was mostly dismissed by scientists. They knew it played a role in inducing labor and facilitating breast-feeding, but otherwise didn't give it much attention. But over the past 10 years, oxytocin has come up in the world, and several researchers have begun making big claims about it. Now dubbed "the trust hormone," oxytocin, researchers say, affects everything [in] our day-to-day life. To understand the role that oxytocin plays in your own life, consider the experience of a small 9-year-old girl named Isabelle. Isabelle has Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder with a number of symptoms. The children are often physically small and often have developmental delays. But also, kids and adults with Williams love people and are pathologically trusting: They literally have no social fear. Researchers theorize that this is probably because of a problem with the area in their brain that regulates the manufacture and release of oxytocin. Paul Zak, a researcher at Claremont Graduate University, ... says that in a normal brain, oxytocin is generated only after some concrete event or action: "When someone does something nice for you — holds a door — your brain releases this chemical, and it down-regulates the appropriate fear we have of interacting with strangers." Suddenly, you are filled with a sense that the person before you is not a threat. And then just as quickly, according to Zak, it disappears. "This is a quick on/off system." Unless, of course, the system gets disregulated, which is what Zak and other scientists say happens with Williams syndrome.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins. Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise. The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. "For whales and dolphins, listening is as important as seeing is for humans – they communicate, locate food, and navigate using sound," said Sarah Dolman, at charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation. "Noise pollution threatens vulnerable populations, driving them away from areas important to their survival, and at worst injuring or even causing the deaths of some whales and dolphins." Dolman said there were no accepted international standards regarding noise pollution and there was an urgent need to re-evaluate the environmental impacts of military activities. Unusual mass strandings, where multiple species of whale and dolphin beach at several locations at once, have soared since the introduction of military sonar in the 1950s and can be fatal. The strandings occur every year and major recent events saw up to 15 animals beached in the Canary Islands, the Bahamas and Greece.
Note: For more on threats to whales and dolphins, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
While the Obama administration throws its support behind Egypt's military, some members of Congress are looking at withholding some or all of America's annual $1.5 billion aid package if a civilian government isn't quickly restored. The administration insisted ... that it won't withhold funds from Egypt's army after its second takeover of a civilian government in the past 29 months. Most of the money goes to the military under an arrangement U.S. leaders have honored since Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Despite rocky relations since the ouster of longtime autocrat and longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, the U.S. has continued to financially support the institution it sees as Egypt's guarantor of stability. Some in Congress say the latest military action should change the calculation because it unseated a democratically elected president. Under current law, however, it's President Barack Obama and his administration who decide whether Morsi's overthrow was a coup, which would trigger automatic suspension of most American support. Four-fifths of the money goes to the military and supports operations that include isolating extremist groups and helping secure Israel's borders.
Note: Why are we giving $1.5 billion to Egypt every year? And why does Israel receive about $3 billion a year from the US when the population of the country is only 8 million? If you do the math, the US is providing the equivalent of nearly $4,000 in aid per year to every man, woman and child in Israel, with 3/4 of that to buy US military hardware. It's almost as if the military-industrial establishment wants these countries to go to war. For lots more reliable information on how the military/industrial complex manipulates world politics to support the war machine, click here and here.
Members of a congressional committee [on July 10] accused the FBI of stalling an inquiry into the Boston Marathon bombings, saying the bureau had no grounds for withholding what it knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the attacks. “The information requested by this committee belongs to the American people,’’ said Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. “It does not belong solely to the FBI.” The frustrations, aired publicly after FBI officials rebuffed an invitation to appear before the committee, stemmed from the FBI’s unwillingness to detail how it handled a security review of Tsarnaev nearly two years before the Marathon bombings. “The FBI continues to refuse this committee’s appropriate requests for information and documents crucial to our investigation into what happened in Boston,” McCaul declared as he opened a committee hearing. Tsarnaev died after a firefight with police in Watertown within hours of being identified as a suspect. Members were particularly frustrated by a July 3 letter to the committee from the FBI. The letter, reviewed by the Globe, said the bureau would not be responding to all the committee’s requests for information. “The fact that the FBI is not sharing information with this committee with jurisdiction over homeland security I think is just totally unacceptable,” said Representative Peter King, a New York Republican.
Note: For more strangeness around the Boston bombing with a key witness being deported, click here. For more on the realities of intelligence agency manipulations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The top U.S. special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public. The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said that the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations. The records transfer was part of an effort by McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector general's draft report. But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn't find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and would represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny. "Welcome to the shell game in place of open government," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University. "Guess which shell the records are under. If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It's ridiculous."
Note: For a powerful analysis of the strong evidence that Osama bin Laden most likely died in Afghanistan in December 2001, long before he was "killed" by the SEALs raid in Pakistan, read David Ray Griffin's Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima has probably been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for two years, ever since an earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant, Japan’s chief nuclear regulator said on [July 10]. In unusually candid comments, Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, also said that neither his staff nor the plant’s operator knew exactly where the leaks were coming from, or how to stop them. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, has reported spikes in the amounts of radioactive cesium, tritium and strontium detected in groundwater at the plant, adding urgency to the task of sealing any leaks. Radioactive cesium and strontium, especially, are known to raise risks of cancer in humans. Mr. Tanaka’s comments bring into sharp relief the precariousness of the cleanup at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, where core meltdowns occurred at three of the six reactors. A critical problem has been the groundwater that has been pouring into the basements of the damaged reactor buildings and becoming contaminated. Workers have been pumping the water out to be stored in dozens of tanks at the plant, but have not stopped the inflow. Until recently, Tokyo Electric ... flatly denied that any of that water was leaking into the ocean, even though various independent studies of radiation levels in the nearby ocean have suggested otherwise. Mr. Tanaka said that the evidence was overwhelming. “We’ve seen for a fact that levels of radioactivity in the seawater remain high, and contamination continues — I don’t think anyone can deny that,” he said.
Note: For more on dangers from the nuclear power industry, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A professor at an Indiana college says he has found film footage showing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt being pushed in his wheelchair, depicting a secret that was hidden from the public until after his death. Ray Begovich, a journalism professor at Franklin College south of Indianapolis, said ... he found the eight-second clip while conducting unrelated research in the National Archives in College Park, Md. Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921 at age 39 and was unable to walk without leg braces or assistance. During his four terms as president, Roosevelt often used a wheelchair in private, but not for public appearances. News photographers cooperated in concealing Roosevelt's disability, and those who did not found their camera views blocked by Secret Service agents. "This raw film clip may be the first motion picture images of the president in his wheelchair, and it was never meant to be shown to the world," Begovich said. The film shows Roosevelt visiting the U.S.S. Baltimore at Pearl Harbor in July 1944. Roosevelt's disability was virtually a state secret during his presidency, which spanned the Great Depression and most of World War II.
Note: To watch this historic video, click here. Isn't it amazing that Roosevelt was U.S. president for 12 years, yet thanks to collusion of the press, his use of a wheelchair and disability was kept a secret from the public the entire time? Politicians know that public perception makes all the difference, so that perception management and manipulation has become a huge industry. For excellent information and resources along these lines, see this link.
Thousands of Guatemalans were intentionally infected with [sexually-transmitted diseases] in the 1940s by US public health researchers. An appeal on their case against the US government was dismissed this week. Thousands of Guatemalans ... were unwittingly subjected to secret human experiments led by US doctors. Nearly three years after beginning the legal battle in US courts, attorneys representing an estimated 5,000 Guatemalan victims used as guinea pigs and infected with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s by US public health researchers withdrew their appeal earlier this week. The alleged victims include soldiers, inmates, sex workers, mental health patients, and schoolchildren. Dr. John Cutler ... led the experiments in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. Under a grant by the National Institute of Health, Dr. Cutler and US researchers gave antibiotic penicillin to test its ability to cure and prevent syphilis. But, his team also infected test subjects without their consent. Some 1,300 were deliberately infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases. Researchers would expose inmates to infected prostitutes brought into jails. In other cases, they would first infect patients in mental hospitals before testing the effects of the medication. The American team studied and performed experiments on more than 5,000 subjects – including orphans as young as 6 years old.
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans. The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny. The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come. In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures. Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public.
Note: For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
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.