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Revealing News For a Better World

Corporate Corruption News Articles
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Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.


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


Critiques of Gates Foundation's agricultural interventions in Africa
2024-09-04, US Right to Know
https://usrtk.org/bill-gates/critiques-of-gates-foundation/

The Gates Foundation is a major influencer and funder of agricultural development in Africa, yet there are no avenues to hold the foundation accountable to the communities it influences. Gates Foundation is the main funder of the controversial AGRA program. AGRA rebranded after evidence-based critiques showed that its 15-year effort to expand high-input, chemical-dependent monoculture farming in Africa has failed to provide food security, despite billions in funding from private donors and government subsidies. Critics say the "green revolution" approach is exacerbating hunger, worsening inequality and entrenching the power of outside corporate agribusiness interests in the hungriest regions of the world. AGRA works to transition farmers away from traditional seeds and crops to patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and other inputs to grow commodity crops for the global market. The strategy is modeled on the Indian "green revolution" that boosted production of staple crops but also left a legacy of structural inequity and escalating debt for farmers. Evidence suggests that the green revolution has failed to improve health or reduce poverty and has created many problems. These include hooking farmers in a debt cycle with expensive inputs, growing pesticide use, environmental degradation, worsening soil quality, reduced diversity of food crops, and increased corporate control over food systems.

Note: 50 food sovereignty organizations wrote an open letter to Bill Gates on how the Green Revolution has failed to reduce hunger or increase food access as promised. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


AI ‘Surveillance Pricing' Could Use Data to Make People Pay More
2024-09-03, Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-surveillance-pricing-practices-...

Big tech companies have spent vast sums of money honing algorithms that gather their users' data and scour it for patterns. One result has been a boom in precision-targeted online advertisements. Another is a practice some experts call "algorithmic personalized pricing," which uses artificial intelligence to tailor prices to individual consumers. The Federal Trade Commission uses a more Orwellian term for this: "surveillance pricing." In July the FTC sent information-seeking orders to eight companies that "have publicly touted their use of AI and machine learning to engage in data-driven targeting," says the agency's chief technologist Stephanie Nguyen. Consumer surveillance extends beyond online shopping. "Companies are investing in infrastructure to monitor customers in real time in brick-and-mortar stores," [Nguyen] says. Some price tags, for example, have become digitized, designed to be updated automatically in response to factors such as expiration dates and customer demand. Retail giant Walmart–which is not being probed by the FTC–says its new digital price tags can be remotely updated within minutes. When personalized pricing is applied to home mortgages, lower-income people tend to pay more–and algorithms can sometimes make things even worse by hiking up interest rates based on an inadvertently discriminatory automated estimate of a borrower's risk rating.

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


Geofence Warrants Ruled Unconstitutional–but That's Not the End of It
2024-08-17, Wired
https://www.wired.com/story/geofence-warrants-ruled-unconstitutional-tmobile-...

A US federal appeals court ruled last week that so-called geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Geofence warrants allow police to demand that companies such as Google turn over a list of every device that appeared at a certain location at a certain time. The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on August 9 that geofence warrants are "categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment" because "they never include a specific user to be identified, only a temporal and geographic location where any given user may turn up post-search." In other words, they're the unconstitutional fishing expedition that privacy and civil liberties advocates have long asserted they are. Google ... is the most frequent target of geofence warrants, vowed late last year that it was changing how it stores location data in such a way that geofence warrants may no longer return the data they once did. Legally, however, the issue is far from settled: The Fifth Circuit decision applies only to law enforcement activity in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Plus, because of weak US privacy laws, police can simply purchase the data and skip the pesky warrant process altogether. As for the appellants in the case heard by the Fifth Circuit, well, they're no better off: The court found that the police used the geofence warrant in "good faith" when it was issued in 2018, so they can still use the evidence they obtained.

Note: Read more about the rise of geofence warrants and its threat to privacy rights. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Your food is more expensive – are US corporate profits to blame?
2024-07-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/food-price-inflat...

While you may be feeling the pain from high prices at restaurants and supermarkets, many companies making and selling the products are doing remarkably well. Most have seen their profits jump as they continue raising prices on customers. Some companies say they have no choice but to pass inflationary pain on to consumers. Others, however, acknowledge they are exploiting the inflationary atmosphere to raise prices, or to shrink product sizes. Meanwhile, companies spent billions rewarding investors with stock buybacks. Menu and grocery store prices may remain elevated. In earnings calls, executives detail plans to maintain high prices even as some costs are falling. The companies' net profits are up by a median of 51% since just prior to the pandemic, and in one case as much as 950%. The average American worker has not fared as well: wages are only up 5% since inflation's peak. For the lowest earners, food price increases during the last two years are outpacing wage gains by over 340%. Kroger's CEO told investors in June 2022, "a little bit of inflation is always good for our business", while Hostess's CEO said rising prices across the economy "helps" it profit because they can raise prices to levels that exceed their increased costs. Food prices have increased more than most other industries, federal data shows. While prices in the economy overall have risen by around 16% since mid-2022, families are now paying 19% more for food.

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


Eat This, Not That–Why Medical Schools Need to Emphasize Nutrition
2024-07-16, Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/eat-this-not-thatwhy-medical-schools-need-emphasize-...

Being overweight or obese is a serious, common, and costly chronic disease. More than two in five U.S. adults have obesity. By 2030, nearly one of two adults in the U.S. are projected to be obese. More than 108 million U.S. adults live with obesity and more than 1 billion people are obese around the world. Obesity accounted for nearly $173 billion in medical expenditures in 2019. Recent news that weight loss medications, including GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic and others, are revolutionizing obesity medicine. Some patients lose up to 20 percent of their initial body weight in a year or two on these drugs. Yet a recent lawsuit challenging a top brand heightens concerns about this relatively new class of drugs. More than half of graduating medical students report that the time dedicated to clinical nutrition instruction is insufficient. In a striking study of 115 medical doctors, the majority of participants (65.2 percent) demonstrated inadequate nutrition knowledge, with 30.4 percent of those scoring low having a high self-perception of their nutrition knowledge. The important role of medical doctors in addressing nutrition in clinical practice has been acknowledged by multiple authoritative professional bodies. Ironically, most doctors often lack the knowledge to help a patient eat healthy and to realize the importance of food to wellness. In a contested space filled with commercial interests and influencers, it is critical for a doctor to be a reliable source of evidence-based nutrition.

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


OnlyFans vows it's a safe space. Predators are exploiting kids there.
2024-07-02, Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/onlyfans-sex-children/

OnlyFans makes reassuring promises to the public: It's strictly adults-only, with sophisticated measures to monitor every user, vet all content and swiftly remove and report any child sexual abuse material. Reuters documented 30 complaints in U.S. police and court records that child sexual abuse material appeared on the site between December 2019 and June 2024. The case files examined by the news organization cited more than 200 explicit videos and images of kids, including some adults having oral sex with toddlers. In one case, multiple videos of a minor remained on OnlyFans for more than a year, according to a child exploitation investigator who found them while assisting Reuters. OnlyFans "presents itself as a platform that provides unrivaled access to influencers, celebrities and models," said Elly Hanson, a clinical psychologist and researcher who focuses on preventing sexual abuse and reducing its impact. "This is an attractive mix to many teens, who are pulled into its world of commodified sex, unprepared for what this entails." In 2021 ... 102 Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on the Justice Department to investigate child sexual abuse on OnlyFans. The Justice Department told the lawmakers three months later that it couldn't confirm or deny it was investigating OnlyFans. Contacted recently, a department spokesperson declined to comment further.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


OpenAI adds former NSA chief to its board
2024-06-13, CNBC News
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/openai-adds-former-nsa-chief-to-its-board-pau...

OpenAI on Thursday announced its newest board member: Paul M. Nakasone, a retired U.S. Army general and former director of the National Security Agency. Nakasone was the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. The company said Nakasone will also join OpenAI's recently created Safety and Security Committee. The committee is spending 90 days evaluating the company's processes and safeguards before making recommendations to the board and, eventually, updating the public, OpenAI said. OpenAI is bolstering its board and its C-suite as its large language models gain importance across the tech sector and as competition rapidly emerges in the burgeoning generative artificial intelligence market. While the company has been in hyper-growth mode since late 2022, when it launched ChatGPT, OpenAI has also been riddled with controversy and high-level employee departures. The company said Sarah Friar, previously CEO of Nextdoor and finance chief at Square, is joining as chief financial officer. OpenAI also hired Kevin Weil, an ex-president at Planet Labs, as its new chief product officer. Weil was previously a senior vice president at Twitter and a vice president at Facebook and Instagram. Weil's product team will focus on "applying our research to products and services that benefit consumers, developers, and businesses," the company wrote.

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


Banana giant held liable for funding paramilitaries
2024-06-11, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6pprpd3x96o

A court in the United States has found multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group. The group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation at the time. Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (Ł30m) in damages to the families. The AUC engaged in widespread human rights abuses in Colombia, including murdering people it suspected of links with left-wing rebels. The victims ranged from trade unionists to banana workers. The case was brought by the families after Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to making payments to the AUC. During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004. The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming. The AUC claimed to have been created to defend landowners from ... left-wing rebels, the paramilitary group more often acted as a death squad for drug traffickers. At its height, it had an estimated 30,000 members who engaged in intimidation, drug trafficking, extortion, forced displacement and killings.

Note: Read more about Chiquita's payments to this Colombian paramilitary group. Chiquita succeeded the United Fruit Company, which once owned most of the land in Guatemala and had close ties with the CIA. When Guatemala's democratically elected president aimed to nationalize land, US covert operations installed a military dictator, returning the land to United Fruit. This led to a bloody 40-year civil war and a series of repressive military regimes, armed with CIA-funded weapons.


More than 300m children victims of online sexual abuse every year
2024-05-26, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/27/more-than-300m-childr...

More than 300 million children across the globe are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse each year, research suggests. In what is believed to be the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that 12.6% of the world's children have been victims of nonconsensual talking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year, equivalent to about 302 million young people. A similar proportion – 12.5% – had been subject to online solicitation, such as unwanted sexual talk that can include sexting, sexual questions and sexual act requests by adults or other youths. Offences can also take the form of "sextortion", where predators demand money from victims to keep images private, and abuse of AI deepfake technology. The US is a particularly high-risk area. The university's Childlight initiative – which aims to understand the prevalence of child abuse – includes a new global index, which found that one in nine men in the US (equivalent to almost 14 million) admitted online offending against children at some point. Surveys found 7% of British men, equivalent to 1.8 million, admitted the same. The research also found many men admitted they would seek to commit physical sexual offences against children if they thought it would be kept secret. Child abuse material is so prevalent that files are on average reported to watchdog and policing organisations once every second.

Note: New Mexico's attorney general has called Meta the world's "single largest marketplace for paedophiles." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and sexual abuse scandals.


Wall Street Is Buying Up Entire Neighborhoods
2024-05-15, Jacobin
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/single-family-homes-rentals-wall-street

As Wall Street buys up entire neighborhood blocks, driving up corporate purchases of single-family homes to historic highs, housing advocates warn companies ... are harming their tenants and pricing out would-be homebuyers. Now policymakers in states across the country and Washington, DC, are finally beginning to push back – but they're facing the might of a powerful new single-family rental lobby. Driven by the pandemic-era real estate boom, corporate landlords are ramping up their purchases of assets like apartment buildings and mobile home communities nationwide. They're especially active in fast-growing Sun Belt markets like Phoenix and Atlanta, where more than a third of homes on the market are now being purchased by private equity firms like Blackstone or dedicated single-family rental companies. Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has entered the single-family housing market. Critics say that such companies' encroaching presence in the housing market and their focus on short-term profits are pricing out first-time homebuyers and gentrifying neighborhoods, contributing to an ongoing housing crisis. A 2022 study by federal lawmakers found that five major rental companies hiked their fees by 40 percent over a three-year period and saw their tenants fall behind in rent. In California, the state's largest corporate landlord, Invitation Homes, was forced to pay $2 million in sanctions after the state attorney general found it was charging tenants illegally high rents.

Note: Read about the shadowy global interests buying up land all over the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech
2024-05-08, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/08/college-professor-wants-us...

Ethan Zuckerman, a longtime technologist and social media scholar, thought he fully understood Section 230, the 1996 statute that contains the famous "26 words that created the internet." But three years ago, he was reading its full text aloud to his class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when suddenly, in his words, "a lightbulb went off in my head." It struck him that the law, widely understood to shield tech companies from being sued for their users' posts, also protects users. In particular, it protects people who build tools to filter or moderate online content. People like Zuckerman's friend Louis Barclay, a developer who in 2021 was permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram for developing a tool called "Unfollow Everything" that lets users, well, unfollow everything and restart their feeds fresh. Three years later, that eureka moment has turned into a lawsuit – one that, if successful, could loosen Big Tech's grip on how people use social media. The suit ... asks a California court to declare that Meta can't ban or sue him for building an unfollowing tool inspired by Barclay's. If the suit succeeds, Zuckerman plans to release the tool, called "Unfollow Everything 2.0," and hopes a wave of other tools to give users more control over their online lives will follow. Such tools are sometimes called "middleware" and have been touted by the Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama as a way to break Silicon Valley's chokehold on online speech.

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


Columbia Crackdown Led by University Prof Doubling as NYPD Spook
2024-05-03, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/03/columbia-crackdown-led-by-university-prof-d...

The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school's own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared. During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force. Weiner maintained an office at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an "Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs" who simultaneously serves as the "civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department's Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau." In that role ... Weiner "develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence." A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called "Demographics Unit" operated secretly within the NYPD's Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to "map the city's human terrain" through a program "modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.


How companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps
2024-04-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/us-homeless-encampments-compa...

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California. The camp, one of the largest in California, was cleared between 2021 and 2023 in part by a private company named Tucker Construction. Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across California. In total, private firms have been paid at least $100m to clear homeless camps, an investigation by the Guardian and Type Investigations has found. Pete White, the founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network ... says he's observed a steady increase in the privatization of sweeps in recent years. "The growth of a private industry geared towards removing and dismantling informal settlements and houseless encampments has grown steadily in Los Angeles and across the country," said White. "Not only are we seeing a growth in the loss of property, but also the loss of rights." Firms vying for contracts to sweep encampments in California include mid-size construction companies that also do home renovations, as well as large environmental services firms that specialize in cleaning up hazardous waste and responding to public emergencies. A study of the health impacts of sweeps where the Crash Zone is located found that unhoused residents often lost medicines and other "health necessities" and that sweeps "drove unhoused people into hazardous, isolated, less visible spaces". As well as the loss of their homes, they allege the destruction of belongings that rules are meant to protect.

Note: Read more about the unprecedented rise in food costs that are leaving millions of Americans facing higher prices and growing food insecurity. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


New York Times Backhandedly Acknowledges Getting Censored by DHS
2024-03-26, Lee Fang on Substack
https://www.leefang.com/p/new-york-times-backhandedly-acknowledges

Last month, I revealed internal Twitter and Department of Homeland Security emails showing that the agency had successfully pressured the social media platform to censor the New York Times during the 2020 presidential election. It was impossible to get the Times to comment on my reporting that revealed that a government agency, enacted to protect national security, had muzzled one of its own. The paper remained silent. That was the case until last week when the Times finally mentioned the issue. In a lengthy article that falsely paints efforts to promote free speech as orchestrated entirely by Trump supporters, the Times buried an acknowledgment of our reporting some 52 paragraphs down. The backhanded way in which the Times finally noted that the government had suppressed the speech – in an article that essentially argues that free speech is a dangerous right-wing plot – reflects the institution's changing nature. Many in the public may view the paper as a beacon of the free press. After all, the most important Supreme Court case enshrining media rights was New York Times v. U.S., the 1971 case that made it clear that journalists have the right to publish even classified documents. There are sprawling constitutional issues at heart here that should go beyond left and right. This government or the next administration may use the DHS apparatus to control what is said about almost any political issue. DHS bureaucrats ... have planned to suppress "misinformation" about the Ukraine war, the origins of COVID-19, and topics as broad as "racial justice." That power can easily be exploited. Last month, I testified before Congress on the importance of free speech. I also filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court ... urging the justices to consider the lengthy evidence that the government has already overstepped its authority with respect to online censorship.

Note: This Substack was written by independent journalist Lee Fang. Read more about Department of Homeland Security's censorship efforts, including offensive operations to manipulate public opinion, discredit individuals, and infiltrate online groups. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on censorship and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Musk's SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say
2024-03-16, Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-building-spy-satelli...

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said. The network is being built by SpaceX's Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites. The plans show the extent of SpaceX's involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces. If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe. Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits. The planned Starshield network is separate from Starlink, SpaceX's growing commercial broadband constellation that has about 5,500 satellites in space. The classified constellation of spy satellites represents one of the U.S. government's most sought-after capabilities in space because it is designed to offer the most persistent, pervasive and rapid coverage of activities on Earth. "No one can hide," one of the sources said of the system's potential capability, when describing the network's reach.

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


Ad agency tied to Purdue Pharma settles opioid claims for $350 million
2024-02-01, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/02/01/opioids-oxycontin-purdue-pub...

An advertising agency that helped market the blockbuster painkiller OxyContin will pay $350 million to states ravaged by the nation's opioid crisis. Attorneys general from multiple states alleged that Publicis Health developed "unfair and deceptive" marketing campaigns aimed at persuading doctors to prescribe the addictive drug for longer periods of time and at higher doses. The company's client was Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut drugmaker accused in lawsuits of helping ignite the epidemic through aggressive marketing and sales of OxyContin. Publicis, a subsidiary of French ad giant Publicis Groupe, settled with 50 states and D.C. Under the agreements, Publicis Health will stop accepting work related to prescription opioids and must release thousands of internal documents chronicling its dealings with companies such as Purdue. It is the first settlement with an advertising agency connected to the opioid crisis, according to the New York attorney general's office. "Publicis was responsible for creating advertisements and materials, such as pamphlets and brochures that promoted OxyContin as safe and unable to be abused, even though this claim was not true," according to a news release from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. Drug overdoses killed nearly 110,000 people in the United States in 2022, a record high, according to federal death statistics.

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


DOJ's Healthcare Probes of AI Tools Rooted in Purdue Pharma Case
2024-01-29, Bloomberg
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/dojs-healthcare-probes-of-ai-tools-...

Justice Department investigators are scrutinizing the healthcare industry's use of AI embedded in patient records that prompts doctors to recommend treatments. Prosecutors have started subpoenaing pharmaceuticals and digital health companies to learn more about generative technology's role in facilitating anti-kickback and false claims violations, said three sources familiar with the matter.. Two of the sources–speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing investigations–said DOJ attorneys are asking general questions suggesting they still may be formulating a strategy. "I have seen" civil investigative demands "that ask questions about algorithms and prompts that are being built into EMR systems that may be resulting in care that is either in excess of what would have otherwise been rendered, or may be medically unnecessary," said Jaime Jones, who co-leads the healthcare practice at Sidley Austin. DOJ attorneys want "to see what the result is of those tools being built into the system." The probes bring fresh relevance to a pair of 2020 criminal settlements with Purdue Pharma and its digital records contractor, Practice Fusion, over their collusion to design automated pop-up alerts pushing doctors to prescribe addictive painkillers. The kickback scheme ... led to a $145 million penalty for Practice Fusion. Marketers from Purdue ... worked in tandem with Practice Fusion to build clinical decision alerts relying on algorithms.

Note: Read how the US opioid industry operated like a drug cartel. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


How Wealthy Corporations Use Investment Agreements to Extract Millions From Developing Countries
2024-01-25, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/25/how-wealthy-corporations-use-investment-agr...

When Rafael Correa entered Ecuador's presidency in 2007, the nation faced an opportunity and a challenge. Ecuador's economy depended on oil, and global crude prices were near a record high. Much of the oil was extracted by foreign companies ... as prices surged more wealth began flowing overseas. Soon after taking office, Correa increased a recently enacted windfall tax on oil companies. The idea was to use the tax as leverage to extract better terms from the companies. Within months, two oil companies working as partners–the independent Anglo-French firm Perenco and Burlington Resources, a subsidiary of ConocoPhillips–ceased paying the tax and sued the government through a system of international tribunals known as investor state dispute settlements, or ISDS. The system allows foreign investors to sue governments before tribunals outside the jurisdiction of national courts. Perenco and Burlington [convinced] arbitrators in two separate tribunals to award the companies more than $800 million. Critics say the ISDS system gives corporations an exclusive, parallel justice system that elevates foreign interests above human rights and environmental concerns. The vast majority of cases have been brought by companies based in North America or Europe against governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia, prompting many critics to liken the ISDS system to a form of market-based colonialism that continues to extract wealth from the Global South.

Note: According to the analysis in the article, fossil fuel companies and investors filed one in five of 1,720 claims since the 1970s, and "have been awarded at least $82.8 billion in compensation from governments." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel's War on Gaza
2023-12-21, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/21/meet-the-companies-profiting-from-israels-w...

As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group's online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a "genocidal" war that sent defense stocks soaring. Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza. "The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without massive weapon transfers from the U.S.," said Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Boeing, the world's fifth-largest weapon manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as "multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits" that have been used "extensively" during the war. Caterpillar's armored D9 bulldozers ... have been crucial in the Israeli military's ground invasion. Other companies on the list include weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX–formerly Raytheon–as well as vehicle companies AM General, Ford, Oshkosh, Toyota, and drone manufacturers AeroVironment, Skydio, and XTEND.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.


Experts call for fewer antidepressants to be prescribed in UK
2023-12-05, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/05/experts-call-for-fewer-antide...

Medical experts and politicians have called for the amount of antidepressants being prescribed to people across the UK to be reduced in an open letter to the government. The letter coincides with the launch of the all-party parliamentary group Beyond Pills, which aims to reduce what it calls the UK healthcare system's over-reliance on prescription medication. A total of 8.6 million patients in England were prescribed antidepressants in 2022-23, with the amount having almost doubled since 2011. Published in the British Medical Journal ... the letter says: "Rising antidepressant prescribing is not associated with an improvement in mental health outcomes at the population level, which, according to some measures, have worsened as antidepressant prescribing has risen." The letter goes on to say that reducing the rate of antidepressant prescriptions could be achieved through measures that includes stopping the prescribing of antidepressants for mild conditions, and funding and delivering a national 24-hour prescribed drug withdrawal helpline ... to help those experiencing withdrawal symptoms from prescription medication. [Former chief executive of NHS England, Nigel] Crisp said: "The high rate of prescribing of antidepressants over recent years is a clear example of over-medicalisation, where patients are often prescribed unnecessary and potentially harmful drugs instead of tackling the root causes of their suffering, such as loneliness, poverty or poor housing.

Note: Antidepressants are some of the most commonly prescribed medications, yet their significant risks are often withheld from public debate. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.


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