Corporate Corruption News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

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.

Last year was the most perilous ever for people defending their communitys land, natural resources or wildlife, with new research showing that environmental defenders are being killed at the rate of almost four a week across the world. Two hundred environmental activists, wildlife rangers and indigenous leaders trying to protect their land were killed in 2016, according to the watchdog group Global Witness more than double the number killed five years ago. And the frequency of killings is only increasing as 2017 ticks by, according to data provided exclusively to the Guardian, with 98 killings identified in the first five months of this year. John Knox, UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said: There is now an overwhelming incentive to wreck the environment for economic reasons. The people most at risk are people who are already marginalised and excluded from politics and judicial redress, and are dependent on the environment." Most environmental defenders die in remote forests or villages affected by mining, dams, illegal logging, and agribusiness. Many of the killers are reportedly hired by corporations or state forces. Very few are ever arrested or identified. This is why the Guardian is today launching a project, in collaboration with Global Witness, to attempt to record the deaths of everyone who dies over the next year in defence of the environment. We will be reporting from the worlds last wildernesses, as well as from the most industrialised countries on the planet.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.

President Trump’s advisers recruited two businessmen who profited from military contracting to devise alternatives to the Pentagon’s plan to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser. Soliciting the views of Mr. Prince and Mr. Feinberg ... raises a host of ethical issues, not least that both men could profit from their recommendations. Mr. Feinberg ... met with the president on Afghanistan, according to an official, while Mr. Prince briefed several White House officials, including General McMaster. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May, [Mr. Prince] called on the White House ... to use “private military units” to fill the gaps left by departed American soldiers. If Mr. Trump opted to use more contractors and fewer troops, it could also enrich DynCorp, which has already been paid $2.5 billion by the State Department for its work in the country. Mr. Feinberg controls DynCorp through Cerberus Capital Management.

Note: When Blackwater changed its name to Academi, the US paid $309 million to this company to conduct counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan. These operations reportedly contributed to the Afghan opium boom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Drug users, desperate to break addictions to heroin or pain pills, are pawns in a sprawling national network of insurance fraud, an investigation by The Boston Globe and STAT has found. They are being sent to treatment centers hundreds of miles from home for expensive, but often shoddy, care that is paid for by premium health insurance benefits procured with fake addresses. Patient brokers are paid a fee to place insured people in treatment centers, which pocket thousands of dollars in claims for each patient. Patients from across the United States have been taken in by these profiteers capitalizing on the surge in opioid addiction. The patients are often enrolled through HealthCare.gov, the online insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act that connects patients to insurers in dozens of states. The brokers, patients’ families, or marketers for the treatment centers pay the insurance premium. Within a few weeks, the insurer is billed tens of thousands of dollars for what is often subpar care. Many patients have no idea how their insurance coverage was obtained or that they are part of a scam. They are often told they are receiving free care — or that their insurance is being taken care of by the patient broker. Some find out their coverage is from a company in a state where they have never lived only when a billing problem arises or when the broker stops paying the premium. By then, they’re far from home, stranded without any insurance.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health.

In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, I watched hordes of private military contractors descend on the flooded city to find ways to profit from the disaster, even as thousands of the city’s residents, abandoned by their government, were treated like dangerous criminals just for trying to survive. I started to notice the same tactics in disaster zones around the world. I used the term “shock doctrine” to describe the brutal tactic of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock – wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters – to push through radical pro-corporate measures. As Lee Fang reported ... “President Donald Trump [appointed] defence contractors and lobbyists to key government positions as he seeks to rapidly expand the military budget and homeland security programmes … At least 15 officials with financial ties to defence contractors have been either nominated or appointed so far.” One noticeable thing about Trump’s contractor appointees is how many of them come from firms that did not even exist before 9/11: L-1 Identity Solutions (specialising in biometrics), the Chertoff Group (founded by George W Bush’s homeland security director Michael Chertoff), Palantir Technologies (a surveillance/big data firm cofounded by PayPal billionaire and Trump backer Peter Thiel), and many more. This creates a disastrous cocktail. Take a group of people who directly profit from ongoing war and then put those same people at the heart of government. Who’s going to make the case for peace?

Note: The above article was extracted from bestselling author Naomi Klein's new book, "No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the corporate world.

CNN accepted the resignations Monday of three journalists involved in a retracted story about a supposed investigation into a pre-inaugural meeting between an associate of President Donald Trump and the head of a Russian investment fund. The story was posted on the network's website on Thursday and was removed, with all links disabled, Friday night. CNN immediately apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, the Trump transition team member who was reported to be involved in the meeting. The story had been quickly questioned both internally and externally, including by the conservative site Breitbart News. It was determined that the story was posted without going through the expected checks and balances for a story of such sensitivity, the executive said. The failure to follow proper procedures is what led to the resignations, the CNN executive said. It's not immediately clear what in the story is factually incorrect, or whether CNN will continue to report on the issue. The retracted story had said the Senate investigations committee was looking into a January 16 discussion between Scaramucci and Kirill Dmitriev, whose Russian Direct Investment Fund guides investments by U.S. entities in Russia. Scaramucci, in the story, said he exchanged pleasantries in a restaurant with Dmitriev. The report also said that two Democratic senators wanted to know whether Scaramucci had indicated in the meeting whether sanctions against Russia would be lifted, a decision that could impact the investment fund.

Note: CNN supervising producer John Bonifield was recently caught on camera admitting that CNN's Russia narrative is unsupported by proof but good for ratings. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing media corruption news articles from reliable sources.

Foxconn’s enormous Longhua plant is a major manufacturer of Apple products. It might be the best-known factory in the world; it might also might be among the most secretive and sealed-off. The vast majority of plants that produce the iPhone’s component parts and carry out the device’s final assembly are based here. The sprawling factory was once home to an estimated 450,000 workers. In 2010, Longhua assembly-line workers began killing themselves. Worker after worker threw themselves off the towering dorm buildings, sometimes in broad daylight, in tragic displays of desperation – and in protest at the work conditions inside. The corporate response spurred further unease: Foxconn CEO, Terry Gou, had large nets installed outside many of the buildings to catch falling bodies. Workers were made to sign pledges stating they would not attempt to kill themselves. “It’s not a good place for human beings,” says [a former Foxconn worker], who goes by the name Xu. He’d worked in Longhua for about a year, until a couple of months ago, and he says the conditions inside are as bad as ever. The work is very high pressure and he and his colleagues regularly logged 12-hour shifts. Management is both aggressive and duplicitous, publicly scolding workers for being too slow and making them promises they don’t keep, he says, [painting] a bleak picture of a high-pressure working environment where exploitation is routine and where depression and suicide have become normalised.

Note: This is an edited extract from "The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone" by Brian Merchant. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

As grocery shoppers work to digest Amazon’s massive acquisition of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, the digital storefront recently scored a victory that aims to reinforce the company’s growing investments in brick-and-mortar retail. Amazon was awarded a patent May 30 that could help it choke off a common issue faced by many physical stores: Customers’ use of smartphones to compare prices even as they walk around a shop. But Amazon now has the technology to prevent that type of behavior when customers enter any of its physical stores and log onto the WiFi networks there. Titled “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” Amazon’s patent describes a system that can identify a customer’s Internet traffic and sense when the smartphone user is trying to access a competitor’s website. When that happens, Amazon may take one of several actions. It may block access to the competitor’s site, preventing customers from viewing comparable products from rivals. It might redirect the customer to Amazon’s own site or to other, Amazon-approved sites. It might notify an Amazon salesperson to approach the customer. Or it might send the customer’s smartphone a text message, coupon or other information designed to lure the person back into Amazon’s orbit.

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

Overdoses are now the leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 50. According to preliminary data compiled by The New York Times, deaths last year likely topped 59,000 - 19 percent more than the year before. In Ohio, they were up even more. On May 26, Cleveland Police Sgt. Timothy Maffo-Judd's body camera was running as he approached a man slumped in his car. It turned out that the man was minutes from a fatal drug overdose. Three applications of Narcan - the anti-overdose drug - and the victim finally started coming around. Maffo-Judd says it's become a grim routine, and he's even encountered the same person twice. "That's pretty common," he says. In Ohio, at least 4,100 people died from unintentional drug overdoses last year - a 36 percent increase from 2015, when the state led the nation in overdose deaths. Kentucky, West Virginia and New Hampshire have also experienced shocking increases, along with the East Coast. Most of it is tied to heroin or prescription painkillers, often laced with a powerful synthetic opioid known as fentanyl. In Ohio alone, nearly four billion opioid pills were prescribed across Ohio between 2011 and 2015. Ohio is now suing five big drug companies that manufacture prescription painkillers, charging that they knowingly minimize the risks of addiction. As Attorney General Mike Dewine put it: "They knew they were wrong but they did it anyway and they continue to do it."

Note: This excellent article has lots more on the intense level of corruption found in this opioid crisis. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the pharmaceutical industry.

Say what you like about Bilderberg, but they’ve got a sense of humour. The agenda for this year’s secretive summit of the global elite [gets] big laughs straight off the bat by describing themselves as “a diverse group of political leaders and experts”. They’re trumpeting the diversity of a conference where less than 25% of the participants are female. And as for racial diversity, there are more senior executives of Goldman Sachs at this year’s Bilderberg than there are people of colour. Perhaps by “diverse” they mean that some of the participants own hedge funds, whereas others own vast industrial conglomerates. Some are on the board of HSBC, others are on the board of BP. That sort of thing. But my favourite joke by far from this year’s agenda is this item: “The war on information”. Bilderberg is concerned about fake news? The world’s most secretive conference, which is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping the press away from its sacred discussions, which has spent decades lying and obfuscating about itself, wants to ensure the spread of truth? Many times before I’ve been detained by armed police for trying to report on this conference. If Bilderberg wants an answer to “Why is populism growing?” – another question on the agenda – they might take a look in the mirror. People aren’t all that comfortable with unaccountable technocratic elites and billionaire globalists lobbying their ministers and party leaders behind closed doors.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Bilderberg and other influential secret societies.

The entire pharmaceutical industry is floated by a protectionist racket. Drugs that are in fact very cheap to make are kept artificially expensive – we have drugs that cost $1,000 a pill here in America that sell for $4 in India, for instance. The means of keeping prices high vary, but include lengthy patents to push production of generics into the future, the barring of foreign competition, and the prohibition of negotiations to lower prices for bulk purchases by both the federal and state governments. Without government intervention, the pharmaceutical industry would be profitable, but it wouldn't be the massive cash factory it is now. In 2015, for instance, the 20 largest drug companies made a collective $124 billion in profits. All the industry needs to protect those sums is the continued cooperation of Congress. So naturally it spends money ... to make sure they always have just enough dependable people in office to block change. Which brings us ... to drug importation. Trump announced early in the race that he was in favor of bringing in cheaper drugs from Canada and made it a big stump theme. The Democrats, meanwhile, put allowing importation of drugs from countries like Canada in their platform last summer. The seeming synergy of the two candidates' positions led to the hope that something might actually be done about the problem, no matter who won. No such luck. Trump's support for drug importation basically went up in smoke from the moment he started filling out his executive appointees.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and throughout Big Pharma.

A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states. TigerSwan, [working] at the behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, [described] the movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component” and [compared] the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters. “Daily intelligence updates” developed by TigerSwan ... were shared with law enforcement officers, thus contributing to a broad public-private intelligence dragnet. [Leaked] documents ... also reveal a widespread and sustained campaign of infiltration of protest camps and activist circles. TigerSwan agents using false names and identities regularly sought to obtain the trust of protesters, which they used to gather information they reported back to their employer. In an October 3 report, TigerSwan discusses how to use its knowledge of internal camp dynamics: “Exploitation of ongoing native versus non-native rifts, and tribal rifts between peaceful and violent elements is critical in our effort to delegitimize the anti-DAPL movement.” The way TigerSwan discusses protesters as “terrorists,” their direct actions as “attacks,” and the camps as a “battlefield,” reveals how the protesters’ dissent was not only criminalized but treated as a national security threat.

Note: The above article is part of an in-depth series, and includes many original source documents. Standing Rock activists were also targeted for investigation by the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.

Christine Sheppard fantasizes about her life before cancer. For 12 years, Sheppard had no idea what might have caused her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - until IARC [The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer] reported that glyphosate, the key ingredient in the popular weed killer Roundup, is "probably carcinogenic to humans". That's the same herbicide Sheppard said she sprayed on her coffee farm in Hawaii for five years. Sheppard is one of more than 800 cancer patients suing Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, claiming the company failed to warn consumers about the risk of cancer associated with Roundup products. Recently unsealed court documents appear to show Monsanto mounting its effort to discredit the IARC report before it was even released. A month before the IARC report came out in 2015, Monsanto executive William F. Heydens sent an internal email [that] suggested ghostwriting parts of an "overall plausibility paper" to save money. After the report [was released] Heydens sent an email to Monsanto's US agency lead. Dan Jenkins, Monsanto's US agency lead ... suggested talking to Jess Rowland, then chairman of the EPA's Cancer Assessment Review Committee. But the next day, Jenkins said Rowland called him. "(Rowland) told me no coordination is going on and he wanted to establish some, saying 'If I can kill this I should get a medal,'" Jenkins wrote, as shown in the plaintiffs' motion to compel the deposition of Rowland.

Note: Read more on Monsanto's fake research and influence over EPA regulators. The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. Yet the EPA continues to use industry studies to declare Roundup safe while ignoring independent scientists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.

Residents in North Carolina are fighting back against one of the state's most prominent industries: hog farming. But the legislation may not be on their side - a group of lawmakers in the state passed House Bill 467 last week, legislation that limits how much residents can collect in damages from hog farms. Hog farms in North Carolina dispose of pig feces and urine by spraying it, untreated, into the air where residents live. In response, nearly 500 of those residents ... from eastern North Carolina, brought a class action suit against Murphy-Brown, the state's largest producer of hogs. The lawsuit has now made its way to federal court. Residents have said the process of waste disposal has caused health problems. Much of the waste disposal affects low-income residents and black communities. "It can, I think, very correctly be called environmental racism or environmental injustice that people of color, low-income people bear the brunt of these practices," [University of North Carolina professor] Steve Wing ... said. "I shut my hog operation down, and I got out of it. And I ... just couldn't do another person that way, to make them smell that," Don Webb, a former pig factory farm owner, told Democracy Now. "You get stories like, 'I can't hang my clothes out.' Feces and urine odor comes by and attaches itself to your clothes." HB 467 ... was passed by both houses of the North Carolina Legislature. The bill would prevent people from recovering damages like those for healthcare bills and pain and suffering.

Note: In 2014, video footage of toxic cesspools around North Carolina farms exposed shockingly lax agricultural waste disposal standards. In response, the North Carolina Legislature passed a law to prevent whistle-blowers from exposing corporate wrongdoing. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Anybody who works in Washington knows that think tanks play an important role in advising the government on policy. One organization in particular has dramatically increased its influence over the past decade. The policy shop in question is McKinsey, a global – and highly profitable – consulting firm. In the foreign policy community, think tanks are widely viewed as the traditional brokers in the marketplace of ideas. But this is changing. Whether based in investment banks like Goldman Sachs, management consultancies like McKinsey or political risk firms like the Eurasia Group, private-sector institutions have started to act like policy knowledge brokers. Consultants have been key advisers to the government for decades, but recent trends have caused their star to rise at the same time that traditional think tanks face new challenges. The University of Pennsylvania's annual think tank report has stressed "the fierce competition think tanks are facing from consulting firms" in recent years. And think tank officials have acknowledged the sway of donors. Bill Goodfellow, the executive director of the Center for International Policy, told the Times: "It's absurd to suggest that donors don't have influence. The danger is we in the think tank world are being corrupted in the same way as the political world." The irony is that the nonprofit actors, in trying to expand their base of support, have been accused of compromising their independence, while the explicitly for-profit world of consultants has avoided the charge.

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

There's no question that activist David Daleiden surreptitiously recorded healthcare and biomedical services employees across the state of California with the intent of discrediting the healthcare provider, Planned Parenthood. It's against state law to record confidential conversations without the consent of all the parties involved. But that doesn't mean that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra should have charged Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Susan Merritt, with 15 felony counts – one for each of the 14 people recorded, and a 15th for conspiracy. It's disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy. In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy. The videos ... were published online nearly two years ago by Daleiden's organization, the Center for Medical Progress. Officials of Planned Parenthood, whose staff members were seen on some of the recordings, denied any wrongdoing. Still, the online posting of the edited tapes triggered more than a dozen different state investigations ... and several now concluded congressional investigations into whether fetal tissue was being sold.

Note: Watch all the leaked footage of Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue here. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.

A retired US Navy admiral is one of six former officers arrested and charged with bribery in a recently-unsealed indictment, part of an ongoing investigation into the “Fat Leonard” scandal. Retired Navy Adm. Bruce Loveless ... stood accused of providing classified information and offering preferential business treatment to Malaysian defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard.” In exchange, the indictment charges, he and the other members of Mr. Francis’s “Wolf Pack” received a host of bribes, including meals, hotels, and encounters with prostitutes. Francis’s company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, had long serviced Navy ships in the Pacific, cleaning, refueling, and restocking the ships. Over the course of a decade starting round 2005, Francis and his company worked to develop ties with Navy officers. These Navy officers, in turn, helped recruit others who might be willing to share classified shipping schedules and route Navy ships through ports where Francis’s company could charge fake tariffs, prosecutors allege. In 2007, an email from chief warrant officer Robert Gorsuch told Francis that these officers were developing “personality profiles” on potential recruits. The rewards for participating Navy officers for this association – which Francis admitted in 2015 cost the Navy $200 million – were substantial. The indictment enumerates the bribes received by officers between 2006 and 2012. All in all, 13 defendants have pleaded guilty so far.

Note: At one point, Frances bribed Naval officials to redirect an aircraft carrier, and avoided prosecution for years by also bribing military investigators. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in the military and in the corporate world.

Two former high-level Penn State administrators pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor charges of child endangerment, for their roles in covering up child sex abuse by disgraced assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Former Vice President Gary Schultz and former Athletic Director Tim Curley each took a plea bargain that - if accepted by the judge - will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. As part of the plea bargain, the felony charges they originally faced were reduced to misdemeanors. The pleas also open the possibility they may testify against former university President Graham Spanier ... who has been charged with a conspiracy felony and a child endangerment misdemeanor. The charges against all three men pertain to how they handled the multiple allegations of sexual abuse against Sandusky, who in 2012 was convicted of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year span. "Prosecutors said Spanier, Curley and Schultz knew of complaints involving Sandusky showering with boys in 1998 and 2001," The Associated Press reported in 2012. A series of 2001 emails — now key to the government's case — show that the men at least considered the situation serious enough to possibly warrant police intervention. They ultimately rejected the idea of calling authorities. "This was not an oversight," then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said in 2012. "It was not misjudgment on their part. This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials to actively conceal the truth."

Note: Read more about how senior Penn State officials covered up Sandusky's crimes due to fears of bad publicity. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

Lawyers in Pennsylvania say their client was sexually exploited at a motel for years, alleging the teen girl was a victim of human trafficking. “This child was forced into sex slavery,” attorney Nadeem Bezar told reporters. The teen’s lawyers are using Pennsylvania’s human trafficking law to sue the motel where they say their client was sexually exploited, marking the first civil suit under the law since it was enacted in 2014. Lawyers allege employees at the Roosevelt Inn in northeast Philadelphia knew that a 14-year-old girl was being held against her will for two years. She was forced to have sex with more than 1,000 men. The girl, now 17, wants the hotel to pay for what happened to her. She’s suing the motel’s owners, the motel’s management company and the manager himself. According to the [Philadelphia] Inquirer, the girl managed to escape and reconnect with her family after two years at the motel. Those responsible for trafficking the teen were convicted and sentenced to prison. The motel is well-known to Philadelphia prosecutors as “the epicenter of human trafficking” in the city. An assistant district attorney, Erin O’Brien, told the Inquirer that [motel manager Yanga] Patel had cooperated with police in previous investigations, but said “almost every trafficking investigation we have, we see the victim is at Roosevelt Inn.” “You can’t have a line of johns out the front door and around the room waiting without them knowing,” [Attorney Tom] Kline said. “The front desk would direct the traffic to the room of this child.”

Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "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 topic in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

An increasing proportion of sperm - now about 90 percent in a typical young man - are misshapen, sometimes with two heads or two tails. Even when properly shaped, today’s sperm are often pathetic swimmers. Sperm counts also appear to have dropped sharply in the last 75 years, in ways that affect our ability to reproduce. Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas at Austin and the editor of the journal Endocrinology, put it to me this way: “Semen quality and fertility in men have decreased. Not everyone who wants to reproduce will be able to. And the costs of male disorders to quality of life, and the economic burden to society, are inestimable.” Human and animal studies suggest that a crucial culprit is a common class of chemical called endocrine disruptors, found in plastics, cosmetics, couches, pesticides and countless other products. Because of the environmental links, The New Yorker once elegantly referred to the crisis as “silent sperm,” and innumerable studies over 25 years add to the concern. Related to the problem of declining semen quality is an increase in testicular cancer in many countries; in undescended testicles; and in a congenital malformation of the penis. The crisis for male reproductive health seems to begin in utero. Male and female fetuses start pretty much the same, and then hormones drive differentiation of males from females. The problem seems to be that endocrine disrupting chemicals mimic hormones and confuse this process.

Note: Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's RoundUp, is the most heavily used agricultural chemical in human history. Even at extremely low levels, glyphosate is a known endocrine disruptor. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.

According to new research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University, up to 15 percent of Twitter accounts are in fact bots rather than people. Researchers at USC used more than one thousand features to identify bot accounts on Twitter, in categories including friends, tweet content and sentiment, and time between tweets. Using that framework, researchers wrote that "our estimates suggest that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts are bots." Since Twitter currently has 319 million monthly active users, that translates to nearly 48 million bot accounts, using USC's high-end estimate. The report goes on to say that complex bots could have shown up as humans in their model, "making even the 15% figure a conservative estimate." At 15 percent, the evaluation is far greater than Twitter's own estimates. In a filing with the SEC last month, Twitter said that up to 8.5 percent of all active accounts contacted Twitter's servers "…without any discernable additional user-initiated action." USC's researchers ... highlight the benefits of some bots, writing, "many social bots perform useful functions, such as dissemination of news and publications…" But the USC report also points to the downside of bots, saying, "there is a growing record of malicious applications of social bots. Some emulate human behavior to manufacture fake grassroots political support [and] promote terrorist propaganda and recruitment."

Note: The use of social media to manipulate public perception has reportedly influenced recent elections in Latin America, the UK, and the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.