Inspirational News StoriesExcerpts of Key Inspirational 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.
Endurance athletes sometimes say they're "addicted" to exercise. In fact, scientists have shown that rhythmic, continuous exercise — aerobic exercise — can in fact produce narcoticlike chemicals in the body. Now researchers suggest that those chemicals may have helped turn humans, as well as other animals, into long-distance runners. The man behind the research is University of Arizona anthropologist David Raichlen, a runner himself. He thinks humans are "Wired to run, meaning that our brains ... have been sort of rewired ... to encourage these running and high aerobic-activity behaviors." Many anthropologists think early humans learned to run long distances to chase down and exhaust prey, like antelopes. Meat is one payoff for runners. But Raichlen thinks there may have been another reward: a runner's high. He designed an experiment to test this idea. When people exercise aerobically, their bodies can actually make drugs — cannabinoids, the same kind of chemicals in marijuana. Raichlen wondered if other distance-running animals also produced those drugs. If so, maybe runner's high is not some peculiar thing with humans. So he put dogs — also distance runners — on a treadmill. Also ferrets, but ferrets are not long-distance runners. The dogs produced the drug, but the ferrets did not. Says Raichlen: "It suggests some level of aerobic exercise was encouraged by natural selection, and it may be fairly deep in our evolutionary roots."
Recent studies at Harvard, U.C.L.A. [and] John Hopkins have now made it plain that doctors should [soon] be free to offer illicit drugs to patients who are terminally ill, in order to ease their emotional suffering. At Harvard, Dr. John Halpern ... tested MDMA (the street drug Ecstasy) to determine if it would ease the anxieties in two patients with terminal cancer. At U.C.L.A. and Hopkins, Drs. Charles Grob and Roland Griffiths used psilocybin (the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms) to help cancer patients past their paralyzing, debilitating fears. The results are reportedly consistently good. In many cases, patients are able to cope with their physical pain and psychological turmoil better than before. Some, no doubt, feel the drugs opened doors of perception previously closed to them, allowing them to make peace with their lives and the impending end of their lives. Recent data also show that low doses of the street drug Special K (ketamine), when slowly infused via IV, can instantly [relieve] major depression ... in many patients. And opiates like oxycodone ... are also extremely useful for those patients who ... suffer with unwieldy anxiety that cannot be addressed ... in any other way.
Note: For more news articles from reliable sources on mind-altering drugs, click here.
Charles Grob [is] a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center who [has administered] psilocybin — an active component of magic mushrooms — to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death. When the research was completed in 2008 ... the results showed that administering psilocybin to terminally ill subjects could be done safely while reducing the subjects’ anxiety and depression about their impending deaths. Grob’s interest in the power of psychedelics to mitigate mortality’s sting is not just the obsession of one lone researcher. Dr. John Halpern, head of the Laboratory for Integrative Psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont Mass., a psychiatric training hospital for Harvard Medical School, used MDMA — also known as ecstasy — in an effort to ease end-of-life anxieties in two patients with Stage 4 cancer. And there are two ongoing studies using psilocybin with terminal patients, one at New York University’s medical school, led by Stephen Ross, and another at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where Roland Griffiths has administered psilocybin to 22 cancer patients and is aiming for a sample size of 44. “This research is in its very early stages,” Grob told me earlier this month, “but we’re getting consistently good results.” Grob and his colleagues are part of a resurgence of scientific interest in the healing power of psychedelics.
Note: For fascinating reports from major media sources on the beneficial uses of psychedelics, click here.
Paul Rice spent more than a decade in Nicaragua before returning to the United States to start Fair Trade USA in late 1998. Then known as TransFair, the Oakland nonprofit began to push businesses to practice fair trade. Today, the group works with more than 800 brands, including Peet's Coffee & Tea, Numi Tea and Ben & Jerry's, which have adopted fair-trade practices and carry its fair-trade label on certain products. [Rice:] The way it works is farmers organize themselves into marketing cooperatives and sell direct. When they sell direct to Starbucks, Peet's, Ben and Jerry's, or any number of the 800 brands we work with today, they're able to get a much higher price for their harvest. It's like a farmers' market gone global. Fair Trade USA plays three critical roles in the fair-trade movement. The first role - and defining function - is to certify fair-trade products. We certify 90 percent of fair-trade products in the U.S. That label gives consumers the assurance that the product came from a sustainable farm and farmers received a fair price for their products. We have auditors around the world that audit and inspect farms. We also have a supply-chain audit. It tracks the product from the farm to the grocery store shelves. We also have two other functions, consumer education and farmer support. With consumer education, our goal is to develop programs that raise awareness among consumers in the U.S. We (also) run training programs for farmers all over the world, to help them improve the quality of their products, develop strong business skills and to help them get access to capital.
A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again." Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. "All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence." 3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Note: For inspiring articles from major media sources on at-death and near-death experiences, click here.
Imagine ... a world where the metric that guides our decisions is not money, but happiness. That is the future that 650 political, academic, and civic leaders from around the world came together to promote on April 2, 2012. Encouraged by the government of Bhutan, the United Nations held a High Level Meeting for Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm. The meeting marks the launch of a global movement to shift our focus away from measuring and promoting economic growth as a goal in its own right, and toward the goal of measuring—and increasing—human happiness and quality of life. Some may say these 650 world leaders are dreamers, but they are the sort that can make dreams come true. The meeting began with an address by Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley of Bhutan, where the government tracks the nation’s “Gross National Happiness”: "The time has come for global action to build a new world economic system that is no longer based on the illusion that limitless growth is possible on our precious and finite planet or that endless material gain promotes well-being. Instead, it will be a system that promotes harmony and respect for nature and for each other; that respects our ancient wisdom traditions and protects our most vulnerable people as our own family, and that gives us time to live and enjoy our lives and to appreciate rather than destroy our world. It will be an economic system, in short, that is fully sustainable and that is rooted in true, abiding well-being and happiness."
As diplomats and journalists dissect every word spoken by top Israeli, Iranian and American officials for signs of a potential Israeli military strike on Irans nuclear program, an online campaign to prevent just that has gained steam in Israel. The Israel Loves Iran campaign [was launched last week by] Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry and his wife, Michal Tamir. For there to be a war between us, we must first be afraid of one another, we must hate, Edry says. Im not afraid of you. I dont hate you. I dont even know you. No Iranian ever did me harm. The site and its accompanying Facebook page are filled with photos of Israelis from all walks of life and the Iranians, We Love You slogan, with the subheader: We will never bomb you. On Friday evening, the page had almost 28,000 likes, and the campaign has raised more than $16,000 to print posters and keep the movement grow[ing]. Organizers say responses from Iranians around the world have poured in. Unfortunately, the stupid politicians in both countries are trying to separate these two rich cultures! wrote one responder. One of the more popular posts ricocheting around Facebook is of a man and woman kissing, with him holding up his Israeli passport as she flaunts her Iranian passport. Persian girls are sexy and adorable, the boyfriend wrote. Our cultures and backgrounds have never got in the way. We actually share the same ideals. According to a recent poll, [only] 19 percent of Israelis support a unilateral strike on Iran. Participant Talia Gorodess [commented], the more people join this campaign, the more, I hope, my government will think twice before doing anything foolish.
Note: To see the inspiring website of this campaign, click here. For the facebook page, click here. For a highly inspiring two-minute video of the campaign, click here. For the beautiful response from Iranians, click here. This is how we transform our world! To understand how the politicians and military leaders manage to manipulate us into war after war, read what a highly decorated general had to say at this link.
The concept of the near-death experience – one's life flashing before one's eyes, seeing a white light at the end of a tunnel, encountering loved ones waiting on the other side – is familiar to most of us. But many don't know that Raymond Moody is the man responsible for introducing this phenomenon to the mainstream, and in the process, completely changing our views on death and dying. In Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife ... the pioneering researcher reveals how he became the first doctor to extensively study and eventually unveil this previously unknown experience of the near-death experience to the general public. From his childhood curiosity about the soul to his academic exploration of philosophy, from his early research into the afterlife to the publication of the bestselling book Life After Life, Moody's entire life has been devoted to a deeper understanding of what comes next – and to exploring better ways for the living to encounter the dead. In this fascinating account, readers will discover the surprisingly thin line between the living and the deceased – and why Moody's lifetime of scholarship shows that we have evidence for our deepest hopes: that our existence continues beyond this life. Raymond Moody, M.D.'s seminal work, Life After Life, has sold over ten million copies and completely changed the way in which we view death and dying. He is widely acknowledged as the world's leading expert in the field of near-death experience.
Note: For many other inspiring media articles on near-death experiences, click here. For our special section on NDEs, click here.
The United Nations has named 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, and indeed, co-ops seem poised to become a dominant business model around the world. Today, nearly one billion people worldwide are cooperative member-owners. In Ethiopia, cooperation helps women and men rise above poverty. In Germany, half of renewable energy is owned by citizens. In America, 93 million credit union member-owners control $920 billion in assets. And in Basque Country, a 50-year-old worker co-op has grown to become a multinational, cooperative corporation. Founded in 1956 ... Mondragón is the world’s largest cooperative, and Spain’s seventh largest business. Mondragón has operations in 19 countries and employs 83,000 worker-owners. Yet for every international job the company creates, it employs two people in Spain. The UN ... in 2012 will dedicate its efforts to raising awareness of co-ops, helping them grow and influencing governments to support them legislatively. Thirty percent of Americans belong to cooperatively-owned credit unions, the largest of which serves 3.4 million Department of Defense employees and has $45 billion in assets. “Cooperatives ... promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people. [They] are becoming a major factor of economic and social development and contribute to the eradication of poverty.” - UN Resolution 64/136, 2010. The cooperative model is expected to be the world’s fastest-growing business model by 2025. UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon [says] “Cooperatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility.”
Note: How sad that we've heard hardly a peep out of the major media about this inspiring trend towards cooperatives. For an abundance of other inspiring major media articles, click here.
This dream house is the love child of artist-builder Jay Shafer, who lovingly hand-crafted it. The stainless-steel kitchen, gleaming next to the natural wood interior, is outfitted with customized storage and built-ins. But in an era when bigger is taken as a synonym for better, calling Shafer's home a dream house might strike some as an oxymoron. Why? The entire house, including sleeping loft, measures only 96 square feet -- smaller than many people's bathrooms. Shafer ... began his love affair with diminutive dwellings about 10 years ago. "I was living in an average-sized apartment and I realized I just didn't need so much space," he said. After a friend asked him to build a house for him to live in, Shafer launched Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. in 2000. The friend went on to become the president of the Small House Society -- and thus was written one more episode of the small-is-beautiful movement. Shafer began building and designing little houses for people who wanted them as backyard retreats, second homes or primary residences. Over the years, he has built and sold 10 homes and dozens of house plans, which cost about $1,000. But the real story is that he's become a poster boy for simple living, with interviews or mentions in ... the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and, last February, even on "Oprah." "Our society's been based on excess for so long, it's still a somewhat novel idea to live simply," he said. His next dream is to create a little community of small houses, with a half-dozen or more connected by walking paths on a small piece of land.
Note: For lots more on the fascinating tiny house movement, click here. For an abundance of other inspiring major media articles, click here.
Two entrepreneurs are hoping to take gardening back to a time when an abundance of plant diversity was the norm. Matthew Hoffman and Astrid Lindo grow, source and sell seeds of rare and heirloom edibles. "What's amazing is 100 years ago, everybody saved their own seed," Lindo said. By 1983, the 408 varieties of peas cultivated on American farms some 80 years earlier had dwindled to 25. Sweet corn saw a drop from 307 to 12 varieties. Hoffman undertook intensive training in New Mexico at the first-ever seed school taught by Bill McDorman, one of the veterans of the contemporary North American seed-saving movement. His enthusiasm was infectious; within a few months, Lindo decided to ... immerse herself in the fledgling business. The couple talked with experienced seed growers and farmers, researched catalogs, and scanned gardening forums and blogs online. And then they dug in and began growing their own seed. McDorman, director of Native Seeds/Search, a Tucson organization focused on conserving the genetic diversity of crops ... is effusive in his praise of the couple. "These young kids are way smarter than we were," he remarked. "Matthew and Astrid are indicative of what's coming, a whole new wave." The couple have ... a lively Twitter feed, a blog and a Facebook page as well as a YouTube channel with instructional videos on seed-saving techniques. The company also donates seeds to school garden programs, urban garden programs and correctional facilities.
Note: Learn more at www.livingseedcompany.com. Read the blog at this link and check them out on twitter:@LivingSeedCo; Facebook: www.facebook.com/LivingSeedCompany; and YouTube: bit.ly/wR0P3B
A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research. This apparently outrageous claim is supported by many years of research done in a number of different countries. [Welcome to] the world of High Intensity Training (HIT). By doing just three minutes of HIT a week for four weeks, [you can] expect to see significant changes in a number of important health indices. But how much benefit you get ... may well depend on your genes. The fact is that people respond to exercise in very different ways. In one international study 1,000 people were asked to exercise four hours a week for 20 weeks. The results were striking. Although 15% of people made huge strides ... 20% showed no real improvement at all. The exercise they were doing was not making them any aerobically fitter. [HIT is] actually very simple. You get on an exercise bike, warm up by doing gentle cycling for a couple of minutes, then go flat out for 20 seconds. A couple of minutes to catch your breath, then another 20 seconds at full throttle. Another couple of minutes gentle cycling, then a final 20 seconds going hell for leather. And that's it. Active exercise ... seems to be needed to break down the body's stores of glucose, deposited in your muscles as a substance called glycogen. Smash up these glycogen stores and you create room for more glucose to be sucked out of the blood and stored. Like any new exercise regime if you have a pre-existing medical condition you should consult your doctor before trying it.
Note: For lots more on this, see the excellent article on mercola.com at this link. And for two amazing one-minute videos of a highly inspiring gymnast who is 86-years-old doing her routines, click here.
Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the countrys economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger. Since the end of 2008, the islands banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association. You could safely say that Iceland holds the world record in household debt relief, said Lars Christensen, chief emerging markets economist at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. Iceland followed the textbook example of what is required in a crisis. Any economist would agree with that. Most polls now show Icelanders dont want to join the European Union, where the debt crisis is in its third year. The islands households were helped by an agreement between the government and the banks, which are still partly controlled by the state, to forgive debt exceeding 110 percent of home values. On top of that, a Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 found loans indexed to foreign currencies were illegal, meaning households no longer need to cover krona losses.
Note: The amazing story of the Icelandic people demanding bank reform is one of the most underreported stories in recent years. Why isn't this all over the news? To see what top journalists say about news censorship, click here. For blatant manipulations of the big banks reported in the major media, click here.
A relatively new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you. All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self. Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn’t matter whose body is whose. Wordlessly, relying on the heart’s semaphores, the mother says all an infant needs to hear, communicating through eyes, face and voice. Thanks to advances in neuroimaging, we now have evidence that a baby’s first attachments imprint its brain. The patterns of a lifetime’s behaviors, thoughts, self-regard and choice of sweethearts all begin in this crucible. As a wealth of imaging studies highlight, the neural alchemy continues throughout life as we mature and forge friendships, dabble in affairs, succumb to romantic love, choose a soul mate. Loving relationships alter the brain the most significantly.
Nobody connected with the documentary "Bully," from filmmaker Lee Hirsch to the Weinstein Co.'s Harvey Weinstein, could possibly be surprised by the film's getting an R rating from the MPAA. If even I know that two f-words will almost always get you an automatic R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, then Weinstein, who knows a few things about making movies, certainly knew it, too. Nor is there any question that things could not have worked out better for "Bully" had they planned it - so they probably did plan it. The outrage over the R rating for this documentary, about kids getting bullied in school, is the absolute best publicity that a distributor could hope for. Documentaries are like the literary novel of the movie world - lots of respect but a limited audience. Now this movie has become a cause and will be seen by everybody. "Bully," which exposes the horrible bullying that millions of kids are subjected to and that our schools and institutions tolerate, initially received an R rating on the basis of its "language." Weinstein and one of the kids depicted in the film made a personal appeal to the MPAA board, but the R rating was upheld by a single vote. In a country in which kids are coming home beaten up or demoralized, and in which social media have become the ultimate goon squad to browbeat, intimidate and humiliate the young and delicate among us, the MPAA needs to reverse its decision. But whatever they do, the good news is that they've all but guaranteed that "Bully" will find an audience.
Note: To learn about Challenge Day, the amazing organization which put bullying on the map, click here. A documentary on their transformative work won and Emmy award. You can watch powerful clips of this moving documentary at the link just given.
In the fight against maternal mortality in the developing world, a rugged, portable “Solar Suitcase” is providing reliable electricity to clinics in 17 countries where healthcare workers previously struggled to provide emergency obstetric care by the light of candles, flashlights and mobile phones. The Solar Suitcase powers medical LED lights, headlamps, mobile phones, computers and medical devices. Healthcare workers using the Solar Suitcase report greater facility and ease in conducting nighttime procedures. Improved lighting allows health workers to identify and treat complications such as obstetric lacerations and hemorrhage, nurses to locate and administer intravenous medication, and emergency Caesarean sections to be performed 24 hours a day. Solar-powered mobile phones allow on-call doctors to be alerted when obstetric emergencies require surgery. With augmentation, the solar suitcase powers blood bank refrigeration, permitting life-saving transfusions to occur without delay. An estimated 358,000 maternal deaths occur worldwide. Reducing childbirth deaths depends, in part, on providing adequate emergency obstetric care. However, a lack of health facility power translates to an inability to perform life-saving care.
A World Bank report shows a broad-based reduction in extreme poverty - and indicates that the global recession, contrary to economists' expectations, did not increase poverty in the developing world. The report shows that for the first time the proportion of people living in extreme poverty - on less than $1.25 a day - fell in every developing region between 2005 and 2008. And the biggest recession since the Great Depression seems not to have thrown that trend off course, preliminary data from 2010 indicate. The progress is so dramatic that the world has met the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty in half five years before its 2015 deadline. That is contrary to the World Bank's own expectations. In a year-end 2008 report, the Washington-based development institution warned: "Unemployment is on the rise in industrial countries and poverty is set to increase across low- and middle income countries, bringing with it a substantial deterioration in conditions for the world's most vulnerable." But that did not happen. Surveys for 2010 show that the proportion of people in the developing world living in extreme poverty fell. That is because of strong growth in countries like Brazil, India and especially China, growth that helped buoy economies in Africa and South America.
Jane the Concussion Killer ended her battle against evil years ago, but See Jane Run is still vanquishing foes. Both are the alter egos of video game advocate Jane McGonigal, whose slow recovery from a head injury was inspiration to turn wellness into a hero-themed game called "SuperBetter." The San Francisco author and game researcher is taking "SuperBetter" global this month, as a free online game and app. With partners, funding and a network of users who have already signed up, she's hoping "SuperBetter" can help people on their own heroic journeys to tackle depression, obesity and other health issues." 'SuperBetter' is fundamentally about a mind shift," McGonigal says. "It's about claiming your power to be in charge of how you spend your time and energy, and focusing it on the things that matter the most to you. Focusing on things that will bring real happiness, real well-being." [She] became a public face with her 2011 best-seller Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Reality Is Broken talks about adopting the stimulating challenges and rewards of video games when tackling real-life problems. "I still believe really strongly that gamers can solve some of the world's toughest challenges, but some of the world's toughest challenges are very personal," she says. "Things like depression and obesity are global challenges."
The most valuable weapon in the fight against human trafficking may be you. People from West Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, have all joined the fight. Watch the "Taking a Stand, Making a Difference" show [at the link above] in three parts. In the first segment, viewers horrified by our expose of working conditions for people [farming cocoa] in West Africa campaign for more Fair Trade products. Natalie, in Romania, was moved to stop eating chocolate until Fair Trade cocoa is on sale in local shops. Gerry, in New Zealand, tried to make a regionally-inspired dish using only Fair Trade products. Meanwhile, young Christians at a U.S. convention built a statue symbolizing the extent of slavery [and] raised $3 million for related charities. Their stories also offer practical ideas and information to others who want to get involved in helping the victims of modern-day slavery. In part two, the idea that people are not for sale is spreading across Ukraine, and one South Korean school is now campaigning to abolish the modern-day scourge. In part three, one woman beat her fashion bug to help women rescued from human trafficking. Amy Seiffert wore the same dress for six months and donated the money she would have spent on clothes to a local organization building a shelter for rescued women in Ohio. She says it was a small thing that reinforced the message that her ability to choose is [a] privilege denied to many. Along the way she inspired others, and the Daughter Project’s shelter is now a reality.
Note: The CNN videos included in this message are quite inspiring. Things are changing. Yea!!! For lots more inspiring news, click here.
Staring down a mountain of bras in her basement, Kimba Langas knew things had gotten out of hand. The stay-at-home-mom started collecting unwanted bras as a way to help women on the other side of the world. It started small through word of mouth, and then a Facebook page. But the bras quickly overran her home in suburban Denver, Colorado. They were in her basement, in her garage, in her car. They were in bags, in boxes, in envelopes. Her husband, Jeff, tried to navigate his way around them, but it wasn't easy. Langas collects unwanted bras for a charity called "Free the Girls" which gives them to young women coming out of sex trafficking in Mozambique - not to wear, but to sell in used clothing markets where bras are a luxury item and command top dollar. The girls can make three times the average wage, more than enough to support themselves and not be trafficked again. It was the pastor of her church who came up with the idea for Free the Girls. He was planning on moving to Mozambique for missionary work, and called Langas to see if she would run the project with him. She thought it sounded like fun. Shortly after launching the Facebook page, the bras started coming. The response was much bigger than she expected. "There was a drive in Arizona and the women collected 8,000 bras. There's a church in Tennessee that collected 3,000 bras. There's a group ... in Denver that collected 1,250 bras. It's just one of those things that caught on and spread."
Note: For lots more inspiring news, click 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.