Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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A controversial facial recognition database, used by police departments across the nation, was built in part with 30 billion photos the company scraped from Facebook and other social media users without their permission. The company, Clearview AI, boasts of its potential for identifying rioters at the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saving children being abused or exploited, and helping exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. But critics point to privacy violations and wrongful arrests fueled by faulty identifications made by facial recognition, including cases in Detroit and New Orleans, as cause for concern over the technology. Once a photo has been scraped by Clearview AI, biometric face prints are made and cross-referenced in the database, tying the individuals to their social media profiles and other identifying information forever – and people in the photos have little recourse to try to remove themselves. CNN reported Clearview AI last year claimed the company's clients include "more than 3,100 US agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security." BBC reported Miami Police acknowledged they use the technology for all kinds of crimes, from shoplifting to murder. The risk of being included in what is functionally a "perpetual police line-up" applies to everyone, including people who think they have nothing to hide, [said] Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst for the international non-profit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Fund.
Note: Read about the rising concerns of the use of Clearview AI technology in Ukraine, with claims to help reunite families, identify Russian operatives, and fight misinformation. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
The secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, a deal between a company that has acted as a front for the United States government and the American affiliate of a notorious Israeli hacking firm. Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons – a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user's knowledge or consent. Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists. The White House placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist, declaring the company a national security threat. The secret contract ... violates the Biden administration's public policy, and still appears to be active. The contract, reviewed by The Times, stated that the "United States government" would be the ultimate user of the tool, although it is unclear which government agency authorized the deal and might be using the spyware. Elements of America's expansive national security apparatus in recent years have bought the weapons, deployed them against drug traffickers, and have quietly pushed to consolidate control of them into the hands of the United States and its closest allies. The F.B.I. purchased access in 2019 to NSO's most powerful hacking tool, known as Pegasus, which invades mobile phones and mines their contents.
Note: Read how journalists and activists have been targeted with NSO Group spyware. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
When Stephen Buchmann finds a wayward bee on a window inside his Tucson, Arizona, home, he goes to great lengths to capture and release it unharmed. This March, Buchmann released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee's mind really is. The book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees, draws from his own research and dozens of other studies to paint a remarkable picture of bee behavior and psychology. It argues that bees can demonstrate sophisticated emotions resembling optimism, frustration, playfulness and fear, traits more commonly associated with mammals. Experiments have shown bees can experience PTSD-like symptoms, recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and maybe even dream. Approximately one-third of the American diet, including many fruits, vegetables and nuts, relies on bees for pollination. In the past, bee research has focused on their role in crop pollination, but the work being pioneered by Buchmann and his contemporaries could force an ethical reckoning with how the animals are treated. Can large-scale agriculture and scientific research continue without causing bees to suffer, and is the dominant western culture even capable of accepting that the tiniest of creatures have feelings, too? Buchmann hopes an ethical shift will happen as details about the emotional lives of invertebrates – especially bees – are shared with the public.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
A US Virgin Islands investigations into the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's ties to an American bank issued subpoenas to four wealthy business leaders on Friday, extending its reach into the highest echelons of tech, hospitality and finance. The subpoenas issued to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Hyatt Hotels chairperson Thomas Pritzker, American-Canadian businessman Mortimer Zuckerman and former CAA talent agency chairperson Michael Ovitz are crafted to gather more information about Epstein's relationship with JPMorgan Chase. The Virgin Islands' lawsuit against JP Morgan, the world's largest bank in terms of assets, alleges that the institution "facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls in and beyond the Virgin Islands". "Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JP Morgan," it said. The disgraced financier ... owned two private islands – Little Saint James, or "Epstein Island", and Great Saint James – in the American territory, and authorities there have secured a $105m settlement from his estate. The demand for any communications and documents related to the bank and Epstein from four of the wealthiest people in the US comes days after it was reported that Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan's chairperson and chief executive, is expected to be deposed in the case.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.
Florida's statewide prosecutor Thursday explicitly accused federal immigration authorities of "human trafficking" in their oversight of unaccompanied migrant children in the state. The Statewide Prosecutors' Office released an acerbic, 46-page grand jury report that denounces the federal Department of Homeland Security's Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), for leaving vulnerable migrant children with unvetted caregivers, or "sponsors" – and then abdicating all oversight of their welfare. The report suggests the policy amounts to criminal child neglect. The Statewide Grand Jury, which is an arm of Attorney General Ashley Moody's office, also accuses the federal government of covering up its alleged misdeeds. [Gov. Ron] DeSantis asked the state Supreme Court to empanel a statewide grand jury to investigate undocumented migrants last June. "The purpose of the grand jury will be to investigate individuals and organizations that are actively working with foreign nationals, drug cartels and coyotes to illegally smuggle minors, some as young as 2 years old, across the border," DeSantis said. By "incentivizing" illegal migration, the grand jury wrote, the Biden administration has encouraged children "to undertake and/or be subjected to a harrowing trek to our border. "This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape, and other experiences not done justice by mere words," grand jurors added.
Note: A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Aaron Stevenson is trying to stop the facilitation of child trafficking at the US border. Watch a 23-min video of his experience with this deeply concerning issue, including his investigation into a common pattern of criminals (many of them sex traffickers) across the world who become sponsors for unaccompanied children. Worst off, when he tried to track down who was monitoring and vetting the sponsors, he couldn't find any information about it. According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Why is this not being talked about on a mainstream level? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is circulating a letter among her House colleagues that calls on the Department of Justice to drop charges against Julian Assange and end its effort to extradite him from his detention in Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom. The Justice Department has charged Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, for publishing classified information. The Obama administration had previously decided not to prosecute Assange, concerned with what was dubbed internally as the "New York Times problem." The Times had partnered with Assange when it came to publishing classified information and itself routinely publishes classified information. Publishing classified information is a violation of the Espionage Act, though it has never been challenged in the Supreme Court, and constitutional experts broadly consider that element of the law to be unconstitutional. The Obama administration could not find a way to charge Assange without also implicating standard journalistic practices. The Trump administration, unburdened by such concerns around press freedom, pushed ahead with the indictment and extradition request. The Biden administration, driven by the zealous prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, has aggressively pursued Trump's prosecution. Tlaib noted that the Times, The Guardian, El PaĂs, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel had put out a joint statement condemning the charges, and alluded to the same problem that gave the Obama administration pause.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
Plants make popping sounds that are undetectable to the human ear, according to recordings made in a new study – and they make more sounds when thirsty or under other kinds of stress. The research shakes up what most botanists thought they knew about the plant kingdom, which had been considered largely silent, and suggests the world around us is a cacophony of plant sounds, said study coauthor Lilach Hadany. To figure out whether plants actually were emitting sounds, Hadany and her team commissioned soundproofed acoustic boxes. The researchers placed tobacco and tomato plants in the boxes, rigged with ultrasonic microphones that record at frequencies between 20 and 250 kiloherz. (The maximum frequency that a human adult's ear can detect is about 16 kilohertz.) Some of the plants had cut stems or had not been watered for five days, and others were untouched. The team found that the plants emitted sounds at a frequency of 40 to 80 kilohertz, and when condensed and translated into a frequency humans can hear, the noises were a bit similar to the pop of popcorn being made or bubble wrap bursting. A stressed plant emitted around 30 to 50 of these popping or clicking sounds per hour at seemingly random intervals, but unstressed plants emitted far fewer sounds – around one per hour. "When tomatoes are not stressed at all, they are very quiet," Hadany said. The researchers don't know exactly how the sounds are made.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the mysterious nature of reality from reliable major media sources.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University recently published an article in JAMA that highlights rising concern around the effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) on health care. Their work shows that DTC advertising might have direct harm on patients. They studied drug characteristics and total advertising expenditures for the 150 top-selling branded prescription drugs in the United States, finding that total promotional spending by the manufacturer was associated with a significantly lower added clinical benefit for the drug. In fact, companies spent nearly 15% more on DTC advertising for drugs that had demonstrated lower added benefit. Even more troubling, each 1.5% increase in spending was associated with a 10% increase in sales. Simply put, pharmaceutical companies spent more money on DTC advertising when medical research found that the drug was less effective, and this spending directly led to more sales for those inferior drugs. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that still allows direct-to-consumer advertising. Aside from increased pressure on providers to prescribe particular drugs which may not be the best option, there are other downsides to DTC. The data show that DTC advertising leads to increased drug costs overall, adding to the already skyrocketing costs of medical care in America. Additionally, DTC advertising tends to reduce use of generic medications, which are often equally effective but significantly cheaper for patients.
Note: This profoundly eye-opening interview of a top cardiologist reveals without doubt how big Pharma has corrupted science and greatly damaged public health. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.
Two international legal agreements [are] currently working their way through the World Health Organisation: a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year. As concerned scholars and jurists have detailed, these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals. They would hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens. A global system for digital â€health certificates' for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network ... would be embedded and expanded. The WHO has fallen largely under the control of private capital and other vested interests. Over 80 percent of the WHO's budget is now â€specified' funding by way of voluntary contributions typically earmarked for specific projects or diseases in a way that the funder specifies. The WHO [is] ordaining itself as the exclusive global controller not just of the identification of pandemics and potential pandemics but of the design and execution of pandemic responses, while also granting itself a vast health surveillance network and a global workforce.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
The world we live in is slowly poisoning every single one of us. And the chemicals doing the most damage are byproducts of the fossil fuel industry, agribusiness and manufacturing. There doesn't seem to be the appetite at a regulatory or governmental level to stop it. In Australia, 50,000 agricultural, industrial and veterinary chemicals are being used; 1,500 are suspected to interfere with endocrine function, which is essential to the healthy working of our reproductive and hormonal systems. Only a very small number have been tested. Microplastics, which can cause inflammation in the body, is being found in our blood streams and also in the placentas of unborn fetuses. Walking down a major intersection during rush hour can expose you to as much particulate matter as a major bushfire event. Even if chemicals are tested, the testing regimen means that chemicals are only being tested in isolation and not in conjunction with others to see how compounds react. Also, they might be tested for carcinogenic effects ... but the test subjects aren't monitored for other ill-effects, such as endocrine disruption. Some effects take place long after the research has concluded. Some of these chemicals can stay in the body forever. Or affect the way our DNA functions. There's even an Australian website (not widely enough publicised) called yourfertility.org.au. It has an entire section on chemicals in our environment and what to avoid, stating that "avoiding these chemicals may increase the chance of having a baby".
Note: The above was written by Isabelle Oderberg, author of Hard to Bear: Investigating the science and silence of miscarriage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
Practising mindfulness is much better than taking part in talking therapies at helping people recover from depression, a British study has found. People who used a mindfulness self-help book for eight weeks and had six sessions with a counsellor experienced a 17.5% greater improvement in recovery from depressive symptoms than those who underwent cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) while being supported by a mental health practitioner. Their results have been published in JAMA Psychiatry. The NHS says mindfulness involves people paying attention to "what is going on inside and outside ourselves, moment by moment" and "the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the present moment" as well as being aware of their thoughts and feelings as they happen. People using mindfulness in the LIGHTMind 2 trial spent eight weeks following the advice in The Mindful Way Workbook, which helps them build up their mindfulness skills by guiding them on what they should do every day in order to be aware of their thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in a non-judgmental way. Doing that helps people address some of the behaviours that can maintain feelings of depression. They also had six one-to-one half-hour "support sessions" on the telephone with a therapist discussing their progress, experience of practising mindfulness and asking questions. Mindfulness-based treatment is also a cheaper way of tackling depression because people using it needed on average Ł526 less of subsequent treatment.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
In February, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published an extensive investigation into the spectacular collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces' (ANDSF), which the U.S. spent two decades and $90 billion building. In common with previous SIGAR reports, it offers a remarkably uncompromising, no-punches-pulled assessment, exposing corruption, incompetence, lies, and delusion every step of the way. The Pentagon and State Department rejected SIGAR's jurisdiction over them, declined to review interim drafts of the report, denied access to their staff, and "mostly" refused to answer requests for information. The Afghan government and military, their trainers and the Pentagon alike were all heavily incentivized to lie to one another, and political leaders in Washington, who were in turn motivated to mislead the public. As prior SIGAR reports also found, so much money and equipment were flowing into Afghanistan without any supervision whatsoever, and weaponry and other aid were misused, stolen or illegally sold off with ease by Afghans, U.S. personnel and Pentagon contractors. SIGAR ominously warns that a similar absence of accountability is evident in the "unprecedented" U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine since Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022. Despite U.S. leaders promising a keen eye is being kept on the weapons shipments, SIGAR's report makes clear these same officials did not even know what was being sent to Afghanistan. Is the same true for Kiev?
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and war from reliable major media sources.
Even as elite American universes such as Harvard have bowed to pressure to divest their multibillion-dollar endowments from fossil fuels, and student activists take recalcitrant holdouts to court, oil and gas companies continue to exert a grip upon campus life, through funded research and the physical presence of oil and gas industry employees in lectures and meetings with faculty. Fossil-fuel firms have purposely sought to "colonize" academia with industry-friendly science, rather than seed overt climate denial, according to Ben Franta, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford who has studied industry's influence over universities. Their research dollars, he said, had effectively discouraged academic endeavors that challenge the core business model of burning oil and gas, instead shifting the focus to favored topics such as capturing carbon emissions from polluting facilities, a still niche technology that would allow industry to continue business as usual. The reach of fossil fuels into academia "never ceases to amaze me", said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University. "You can barely study climate change at elite universities and not be funded by fossil-fuel companies," he added. "They drive all this study into carbon capture, so that influences policy and becomes a part of the Biden administration's agenda. The influence is profound, and the students are right to be wondering what kind of education they are getting here."
Note: Read more on how fossil companies donated $700 million to US universities over 10 years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
Private thoughts may not be private for much longer, heralding a nightmarish world where political views, thoughts, stray obsessions and feelings could be interrogated and punished all thanks to advances in neurotechnology. In a new book, The Battle for Your Brain, Duke University bioscience professor Nita Farahany argues that such intrusions into the human mind by technology are so close that a public discussion is long overdue and lawmakers should immediately establish brain protections as it would for any other area of personal liberty. Farahany, who served on Barack Obama's commission for the study of bioethical issues, believes that advances in neurotechnology mean that intrusions through the door of brain privacy, whether by way of military programs or by way of well-funded research labs at big tech companies, are at hand via brain-to-computer innovations like wearable tech. "All of the major tech companies have massive investments in multifunctional devices that have brain sensors in them," Farahany said. "Neural sensors will become part of our everyday technology and a part of how we interact with that technology." François du Cluzel, a project manager at Nato Act Innovation Hub, issued a report in November 2020 entitled Cognitive Warfare that, it said, "is not limited to the military or institutional world. Since the early 1990s, this capability has tended to be applied to the political, economic, cultural and societal fields."
Note: Read more about these troubling developments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Recent reports about the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement playing fast and loose with rules regarding cellphone tracking and the FBI purchasing phone location data from commercial sources constitute an important wake-up call. They remind us that those handy mobile devices many people tote around are the most cost-effective surveillance system ever invented. "The United States Secret Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations (ICE HSI) did not always adhere to Federal statute and cellsite simulator (CSS) policies when using CSS during criminal investigations," the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General reported last month. "Separately, ICE HSI did not adhere to Department privacy policies and the applicable Federal privacy statute when using CSS." The OIG report referred to the use of what is commonly called "stingray" technology–devices that simulate cellphone towers and trick phones within range into connecting and revealing their location. "They also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby," the ACLU warns. Even the most precise phone company location data remains available with court approval. The courts are currently mulling multiple cases involving "geofence warrants" whereby law enforcement seeks data not on individuals, but on whoever was carrying a device in a designated area at a specified time.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Over the last decade alone, at least 540 doctors and healthcare practitioners collectively paid the government hundreds of millions of dollars to negotiate their way out of trouble via civil settlements, then continued to practice medicine without restrictions on their licenses despite allegations that included fraud and patient harm, a Reuters investigation found. That figure is the result of the first-ever comprehensive analysis of federal civil settlements and state disciplinary actions. Separately, more than 2,200 hospitals and healthcare companies likewise negotiated civil deals to sidestep prosecution for alleged offenses that included paying bribes, falsifying patients records and billing the government for unnecessary patient care, the Reuters analysis shows. In many of those cases, the physicians, staffers and top brass who purportedly committed those misdeeds were not named publicly by prosecutors or forced to pay settlements themselves. Federal enforcers said they sometimes withhold names of individuals in these situations because of ongoing or planned investigations. The U.S. government collected more than $26.8 billion in healthcare-related civil settlements and judgments from 2013 to 2022, the Reuters analysis found. Victims, meanwhile, received no share of these settlements, which are funneled to a Treasury Department general fund. Consequently, they must pursue their own civil cases in search of restitution for suffering and harm, Reuters found.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
A state-of-the-art assessment on the scientific evidence of wireless radiation impacts on children's health published in the journal Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care concludes that the medical community has a critical role to play to prevent harm from wireless radiation. Written by distinguished experts in medicine, epidemiology, toxicology, physics, biochemical engineering and public health ... the paper references numerous studies that associate wireless exposure to effects including oxidative stress, DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, memory damage and neurological effects. Pregnancy, infancy and childhood are periods of critical susceptibility, especially for the brain, which is rapidly developing. "Current government safety limits are outdated and do not reflect the latest science nor the way children use wireless technology today," stated Linda Birnbaum Ph.D, former Director of the National Toxicology Program. Theodora Scarato, Executive Director of Environmental Health Trust, highlighted the international policies to reduce children's exposure, such as France and Belgium's bans on the sale of cell phones designed for young children and the numerous countries that have restrictions on Wi-Fi exposure in classrooms. She stated that, "US government limits allow radiation emissions 10 to 100 times higher than numerous countries such as Switzerland, Italy, China, Russia and India."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on wireless technology dangers from reliable major media sources.
Bridge International Academies ... grew into a chain of schools providing a homogeneous curriculum developed by researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to hundreds of thousands of students in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia, and India. Today, it is the largest for-profit primary education chain in the world. The company is financed today by some of the highest-profile do-good donors in the game – or rather, the for-profit arms of their networks. In March 2022, the World Bank's financing arm – the International Finance Corporation – quietly divested from NewGlobe, the parent company of Bridge International. A series of abuse and neglect allegations in Kenya ... had caught the eye of a Nairobi-based human rights group, the East African Centre for Human Rights, or EACHRights, as well as the internal watchdog at the World Bank, known as the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, or CAO. "I find it deeply suspect that CAO uncovers explosive child sexual abuse allegations in the course of a compliance investigation and shortly thereafter, the World Bank president unexpectedly terminates the head of the CAO," said one well-placed civil society representative whose clients have complaints before the CAO. "Meanwhile, three years after the child sexual abuse allegations came to light, the CAO has still not produced an investigation report." It's very sad, because the CAO has always been the kind of beacon of accountability of any kind of institution, public or private. No more.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
During one of his many visits to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Siddharth Kara ... met a young woman sifting dirt for traces of cobalt. Priscille told him she had suffered two miscarriages and that her husband, a fellow "artisanal" miner, died of a respiratory disease. It is just one of many devastating personal accounts in Cobalt Red, a detailed exposé into the hidden world of small-scale cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The "quaint" moniker of artisanal mining, Mr. Kara points out, belies a brutal industry where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dig with bare hands and basic tools in toxic, perilous pits, eking out an existence on the bottom rung of the global supply chain. If you own a smartphone, tablet, laptop, e-scooter, [or] electric vehicle ... then it is a system in which you are unwittingly complicit. Around 75 per cent of the world's cobalt is mined in the DRC. The rare, silvery metal is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Congolese miners ... have experienced life-changing injuries, sexual assault, physical violence, corruption, displacement and abject poverty. Cobalt Red also documents many unreported deaths, including those of children buried alive in makeshift mining tunnels, and their bodies never recovered. Cobalt is toxic to touch and breathe in, and can be found alongside traces of radioactive uranium. Cancers, respiratory illnesses, miscarriages, headaches and painful skin conditions occur among adults who work without protective equipment. Children in mining communities suffer birth defects, developmental damage, vomiting and seizures from direct and indirect exposure to the heavy metals. Female miners, who earn less than the average two dollars per day paid to men, typically work in groups as sexual assault is common in mining areas. Major tech and EV companies extol commitments to human rights, zero-tolerance for child labor, and clean supply chains. Mr. Kara described these statements as "utterly inconsistent" with what's happening on the ground.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and some 2,000 suffered injuries from "less lethal" impact projectiles, according to a report released Wednesday. Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, which produced the report, called it "the most comprehensive study on crowd-control weapons to date." The report on casualties from a largely unregulated industry cites an alarming evolution of crowd-control devices into more powerful and indiscriminate designs and deployment, including dropping tear gas from drones. Some of the injuries were fatal but it was impossible from the data to estimate the total number of deaths, said the report's lead author, Rohini Haar. The vast majority of the data comes from cases in which a person came to an emergency room with injuries from crowd-control weapons and the attending doctor or hospital staff made the effort to document it, Haar said. Protesters have been blinded and suffered brain damage from beanbag rounds. In November, the city of Portland reached a $250,000 settlement with five demonstrators in a federal lawsuit over police use of tear gas and other crowd-control devices during racial justice protests. But last month, a federal judge threw out an excessive force claim against an unnamed federal agent who fired an impact munition at the forehead of protester Donavan La Bella, fracturing his skull.
Note: For an idea of how common the deployment of nonlethal weapons against protesters has become, see a list of incidents of police violence that took place in the US in 2020. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and non-lethal weapons from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing 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.