Please donate here to support this vital work.
Revealing News For a Better World

Media Articles
Excerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of highly revealing media articles from the major media. Links are provided to the full articles on their media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These media articles are listed in reverse date order. You can also explore the articles listed by order of importance or by date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can build a brighter future.

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.


Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force' for civil unrest
2025-08-12, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/12/national-guard-ci...

The Trump administration is evaluating plans that would establish a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force" composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and be stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively. Cost projections outlined in the documents indicate that such a mission, if the proposal is adopted, could stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump has summoned the military for domestic purposes like few of his predecessors have. He did so most recently Monday, authorizing the mobilization of 800 D.C. National Guard troops to bolster enhanced law enforcement activity in Washington. The proposal represents a major departure in how the National Guard traditionally has been used, said Lindsay P. Cohn, an associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. While it is not unusual for National Guard units to be deployed for domestic emergencies within their states, including for civil disturbances, this "is really strange because essentially nothing is happening," she said.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


First 3D-Printed Home Made Primarily From Soil is Built in Japan–Ditching Unsustainable Concrete
2025-08-09, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/first-3d-printed-home-made-primarily-from-soi...

Collaborating with robotics engineers and Italian 3D printer manufacturers, a Japanese company is building "homes of earth" made primarily from soil. Lib Work, Ltd. completed their first 3D-printed earth home in Yamaga, Kumamoto on July 22, calling their creative process "uncharted territory where tradition and convention offered no guide". With an eye toward recycling, sustainability, and reduced carbon emissions, Lib Work focused on combining 3D-printing with natural materials enhanced for strength, constructibility, and design quality. The walls of the completed Lib Earth House Model B use no cement (which produces industrial waste). Instead, they utilized only naturally derived materials with soil as the primary component to create sustainable earthen walls. Compared to the previous model (Model A) that used some cement, the building's strength has improved approximately fivefold while significantly reducing CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process itself. The walls contain cutting-edge sensors as part of a wall condensation monitoring system that monitors in real-time the temperature and humidity inside the walls. This system enables the house to manage its own condition by detecting condensation in advance to maintain a long-lasting, comfortable living environment. Additionally, the homes include remote operation of air conditioning, lighting, and bath controls via smartphone or dedicated monitor. It also features an off-grid energy system.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.


This dog used to sniff out cold cases for police. Now she's saving bees.
2025-08-09, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2025/08/09/maple-dog-bee-conservation/

Equipped with her own tailored bee suit and a hood to cover her floppy ears, Maple – a former police dog – has an important retirement task: helping save thousands of honeybee hives. The canine has spent the past five months sniffing Michigan bee colonies for American foulbrood, a highly contagious bacteria that's fatal to the insects. Maple, an English springer spaniel, uses her extraordinary sense of smell as a "high-speed screening tool" to prevent beekeepers from having to manually inspect every hive. American foulbrood only becomes detectable to humans by smell when it reaches severe infection, at which point the colony risks death, said Meghan Milbrath, a researcher and assistant professor of entomology at Michigan State University. The ultimate goal is for Maple's work to serve as a blueprint for teaching canines to detect honeybee diseases. It's part of a larger bee conservation effort in a record-breaking year for colony death in the United States ... primarily driven by pesticides, pathogens, poor nutrition and pests. Although Maple's new "target odor" is distinct from her previous job ... the fundamentals remain the same. Handlers expose the canines to a scent, offer a reward and teach the dog to conduct an action that means they've found the odor they're looking for. In Maple's case, she sits when she detects the smell. [Handler, Sue] Stejskal said she has to train Maple to be familiar and comfortable with the new environment so the pup can focus on the target odor.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth.


‘Leave it to nature': how enticing insects to kill off pests helped cut reliance on pesticides
2025-08-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/08/insecticides-integrated-p...

While trying to come up with a pesticide solution to kill off bollworms, Dr Robert Mensah had his eureka moment. It was the 90s, and in Australia bollworms were devastating cotton farms. He experimented and eventually came up with a simple food spray, "a mixture of food ingredients, yeast and sugar-based, diluted in water and applied to crops. It emits an odour which is picked up by beneficial predatory insects and attracts them to the fields where they kill pests." It was the beginning of an international grassroots campaign, in which Mensah has worked with various charities to teach people about this sustainable farming method. Ever since the dangerous side effects of pesticides became widely known, alternatives have been sought. This approach to farming, which reduces our reliance on pesticides, is called integrated pest management. In 2005, Mensah took food sprays to Benin, where the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK) was helping farmers transition to organic farming. There, the misuse of chemical pesticides was seriously damaging people's health. The food sprays – cheap, safe and effective – caught on with farmers in Benin where thousands now use the technique. From there, Mensah took food sprays to southern Ethiopia, where they were also trialled successfully on vegetables ... and then to Vietnam where they were used successfully on maize. Another charity, Better Cotton, is now trialling food sprays in India ... where they've trained 214,000 farmers to use sprays.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and healing the Earth.


‘I was Epstein's butler for 18 years. There's no way he killed himself'
2025-08-08, The Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/08/08/jeffrey-epstein-butler-18-y...

Jeffrey Epstein "loved life too much" to kill himself and was confident of securing bail before he died, his butler for 18 years has told The Telegraph. Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein's Paris home, [said] he could not accept the official verdict of suicide and feared that his own life was in danger. He also said he believed that Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who accused Prince Andrew of rape and died by suicide in April, was a victim of foul play. Mr Cotrin also made the extraordinary claim ... that Epstein told him he had been offered a job by Donald Trump. There is no evidence that the allegation is true. But Mr Cotrin's recollection of a conversation with his boss will fuel a growing demand for the full Epstein files – the trove of documents from the criminal investigations into the financier that allegedly name high-profile celebrities and politicians, possibly including Mr Trump – to be released. Mr Cotrin remains in possession of a number of photographs taken with friends of Epstein, including a photo of himself with Bill Clinton on the so-called Lolita Express, Epstein's private plane that he used to traffic underage girls and women for sex. The existence of the photo showing Mr Clinton on board Epstein's jet will also fuel demands for the former president to reveal his full dealings with Epstein. Mr Clinton was issued with a subpoena on Tuesday, demanding he give evidence to a congressional committee investigating the financier.

Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's criminal enterprise.


The Secret History of Tor: How a Military Project Became a Lifeline for Privacy
2025-08-08, MIT Press Reader
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-secret-history-of-tor-how-a-military-p...

Tor is mostly known as the Dark Web or Dark Net, seen as an online Wild West where crime runs rampant. Yet it's partly funded by the U.S. government, and the BBC and Facebook both have Tor-only versions to allow users in authoritarian countries to reach them. At its simplest, Tor is a distributed digital infrastructure that makes you anonymous online. It is a network of servers spread around the world, accessed using a browser called the Tor Browser, which you can download for free from the Tor Project website. When you use the Tor Browser, your signals are encrypted and bounced around the world before they reach the service you're trying to access. This makes it difficult for governments to trace your activity or block access, as the network just routes you through a country where that access isn't restricted. But, because you can't protect yourself from digital crime without also protecting yourself from mass surveillance by the state, these technologies are the site of constant battles between security and law enforcement interests. The state's claim to protect the vulnerable often masks efforts to exert control. In fact, robust, well-funded, value-driven and democratically accountable content moderation – by well-paid workers with good conditions – is a far better solution than magical tech fixes to social problems ... or surveillance tools. As more of our online lives are funneled into the centralized AI infrastructures ... tools like Tor are becoming ever more important.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.


The cancer patient who inspired French movement to block reintroduction of pesticide
2025-08-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/08/the-cancer-patient-who-inspired...

French MPs gave themselves a round of applause for approving legislation to reintroduce a banned pesticide last month. A figure rose from the public gallery to shout: "You are supporters of cancer ... and we will make it known." Fleur Breteau made it known. Her outburst and appearance – she lost her hair during chemotherapy for breast cancer – boosted a petition against the "Duplomb law" to well over 2m signatures. On Thursday, France's constitutional court struck down the government's attempt to reintroduce the pesticide acetamiprid – a neonicotinoid banned in France in 2018 but still used as an insecticide in other EU countries as well as the UK – in a judgment that took everyone by surprise. The ruling said the legislature had undermined "the right to live in a balanced and healthy environment" enshrined in France's environmental charter. For Breteau, 50, a battle is won but the struggle goes on. "The law is a symptom of a sick system that poisons us. The Duplomb law isn't the real problem. It's aggravating an already catastrophic system," she said. "We are living in a toxic world and need a revolution to break the chain of contamination in everything ... If people don't react we'll find ourselves in a world where we cannot drink water or eat food that is uncontaminated, where a slice of buttered bread or a cup of tea poisons us. It will be a silent world, without animals, without insects, without birds."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.


Why Doesn't the U.S. Government Know How Many People Die in Custody?
2025-08-07, The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/07/deaths-in-custody-reporting-act...

Was George Floyd killed by a police officer? The official answer, according to a newly revealed set of federal government records, is no. Under the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, anyone who dies in law enforcement custody, like during an arrest, must be reported to the Department of Justice. If the death resulted from police use of force, as Floyd's did, it is labeled "use of force by a law enforcement or corrections officer." But, when an unredacted copy of four years of data was inadvertently posted on a government website late last year, Floyd's case was listed under a different category, "homicide" – which refers to deaths at the hands of another civilian, not law enforcement. The error shows how even one of the most notorious cases of police violence, one that led to a murder conviction for the officer, can be hidden in the official statistics. A Marshall Project review ... identified hundreds of people who died in custody but weren't listed, and entire states that failed to report almost any deaths in their prisons or in their jails. We found at least 681 deaths missing from the federal count – a number that would almost certainly rise if more complete data were available nationwide. More than 5,000 people likely died in state and federal prisons in 2021, over 1,000 in local jails in 2019 and over 1,000 in arrest-related interactions with police in 2024. The actual toll is unknown because no one, including the federal government, bothers keeping track.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in policing and in the prison system.


How the Secret Algorithms Behind Social Media Actually Work
2025-08-07, Time
https://time.com/7308120/secret-algorithms-behind-social-media/

A series of corporate leaks over the past few years provides a remarkable window in the hidden engines powering social media. In January 2021, a few Facebook employees posted an article on the company's engineering blog purporting to explain the news feed algorithm that determines which of the countless posts available each user will see and the order in which they will see them. Eight months later ... a Facebook product manager turned whistleblower snuck over ten thousand pages of documents and internal messages out of Facebook headquarters. She leaked these to a handful of media outlets. Internal studies documented Instagram's harmful impact on the mental health of vulnerable teen girls. A secret whitelist program exempted VIP users from the moderation system the rest of us face. It turns out Facebook engineers have assigned a point value to each type of engagement users can perform on a post (liking, commenting, resharing, etc.). For each post you could be shown, these point values are multiplied by the probability that the algorithm thinks you'll perform that form of engagement. These multiplied pairs of numbers are added up, and the total is the post's personalized score for you. Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter all run on essentially the same simple math formula. Once we start clicking the social media equivalent of junk food, we're going to be served up a lot more of it–which makes it harder to resist. It's a vicious cycle

Note: Read our latest Substack focused on a social media platform that is harnessing technology as a listening tool for the radical purpose of bringing people together across differences. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.


The False Promise of Keto and Ancestral Eating in the Age of Chemical Intensive Industrial Agriculture
2025-08-06, The Kucinich Report
https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/the-false-promise-of-keto-and-ancestral

As the 2025 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans take shape, a serious disconnect threatens public health. Some advocates are calling for higher intake of animal fats and promoting so called ancestral or animal based keto diets, citing traditional wisdom and nutrient density. Diets like Keto often rely on meat and dairy from industrial production systems, where contamination with drugs and chemicals is routine. The promise of healing through meat and fat collapses when those foods carry residues of antibiotics, steroid hormones, synthetic preservatives, arsenicals, cocciodiostats, and pesticides. Many of these toxins accumulate precisely in the fats and organs being celebrated as nutrient rich. A decade ago, as policy director at the Center for Food Safety, I helped publish a report entitled "America's Secret Animal Drug Problem," identifying over 450 animal drugs and feed additives used in U.S. meat production. That number alarmed me then. Today, the Food and Drug Administration has approved nearly 700 veterinary drugs for use in food-producing animals. This figure includes not only growth promoters and antibiotics but also synthetic hormones, beta agonists, coccidiostats, and antiparasitics. Less than 1% of meat and dairy in the United States is produced in regenerative organic systems on pasture. The remaining 99% comes from animals housed in industrial facilities, fed chemically saturated GMO grains.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on factory farming and toxic chemicals.


Who Answers for a Death in Custody?
2025-08-06, The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/06/harris-county-jail-death-evan-l...

Each year, about 6,000 people die in prisons and jails, and another 2,000 during encounters with police, according to estimates by government agencies and nonprofit groups – numbers that experts believe are likely undercounts. Federal law has for 25 years required local agencies to report in-custody deaths, but the mandate is not enforced. In many places, there's no reliable public accounting of what happened or why. Families who lose loved ones in custody are often met with silence or conflicting accounts. The authorities tasked with finding the truth – from jail officials to medical examiners to state investigators – often operate slowly, without coordination, or behind closed doors. Late last year, the Justice Department published aggregated totals of deaths reported between 2019 and 2023. Due to a technical glitch, The Marshall Project was able to download the full dataset – a loophole that was quickly closed. (The department has not published unredacted death in custody datasets in the past because of privacy issues and concerns about data quality.) The records we reviewed showed widespread gaps: missing causes of death, vague entries and inconsistent details from jail to jail. Those gaps make it nearly impossible to hold institutions accountable, experts say. "You can't have that discussion without the data," said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and one of the law's original authors. "That's why we passed the law."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in policing and in the prison system.


80 years after Hiroshima, why are we still pretending nuclear weapons keep us safe?
2025-08-06, USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/08/06/hiroshima-nagasaki-bombing-...

In 1945, the horrors unleashed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely hidden from the outside world. Eighty years later, thanks to the testimonies shared by those who survived the atomic bombings of my country, we have a window into the truth of what happened on those dark August days when weapons of previously unimaginable power destroyed our cities. We also know what happened over the torturous months and years that followed, as those who weren't immediately burned alive succumbed to radiation poisoning and cancer. Nuclear bombing survivors have helped ... fuel public demand for post-Cold War arms-control treaties that resulted in significant stockpile reductions in the United States and Russia. They helped persuade nuclear-armed countries to stop explosive weapons tests that caused grave harm to the environment and to the servicemembers and civilians involved. They worked to establish the "nuclear taboo" that has spared the use of nuclear weapons in warfare for eight decades. They delivered millions of petition signatures to the United Nations that helped ... reduce nuclear risks. Again and again, they have proved that progress is possible, and for their decades of work to ensure that ... no country ever again face the unthinkable, the survivors in 2024 were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Demanding a nuclear-free world isn't naive. True naivete is believing that weapons designed to annihilate cities will keep us safe.

Note: Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Doctors Horrified After Google's Healthcare AI Makes Up a Body Part That Does Not Exist in
2025-08-06, Neoscope
https://futurism.com/neoscope/google-healthcare-ai-makes-up-body-part

Health practitioners are becoming increasingly uneasy about the medical community making widespread use of error-prone generative AI tools. In their May 2024 research paper introducing a healthcare AI model, dubbed Med-Gemini, Google researchers showed off the AI analyzing brain scans from the radiology lab for various conditions. It identified an "old left basilar ganglia infarct," referring to a purported part of the brain – "basilar ganglia" – that simply doesn't exist in the human body. Board-certified neurologist Bryan Moore flagged the issue ... highlighting that Google fixed its blog post about the AI – but failed to revise the research paper itself. The AI likely conflated the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that's associated with motor movements and habit formation, and the basilar artery, a major blood vessel at the base of the brainstem. Google blamed the incident on a simple misspelling of "basal ganglia." It's an embarrassing reveal that underlines persistent and impactful shortcomings of the tech. In Google's search results, this can lead to headaches for users during their research and fact-checking efforts. But in a hospital setting, those kinds of slip-ups could have devastating consequences. While Google's faux pas more than likely didn't result in any danger to human patients, it sets a worrying precedent, experts argue. In a medical context, AI hallucinations could easily lead to confusion and potentially even put lives at risk.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and corruption in science.


US Backed Ethnic Cleansing of Serbs, Top Diplomat Secretly Told Croat Leader
2025-08-06, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/06/us-backed-ethnic-cleansing-of-serbs-top-dip...

August 4, 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Operation Storm. Little known outside the former Yugoslavia, the military campaign unleashed a genocidal cataclysm that violently expelled Croatia's entire Serb population. Croat forces rampaged UN-protected areas of the self-declared Serb Republic of Krajina, looting, burning, raping and murdering their way across the province. Up to 350,000 locals fled, many on foot, never to return. Meanwhile, thousands were summarily executed. As these hideous scenes unfolded, UN peacekeepers charged with protecting Krajina watched without intervening. Meanwhile, US officials strenuously denied the horrifying massacres and mass displacement amounted to ethnic cleansing, let alone war crimes. Operation Storm was for all intents and purposes a NATO attack, carried out by soldiers armed and trained by the US and directly coordinated with other Western powers. Despite publicly endorsing a negotiated peace, Washington privately encouraged Zagreb to employ maximum belligerence, even as their ultranationalist Croat proxies plotted to strike with such ferocity that the country's entire Serb population would "to all practical purposes disappear." High-ranking Croat officials privately discussed methods to justify their coming blitzkrieg, including false flag attacks. In preparing for the offensive, Croatian soldiers were trained at Fort Irwin in California and the Pentagon aided in planning the operation.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.


Pentagon: U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Have Failed Africans
2025-08-05, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2025/08/05/pentagon-africa-counterterrorism-failure/

A new Pentagon report offers the grimmest assessment yet of the results of the last 10 years of U.S. military efforts [in Africa]. It corroborates years of reporting on catastrophes that U.S. Africa Command has long attempted to ignore or cover up. Fatalities from militant Islamist violence spiked over the years of America's most vigorous counterterrorism efforts on the continent, with the areas of greatest U.S. involvement – Somalia and the West African Sahel – suffering the worst outcomes. "Africa has experienced roughly 155,000 militant Islamist group-linked deaths over the past decade," reads a new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. "What many people don't know is that the United States' post-9/11 counterterrorism operations actually contributed to and intensified the present-day crisis," [said] Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University. The U.S. provided tens of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the governments of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger, which are experiencing the worst spikes in violent deaths today, she said. In 2002 and 2003 ... the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks, resulting in a combined 23 casualties across the entire continent. Last year, there were 22,307 fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa. At least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance were key leaders in a dozen coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel.

Note: Read more about the Pentagon's recent military failures in Africa. Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.


Big Insurance Uses AI to Quickly Deny Claims, One Man Fights Back with AI App That Quickly Appeals
2025-08-05, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/big-insurance-uses-ai-to-quickly-deny-claims-...

The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back. When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife's chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck. Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter. "For a doctor to write this, it's not rocket science, but it still takes hours," Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don't know they can appeal, or don't know on what grounds they can appeal. In fact, according to Shah's research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed. That's where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that's created a free-to-use app for claims denials. For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking. Together, they've built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Cancer, Alzheimer's and infertility ‘strongly' linked to toxic chemicals in food and water by major report
2025-08-04, The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/cancer-alzheimers-risk-toxic-chemic...

Describing toxicity as "the most underrated threat facing humanity", a new report has warned that the "contamination of humans is endemic" and that the risks to planetary and human health are "widely underestimated", with the impact of pesticide use on cancer rates potentially rivalling that of smoking. More than 3,600 synthetic chemicals from food contact materials, such as packaging and pesticides, are present within human bodies globally, the report revealed, 80 of which are feared to be especially dangerous. Chemicals known as Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) were found in almost everyone tested, with 14 per cent of European teenagers having blood levels high enough to pose serious health risks. Among the shocking findings is the link between pesticide use and leukaemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and bladder, colon and liver cancer – including suggestions that prenatal pesticide exposure increases the odds of childhood leukaemia and lymphoma by more than 50 per cent. Evidence was also gathered showing that synthetic chemicals humans are exposed to have contributed to a global decline in sperm counts. The report outlines "strong" causal and correlational links between toxicity and a variety of severe human health conditions, including cancer, obesity, Alzheimer's, pregnancy complications, ADHD, fertility issues, heart conditions, and respiratory ailments.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.


You Are Contaminated
2025-08-04, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/opinion/contamination-exposome.html

Everywhere they look, they find particles of pollution, like infinite spores in an endless contagion field. Scientists call that field the "exposome": the sum of all external exposures encountered by each of us over a lifetime, which portion and shape our fate alongside genes and behavior. Plastic is now threaded through the flesh of fish, where it is interfering with reproduction, and the stalks of plants, where it is interfering with photosynthesis, and in much else we place upon our dinner plates and set about eating. There might be plastic in your saliva, and almost certainly in your blood. Plastic has been found in human hearts and kidneys and other organs, in the breast milk expressed by new mothers and on both sides of their placentas. The penetration appears so complete that some researchers have begun to worry that their methods, too, are compromised by ambient contamination and plastic materials in the lab. The buildup inside brain tissue has grown 50 percent in just eight years, and that, as of last year, there might be inside your skull the equivalent of a full plastic spoon – by weight perhaps one-fifth as much polymer as there is brainstem in there. Beyond plastics, there is PFAS, that category of long-lasting industrial compounds often called "forever chemicals." Whole environmental movements of the past have been built on fears of incipient contamination. But what are the lessons when pollution is seemingly everywhere, and in everyone, already?

Note: This article is also available here. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.


Unilateral and Illegal Sanctions – Mainly by the United States – Kill Half a Million Civilians Per Year
2025-08-04, ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/04/unilateral-and-illegal-sanctions-mainly-by-...

According to the Global Sanctions Database, the United States, European Union, and UN have sanctioned 25% of the countries in the world. The United States by itself sanctioned 40% of these countries, sanctions that are unilateral because they do not have the assent of a UN Security Council resolution. In the 1960s, only 8% of the world's countries were under sanctions. This inflation of sanctions demonstrates that it has become normal for the powerful North Atlantic states to wage wars without having to fire a bullet. As US President Woodrow Wilson said in 1919 at the formation of the League of Nations, sanctions are ‘something more tremendous than war'. The cruellest formulation of Wilson's statement was made by Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the UN, regarding the US sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s. From 1990 to 1996, sanctions ... resulted in the excess deaths of over 500,000 children under the age of five. The number of people who die because of sanctions is greater than the number of battle-related casualties (106,000 deaths per year) ‘and similar to some estimates in the total death toll of wars including civilian casualties (around half a million deaths per year)'. The most vulnerable population groups, as you would expect, are children under five and older people. Deaths of children under five years ‘represented 51% of total deaths caused by sanctions over the 1970–2021 period'.

Note: The above article is largely based on an article published in The Lancet titled "Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis." Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption.


The pandemic divided the US. Could a full accounting help the nation heal?
2025-08-02, Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2025/0802/covid-19-pandemic-accountability

In 2021, Kristen Magnuson had to make a secret deal to continue a staple of her daily routine: swimming at her local outdoor pool. During the pandemic, the state of Washington required a vaccine passport to gain access to public spaces such as restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms. Ms. Magnuson chose not to get vaccinated. So the mother of two made a covert arrangement with gym staff. She could bypass the lobby by sneaking in through a back door. Ms. Magnuson was grateful, but she felt like a second-class citizen. Now she has a plea: Can we talk about what we went through? She isn't opposed to vaccines – her husband and children got them. She and others are asking: What would America do differently if the country could have a do-over, or faced a similar challenge in the future? Ms. Magnuson ... isn't ready to absolve top officials until they show "a recognition of harms." "I was surprised when some politicians and doctors said that those who remain unvaccinated should not be treated if they fall ill. People were not ‘bad' or ‘COVidiots' if they contracted COVID-19; they were human," [Dr. Monica] Gandhi wrote. "There is absolutely no place for stigma, judgment, and a shame-based approach in public health." The former NIH director [Dr. Francis Collins] proposed, instead, a reckoning modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the aftermath of apartheid. "That means people coming forward and confessing what they did that was harmful in public and asking for forgiveness," said Dr. Collins, who was appointed by President Obama and served as a science adviser to Biden. "That's very different than just amnesty."

Note: Read NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's powerful call for forgiveness despite being cancelled for having dissenting views on COVID policies. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


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.

Kindly donate here to support this inspiring work.

Subscribe to our free email list of underreported news.

newsarticles.media is a PEERS empowerment website

"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"