Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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.
At 70 years of age, Wisdom the Laysan albatross has hatched another chick. Regarded as "oldest known wild bird in history", Wisdom has outlived previous mating partners as well as the biologist Chandler Robbins, who first banded her in 1956. Wisdom hatched the chick on 1 February in the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge in the North Pacific, where more than a million albatross return to nest each year. Wisdom's long-term mate, Akeakamai, who she has been with since 2010 according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), fathered the chick. The USFWS also stated that albatross find their mates through "dance parties". "We believe Wisdom has had other mates," US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Dr Beth Flint said. "Though albatross mate for life, they may find new partners if necessary – for example if they outlive their first mate." USFWS estimated Wisdom has hatched more than 30 chicks over the course of her lifetime. Sean Dooley, national public affairs manager for BirdLife Australia, was excited about the news of Wisdom's latest chick. "Because she only nests every two years, the international bird community looks forward to see if she's been able to come back and nest," Dooley said. "The odds are stacked against them so much, whenever it happens it's always a cause for celebration."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a "shocking" amount of taxes was going uncollected by the federal government. "The gap between what we're collecting in taxes on current tax and what we should be collecting ... amounts to over $7 trillion over a decade," Yellen said. Yellen's remarks emphasize the Biden administration's efforts to collect tax revenue from the wealthiest Americans and multinational companies to finance $4 trillion in spending programs. At the center of Biden's planned revenue raisers is a provision to increase funding for IRS enforcement. He also wants to slap investors earning above $1 million with a hike in the capital-gains tax and raise the top marginal income-tax rate to 39.6% from 37%. The IRS's official estimate is that there is a tax gap of $441 billion a year. But Charles Rettig, the agency's commissioner, recently told Congress that number could be over $1 trillion. A recent study from IRS researchers and academics found that the top 1% of Americans failed to report about one-quarter of their income to the IRS. The research found income underreporting was nearly twice as high for the top 0.1%, which could account for billions in uncollected taxes. The number of agents devoted to working on sophisticated tax-evasion enforcement dropped by 35% over the past decade. The IRS's budget fell by 20% between 2010 and 2018. There was an 80% decline from 2011 to 2018 in the audit rate for those making over $1 million a year.
Note: Some major US companies pay no taxes at all. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.
A small group of scientists and others who believe the novel coronavirus that spawned the pandemic could have originated from a lab leak or accident is calling for an inquiry independent of the World Health Organization's team of independent experts sent to China last month. Officials with the W.H.O. have said in recent interviews that it was "extremely unlikely" but not impossible that the spread of the virus was linked to some lab accident. The open letter ... lists what the signers see as flaws in the joint W.H.O.-China inquiry. The letter emphasized that the team was denied access to some records and did not investigate laboratories in China. Dr. David A. Relman, a professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford University [said] "the W.H.O. investigation appears to be biased, skewed, and insufficient." Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and one of the scientists who signed the letter, said it grew out of a series of online discussions among scientists, policy experts and others who came to be known informally as the Paris group. Many of those who signed the letter were based in France and Dr. Ebright, who has been outspoken about the need to investigate a possible laboratory leak, said such discussion had been less vigorous in the United States. He said that no one in the group thought that the virus had been intentionally created as a weapon, but they were all convinced that an origin in a lab through research or by accidental infection was as likely as a spillover occurring in nature from animals to humans.
Note: Read more about the controversial "gain-of-function" research that took place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
President Joe Biden's administration is being asked to punish Hungary, Colombia, Chile, and other countries for seeking to ramp up the production of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics without express permission from pharmaceutical companies. The sanctions are being urged by the drug industry, which has filed hundreds of pages of documents to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative outlining the alleged threat posed by any effort to challenge "basic intellectual property protections" in the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The drug industry has sharply criticized any attempt to share vaccine patents or the technological knowledge needed to manufacture them, despite global need. The strident corporate opposition to any intellectual property flexibility has rankled public health advocates, many of whom note that much of the vaccine technology has been financed by the public sector. The Pfizer vaccine, noted Prabhala, was developed in partnership with the European firm BioNTech, which received $445 million from the German government to help accelerate vaccine development and manufacturing. The U.S. government provided about $1 billion for the research and testing by Moderna to create its coronavirus vaccine. Johnson & Johnson received over $1.45 billion in funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for its recently approved Covid-19 vaccine.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.
When a dormant pecan farm in the neighborhoods of south Atlanta closed, the land was soon rezoned and earmarked to become townhouses. But when the townhouses never came to fruition and with the lot remaining in foreclosure, the Conservation Fund bought it in 2016 to develop an unexpected project: the nation's largest free food forest. Thanks to a US Forest Service grant and a partnership between the city of Atlanta, the Conservation Fund, and Trees Atlanta, you'll find 7.1 acres of land ripe with 2,500 pesticide-free edible and medicinal plants only 10 minutes from Atlanta's airport. The forest is in the Browns Mill neighborhood of southeast Atlanta, where the closest grocery store is a 30-minute bus ride away. "Access to green space and healthy foods is very important. And that's a part of our mission," says Michael McCord, a certified arborist and expert edible landscaper who helps manage the forest. The forest is part of the city of Atlanta's larger mission to bring healthy food within half a mile of 85% of Atlanta's 500,000 residents by 2022, though as recently as 2014, it was illegal to grow food on residential lots in the city. Resources like the food forest are a rarity and necessity in Atlanta as 1 in 6 Georgians face food insecurity, 1 in 3 Browns Mill residents live below the poverty line, and 1 in 4 Atlantans live in food deserts. The forest is now owned by the parks department and more than 1,000 volunteers and neighbors are helping to plant, water and maintain the forest.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
A nursing home accused of illegally "dumping" patients onto city streets and into ill-equipped homes in order to take in more lucrative COVID-19 patients will nearly double its nursing staff, allow increased oversight and pay $275,000 in penalties and costs to settle a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles city attorney's office. City Attorney Mike Feuer on Monday announced the legal agreement with the Lakeview Terrace skilled nursing facility, which he had accused of "sustained" and "intentional" misconduct in failing to adequately tend to some patients, while pushing others out of the 99-bed home. The city alleged in its lawsuit that the facility west of downtown had an incentive to discharge long-term residents in order to make room for COVID-19 patients, who brought Lakeview Terrace much higher reimbursement payments from Medicare. In one instance, the lawsuit said, an 88-year-old man with dementia was transferred from the nursing home in the Westlake neighborhood to a boarding house in Van Nuys, only to be found a day later wandering the streets, profoundly confused. Health care experts have warned that the money skilled nursing facilities are paid under a plan by the federal government to care for people stricken by the coronavirus would lead to patient-dumping by unscrupulous operators. The reimbursement plan pays more than four times more for COVID-19 patients than homes can charge for long-term residents with relatively mild conditions.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Sweden's novel approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic has drawn both praise and fierce criticism, not just inside the Scandinavian country, but across the Western world. The country has so far resisted going into lockdown, unlike the rest of Europe, even during the peak of its second wave over Christmas. Sweden may be faring comparably better in terms of excess deaths - those greater than the usual number of deaths expected in a certain time period. Experts say excess deaths can indicate whether policies intended to combat the pandemic have unintended consequences, such as delaying treatment for other ailments and is an important measure of the overall efficacy of policy. While still performing worse than other Nordic countries on data from Eurostat, the official European Union statistics agency, and the University of Oxford, shows that Sweden recorded 7.9% excess deaths last year compared to the years 2016-19, according to the independent health news site Dagens Medicin. That means that the country had the 23rd lowest annual excess deaths out of 30 European countries - lower than the U.K. (15.1%), France (10.4%) and Spain (18.9%). Sweden also has a lower number of coronavirus deaths per million than those countries, all of which have gone under strict lockdowns during the pandemic.
Note: The media has consistently compared Sweden to its immediate neighbors Finland and Norway, which have done much better than Sweden, but were not hit hard in the beginning as Sweden was. With the exception of this and a very few other articles, they almost always fail to compare Sweden to other European countries, as they don't want people to know how well they have done with no lockdown. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
For Eric Nshimiyimanain, who owns two small electronic repair shops in Kigali, Rwanda, the startup chime of an old Windows laptop is the sound of a business opportunity. He refurbishes broken PCs, laptops, phones and secondhand gadgets classified as electronic waste, or "e-waste" that would otherwise end up as trash in Nduba, Rwanda's only open-air dump. "Sometimes we even use computer screens as TVs," Nshimiyimanain says. Converting those screens to televisions then becomes a cheaper option, he adds, for "citizens who have low incomes and cannot afford buying a brand-new TV." According to the UN-affiliated Global E-Waste Monitor report, nearly 54 million metric tons of e-waste was generated around the world in 2019. It includes everything from phones and computer monitors to larger appliances like refrigerators. Rwanda is one of only 13 countries in Africa that have passed national legislation regarding e-waste regulation, according to the report. And it has led to the first official recycling and refurbishing facility in the country. Operational since early last year, this public-private partnership between the government and Dubai-based Enviroserve became a source of pride for Rwanda. The state-of-the-art plant near Kigali can process up to 10,000 metric tons of e-waste per year. Enviroserve has already repaired and refurbished more than 5,000 computers, which were sold to public schools. To date, it has processed more than 4,000 tons of e-waste and created more than 600 jobs.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
[Captain Emada] Tingirides, 50, is only the second Black female officer in Los Angeles to reach the position of Deputy Chief. Since September 1, 2020, she has been in charge of the Department's new Community Safety Partnership Bureau (CSP). "It's about trust," Tingirides says when asked to describe CSP. "The community has to hold law enforcement accountable, and law enforcement has to hold communities accountable. We ask the communities what they expect from us, and we take their goals seriously." CSP represents a major shift in L.A.'s notoriously hardline approach to policing. But there's reason to believe it could stick – independent studies have shown that the CSP has increased trust in police, reduced violent crime and saved the city millions of dollars. Under the CSP concept, police officers are stationed in an area for at least five years. They become part of the community, attend neighborhood meetings, organize soccer tournaments, hand out "Donuts for Dads," and "Muffins for Moms." They work closely with gang intervention workers, social workers, non-profits and, most important, neighborhood residents. "I thought all cops were bad," a nine-year old boy admits. But now, he says, he loves Community Officer Jeff Joyce, who started "Nicks Kids," a soccer club for youths. "Our methods are unconventional, and we are adaptable," Tingirides says. "Each neighborhood is different."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
While dozens of New Yorkers lined up outside in the rain, shopping carts at the ready as they waited for free food, Sofia Moncayo led her team in prayer. During the coronavirus pandemic, Moncayo has led the food distribution program through Mosaic West Queens Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood. The initiative began in March; Moncayo took charge a month later, as it expanded to serve hundreds of people. Since then, Moncayo has had her own struggles. She was furloughed from her job at a construction company and remains unemployed. And she also owes five months of rent for the martial arts studio that she owns with her husband in the neighborhood. But she has continued to lead fundraisers and coordinate dozens of volunteers who distribute more than 1,000 boxes of food to families twice a week. "I think helping others has to do something to your brain chemically because if we had not being doing everything that we're doing, I think this would have been a much scarier time," she said. "Being able to dig in and help others, it really gives you perspective and helps you believe that you're going to be OK too. One of the things that we wanted to make sure is that we don't look at people on the pantry line as people that need food, and really focus on, â€hey, these are our neighbors.'" Carol Sullivan lost her stage manager job when Broadway theaters closed because of the virus. She was hesitant at first about receiving food from a pantry, but she said that Moncayo and the other volunteers made her feel welcome.
Note: Enjoy a wonderful compilation of inspiring stories from the pandemic times on this webpage. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Dr. Monica Gandhi is not your typical epidemiologist in the era of COVID-19. While the vast majority of experts in her field call for the most stringent business closures and other mitigation measures, Gandhi – a professor of medicine at UCSF – has called for a "harm reduction" approach that also considers other risks beyond COVID-19 infection when making public policy. That view has not been a popular one among policymakers and experts in her city and state. But Gandhi is confident that one day, she'll be vindicated. "I have been surprised by the party lines that were drawn in terms of how to respond to pandemic, as opposed to having everyone take in new data as it comes, incorporate the data and then make decisions that can change over time," [said Gandhi]. "It seems that we decided early on that there's only one way to respond, and any dissent from standard messaging was met with dismay and criticism. For example, in terms of the winter lockdown in California, I was dismayed by the degree of profound shutdowns for outdoor playgrounds, outdoor dining and also this idea that no one from two households could see each other." And when I spoke out about that, I took a lot of criticism. My impulse in speaking out came out of a concern for the economic situations of the working class and the impacts on health that come from economic insecurity. And those questions of, "How are they going to feed their families?" were met by scientific community with, "We'll deal with that later."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and income inequality from reliable major media sources.
Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly told a journalist that Jeffrey Epstein recorded tapes of former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, who were former acquaintances of the disgraced sex offender. Ms Maxwell, who awaits trial on charges she assisted Epstein's crimes in the 1990s, reportedly told a CBS "60 minutes" producer that she would not release tapes of Mr Trump without those of Mr Clinton before the 2016 presidential election. The apparent revelations were made by Ira Rosen, an ex-producer for the CBS show, who released a memoir called "Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes," which reveals details about his time on the award-winning programme. As reported by The Telegraph, Mr Rosen wrote that he was acting on a "hunch" that secret recordings of Epstein's former acquaintances existed – although the theory was never confirmed, and no tapes have been forthcoming. Mr Rosen allegedly told Ms Maxwell: "I want the tapes. I know he [Epstein] was videotaping everyone." Ms Maxwell was said to have ... "pointed a finger" at Mr Rosen, who theorized that Epstein secretly recorded those who visited his properties in Florida and New York in the 1990s, which included the former presidents. Ms Maxwell reportedly told Mr Rosen: "I am the daughter of a press baron. I know the way you people think. If you do one side, you must do the other. If you get the tapes on Trump you have to do Clinton'." Mr Trump previously remarked that he met Ms Maxwell "numerous times" ... while Mr Clinton has previously said his friendship with Epstein ended before [he] was convicted.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.
About fifty years ago, Dr. Bruce Greyson was eating pasta in the hospital cafeteria when his beeper went off. Greyson, a psychiatrist, was urgently needed in the ER to treat a college student who had overdosed. He called her name – "Holly" – and tried to rouse her. But she didn't stir. The next morning, Greyson returned to work at the hospital. Holly stirred. "I remember you from last night," she mumbled. "I saw you talking with Susan, sitting on the couch." Suddenly Holly opened her eyes, looked Greyson in the face and added, "You were wearing a striped tie that had a red stain on it." Greyson began studying these so-called near-death experiences (NDEs) from a scientific standpoint, collecting hundreds of stories from those who've had them. He discovered that ... many people who survive the jaws of death report strange out-of-body experiences. Since meeting Holly, Greyson has published hundreds of academic papers. His search for answers is chronicled in his new book "After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond." Near-death experiences are fairly common. Some 10 percent to 20 percent of people who come close to death report them – about 5 percent of the population. So what is going on? Greyson, who grew up in a scientific household and is not religious, says he doesn't know. "But I think the evidence overwhelmingly points to the physical body not being all that we are," he says. "There seems to be something that is able to continue after the body dies."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles on near-death experiences.
Sperm counts have been dropping; infant boys are developing more genital abnormalities; more girls are experiencing early puberty; and adult women appear to be suffering declining egg quality and more miscarriages. It's not just humans. Scientists report genital anomalies in a range of species, including unusually small penises in alligators, otters and minks. In some areas, significant numbers of fish, frogs and turtles have exhibited both male and female organs. Experts say the problem is a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors, which mimic the body's hormones and thus fool our cells. This is a particular problem for fetuses as they sexually differentiate early in pregnancy. Endocrine disruptors can wreak reproductive havoc. These endocrine disruptors are everywhere: plastics, shampoos, cosmetics, cushions, pesticides, canned foods and A.T.M. receipts. They often aren't on labels and can be difficult to avoid. Chemical companies ... lobby against even safety testing of endocrine disruptors, so that we have little idea if products we use each day are damaging our bodies or our children. Still, the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the President's Cancer Panel and the World Health Organization have all warned about endocrine disruptors, and Europe and Canada have moved to regulate them. But in the United States, Congress and the Trump administration seemed to listen more to industry lobbyists than to independent scientists.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
In "Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System," [Judge Jed S.] Rakoff reaches far beyond corporate boardrooms to highlight an array of shortcomings within the criminal justice system. His proposed fixes are worthy of consideration but also lay bare a harsh reality: The entrenched interests tolerating the system's inequities and, in some cases, profiting from the status quo pose significant obstacles to reform. Rakoff realized that America's "system of justice is failing its mission" after becoming a federal district court judge a quarter-century ago. What's the nature of this failure? The country imprisons millions of indigent Americans yet routinely allows white-collar criminals to avoid punishment. "To a federal judge," he declares, the government's reluctance to hold executives accountable and instead enter into "cosmetic prosecution agreements" with corporations that are repeatedly violated and unenforced "is disturbing ... in what it says about the DOJ's apparent disregard for equality under the law." Rakoff fittingly cites Pfizer to exemplify his point. The four deferred-prosecution agreements between the pharmaceutical giant and federal authorities from 2002 to 2009 – all devised to prevent future misconduct – failed to stop the company from flouting the law. Through it all, Pfizer's executives went unpunished, and the fines the company paid represented a fraction of its ill-gotten gains.
Note: For a much deeper analysis and discussion of Judge Rakoff's highly revealing book by courageous journalist Matt Taibbi, see this excellent essay. Consider subscribing to Taibbi's excellent work. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the court system and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.
Mexico is sticking to a plan to stop importing genetically modified corn and a ban on a widely used herbicide, a senior official told Reuters, doubling down on a policy that has pleased green advocates but alarmed industry leaders. The plan announced late last year by executive order aims to replace some 16 million tonnes of yellow corn imported mostly from U.S. farmers and nearly all of it genetically modified, with new, local production by 2024. Victor Suarez, the deputy agriculture minister and a key architect of the order, argued that GMO corn and the herbicide glyphosate are too dangerous and that local output and sustainable "agroecological" practices must be prioritized. He cited studies linking glyphosate to cancer and saying that it harmed pollinators like bees and separately alleged that GMO corn contaminates Mexico's native strains of the grain. "We have to put the right to life, the right to health, the right to a healthy environment ahead of economic and business (interests)," said the former congressman. Mexico is mostly self-sufficient in white corn, used for the country's staple tortillas, but meat producers have for years relied on growing volumes of yellow corn imports to fatten cows, pigs and chickens. Asked if the Dec. 31 decree applied to animal feed as well processed foods that include GMO corn, Suarez said that the law covers all food that "will eventually reach human consumption."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
There's a new "village" in Los Angeles – and it's filled with tiny homes. Earlier this month, nonprofit Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission opened its first "Tiny Home Village," to help combat homelessness. The first village ... has 40 tiny homes and 75 beds that Hope of the Valley will be offering to people who are trying to find permanent housing. Each of the tiny homes is 64 square feet and has two beds, heating, air conditioning, windows, a small desk and a front door that locks, according to the website and a video tour of the village led by Hope of the Valley founder and CEO Ken Craft. Residents will also have access to a hygiene trailer, with five showers, five toilets and five sinks and a laundry facility, which has five washers and dryers. Residents will also be given three meals a day and some of the tiny homes are even wheelchair accessible. The village is also pet-friendly and has a dedicated dog run, according to Craft's video tour. Support services such as case management, housing navigation, mental health help, job training and placement will be provided to residents onsite. "This is an incredible community where people will live together, but they all have something in common: they're trying to exit homelessness," Craft said during the tour. "They're trying to overcome the obstacles and barriers that are keeping them unhoused." The Chandler Boulevard village is the first of its kind in the Los Angeles area. However, Hope of the Valley is planning to open another village in April.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has banned from his social media platforms any claims that the novel coronavirus vaccine alters DNA, although he himself expressed similar concerns last year. Project Veritas released video Tuesday of Mr. Zuckerberg raising questions about whether vaccines include risks of side effects such as "modifying people's DNA and RNA" in July during a virtual Q&A meeting with staff. "I do just want to make sure that I share some caution on this because we just don't know the long-term side effects of basically modifying people's DNA and RNA to directly code in a person's DNA and RNA," Mr. Zuckerberg said in the video. "Basically the ability to produce those antibodies and whether that causes other mutations or other risks downstream." In a Feb. 8 post, Facebook updated its COVID-19 and vaccine policies "to protect people from harmful content and new types of abuse related to COVID-19 and vaccines," saying it would remove posts that included "Claims that the COVID-19 vaccine changes people's DNA." Project Veritas president James O'Keefe said that the newly leaked tape showed Mr. Zuckerberg "violating his own code of conduct" and that "he would be censored on the platform today for what he said." "Isn't it interesting that Zuckerberg can vacillate and evolve his thinking on the subject of vaccines, but as soon as he's made up his mind or appears to have made up his mind on the topic, he disallows the almost three billion Facebook users to do the same?" Mr. O'Keefe asked.
Note: Explore an informative essay on this on the Project Veritas websites. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
Portland joined Philadelphia and Amsterdam as the first cities to pilot the Thriving Cities Initiative. The Initiative is a collaboration between C40, the Amsterdam-based Circle Economy, which seeks to create zero-waste urban economies that support their residents, and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, an organization mostly comprising volunteers working to implement systemic, society-wide economic change. At its most basic level, doughnut economics is a way of describing an economic system that extends beyond strictly financial measures, like gross domestic product, to include environmental sustainability and healthy, thriving communities. The Thriving Cities Initiative's model - and the expertise and resources it provided - dovetailed with Portland's existing momentum in tracking and reducing emissions that accounted for spending by government, businesses, and households. The model also pointed to ways to address the city's social issues, including more than 4,000 people in the metro area without stable housing. The pandemic ... forced Portland to scale back its Thriving Cities program. A five-year program that could have formed the basis for city council action was scaled back to a two-year in-house plan that the city's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability could follow on its own. Still, some existing programs already were in line with the goals of the Thriving Cities Initiative. In Amsterdam, the Doughnut Coalition and the city government are already looking toward next steps.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Monsanto owner Bayer AG and industry lobbyist CropLife America have been working closely with US officials to pressure Mexico into abandoning its intended ban on glyphosate, a pesticide linked to cancer that is the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weedkillers. The moves to protect glyphosate shipments to Mexico have played out over the last 18 months, a period in which Bayer was negotiating an $11bn settlement of legal claims brought by people in the US who say they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma due to exposure to the company's glyphosate-based products. The pressure on Mexico is similar to actions Bayer and chemical industry lobbyists took to kill a glyphosate ban planned by Thailand in 2019. Records show alarm starting to grow in the latter part of 2019 after Mexico said it was refusing imports of glyphosate from China. In denying a permit for an import shipment, Mexican officials cited the "precautionary principle", which generally refers to a policy of erring on the side of caution. Industry executives told US government officials that they feared restricting glyphosate would lead to limits on other pesticides and could set a precedent for other countries to do the same. Mexico may also reduce the levels of pesticide residues allowed in food, industry executives warned. "If Mexico extends the precautionary principle" to pesticide residue levels in food, "$20bn in US annual agricultural exports to Mexico will be jeopardized", [CropLife president Chris] Novak wrote to US officials.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption 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.