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A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy. Houston-based Inhance manufactures an estimated 200m containers annually with a process that creates, among other chemicals, PFOA, a toxic PFAS compound. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December prohibited Inhance from using the manufacturing process. But the conservative fifth circuit court of appeals court overturned the ban. The judges did not deny the containers' health risks, but said the EPA could not regulate the buckets under the statute it used. The rule requires companies to alert the EPA if a new industrial process creates hazardous chemicals. Inhance has produced the containers for decades and argued that its process is not new, so it is not subject to the regulations. The EPA argued that it only became aware that Inhance's process created PFOA in 2020, so it could be regulated as a new use, but the court disagreed. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds [that] have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems. A peer-reviewed study in 2011 found Inhance's containers leached the toxic compounds into their contents.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
The U.S. Navy is reportedly preparing to test a hypersonic weapon as part of a joint developmental program with the U.S. Army, which aims to unleash the military's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) capabilities. The forthcoming test will involve the C-HGB, which relies on the Navy's booster rocket motor to propel the weapon to hypersonic speeds. Once the rocket is ejected, the C-HGB can glide at speeds of Mach 5 or greater.Production of the C-HGB for the Army and the Navy has been underway for several years in cooperation with Dynetics ... who was contracted to develop the prototypes. Dynetics' development of the C-HGB prototypes marks the first time that a domestic private sector entity has been tasked with building hypersonic weapons. Known as Dark Eagle, the Army says its LRHW will be capable of reaching targets within a range of 1,725 miles and reportedly traveling at speeds exceeding 3,800 miles per hour. Presently, the U.S. is racing against similar hypersonic developments being undertaken by Russia and China, who have been actively testing similar weapons capabilities for years. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the U.S. Air Force conducted a test with a prototype hypersonic missile in the Marshall Islands. Formally known as the AGM-183, the missile is an air-launched rapid response weapon (ARRW), a type of hypersonic air-to-ground missile that was the result of a $480 million contract granted to Lockheed Martin in 2018.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Private donors including big-box stores, fossil fuel companies, and tech giants are secretly giving hundreds of millions of dollars annually to law enforcement agencies and related foundations, allowing police to buy specialized weapons and technology with little public oversight. Experts say this huge deluge of police "dark money" funding, detailed in a new University of Chicago working paper ... leaves law enforcement beholden to the companies and powerful donors bankrolling them, rather than the communities that officers are sworn to serve. The study, which analyzed a database of nonprofit tax returns, found that from 2014 to 2019, more than 600 private donors and organizations collectively funneled $461 million to police and to other nonprofits supporting police. The Baltimore Police Department for years used private money to fund a secret aerial surveillance program that could track the locations of people throughout the city in real time. The program ... was eventually ruled unconstitutional in court. In Los Angeles, the city's police department used money from Target ... routed through a local police foundation – to purchase software from Palantir, venture capitalist Peter Thiel's data analytics company, that provides police massive amounts of sensitive data and purports to identify crime "hot spots." For the most part, the millions in dark-money funding that police agencies receive each year is perfectly legal. There are largely no laws or policies governing foundation donations to the police.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
The FBI spends "every day, all day long" interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that's what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity. Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad's house and said that they had been given "screenshots" of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident. "Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent in a gray shirt said in the video. "So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" replied Abdeljawad. "No, we totally do. That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything," a second agent in a red shirt added. "We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will." Shibly says that he doesn't know which Facebook post caught the agents' attention, and that it was the first time he had heard of Facebook's parent company, Meta, preemptively reporting posts to law enforcement. [Abdeljawad] made multiple angry posts per day about the war in Gaza, referring to Israel as "Israhell." But none of the posts on her feed call for violence. Ironically, Abdeljawad had also posted a warning about exactly the kind of government monitoring she was later subjected to. "Don't fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up," Abdeljawad wrote.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
Patrick Burrichter did not think about saving lives or protecting the planet when he trained as a chef. But 25 years later he has focused his culinary skills on doing exactly that. On the outskirts of Berlin, Burrichter and his team cook for a dozen hospitals that offer patients a "planetary health" diet – one that is rich in plants and light in animals. Compared with the typical diet in Germany, known for its bratwurst sausage and doner kebab, the 13,000 meals they rustle up each day are better for the health of people and the planet. In Burrichter's kitchen, the steaming vats of coconut milk dal and semolina dumpling stew need to be more than just cheap and healthy – they must taste so good that people ditch dietary habits built up over decades. The biggest challenge, says Burrichter, is replacing the meat in a traditional dish. Moderate amounts of meat can form part of a healthy diet, providing protein and key nutrients, but the average German eats twice as much as doctors advise. Patients on the wards of Waldfriede praise the choice of meals on offer. Martina Hermann, 75, says she has been inspired to cook more vegetables when she gets home. Followers of the planetary health diet need not abandon animal products altogether. The guidelines, which were proposed by 37 experts from the EAT-Lancet Commission in 2019, translate to eating meat once a week and fish twice a week, along with more wholegrains, nuts and legumes.
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According to Wikipedia, the United States has been involved in 107 wars since its founding and 41 of these were fought against the Indigenous peoples of North America. Most of these wars are ignored by schools, textbooks and the media, but the pressure to become involved in additional conflict is ever-present. At times the number of private contractors has been larger than that of enlisted troops. In April 2008, there were 163,900 contractors and 160,000 enlisted troops in Iraq. But when most media reported the number of Americans in the war zone, they reported the number of enlisted troops and not the contractors. This results in a predictable under-estimate of American involvement and additional earnings for contractor providers. Every year, the defense industry donates millions of dollars to the campaigns of members of Congress, creating pressure on the legislative branch to fund specific weapons systems, maintain an extremely high Pentagon budget, and add ever more military spending. In 2022 the weapons/defense industry donated $10.2 million to the 84 members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. And the wars continue. In his book "The United States of War," David Vine reports that, "In the nearly two decades since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has fought in at least 22 countries." If we are to escape a future of forever wars, all justifications for war should be questioned and debated before the killing starts.
Note: Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
The Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK) has tyrannically ruled Haiti since 2011. The U.S. State Department, who unilaterally picked Ariel Henry to be Haiti's prime minister in July of 2021, has now decided Henry no longer fits their interests and has forced him to step down. Henry was prevented from returning to Haiti on March 5 by paramilitary gangs who attempted to take the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, opening fire and hitting a plane bound for Cuba. The imperial forces responsible for over half a million illegal U.S. guns in Haiti that fuel this unparalleled violence are now preparing their next move to keep Haiti subdued. For the past 18 months, the Biden administration has sought to facilitate what will be the fourth U.S.-led foreign invasion and occupation of Haiti in the last 100 years by deputizing Kenya, Benin, the Bahamas, and other western neocolonies to carry out the occupation. The CIA remains active as well seeking a neocolony the U.S. can deputize to carry out this invasion. The only Haitian representatives that can be considered for the U.S.-led transitional government have to agree to the occupation. U.S. policy empowers and works with corrupt political leadership in Haiti because they can be relied upon to do the U.S.'s bidding. Meanwhile, those leaders who refuse to sell out to imperial interests are repressed and murdered. The ruling PHTK [has] bragged about being "legal bandits" above the law and employing ... government death squads armed with hundreds of thousands of U.S. weapons.
Note: The US government wants Ariel Henry out to purportedly prevent a full scale civil war. Is the US now trying to address Haitian stability and violence that US policies have helped create? Read about US involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel MoĂŻse. Learn more about the role the arms industry plays in global conflicts in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
A Silicon Valley defense tech startup is working on products that could have as great an impact on warfare as the atomic bomb, its founder Palmer Luckey said. "We want to build the capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter," he [said]. The Anduril founder didn't elaborate on what impact AI weaponry would have. But asked if it would be as decisive as the atomic bomb to the outcome of World War II he replied: "We have ideas for what they are. We are working on them." In 2022, Anduril won a contract worth almost $1 billion with the Special Operations Command to support its counter-unmanned systems. Anduril's products include autonomous sentry towers along the Mexican border [and] Altius-600M attack drones supplied to Ukraine. All of Anduril's tech operates autonomously and runs on its AI platform called Lattice that can easily be updated. The success of Anduril has given hope to other smaller players aiming to break into the defense sector. As an escalating number of global conflicts has increased demand for AI-driven weaponry, venture capitalists have put more than $100 billion into defense tech since 2021, according to Pitchbook data. The rising demand has sparked a fresh wave of startups lining up to compete with industry "primes" such as Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) for a slice of the $842 billion US defense budget.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.
Diddy has been dubbed the Jeffrey Epstein of the music industry. The internet was shaken to its core when Homeland Security Investigators' raid of Diddy's Los Angeles and Miami homes hit the headlines. Even though the cause of the raid has remained undisclosed, sources suggested it has to do with the s-x trafficking allegations against the music mogul. In a lawsuit filed by Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones, Diddy was accused of hosting "freak parties" that were attended by "celebrities, athletes, politicians, international dignitaries, and music label executives." The music producer further stated that these parties were sponsored by major players in the recording industry, giving them access to "s-x, drugs, and underage girls." He also alleged that the ... rapper hired underage girls to work for him and drugged their drinks. The lawsuit further stated that Combs Global Enterprises chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, "ordered s-x workers and prostitutes for Mr. Combs." According to lawsuits against Diddy and Epstein, both men had their homes fitted with hidden cameras that captured the debauchery that went on during their parties. In Jones' civil lawsuit against Diddy, he stated: "Mr. Combs had hidden cameras in every room of his home... has recordings of several celebrities, artists, music label executives, and athletes engaging in illegal activity. Mr. Combs possesses compromising footage of every person who has attended his freak-off parties and his house parties."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and other sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
No criminal charges have been filed against rap mogul Sean Combs, even though one of his two mansions on Star Island – and one in Los Angeles – were raided by Homeland Security agents on Monday. That's a disturbing development. The question: Is Combs another South Florida-grown Jeffrey Epstein? A civil lawsuit filed one month before the raid alleges Combs, better known as Diddy, his staff and executives engaged in "serious illegal activity," including using drugs, possessing illegal firearms and providing laced alcoholic beverages to drug sex workers and minors, all for Comb's pleasure. The lawsuit, filed by producer Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones, says Combs was running a "widespread and dangerous criminal sex trafficking organization." Combs settled another suit filed by singer Cassie in November that accused him of raping her. Jones said in the lawsuit that Combs, his staff and music executives knew about – and were involved in – illicit and unwanted sexual activities in Florida, New York, California and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In December ... four civil lawsuits filed by women [alleged that Combs] promised to launch their singing careers, then sexually abused them, trafficked them and forced them to have sex with other people. If the allegations are true, then Combs used his position of power over aspiring female artists, models and assistants in a manner comparable to Weinstein's serial abuse of women hoping to advance their careers.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and other sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Last month, I revealed internal Twitter and Department of Homeland Security emails showing that the agency had successfully pressured the social media platform to censor the New York Times during the 2020 presidential election. It was impossible to get the Times to comment on my reporting that revealed that a government agency, enacted to protect national security, had muzzled one of its own. The paper remained silent. That was the case until last week when the Times finally mentioned the issue. In a lengthy article that falsely paints efforts to promote free speech as orchestrated entirely by Trump supporters, the Times buried an acknowledgment of our reporting some 52 paragraphs down. The backhanded way in which the Times finally noted that the government had suppressed the speech – in an article that essentially argues that free speech is a dangerous right-wing plot – reflects the institution's changing nature. Many in the public may view the paper as a beacon of the free press. After all, the most important Supreme Court case enshrining media rights was New York Times v. U.S., the 1971 case that made it clear that journalists have the right to publish even classified documents. There are sprawling constitutional issues at heart here that should go beyond left and right. This government or the next administration may use the DHS apparatus to control what is said about almost any political issue. DHS bureaucrats ... have planned to suppress "misinformation" about the Ukraine war, the origins of COVID-19, and topics as broad as "racial justice." That power can easily be exploited. Last month, I testified before Congress on the importance of free speech. I also filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court ... urging the justices to consider the lengthy evidence that the government has already overstepped its authority with respect to online censorship.
Note: This Substack was written by independent journalist Lee Fang. Read more about Department of Homeland Security's censorship efforts, including offensive operations to manipulate public opinion, discredit individuals, and infiltrate online groups. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on censorship and media manipulation from reliable sources.
Billionaire Elon Musk's brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink made headlines earlier this year for inserting its first brain implant into a human being. Such implants ... are described as "fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go." They can help people regain abilities lost due to aging, ailments, accidents or injuries, thus improving quality of life. Yet, great ethical concerns arise with such advancements, and the tech is already being used for questionable purposes. Some Chinese employers have started using "emotional surveillance technology" to monitor workers' brainwaves. Governments and militaries are already ... describing the human body and brain as war's next domain. On this new "battlefield," an era of neuroweapons ... has begun. The Pentagon's research arm DARPA directly or indirectly funds about half of invasive neural interface technology companies in the US. DARPA has initiated at least 40 neurotechnology-related programs over the past 24 years. As a 2024 RAND report speculates, if BCI technologies are hacked or compromised, "a malicious adversary could potentially inject fear, confusion, or anger into [a BCI] commander's brain and cause them to make decisions that result in serious harm." Academic Nicholas Evans speculates, further, that neuroimplants could "control an individual's mental functions," perhaps to manipulate memories, emotions, or even to torture the wearer. In a [military research paper] on neurowarfare: "Microbiologists have recently discovered mind-controlling parasites that can manipulate the behavior of their hosts according to their needs by switching genes on or off. Since human behavior is at least partially influenced by their genetics, nonlethal behavior modifying genetic bioweapons that spread through a highly contagious virus could thus be, in principle, possible.
Note: The CIA once used brain surgery to make six remote controlled dogs. For more, see important information on microchip implants and CIA mind control programs from reliable major media sources.
Although it happened more than 60 years ago, Antonio Salazar-Hobson remembers every detail of his kidnapping. After being snatched from his back yard, he is taken into a nightmarish landscape of sex trafficking, violence and exploitation. Rather than being broken by what he experienced, he instead rose from the ashes of his stolen childhood to accomplish extraordinary academic feats and become one of the US's most successful labour rights attorneys, representing vulnerable and powerless communities, and dedicating his life to justice and compassion. "I chose not to be obliterated by the abuse and trauma I was forced to endure," he says. "Instead of being swallowed by the darkness, I survived by walking towards the light." He has taken on multibillion-dollar corporations, represented First Nation people and LGBTQ+ farm worker communities, and won every case. "I'm used to people underestimating me, this poor Chicano boy going up against rooms full of corporate lawyers in suits, but I always prevail," he says. He now plans to dedicate the rest of his life to the anti-trafficking movement. "It is my hope that somehow my story can be of service to the community of survivors of sexual assault and trafficking; what happened to me can show other kids that they don't have to be ashamed, that they can rise up to become whoever they want to be. I want to show them that I refused to be broken and, in the end, I ... made it home."
Note: Explore more positive stories about ending human trafficking.
People experiencing mental or behavioral health crises and addiction have often been subject to police use of force, arrest and incarceration. [There are] efforts around the country to change that. One of the most common new approaches ... are civilian co-responder programs, in which behavioral health specialists, often social workers, show up to certain emergency calls alongside police. These can include situations like suicide threats, drug overdoses, and psychiatric episodes. Typically, the officers on the team have special training in crisis intervention. Generally, these teams aim to de-escalate any crisis or conflict, avoiding arrest and solving the reason for the emergency call, especially if it's a simple one. This week, the New Jersey Monitor reported that one call "for a welfare check on a woman with anxiety ended with the [state] trooper picking up her new cell phone from the post office and fixing a broken toilet" and the emergency call screener setting up her new phone. The Monitor also found that the program avoided arrests or police use of force in 95% of responses. The B-HEARD program in New York City, which is just three years old in a diverse city of 8.5 million, responded to roughly a quarter of mental health calls in precincts where it operated in the first half of 2023. Mental health calls make up 10% of all 911 calls in the city. In Denver, a study of the city's STAR program found the alternative response model reduced low-level crime.
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Police in the U.S. recently combined two existing dystopian technologies in a brand new way to violate civil liberties. A police force in California recently employed the new practice of taking a DNA sample from a crime scene, running this through a service provided by US company Parabon NanoLabs that guesses what the perpetrators face looked like, and plugging this rendered image into face recognition software to build a suspect list. Parabon NanoLabs ... alleges it can create an image of the suspect's face from their DNA. Parabon NanoLabs claim to have built this system by training machine learning models on the DNA data of thousands of volunteers with 3D scans of their faces. The process is yet to be independently audited, and scientists have affirmed that predicting face shapes–particularly from DNA samples–is not possible. But this has not stopped law enforcement officers from seeking to use it, or from running these fabricated images through face recognition software. Simply put: police are using DNA to create a hypothetical and not at all accurate face, then using that face as a clue on which to base investigations into crimes. This ... threatens the rights, freedom, or even the life of whoever is unlucky enough to look a little bit like that artificial face. These technologies, and their reckless use by police forces, are an inherent threat to our individual privacy, free expression, information security, and social justice.
Note: Law enforcement officers in many U.S. states are not required to reveal that they used face recognition technology to identify suspects. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos. In a just-unsealed case from Kentucky ... undercover cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker "elonmuskwhm," who they suspect of buying bitcoin for cash. In conversations with the user in early January, undercover agents sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then asked Google for information on who had viewed the videos, which collectively have been watched over 30,000 times. The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos. The cops argued, "There is reason to believe that these records would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, including by providing identification information about the perpetrators." The court granted the order and Google was told to keep the request secret. Privacy experts said the orders were unconstitutional because they threatened to undo protections in the 1st and 4th Amendments covering free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches. Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project [says that] "no one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I'm horrified that the courts are allowing this."
Note: The article refers to federal investigators and to undercover cops, but it doesn't specify who was actually doing the investigating. What agency or agencies were involved in these secret operations? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
It prides itself on offering an "assortment of family-friendly programming." For Alexa Nikolas, however, Nickelodeon's claims concealed a darker truth. She says young stars were exploited into taking part in sexually suggestive scenes. "Kids are groomed into thinking that the lines that they're doing are pretend, that it's not real life," the star, who played Nicole Bristow on the Nickelodeon TV series Zoey 101, [said]. Nikolas spoke out in the wake of docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which aired on the Investigation Discovery channel ... and exposed the "toxic culture" and alleged abuse on the set of some of Nickelodeon's biggest shows. In addition to Nikolas, several former child stars have spoken out, claiming sexual assault and harassment while working for the channel. Drake & Josh star Drake Bell speaks publicly for the first time about being repeatedly molested by his dialogue coach, Peck, when he was 15. "I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him... I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was...he was sexually assaulting me." Bell claimed the abuse occurred more than once and said he was scared to report it. He explained: "And it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and I was just trapped. I had no way out. The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal." The four-part docuseries documents the child sexual abuse committed by assistant Jason Handy, dialogue coach Brian Peck, and studio freelancer Ezel Channel, as well as the alleged abusive and misogynistic behavior of showrunner Dan Schneider.
Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. 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.
The FDA has agreed to delete and never republish several social-media posts suggesting that ivermectin, a drug that some doctors used to treat COVID-19, is for animals and not humans. While the FDA still does not approve of using ivermectin to treat COVID, it settled Thursday a lawsuit brought by three doctors who sued it, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Xavier Becerra, and FDA secretary Robert Califf. All parties have settled. The lawsuit, filed on June 2, 2022, was brought by doctors Mary Talley Bowden, Paul Marik and Robert Apter, each of whom claimed the FDA was interfering with their ability to practice medicine. The case was initially dismissed on the grounds the FDA had "sovereign immunity," though a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the lower court's decision saying that the "FDA is not a physician." The appeals court also said that, "Even tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond the FDA's statutory authority." The FDA will retire a Consumer update titled, "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." The FDA also will delete and not republish posts to Twitter (now X), LinkedIn and Facebook that read: "You are not a horse. Your are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it." Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X: "The FDA is biased against many low-cost, generic, and/or natural therapies with low profit potential. Could it be because half its funding comes from Big Pharma?"
Note: A US Senate Committee hearing on evidence of Ivermectin's benefits was once censored on Youtube. Explore a comprehensive look into the benefits and uses of ivermectin, despite establishment media's concerted effort to discredit its efficacy and safety.
If doctors prescribed fruits and vegetables like medicine, could people improve their health through diet alone? That's the theory behind a growing number of programs in the U.S. that deliver free produce. These produce prescription programs aim to combat heart problems and obesity-related diseases by either preparing free bundles of fruits and veggies for participants to pick up on a regular schedule, delivering fresh batches of produce to people's homes or giving them money to buy produce. Carol Grand ... joined one such program in late 2022 after she was diagnosed with diabetes. Grand signed up for FreshRx Oklahoma, a nonprofit food prescription service for people with diabetes. The yearlong program distributes bags of locally grown fruits and vegetables, along with recipes, every two weeks. Participants also receive free health screenings. Grand said her blood sugar dropped to nondiabetic levels and she lost 50 pounds. Before the program, she said, she regularly ate junk food because it was more affordable: "My diet was horrible: anything quick, anything loaded with sugar." Now, Grand said, she cooks recipes like sauteed tofu and sweet peppers. Recent studies support the benefits of these programs. "The prescription, instead of going to the pharmacy, goes to the farm," said Lisa Goldman Rosas ... at Stanford School of Medicine. "It's sending the message that food is part of your health because your provider cares about it."
Note: What if the negative news overload on America's chronic illness crisis isn't the full story? Check out our Substack to learn more about the inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis! Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.
The National Park Service is continuing to convert dozens of its sites across the country to cashless payments only, drawing complaints and, now, a lawsuit. Starting in June last year, visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado were told that they could not use cash to enter the park or use its campgrounds. The negative reactions were swift, with visitors raising privacy concerns and expressing confusion about why the American dollar would not be welcome in the U.S. parks system. Now these complaints are the subject of a lawsuit filed on March 6 in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, asserting that the service's policies violate federal law defining cash as "legal tender" and the visitors' "lawful right to pay in cash" at national sites, including those without bank accounts or cards or those who simply prefer to pay cash. In addition to the park service, its director, Charles F. Sams, III, and the Department of the Interior were named as defendants. One of the three plaintiffs, Toby Stover, a New York woman, drove to Hyde Park, N.Y., in January. She ... was not allowed to enter after trying to pay $10 in cash, the filing said. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Ray L. Flores, II, said in an emailed reply to questions that the legal action is being financially backed by the Children's Health Defense. Mr. Flores said in the email that cashless policies were "a key component – if not the linchpin – of the surveillance state."
Note: This article is also available here. A 2018 Guardian piece titled "The cashless society is a con and big finance is behind it" describes some of the basic problems with the push to go cashless.
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.