Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America's overdose crisis. Why hadn't the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, acted sooner to address a crisis that had been building for decades? One reason, a New York Times investigation found: Drugmakers had been paying them not to. For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments. The P.B.M.s exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price. The three dominant companies – Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx – oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million. The P.B.M.s are hired by insurers and employers to control their drug costs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical manufacturers. They often pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs, while driving independent pharmacies out of business. Regulators have accused the largest P.B.M.s of anticompetitive practices. In addition ... P.B.M.s sometimes collaborated with opioid manufacturers to persuade insurers not to restrict access to their drugs.
Note: A former DEA agent has said that Congress helped drug companies create the opioid epidemic. Read how pharmacy benefit managers inflate the price of medications behind the scenes. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.
MANNA [is a] nonprofit that provides free, medically-tailored meals (MTMs) and education about how nutrition affects health conditions to Philadelphians who need it. Last month, the journal BMC Nutrition released research ... showing that its clients achieved a "significant decrease in malnutrition risk" and meaningful changes in conditions like diabetes and hypertension. "This is the first of its kind," explains Jule Anne Henstenburg, PhD, director of The MANNA Institute. "There has never been research involving an in-depth evaluation of a functioning medically tailored meal program." Of the clients at risk for malnutrition when starting the program, 56 percent experienced a clinically significant reduction in malnutrition risk by program finish; 62 percent of clients with hypertension reduced their blood pressure by five or more units; among clients with diabetes, median hemoglobin A1C dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent, indicating improved blood sugar control. Body mass index (BMI) remained stable or decreased for 88 percent of clients who started the program with obesity. Clients can be referred to MANNA either by their medical care provider or through their health insurance plan. The majority of MANNA's clients are low-income, a population that often lives in food deserts, where healthy food is already hard to come by, and health literacy (the kind of insight needed to understand medically complex diets) can be low. "I see MANNA as the pharmacy for your prescription diet," [Chief executive officer of MANNA Sue] Daugherty says. "Imagine getting a prescription for your high blood pressure medicine and not having a pharmacy to fill it – that's what happens every day when folks are discharged with complex diets." The top five illnesses MANNA serves are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV / AIDS and congestive heart failure. Originally created in 1990 to provide comfort foods to patients with AIDS, MANNA overhauled its menu and began expanding its reach to anyone with a life-threatening illness 10 years later.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.
When Bank of America alerted financial regulators in 2020 to potentially suspicious payments from Leon Black, the billionaire investor, to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, the bank was following a routine practice. The bank filed two "suspicious activity reports," or SARs, which are meant to alert law enforcement to potential criminal activities like money laundering, terrorism financing or sex trafficking. One was filed in February 2020 and the other eight months later, according to a congressional memorandum. SARs are expected to be filed within 60 days of a bank spotting a questionable transaction. But the warnings in this case ... were not filed until several years after the payments, totaling $170 million, had been made. By the time of the first filing, Mr. Epstein had already been dead for six months. The delayed filings have led congressional investigators to question if Bank of America violated federal laws against money laundering. Bank of America is not the only big bank to have been questioned about suspicious transactions involving Mr. Epstein. In litigation involving hundreds of Mr. Epstein's sexual abuse victims, it was disclosed that JPMorgan Chase had filed several SARs after the bank kicked him out as a client in 2013. Deutsche Bank, which subsequently became Mr. Epstein's primary banker, paid a $150 million fine to New York bank regulators, in part because of its due diligence failures in monitoring Mr. Epstein's financial affairs.
Note: Read about the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial industry corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and blackmail ring.
Earlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: "integrated space fires." Essentially, "fires" are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as "the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and nonlethal effects on a target." The inclusion of this term in a Space Command planning document was another signal that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past. Wartime scenarios in space range from a one-off cyberattack against a satellite system ... to a destructive nuclear detonation in Earth orbit. The Pentagon is also concerned with the ability of potential adversaries, particularly China, to use their satellites to bolster their land, air, and naval forces, similar to the way the US military leans on its space-based capabilities. One concept proposed by some government and industry officials is to launch roving "defender" satellites into orbit, with the sole purpose of guarding high-value US satellites against an attack. [Space Force General Chance] Saltzman said the service is already thinking about what to do to maintain what the Pentagon now calls "space superiority"–a twist on the term air superiority.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. Read more about the arms race in space. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu's arrival to office as Prime Minister. In [Netanyahu's] 1996 book Fighting Terrorism, Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel's fighting for it. This was confirmed to General Wesley Clark after 9/11. He was told ... that "we're going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years–we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria's oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to "fruition" this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011. The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010's), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia's invasion in 2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending. Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the late 1970s onward.
Note: Remember when Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon fought with Syrian militias armed by the CIA? 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 intelligence agency corruption.
World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create "mirror life" microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an "unprecedented risk" to life on Earth. The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections. Many molecules for life can exist in two distinct forms, each the mirror image of the other. The DNA of all living organisms is made from "right-handed" nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from "left-handed" amino acids. Why nature works this way is unclear: life could have chosen left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins instead. Scientists have already manufactured large, functional mirror molecules to study them more closely. Some have even taken baby steps towards building mirror microbes, though constructing a whole organism from mirror molecules is beyond today's know-how. The fresh concerns over the technology are revealed in a 299-page report and a commentary in the journal Science. Beyond causing lethal infections, the researchers doubt the microbes could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and predators. Existing antibiotics are unlikely to be effective, either.
Note: COVID-19 probably came from a lab. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science and weapons of mass destruction.
A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through. A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were "not accepting of reality", 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit symptoms of aggression. "This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child," Helen Pattinson, chief executive of War Child UK, said. "Alongside the levelling of hospitals, schools and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war." The estimated death toll in Gaza is more than 44,000 and a recent assessment by the UN Human Rights Office found that 44% of the fatalities it was able to verify were children. About 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, approximately 90% of the territory's total population, have been displaced, many several times. Half of that number are children who have lost their home and been forced to flee their neighbourhoods. More than 60% of the surveyed children reported having experienced traumatic events during the war and some had been exposed to multiple traumatic events. An estimated 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied, separated from their parents.
Note: American companies are profiting from the war in Gaza. Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
Portugal has a life expectancy nearly four years longer than the U.S. despite spending 20% of what the U.S. does on health care per person. According to the 2021 Global Security Index, which measures the ability to respond to pandemics, Portugal ranked third out of 195 countries in providing access to affordable health care. The United States ranked 183rd. Portugal has a national health care system, entitling every resident to free or very low-cost health care. It embraces innovative programs such as "social prescribing" that expand the boundaries of what is considered health care, while progressive laws on drug use and treatment have been credited with driving down overdose deaths, even as they rose in the U.S. In the 1990s, Portugal had one of the highest rates of heroin use and fatal overdoses anywhere. In 2001, the country not only decriminalized the use and possession of drugs, but also, in partnership with several non-governmental organizations such as Crescer, created a network of mostly free inpatient and outpatient treatment centers and mobile street teams that seek out drug users to provide medical care, clean needles, and support to enter addiction programs. Two decades later, drug overdose deaths have fallen sharply, from one per day to about 70 to 80 per year. New Jersey, with a smaller population than Portugal, sees 3,000 a year. HIV infection rates have dropped dramatically, too.
Note: Read our Substack to learn about social prescribing and other inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis ravaging the world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing our bodies.
An independent review found Father Thaddeus Kotik, who died in 1992, lured young girls and boys into the monastery garden, where he would sexually abuse, including rape, them over the course of many years – and that leaders within the order and abbey repeatedly failed to report allegations of his abuse to authorities. Father Jan Rossey, who last year became the Abbot of Caldey Abbey, which sits on an island off the coast of Pembrokeshire in west Wales and is home to Cistercian Order monks, admitted that "it is clear opportunities were missed to stop the abuse of children" on Tuesday after he commissioned the review into alleged historical child sex abuse by monks. The review, led by former assistant police and crime commissioner at South Wales Police, Jan Pickles, examined allegations dating from the late 1960s to 1992, made by people who experienced abuse on the remote Welsh island as children, some who lived there and others who visited. The review concluded that Kotik, who sexually abused girls and boys while he was a monk at the abbey, used a tortoise and "other attractive treats" to entice children into the monastery garden, where he would sexually abuse them. The report also said he "groomed" parents by "overwhelming" them with attention, offering babysitting help and giving small gifts. The abuse in the case of some victims persisted over a period of many years, as children returned to Caldey with their families for holidays.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
The U.S. defense budget is approaching $1 trillion. About half is going to defense contractors, who have a history of overcharging the Pentagon and fleecing American taxpayers. Raytheon recently agreed to pay $950 million to resolve investigations concerning defective pricing, foreign bribery and export control schemes. I look forward to working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce waste and fraud at the Pentagon. Consolidation in the defense industry has allowed companies to drive up prices. The price of stinger missiles has increased from $25,000 in 1991 to $480,000 today. One reason is that Raytheon became the sole supplier and can drive up costs. We should make defense contracting more competitive, helping small and medium-sized businesses to compete for Defense Department projects. We can do this by reducing massive sole-source contracts that only specific large companies can fulfill, breaking up major acquisitions into smaller programs, and improving funding and administrative support to help companies cross the "valley of death" between research and product commercialization. The Defense Department also needs better acquisition oversight. Defense contractors have gotten away with overcharging the Pentagon and ripping off taxpayers for too long. DOGE should provide recommendations for systems to better manage government spending and acquisition.
Note: The above was written by Rep. Ro Khanna, representative for California's 17th congressional district. Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
A 2021 study published in Explore suggests that past life experiences have been reported across various parts of the world. Children often begin recalling past life memories around the age of 2 and gradually stop discussing them by about 9, when they're well into their schooling years. Many children describe events, names, families or places from their alleged past life. Many also recall violent or unnatural deaths in their previous life, and about 20% participants mention an "intermission" period between lives, with an average gap of 16 months between a previous death and rebirth. Children can also display skills or behaviors they haven't been taught, such as xenoglossy (speaking a language they've never learned). Research on near-death experiences, published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, also suggests that survivors sometimes experience past-life memories, similar to those that young children in past-life recollection studies recall. Mr. David Moquin ... was in a coma and hospitalized with double pneumonia. "During that time, I experienced at least two events that felt like past lifetimes. The one that has haunted me for the past 24 years was that of burning to death in an airplane crash. Many years later a psychic told me that in my last lifetime I died landing a fighter plane on an odd single digit day in November 1944. I was born December 21, 1944," Moquin explains. "My daughter, hearing the recording of the reading, googled and found that Captain Fryer was the only pilot that died on an odd single digit day that November, and that he died trying to land his burning P-51 Mustang. My favorite plane has always been the P-51. The model sits on my desk. My daughter asked me questions and I seemed to know the names of my wing commander, squadron commander, mother and father."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.
A video game is helping thousands of vulnerable young people turn their darkest moments into moments of creativity and hope that they can pass on to others. Apart of Me is designed to help children and young adults open up about their loss and trauma in a safe and supportive environment. The game, co-founded by Manchester psychologist Louis Weinstock, is now a charity and has helped 44,000 people in the UK, and 160,000 worldwide to understand and process their grief. Created in 2018, [Apart of Me] is designed for 11-18-year-olds who have been affected by a loss which is potentially impacting their mental health. Set on an island, users can play the 3D game anonymously as it introduces characters who each have a grief-related struggle they are finding hard to deal with. It is the user's task to help the characters find a way through and this is done by collecting objects, with each object informing the user about different aspects of grief, Mr Weinstock explains. The game also allows the user to ask questions they may feel scared or uncomfortable to talk about generally. "It gives young people an outlet to have those conversations that otherwise might be difficult to have," he added. Mr Weinstock said the original idea for the game came from young people themselves as "not all want to sit in a room with a stranger and talk about their feelings". He met with young people at a hospice who all expressed the idea of a game to help them with their bereavement.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
For decades, a little-known company now owned by a Goldman Sachs fund has been making millions of dollars from the unlikely dregs of American life: sewage sludge. Synagro, sells farmers treated [sewage] sludge from factories and homes to use as fertilizer. But that fertilizer, also known as biosolids, can contain harmful "forever chemicals" known as PFAS linked to serious health problems including cancer and birth defects. Farmers are starting to find the chemicals contaminating their land, water, crops and livestock. Just this year, two common types of PFAS were declared hazardous substances by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Superfund law. Now, Synagro is part of a major effort to lobby Congress to limit the ability of farmers and others to sue to clean up fields polluted by the sludge fertilizer. In a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in March, sludge-industry lobbyists argued that they shouldn't be held liable because the chemicals were already in the sludge before they received it and made it into fertilizer. [Synagro's] earnings hit $100 million to $120 million last year. An investment fund run by Goldman Sachs ... acquired Synagro in 2020 in a deal reported to be worth at least $600 million. As concerns over PFAS risks have grown, Synagro has stepped up its lobbying. Chemical giants 3M and DuPont, the original manufacturers of PFAS, for decades hid evidence of the chemicals' dangers. The chemicals are now so ubiquitous ... that nearly all Americans carry PFAS in their bloodstream. As many as 200 million Americans are exposed to PFAS through tap water.
Note: Remember when Goldman Sachs once asked in a biotech research report: "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority. However, as many AI ethicists warn, this blinkered focus on the existential future threat to humanity posed by a malevolent AI ... has often served to obfuscate the myriad more immediate dangers posed by emerging AI technologies. These "lesser-order" AI risks ... include pervasive regimes of omnipresent AI surveillance and panopticon-like biometric disciplinary control; the algorithmic replication of existing racial, gender, and other systemic biases at scale ... and mass deskilling waves that upend job markets, ushering in an age monopolized by a handful of techno-oligarchs. Killer robots have become a twenty-first-century reality, from gun-toting robotic dogs to swarms of autonomous unmanned drones, changing the face of warfare from Ukraine to Gaza. Palestinian civilians have frequently spoken about the paralyzing psychological trauma of hearing the "zanzana" – the ominous, incessant, unsettling, high-pitched buzzing of drones loitering above. Over a decade ago, children in Waziristan, a region of Pakistan's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, experienced a similar debilitating dread of US Predator drones that manifested as a fear of blue skies. "I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray," stated thirteen-year-old Zubair in his testimony before Congress in 2013.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.
When Megan Rothbauer suffered a heart attack at work in Wisconsin, she was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. The nearest hospital was "not in network", which left Ms Rothbauer with a $52,531.92 bill for her care. Had the ambulance driven a further three blocks to Meriter Hospital in Madison, the bill would have been a more modest $1,500. The incident laid bare the expensive complexity of the American healthcare system with patients finding that they are uncovered, despite paying hefty premiums, because of their policy's small print. In many cases the grounds for refusal hinge on whether the insurer accepts that the treatment is necessary and that decision is increasingly being made by artificial intelligence rather than a physician. It is leading to coverage being denied on an industrial scale. Much of the work is outsourced, with the biggest operator being EviCore, which ... uses AI to review – and in many cases turn down – doctors' requests for prior authorisation, guaranteeing to pay for treatment. The controversy over coverage denials was brought into sharp focus by the gunning down of UnitedHealthcare's chief executive Brian Thompson in Manhattan. The [words written on the] casings [of] the ammunition – "deny", "defend" and "depose" – are thought to refer to the tactics the insurance industry is accused of using to avoid paying out. UnitedHealthcare rejected one in three claims last year, about twice the industry average.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and corporate corruption.
Within Meta's Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations team, [Hannah] Byrne helped craft one of the most powerful and secretive censorship policies in internet history. She and her team helped draft the rulebook that applies to the world's most diabolical people and groups: the Ku Klux Klan, cartels, and terrorists. Meta bans these so-called Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, or DOI, from using its platforms, but further prohibits its billions of users from engaging in "glorification," "support," or "representation" of anyone on the list. As an armed white supremacist group with credible allegations of human rights violations hanging over it, Azov [Battalion] had landed on the Dangerous Organizations list. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Meta not only moved swiftly to allow users to cheer on the Azov Battalion, but also loosened its rules around incitement, hate speech, and gory imagery so Ukrainian civilians could share images of the suffering around them. Within weeks, Byrne found the moral universe around her inverted: The heavily armed hate group sanctioned by Congress since 2018 were now freedom fighters resisting occupation, not terroristic racists. It seems most galling for Byrne to compare how malleable Meta's Dangerous Organizations policy was for Ukraine, and how draconian it has felt for those protesting the war in Gaza. "I know the U.S. government is in constant contact with Facebook employees," she said. Meta's censorship systems are "basically an extension of the government," Byrne said. "You want military, Department of State, CIA people enforcing free speech? That is what is concerning."
Note: Read more about Facebook's secret blacklist, and how Facebook censored reporting of war crimes in Gaza but allowed praise for the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade on its platform. Going deeper, click here if you want to know the real history behind the Russia-Ukraine war. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
A former 'true atheist' has come forward to tell his story of the dramatic near-death experience that made him a believer and left him with a 'deep sense of love.' Jose Hernandez, from Canada, said his journey to the other side began with a brutal accident as an electrical engineer tending to roadside power lines. When his colleague crashed their utility truck on January 6, 2000, the then 46-year-old Hernandez was left with multiple broken ribs preventing him from breathing as emergency medical technicians raced him to intensive care. Despite his disbelief in the afterlife, Hernandez said that he spent those moments of deep physical pain seeking help from a higher power. Hernandez said his consciousness was soon transported through a dark otherworldly portal that led to a mysterious transitional realm of living light and color. He spent three minutes clinically dead, came back but fell back into the same state for another two minutes, which he said felt like hours as he watched his lifeless body in the hospital. [A] spirit-like figure [offered] him words of comfort as he transitioned to 'the other side.' 'I heard the voice next to me say 'Think of the your body as a car, and that car has like five million miles on it, and there's nothing we can do to fix it anymore. So you have to now say goodbye to your body,'' he remembered. This realm allowed him to reconcile with his deceased father. 'It was even more amazing because me and my father had a very hard relationship,' Hernandez noted. 'We had a lot of clashes and I don't ever remember saying to my father in life, 'I love you,' or he to me.' But all that changed when they met again in this realm. When I met my dad on the other side,' he told the podcast, 'I realized sometimes we may not be able to say something here, [but] we're gonna be able to say it somewhere else.'
Note: Watch a video of Hernandes talking about his experiences. Read more about the fascinating study of near-death experiences. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.
Covid-19 vaccine mandates did "more harm than good", a House of Representatives report has claimed. A 525-page report from the coronavirus pandemic select committee argued that Joe Biden's policy had cost thousands of people their jobs, harmed public confidence in health professionals and damaged military readiness. The report said that "the vaccine ... did not stop transmission and therefore making the jabs mandatory was ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid. The report also suggested that the "more likely" origin of the coronavirus pandemic was a lab leak. "Since the Select Subcommittee commenced its work ... more and more senior intelligence officials, politicians, science editors, and scientists increasingly have endorsed the hypothesis that Covid-19 emerged as the result of a laboratory or research related accident," it said. Mr Biden's administration introduced several vaccine mandates from 2021 for members of the armed forces, federal workers, healthcare workers, and businesses with more than 100 employees. Many state and local governments, along with private employers, followed suit. Some 8,000 members of the armed services were discharged as a result of the vaccine mandate. Only 43 rejoined when this was rescinded. The report argued that vaccine mandates appeared to "fly in the face of decades of scientific research", by not making an exception for those who had acquired immunity by having previously been infected.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccines and government corruption.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has failed for the last 33 years to pass a financial audit. With assets that are approximated at $3.8 trillion probably maybe ... the DoD is surpassed by only JPMorgan/Chase and its $4.2 trillion as the largest U.S. entity when ranked by assets. According to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report last year, "DOD financial management has been on our High-Risk List since 1995. DOD's spending makes up about half of the federal government's discretionary spending. Its physical assets comprise almost 68 percent of the federal government's physical assets. DOD has not yet received an audit opinion on its annual department-wide financial statements. It has been unable to accurately account for and report on its spending or physical assets." The DoD's Number 2 largest supplier, Raytheon and the Government's Number 31 largest supplier, Dell, both agreed to pay millions to resolve Department of Justice (DoJ) investigations this past October and November. The DoJ reported that Raytheon agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve the government's investigations into a major government fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has released its final report, summarizing two years of investigations into the origins and handling of COVID-19. The 520-page report, published Monday, concludes that the virus most likely originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Republican-led committee cited biological characteristics of the virus and reports of illnesses among researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 as key evidence for its findings. The report also scrutinized the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of prioritizing the Chinese Communist Party's interests over its global mission to protect public health. The subcommittee criticized U.S. health officials and the Biden administration for what it described as overselling the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission and infection. However, the report praised the early travel restrictions implemented by the Trump administration as a significant step in mitigating the pandemic's spread. This conclusion contrasts with other research pointing to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan as the most likely origin of the virus. The WHO and many scientists have stated that the exact origins of the pandemic remain uncertain. The release of the report highlights the ongoing debate over the pandemic's beginnings and the global response, underscoring the complexities of managing an unprecedented public health crisis.
Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and COVID vaccines.
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.