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.
Scientists have created genetically modified cattle that produce "human" milk in a bid to make cows' milk more nutritious. The scientists have ... introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with [some of] the same properties as human breast milk. The scientists behind the research ... hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets. The research has the backing of a major biotechnology company. Genetically modified food has become a highly controversial subject and currently they can only be sold in the UK and Europe if they have passed extensive safety testing. The consumer response to GM food has also been highly negative, resulting in many supermarkets seeking to source products that are GM free. Helen Wallace, director of biotechnology monitoring group GeneWatch UK, said: "We have major concerns about this research to genetically modify cows with human genes. There are major welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of still births. There is a question about whether milk from these cows is going to be safe for humans and it is really hard to tell that unless you do large clinical trials like you would a drug, so there will be uncertainty about whether it could be harmful to some people. Ethically there are issues about mass producing animals in this way."
Note: For a powerful summary of the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here. And for other major media news articles exposing the serious risks and dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.
Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, awarded millions of dollars in bonuses to its executives after “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history,” according to an annual report and proxy statement released yesterday. Eleven people were killed, including nine Transocean employees, in the April 20 explosion and collapse of the rig, which gushed crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 86 days. “Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate,” Transocean states in the filing. Transocean President and Chief Executive Officer Steven L. Newman received about $4.3 million in cash bonuses and stock and option awards. With other compensation—such as pension increases and cost of living, housing, and automobile allowances—Newman earned $6.6 million in 2010, almost $1 million more than in 2009. His base salary, $900,000 in 2010, will increase 22 percent to $1.1 million in 2011. Transocean built and staffed the Deepwater Horizon. It was leased by BP, which denied most executives bonuses in 2010. In justifying the bonuses, Transocean cites the increased burden on executives of responding to the spill.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
A bizarre spate of television presenters dissolving into on-air gibberish has sparked claims that the U.S. military could be to blame. In four high-profile cases, the latest involving fast-talking Judge Judy, the presenters have started off speaking properly but have then descended into undecipherable nonsense - looking confused and unstable. The frequency of the 'attacks' - and the fact that recorded examples of the mental meltdowns have been popular on websites - has led to conspiracy theorists pointing the finger at shadowy government experiments. A popular theory being circulated online blames the U.S. Military’s supposed research into using microwaves as a mind control weapon. America has never admitted conducting such research but proponents say the effects - produced by microwave signals stimulating the brain with fake images and voices - exactly mimic those displayed in the recent on-air breakdowns. Serene Branson's garbled Grammys report became an internet sensation, while WISCTV's Sarah Carlson suffered a similar meltdown in January. Judith Sheindlin, the fast-talking judge on Judge Judy, was taken to hospital ... after she began speaking a nonsensical string of words during a live recording of her courtroom TV show.
Note: We don't normally use the UK's Daily Mail as a reliable source, but as the video included in this article clearly demonstrate something highly unusual, we've included it here. Another video of this highly strange phemomenon is available here. There is a possibility that some kind of HAARP technologies may be used in doing this. For more, click here. For reliable, verifiable information on secret government mind control programs, see the powerful two-page summary available here.
It's bizarre but, it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it created those mortgage-backed investments that triggered the financial collapse. Now that banks want to evict people, they're unwinding these exotic investments to find, that often, the legal documents behind the mortgages aren't there. Caught in a jam of their own making, some companies appear to be resorting to forgery and phony paperwork to throw people - down on their luck - out of their homes. This past January in Los Angeles, 37,000 homeowners facing foreclosure showed up to an event to beg their bank for lower payments on their mortgage. In February in Miami, 12,000 people showed up to a similar event. For many that's when the real surprise comes in: these same banks have fouled up all of their own paperwork to a historic degree. There were a million foreclosures last year. And there will be another million this year - those lawsuits are forcing open those bundled, mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street cooked up in the mid 2000s, and exposing a lack of ownership documents all across the country. Banks are defensive because all 50 state attorneys general want to punish them: the states are seeking about $20 billion in damages for what they say is the irresponsible, perhaps criminal way, that some mortgage companies handled what is, for most folks, the most important investment of their lives.
Note: To watch the amazing 14-minute video of this article, click here. Learn how banks paid a company which hired people off the streets to pretend they were bank vice presidents and sign thousands of documents fraudulently. For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal practices of mortgage lenders, click here.
Igor Gramotkin is ... the manager of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and has spent more than two decades at the site of the most devastating nuclear accident in history, trying to stop further radiation emissions and cleaning the area. Mr Gramotkin admitted that the destroyed reactor, still full of radioactive waste and nuclear fuel, remains "a threat not only to Ukraine but to the whole world" until it is encased in a vast steel structure that is being built. In the months after the accident, a makeshift "sarcophagus" had been constructed to encase the reactor, but it is now unstable and, despite work to shore it up, experts say a new shelter is desperately needed in case the old one collapses. At more than 100m tall, the shelter will be the largest moveable structure ever built. Those building it still have to be extremely careful. Standing in the area immediately around the plant subjects a person to radiation equivalent to about one old-style chest X-ray per day. The human costs of the Chernobyl accident are ... horrific by any estimate. [Some] studies put the figure in the hundreds of thousands. There are incidences of genetic mutations, children born lacking organs, and dramatically elevated thyroid cancer levels in local children, who drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine in the years after the accident.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion. The biggest borrowers from the ... discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets. Separate data disclosed in December on temporary emergency-lending programs set up by the Fed also showed big foreign banks as borrowers. Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most debt overall -- a combined $274.1 billion -- to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Those programs also loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the bailout of banks worldwide by the US taxpayer, click here.
The number of traffic fatalities continued its welcomed downward trajectory last year, falling 3% to its lowest levels since 1949, and a 25 percent drop from 2005, according to U.S. Department of Transportation estimates. Preliminary figures show that 32,788 people died in traffic accidents last year, down from the 33,808 killed the previous year and significantly below the 43,510 people killed only six years ago, according to the DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Experts attribute the change to a variety of reasons, including changes to cars -- such as vehicle rollover protection -- and programs to change driver behavior -- such as campaigns addressing drunk driving, distracted driving and seat belt use. Laws aimed at young people also likely have had an impact, notably older minimum drinking ages and graduated drivers' licenses. But the rise and decline of the grim number has numerous peaks and dips, influenced by direct changes such as the national speed limit and indirect causes such as recessions.
For all those who've declared the autism-vaccine debate over a new scientific review begs to differ. It considers a host of peer-reviewed, published theories that show possible connections between vaccines and autism. The article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology is entitled "Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review." The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what nobody else apparently has bothered to do: she reviewed the body of published science since autism was first described in 1943. Not just one theory suggested by research such as the role of MMR shots, or the mercury preservative thimerosal; but all of them. Ratajczak's article states, in part, that "Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis following vaccination. Therefore, autism is the result of genetic defects and/or inflammation of the brain." The article goes on to discuss many potential vaccine-related culprits, including the increasing number of vaccines given in a short period of time. Ratajczak also looks at a factor that hasn't been widely discussed: human DNA contained in vaccines. Ratajczak reports that about the same time vaccine makers took most thimerosal out of most vaccines (with the exception of flu shots which still widely contain thimerosal), they began making some vaccines using human tissue. Why could human DNA potentially cause brain damage? The way Ratajczak explained it to me: "Because it's human DNA and recipients are humans. That DNA is incorporated into the host DNA. Now it's changed, altered self and body kills it. Where is this most expressed? The neurons of the brain. Now you have body killing the brain cells and it's an ongoing inflammation." We asked Ratajczak how she came to research the controversial topic. She told us that for years while working in the pharmaceutical industry, she was restricted as to what she was allowed to publish. "I'm retired now," she told CBS News. "I can write what I want."
Note: For an excellent report endorsed by dozens of respected doctors and nurses on the serious risks and dangers of vaccines, click here. For other major media articles presenting evidence on the risks and dangers of vaccines, click here.
Does Libya set a precedent? If a revolt breaks out again in Iran, and the regime cracks down with brutal force, will the United States support a Libya-style response? Is there an "Obama Doctrine" emerging? It looks like it. It appears that Obama is ready to use U.S. military force anytime, anywhere, for any reason that he — without Congressional approval or UN support — deems legitimate. During the course of the "War on Terror," now a decade old, there has been a constant barrage of efforts to disparage those who called Iraq, or Afghanistan, a "war for oil." It's not bizarre at all to argue that what animates nearly the entirety of American policy toward the region from Algeria to Iran is concern about oil and natural gas. That's been the driving force behind the creation of the Rapid Deployment Force by President Carter, the establishment of Centcom by President Reagan, the invasion of Kuwait by President Bush I and America's arming of Saudi Arabia and the other members of the so-called Gulf Cooperation Council. It's why Obama muses about "maintaining the flow of commerce" by military means. Which brings us to Iran. If the anti-Ahmadinejad forces rise up again, and perhaps take control of a city like Shiraz, or if Iranian oil workers strike and take control of a southern oil city such as Ahwaz, ... the regime would crack down brutally. And then what?
Note: For many reports exposing the real reasons behind the "endless war" policy of the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations, click here.
A consortium of U.S. organic farmers and seed dealers filed suit against global seed giant Monsanto Co. on [March 29], in a move to protect themselves from what they see as a growing threat in the company's arsenal of genetically modified crops. The Public Patent Foundation filed the suit on behalf of more than 50 organizations challenging the chemical giant's patents on its genetically modified seeds. The group is seeking a ruling that would prohibit Monsanto from suing the farmers or dealers if their organic seed becomes contaminated with Monsanto's patented biotech seed germplasm. Monsanto has filed scores of lawsuits and won judgments against farmers they claimed made use of their seed without paying required royalties. Many farmers have claimed that their fields were inadvertently contaminated without their knowledge, and the issue has been a topic of concern for not only farmers, but also companies that clean and handle seed. "This case asks whether Monsanto has the right to sue organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto's genetically modified seed should land on their property," said Dan Ravicher, executive director of PUBPAT. The suit also alleges that Monsanto's GMO seeds do more harm than good and claims the patents on genetically modified seed are invalid because they don't meet the "usefulness" requirement of patent law.
Note: For a powerful, quality documentary revealing the gross abuses of Monsanto which endanger public health, click here.
Good news begets better people. That was the conclusion of new research released ... by the University of British Columbia, that found people with a strong sense of "moral identity" were inspired to do good when they read media stories about Good Samaritans' selfless acts. According to lead author Karl Aquino, who studies forgiveness and moral behaviour issues, four separate studies found a direct link between a person's exposure to media accounts of extraordinary virtue and their yearning to change the world. He said media reports could potentially play a crucial role in the mobilization of history makers if less attention was paid to negative coverage. "The news media have a tendency to celebrate bad behaviour, from Charlie Sheen's recent exploits to articles that focus the spotlight on criminal and other aberrant behaviour." "These things have to be beyond just everyday goodness," Aquino said in an interview. "We're talking here about really exceptional acts of virtue. Acts that require enormous sacrifice, that put people at risk for the sake of others." Based on his research, Aquino also said the media could play a strategic role in helping the fundraising efforts for natural disasters like the recent earthquake in Japan. "Focusing on individual examples of extraordinary goodness within the crisis may be a more effective and subtle way to encourage people to donate than inundating them with stories and pictures of need and desperation," he said.
General Electric marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors that were used in Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plant as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a smaller and less expensive containment structure. Yet American safety officials have long thought the smaller design more vulnerable to explosion and rupture in emergencies than competing designs. Here's the problem: Profit-making corporations have every incentive to underestimate these probabilities and lowball the likely harms. This is why it's necessary to have such things as government regulators and why regulators need enough resources to enforce the regulations. And it's why recent proposals in Congress to cut the budgets of agencies charged with protecting public safety are so wrong-headed. It's also why regulators have to be independent of the industries they regulate. When there's a revolving door between regulatory agency and industry, officials are reluctant to bite the hands that will feed them. Finally, the tendency of corporations to understate the probabilities of public harms requires that limits be placed on corporate political power. The public cannot not be adequately protected as long as big corporations ... are allowed to bribe legislators with campaign donations and boondoggles.
Note: The author of this opinion, Robert Reich, is a professor at UC Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor.
In one of the largest settlements in the Roman Catholic church's sweeping sex abuse scandal, an order of priests agreed [to] pay $166.1 million to hundreds of Native Americans and Alaska Natives who were abused at the order's schools in the northwestern U.S. The settlement between more than 450 victims and the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus also calls for a written apology to the victims and disclosure of documents to them, including their personal medical records. "It's a day of reckoning and justice," said Clarita Vargas, 51, who said she and her two sisters were abused by the head of St. Mary's Mission and School, a former Jesuit-run Indian boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation near Omak, Washington state, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The abuse began when they were as young as 6 or 7, she said. The province ran village and reservation schools in Oregon, Washington state, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The claims are from victims who were students at schools in all five states. Nearly all the victims are American Indian or Alaska Native. The province previously settled another 200 claims. Then the organization filed for bankruptcy in 2009, claiming the payments had depleted its treasury. But victims argued the province remained wealthy because it controls and owns Gonzaga University, Gonzaga Preparatory School, Seattle University and other schools and properties. Many of the abuses happened in remote villages and on reservations. The order was accused of using those areas as dumping grounds for problem priests.
Note: For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies. Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress. While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
Carlos Lam, a Republican activist and Indiana deputy prosecutor, has resigned amid revelations that he sent an email calling for a fake attack on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker designed to discredit union protesters. Walker, a Republican, was the target of protests for his efforts to roll back many union collective bargaining rights in his state. In a Feb. 19 email uncovered by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Lam apparently told Walker he had a "good opportunity" to win public sympathy with a "'false flag' operation." "If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," read the email. Lam initially denied having sent the email. He [claimed] he had been shopping for a minivan with his family when it was sent, and suggested his email account had been infiltrated by his political enemies. Lam resigned as deputy prosecutor on Thursday morning, however, reportedly telling his boss he had indeed sent the email. Last month, another Indiana official -- Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox - lost his job for calling on law enforcement to "use live ammunition" on Wisconsin protesters. Also in February, Walker was the victim of a prank call by a liberal journalist pretending to be billionaire conservative activist David Koch. When the journalist suggested planting people among the protesters to stir up trouble, Walker responded that "we thought about that" but added that he had decided against it.
Note: To learn more about the prevalence of "false flag" operations in politics with links to reliable, verifiable sources, click here. For more on this official's call for a false-flag attack, click here.
The chaos at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant — explosions, fires, ruptures — has not shaken the bipartisan support in partisan Washington for the U.S.'s so-called nuclear renaissance. Republicans have dismissed Japan's crisis as a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. President Obama has defended atomic energy as a carbon-free source of power, resisting calls to halt the renaissance and freeze construction of the U.S.'s first new reactors in over three decades. But there is no renaissance. Even before the earthquake-tsunami one-two punch, the endlessly hyped U.S. nuclear revival was stumbling, pummeled by skyrocketing costs, stagnant demand and skittish investors, not to mention the defeat of restrictions on carbon that could have mitigated nuclear energy's economic insanity. Obama has offered unprecedented aid to an industry that already enjoyed cradle-to-grave subsidies, and the antispending GOP has clamored for even more largesse. But Wall Street hates nukes as much as K Street loves them, which is why there's no new reactor construction to freeze. Once hailed as "too cheap to meter," nuclear fission turns out to be an outlandishly expensive method of generating juice for our Xboxes.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.
Aetna Inc. is suing six New Jersey doctors over medical bills it calls “unconscionable,” including $56,980 for a bedside consultation and $59,490 for an ultrasound that typically costs $74. The lawsuits could help determine what pricing limits insurers can impose on ”out-of-network” physicians who don’t have contracts with health plans that spell out how much a service or procedure can cost. One defendant billed $30,000 for a Caesarean birth, and another raised his fee for seeing a critically ill patient in a hospital to $9,000 in 2008 from $500 the year before, the insurer alleges in the suits. Aetna tried in 2007 to impose caps on some out-of-network payments, prompting doctor complaints to the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. The agency sided with the doctors, fined the company $2.5 million, and ordered it to pay out-of-network practitioners enough so that patients wouldn’t be asked to pay balances other than co-pays. In 2009, Aetna, UnitedHealth Group Inc., Cigna Corp. and WellPoint Inc. were accused by the New York attorney general of underpaying out-of-network physicians by manipulating a database used to calculate payments. They paid a total of $90 million in settlements without admitting wrongdoing. UnitedHealthcare agreed that year to pay $350 million to settle a lawsuit by the American Medical Association over the same issues. Similar AMA lawsuits against Aetna, Cigna and Wellpoint are pending.
Note: Is the American health care system out of control? For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades. The move is one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. The new rules give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights. The Justice Department believes it has the authority to tinker with Miranda procedures. Making the change administratively rather than through legislation in Congress, however, presents legal risks. Before becoming president, Mr. Obama had criticized the Bush administration for going outside traditional criminal procedures to deal with terror suspects, and for bypassing Congress in making rules to handle detainees after 9/11. He has since embraced many of the same policies while devising additional ones—to the disappointment of civil-liberties groups that championed his election.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on government threats to civil liberties, click here.
The "war on drugs" has failed and should be abandoned in favour of evidence-based policies that treat addiction as a health problem, according to prominent public figures including former heads of MI5 and the Crown Prosecution Service. Leading peers – including prominent Tories – say that despite governments worldwide drawing up tough laws against dealers and users over the past 50 years, illegal drugs have become more accessible. Vast amounts of money have been wasted on unsuccessful crackdowns, while criminals have made fortunes importing drugs into this country. The increasing use of the most harmful drugs such as heroin has also led to “enormous health problems”, according to the group. The MPs and members of the House of Lords, who have formed a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, are calling for new policies to be drawn up on the basis of scientific evidence. It could lead to calls for the British government to decriminalise drugs, or at least for the police and Crown Prosecution Service not to jail people for possession of small amounts of banned substances.
Note: If you examine topics on which the government has declared war, what is being fought against often increases instead of decreasing. Could it be that the best way to deal with serious problems is not to wage war?
South of El Paso, Texas, on Mexico's side of the border, lies Juarez - the most dangerous city in the world. ATF [U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] Special Agent Rene Jaquez has been stationed there for the past year, trying to keep U.S. guns from being trafficked into Mexico. "That's what we do as an agency," Jaquez said. "ATF's primary mission is to make sure that we curtail gun trafficking." That's why Jaquez tells CBS News he was so alarmed to hear his own agency may have done the opposite: encouraged U.S. gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexico's drug cartels. Apparently, ATF hoped that letting weapons "walk" onto the street - to see where they'd end up - would help them take down a cartel. Jaquez is so opposed to the strategy, he's speaking out. "You don't let guns walk. I've never let a gun walk." Yet ATF agents told us they were ordered to let thousands of weapons walk. But ATF wasn't working alone on the case known as "Fast and Furious." Documents show ATF had conference calls with "DHS" (Homeland Security). "USMS" (U.S. Marshals) and DEA. An "ICE," or Customs agent, was on ATF's Fast and Furious team. They were advised by an "AUSA," or Assistant U.S. Attorney under the Justice Department. Jaquez says he's left wondering whether runaway violence in Mexico can be partly blamed on the agency tasked with stopping it.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
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.