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Excerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media

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

Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as scientific evidence shows many offsets they have bought have no environmental worth and have become stranded assets. Amid growing evidence that huge numbers of carbon credits do nothing to mitigate global heating and can sometimes be linked to alleged human rights concerns, there is a growing pile of carbon credits ... that are unused in the unregulated voluntary market, according to market analysis. Many of the largest companies in the world have used carbon credits for their sustainability efforts from the unregulated voluntary market, which grew to $2bn (Ł1.6bn) in size in 2021 and saw prices for many carbon credits rise above $20 per offset. The credits are often generated on the basis they are contributing to climate change mitigation such as stopping tropical deforestation, tree planting and creating renewable energy projects. A new study in the journal Science has found that millions of forest carbon credits approved by Verra, the world's leading certifier, are largely worthless and could make global heating worse if used for offsetting. The analysis ... found that 18 big forest offsetting projects had produced millions of carbon credits based on calculations that greatly inflated their conservation impact. The schemes, which generate credits by avoiding hypothetical deforestation, were found not to reduce forest loss or to reduce it by only small amounts, far less than the huge areas they were claiming to protect, rendering the credits largely hot air.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial industry corruption and climate change from reliable major media sources.

As flames tore through a West Maui neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the only paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety. And car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30. One family swerved around the barricade and was safe in a nearby town 48 minutes later, another drove their four-wheel-drive car down a dirt road to escape. One man took a dirt road uphill, climbing above the fire and watching as Lahaina burned. He later picked his way through the flames, smoke and rubble to pull survivors to safety. But dozens of others found themselves caught in a hellscape, their cars jammed together on a narrow road, surrounded by flames on three sides and the rocky ocean waves on the fourth. Some died in their cars, while others tried to run for safety. The road closures – some because of the fire, some because of downed power lines – contributed to making historic Lahaina the site of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. Many of the survivors are angry, and haunted by the thought that a just few minutes of notice could have saved many lives. [Nate] Baird's neighborhood near Lahainaluna Road was filled with kids who were home alone when the flames hit, he said. "We needed like 10 more minutes, and we could have saved a lot of kids," he said, choking back tears. "If we'd just had like a 10- or 15-minute warning."

Note: Despite years of Maui wildfire warnings, Hawaii government officials and Hawaiian Electric did little to address the wildfire threat, spending more on lobbying and peddling influence with regulators and politicians than preventing the fires from happening. For further exploration, watch Robert Kennedy Jr. and former leading BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd discuss this tragic issue.

Those who disobeyed the barricaded road closures during the Maui fires survived the disaster, while many of those who heeded orders to turn around perished in their cars and homes with no way out. At least 114 people were killed in the fires earlier this month, and the FBI is estimating that up to 1,100 more are unaccounted for. Officials are facing increased scrutiny for the emergency response, including why the emergency sirens were not set off and whether closing the roads prevented people from getting to safety. In the early hours of the Maui fires, there were more than 30 power poles downed alongside the Honoapiilani Highway at the south end of Lahaina – a historic town that was decimated in the fires earlier this month. Officials closed Lahaina Bypass Road due to the fires, blocking the only way out of Lahaina to the southern part of the island. Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said during a news conference that officers never stopped people from leaving the area, but the AP report suggests that residents were discouraged from disobeying the barricade. Kim Cuevas-Reyes said that she survived with her two sons by ignoring orders to turn right onto Front Street, which has now been devastated by the fires. Instead, she turned left and drove in the wrong lane to escape the town. "The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came," Cuevas-Reyes [said].

Note: Despite years of Maui wildfire warnings, Hawaii government officials and Hawaiian Electric did little to address the wildfire threat, spending more on lobbying and peddling influence with regulators and politicians than preventing the fires from happening. For further exploration, watch Robert Kennedy Jr. and former leading BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd discuss this tragic issue.

In 2013, the National Vaccine Program Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commissioned an update of earlier findings on the lack of evidence to support claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) infant/child vaccination schedule was safe. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee [was] charged with producing the update. The lack of information on the overall safety of the vaccination schedule was so compelling that the committee then recommended HHS incorporate the study of the safety of the overall childhood immunization schedule into its processes for setting priorities for research, "recognizing stakeholder concerns, and establishing the priorities on the basis of epidemiological evidence, biological plausibility, and feasibility." The IOM also recommended the CDC use its private database, the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), to study the overall health effects of the vaccination schedule using retrospective analyses. Ten years later, the CDC has yet to do such a comparison study, even though it is sitting on a vast repository of data in the VSD, which include comprehensive medical records for more than 10 million individuals and 2 million children. The VSD also contains records for a significant number of unvaccinated children, yet the CDC refuses to compare the health outcomes of vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children. The CDC also prohibits VSD outside researchers from accessing the VSD data.

Note: Read more about how HHS was in violation of the "Mandate for Safer Childhood Vaccines" as stipulated in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on vaccines from reliable major media sources.

A 2022 investigation by the journal The BMJ declared that FDA oversight of clinical trials, including those for Pfizer and Moderna's mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, was "grossly inadequate," from not conducting enough inspections to failing to alert scientific journals or the public when violations were flagged. But the issues here are not confined to behind the pharmacy counter. Dr. John Abramson, author of the recent book "Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It," traces the roots of issue back decades. "In 1992, when what turned out to be effective HIV drugs were stuck in the bottleneck of the FDA, they didn't have enough staff to get them through quickly enough. Many people were dying, and it was a real crisis," he explains. "The solution was that the Prescription Drug User Fee Agreement was passed. The drug companies started to pay a user fee with that was due upon application for new drug approval. And now roughly 65% of the FDA budget for overseeing human products comes from the drug and device companies. This comes with rigid timelines, and as I see from the outside, some degree of influence and obligation to the drug companies that derives from this agreement." The numbers here vary – Forbes puts that budget figure as high as 75%. Another similar conflict of interest that concerns Abramson is what he calls "the revolving door that goes between FDA and the drug industry."

Note: Read about Brook Jackson, a researcher for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials, who discovered patient safety concerns, data integrity issues, and other significant issues at her site. When she reported it to the FDA, she was fired the same day. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.

The pressure to repay debts is forcing poor nations to continue investing in fossil fuel projects to make their repayments on what are usually loans from richer nations and financial institutions, according to new analysis from the anti-debt campaigners Debt Justice and partners in affected countries. The group is calling for creditors to cancel all debts for countries facing crisis – and especially those linked to fossil fuel projects. "High debt levels are a major barrier to phasing out fossil fuels for many global south countries," said Tess Woolfenden, a senior policy officer at Debt Justice. "Many countries are trapped exploiting fossil fuels to generate revenue to repay debt while, at the same time, fossil fuel projects often do not generate the revenues expected and can leave countries further indebted than when they started. This toxic trap must end." According to the report, the debt owed by global south countries has increased by 150% since 2011 and 54 countries are in a debt crisis, having to spend five times more on repayments than on addressing the climate crisis. Sharda Ganga, the director of the Surinamese civil society group Projekta, said ... "The reality is that this is the new form of colonialism – we have exchanged one ruler for the rule of our creditors who basically already own what is ours. The difference is this time we signed the deal ourselves."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.

Natalie Small looks at the ocean. "How high are the waves today – the ones out there on the water and the emotional ones within me? These are questions she likes to ask at the start of every group therapy session on Ocean Beach in San Diego, California. Small ... is part of a burgeoning niche of psychotherapy that blends traditional therapy with a sport proven to build resilience, confidence and well-being. More than a hippie wellness novelty or New Age fad, surf therapy is being embraced by psychologists and government agencies alike as a way to increase access to mental health care while delivering evidence-based, lasting results. Kristen Walter ... received a $1 million grant from the Navy to research surf therapy for military personnel. "We see immediate benefits," Walter confirms. "Post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety decrease significantly." Walter's research has shown that the effects of surf therapy are lasting: When she randomly assigned 96 military participants with mental health diagnoses to either hiking or surf therapy, both groups spent three to four hours per week in nature. After six weeks, both groups showed improvements – 55 percent of the surfers and 46 percent of the hikers were no longer considered clinically ill. "But when we checked again three months later, the improvements in the surfer group lasted significantly longer," Walter says. "74 percent of the surfers were considered healed versus only 47 percent of the hikers."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

The cashless society is effectively already a reality for most of us, but there remains a minority for whom it represents a continuing headache. The government last week told high street banks that they must offer access to cash machines within three miles of customers after the closure of thousands of branches had reduced the number of ATMs. There are also an estimated to be 1.3 million adults in this country who are "unbanked" – ie do not have a bank account. For them, something as mundane as parking a car is increasingly fraught – a quarter of London councils have removed pay and display parking machines in favour of smartphone-centred apps. The shiny, bright future of full computerisation looks very much like a dystopia to someone who either doesn't understand it or have the means to access it. And almost by definition, the people who can't access the digitalised world are seldom visible, because absence is not easy to see. What is apparent is that improved efficiency doesn't necessarily lead to greater wellbeing. Technology doesn't have to be dehumanising, but if it's to avoid that outcome it has to be human-focused, not just consumer-focused, and in particular not just digital-consumer-focused. Cash, like printed air tickets or indeed train tickets, will no doubt one day soon seem as anachronistic as the barter system. In the meantime the transition should focus on ensuring that no one is discounted because they are too old, too poor or too disabled to matter to the gods of efficiency.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.

President Joe Biden's administration has taken a cruel weapon–the cluster bomb–off the shelf and sent it to Ukraine to be used in the war against Russia. Prior to being transferred to Ukraine, cluster bombs made in the United States were used by Saudi Arabia as recently as last year to devastating effect in its war in Yemen. Cluster bombs are large bombs that contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller bombs, or "bomblets." Cluster bombs are designed to scatter the bomblets over a wide area upon detonation. Inevitably, not all of the smaller, scattered bombs explode on impact. The bomblets lie on or below the surface of the ground, potentially for years or even decades, waiting to be detonated when touched. They are, in effect, land mines. The U.S. has used cluster bombs in large-scale military operations since World War II, including its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The bomblets that the U.S. used in those invasions were the same size and color as the packaged meals–humanitarian daily rations, or HDRs–that the U.S. also air-dropped for civilians. Human rights groups warned at the time against using cluster bombs, pointing to a similar problem that occurred when the U.S. used them in the Balkan Wars in the 1990s and children mistook the bomblets for toys–but the Pentagon used them anyway. More than 120 countries have signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. remains in the minority of countries that refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, along with Ukraine and Russia.

Note: The cluster bomb trade is funded by the world's biggest banks. It's been estimated that 98% of cluster bomb victims are civilians. Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances has changed how it defines PFAS for a second time since 2021, a move critics say they fear will exclude thousands of "forever chemicals" from regulation and largely benefit industry. Instead of using a clear definition of what constitutes a PFAS, the agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics plans to take a "case-by-case" approach that allows it to be more flexible in determining which chemicals should be subjected to regulations. Among other uses for the compounds, the EPA appears to be excluding some chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS, current and former EPA officials say, and the shift comes amid fierce industry opposition to proposed limits on the chemicals. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down in the environment. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, a current EPA employee in the toxics office said the chemical's definition has been evolving for several years. "EPA can't get its act together on what PFAS are," they added.

Note: These chemicals have contaminated 41 percent of US tap water. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.

In May, the World Health Organization issued an alarming report that declared widely used non-sugar sweeteners like aspartame are likely ineffective for weight loss, and long term consumption may increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults. A few months later, WHO declared aspartame, a key ingredient in Diet Coke, to be a "possible carcinogen", then quickly issued a third report that seemed to contradict its previous findings – people could continue consuming the product at levels determined to be safe decades ago. That contradiction stems from beverage industry corruption of the review process by consultants tied to an alleged Coca-Cola front group, the public health advocacy group US Right to Know said in a recent report. It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi). Aspartame was first approved for use in the US in the early 1980s over the objection of some researchers who warned of potential health risks. In recent years, as evidence of health threats has mounted, industry has ramped up a PR campaign to downplay the issues. Ilsi representatives have sought to shape food policy worldwide. [Gary Ruskin, US Right to Know's executive director], characterized the aspartame controversy as a "masterpiece in how Ilsi worms its way into these regulatory processes".

Note: Explore a comprehensive overview of key scientific studies on aspartame harms, and how they were covered up by the sugar industry. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

Could plants be the answer to the looming threat of microplastic pollution? Scientists at UBC's BioProducts Institute found that if you add tannins–natural plant compounds that make your mouth pucker if you bite into an unripe fruit–to a layer of wood dust, you can create a filter that traps virtually all microplastic particles present in water. While the experiment remains a lab set-up at this stage, the team is convinced that the solution can be scaled up easily and inexpensively. For their study, the team analyzed microparticles released from popular tea bags made of polypropylene. They found that their method (they're calling it "bioCap") trapped from 95.2 per cent to as much as 99.9 per cent of plastic particles in a column of water, depending on plastic type. When tested in mouse models, the process was proved to prevent the accumulation of microplastics in the organs. Dr. Rojas, a professor in the departments of wood science, chemical and biological engineering, and chemistry at UBC, adds that it's difficult to capture all the different kinds of microplastics in a solution, as they come in different sizes, shapes and electrical charges. "There are microfibres from clothing, microbeads from cleansers and soaps, and foams and pellets from utensils, containers and packaging. By taking advantage of the different molecular interactions around tannic acids, our bioCap solution was able to remove virtually all of these different microplastic types."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

By the time the sun casts its first beams on war-ravaged Yemen, hundreds of men will have taken their positions across the park, and the workout begins. Enthusiastic chants of "Ahsan Fareek", or "Best Team", boom across the park as members of this daily, free, open-to-all sports club begin a set of 33 exercises designed to work the whole body. For the next hour, they temporarily put aside the stressors they've accumulated from the devastating eight-year civil war that has claimed 377,000 lives, touching their toes, standing on one leg and reaching for the sky. By 6.30am the crowd disperses, and everyone goes about their day, rejuvenated and energized, ready to meet again the following morning. "It is a sports club for everyone, but it's particularly vital for the elderly, who suffer from illnesses and anxiety and for whom treatment is unaffordable," says Najy Abu Hatem, co-founder of the initiative. "Being part of Best Team lifts their morale and gives them free exercise classes in a healthy and social setting." In a country of 33 million people, there are only 59 psychiatrists – one psychiatrist per 500,000 people – and the total number of mental health workers is just 304. Although Best Team can hardly tackle this huge, ongoing mental health crisis, the twin benefits it provides of camaraderie and physical exercise – under the guise of a more socially acceptable men's sports club – is nonetheless quietly improving people's mental wellbeing across the capital and beyond.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

New research has found an increase in early-onset cancer rates among younger people between 2010 and 2019. In a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers found that "the incidence rates of early-onset cancers increased substantially" between 2010 and 2019. The researchers said that gastrointestinal cancers had the fastest-growing rates among all the ones they looked at. The study, using data from the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program, found that there was a .74 percent increase among all age groups in the incidence of early-onset cancers. The study found that the rates increased in those aged 30 to 39 years and remained stable in all other age groups below the age of 50. "There is a need to inform health care professionals about the increasing incidence of early-onset cancer, and investigations for possible tumors need to be considered when clinically appropriate, even in patients younger than 50 years," the study's discussion states. "These data ... serve as a call to action for further research into the various environmental factors that may be associated with this concerning pattern," the discussion said. Rates also "disproportionately" increased among women, American Indian or Alaska Native individuals and Asian or Pacific Islander individuals. The study found that while gastrointestinal cancers had the fastest growing rates, breast cancer had the highest number of incident cases. 

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.

If you want a glimpse of the future, go to Japan. What lies ahead for many other countries, including the United States, is in rural areas and regional cities outside greater Tokyo: lots of people aging and dying, and relatively few giving birth and raising kids. In today's Japan, the young and middle-aged are consumed by caring for the old, and small-town resources are overstretched. Japanese innovators are already demonstrating what's possible – and, in many cases, not with high-tech fixes but by showcasing design thinking, dignity and respect. Instead, they would be invited to share their wisdom and skills to help them stay active, sharp and socially engaged. Old people at the center cook for one another and teach young people how to grow vegetables and make art. The city [of Toyama] repurposed old train and tram lines into a sleek light-rail system, with platforms placed at the level of the train cars so that people would not need to climb or descend stairs. Public transit ridership among people in their 60s and 70s has since more than tripled, and this has helped seniors maintain active and social lifestyles. Other social entrepreneurs in Japan have focused on food – for instance, bringing children and the elderly together in cafeterias that serve traditional dishes. One Tokyo pop-up eatery, dubbed the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, has employed people with dementia as its waitstaff. [Japanese innovators have] yielded ideas that prioritize helping old people flourish, not just managing their illnesses, disabilities and deaths.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

Hollie Fallick looks over Brading on the Isle of Wight, at a patchwork of fields bordered by ancient oaks. She farms with her best friend, Francesca Cooper. The friends ... are part of a growing global movement practising regenerative agriculture – or regen ag for short. "Regenerative agriculture is nature-friendly farming," says Fallick. "It's thinking about the health of soil, animals, humans and how they all link together." On Nunwell home farm, which sits alongside land the pair manage for the Wildlife Trust and produces meat and eggs for their direct-to-consumer business, chickens peck away alongside belted Galloway cows, nomadic pigs graze on grass as well as kale and bean "cover crops" sown to boost nutrients in the soil. The idea is that by following the basic principles of regen ag – not disturbing the soil, keeping it covered, maintaining living roots, growing a diverse range of crops and the use of grazing animals – they can regenerate tired and depleted soil and produce nutritious food.  The work, they argue, is urgent. Up to 40% of the world's land is now degraded by industrial and harmful farming methods, according to the UN. Barnes Edwards, co-director of the Garlic Farm ... argues that regen ag farmers recognise the "hideously negative impact" of badly managed livestock farming. But they also argue "it's the how, not the cow", and say that cows pooing and trampling in diversely planted fields boosts soil health, micronutrients and attracts insects, birds and butterflies.

Note: Don't miss Kiss the Ground, a powerful documentary on the growing regenerative agriculture movement and its power to build global community, reverse the many environmental crises we face, and revive our connection to the natural world. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

Dead flies could be turned into biodegradable plastic, researchers have said. The finding, presented at the autumn meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), could be useful as it is difficult to find sources for biodegradable polymers that do not have other competing uses. "For 20 years, my group has been developing methods to transform natural products – such as glucose obtained from sugar cane or trees – into degradable, digestible polymers that don't persist in the environment," said the principal investigator, Karen Wooley. A colleague suggested she could use waste products left over from farming black soldier flies. The larvae of the flies contain proteins and other nutritious compounds so are being raised for animal feed. However, adult flies are less useful and are discarded. Wooley's team has been trying to use these carcasses to make useful materials from a waste product. The researchers found that chitin, a sugar-based polymer, is a major component of the flies and it strengthens the shell, or exoskeleton, of insects and crustaceans. From the fly products, the team created a hydrogel that can absorb 47 times its weight in water in just one minute. This product could be used in cropland soil to capture flood water and then slowly release moisture during droughts. The scientists hope they will soon be able to create bioplastics such as polycarbonates or polyurethanes, which are traditionally made from petrochemicals, from the flies. These plastics will not contribute to the plastic pollution problem.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

In the early days of America's war on terror, U.S. authorities detained Ahmed Rabbani thinking he was someone else. They soon realized their mistake. Rabbani ... was never charged with a crime. Rabbani's lawyer says he ... was taken by Pakistani authorities who misidentified him and handed him over to U.S. intelligence officers for a $5,000 reward. Rabbani [was] a taxi driver in Karachi. He spoke three languages–Urdu, Arabic and English. When he was detained, on Sept. 10, 2002, Rabbani didn't know his wife was pregnant. He said he found out about it three years later from a letter–the first communication he had received from her since his detention. He met his 20-year-old son, Jawwad, for the first time upon his return to Pakistan in February. After 18˝ years at Guantanamo Bay, he stepped off a plane in Pakistan in February–a free but broken man. Years of hunger strikes and force feeding have left him unable to eat most solid food. "I never, never, ever sleep at night," he said. His only means of escape was art. By the time of his release, he had made hundreds of paintings. In May, 20 of Rabbani's paintings were shown at a gallery in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Rabbani said he was transferred several times to camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan known as black sites–secret CIA interrogation facilities. There, he said, he was tortured until he told his captors anything he thought they wanted to hear. A total of 779 men were at some point detained [at Guantanamo]. Like Rabbani, most were eventually released without ever having been charged with a crime. Rabbani says he doesn't expect he will ever fully recover, physically or mentally. "Some things will never be fixed," he said.

Note: Read more about Guantanamo Bay's horrors. Check out the incredible ships created by Moath al-Alwi, another prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay without charges since 2002. The Pentagon has declared that art produced at Guantánamo Bay belongs to the US government, and not the artists. Authorities have refused to release the artworks from prison.

Progressives are confused and distressed over the choice by many of our allies to devalue decentralization in the technology space, and even to portray it as worse than Big Tech alternatives. In recent months, a number of progressive commentators have attacked the very idea of decentralization, arguing that it's a distraction from other political goals. This has also led to progressives making crypto a favorite target and, bizarrely, taking the positions of big banks, which are notoriously monopolistic. To us, the more pressing concern is legacy tech platforms–and their ongoing capture of user data. Decentralizing technology will prove crucial in ensuring that the world isn't run by a handful of unelected technologists. Crypto is an exception to so much technology because it runs on blockchain and no single person or corporation can control it. We value a world where power is dispersed to the people, where no one is so powerful that they can dictate terms to the rest of us. A blockchain allows everyone to own their own data, to control their own information, and to port that information and data to another system at their discretion. It also allows for people to exchange both data and money in a peer-to-peer manner, without permission from expensive, bureaucratic, and–in many cases–unnecessary intermediaries. Migrants also use crypto to send money to their home countries, and this activity alone will become increasingly important as political and climate migration continues to accelerate.

Note: The US government financially attacked Wikileaks in 2010 after the organization published documentation of US military war crimes. This attack would have ended Wikileaks, but the organization instead embraced bitcoin and survived for several more years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Life insurance actuaries are reporting that many more people are dying – still – than in the years before the pandemic. Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too. "COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase," a Society of Actuaries report says. There was an extreme and sudden increase in worker mortality in the fall of 2021 even as the nation saw a precipitous drop in COVID-19 deaths. In the third quarter of 2021, deaths among workers ages 35-44 reached a pandemic peak of 101% above ... the three-year pre-COVID baseline. In two other prime working-age groups, mortality was 79% above expected. In the year ending April 30, 2023 ... at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected. In the U.K., 52,427 excess deaths were reported in that period; in Germany, 81,028; France, 17,731; Netherlands, 10,418; and Ireland, 2,640. The actuarial reports can only speculate on the factors causing these deaths, including oft-cited delayed health care, drug overdoses and even weather patterns. But the question remains: What explains this ongoing wave of excess deaths? Life insurance data suggests something happened in the fall of 2021 in workplaces, especially among white-collar workers. These are people whose education, income level and access to health care would predict better outcomes.

Note: Critical care physician Dr. Pierre Kory, one of the co-authors of this article, recently published an in-depth explanation on what he believes is behind the excess death among American youth, and why it wasn't mentioned in the USA Today article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.