News Articles

Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of little-known, yet highly revealing news articles from the media. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore these articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves, we can build a brighter future.

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Jeffrey Epstein ... helped JPMorgan orchestrate an important acquisition. He introduced executives to men who would become lucrative clients, like the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. At Epstein's behest, JPMorgan set up accounts – into which he routinely transferred huge sums – for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. It wired his funds overseas. It even paid him millions of dollars. But in the summer of 2019, Epstein was arrested. Federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking. JPMorgan went into damage-control mode. It filed a report with federal regulators that retroactively flagged as suspicious some 4,700 Epstein transactions – totaling more than $1.1 billion and including hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Russian banks and young Eastern European women who were brought to the United States. Banks are required to file such reports in real time to alert law enforcement to things like money laundering, sex trafficking and drug dealing. Doing it after the fact might have provided JPMorgan with legal cover, but it did nothing to help identify Epstein's crimes as they were happening. The fallout for JPMorgan has been limited. In 2023, it paid $290 million to settle a lawsuit brought by roughly 200 of Epstein's victims and an additional $75 million to resolve related litigation brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Note: This article is also available here. According to a Guardian article, "Epstein introduced [JPMorgan] bank executives to some figures who would become clients, including the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, such as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the Emirati billionaire Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem." Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

Walking into Brightworks could be a shock for helicopter parents. The K-12 school is alive with invention, autonomy and what founder Gever Tulley calls "the energy of a big multi-generational family household." Therefore there are no traditional grades or classes at Brightworks. Students are grouped into "bands" by interest and maturity, not by age. There are no teachers – just "collaborators," and parents are invited to visit and join as they please. Agency is woven into every part of Brightworks' ecosystem. Students move freely through the buildings. "The first instinct can't be, ‘Where are you supposed to be?'" Tulley explains. "You have to assume they're on a mission – maybe to grab a wrench from the shop or to take a walk. That's part of the culture here." Students can't hide behind textbooks or screens; each semester, they must propose, plan and find collaborators for their own project – and eventually present it to the entire school, known as the "Brightworks family." Tulley believes this kind of learning – driven by curiosity – pays off for life: "We see students as heroes on their own journey." His aim is also to prepare kids for the future. "Twenty years from now, every industry will need small teams of highly specialized people solving complex problems," he says – people who can also communicate and collaborate well. Brightworks graduates have been accepted at top-tier universities, including Harvard.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining education.

Collaborating with robotics engineers and Italian 3D printer manufacturers, a Japanese company is building "homes of earth" made primarily from soil. Lib Work, Ltd. completed their first 3D-printed earth home in Yamaga, Kumamoto on July 22, calling their creative process "uncharted territory where tradition and convention offered no guide". With an eye toward recycling, sustainability, and reduced carbon emissions, Lib Work focused on combining 3D-printing with natural materials enhanced for strength, constructibility, and design quality. The walls of the completed Lib Earth House Model B use no cement (which produces industrial waste). Instead, they utilized only naturally derived materials with soil as the primary component to create sustainable earthen walls. Compared to the previous model (Model A) that used some cement, the building's strength has improved approximately fivefold while significantly reducing CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process itself. The walls contain cutting-edge sensors as part of a wall condensation monitoring system that monitors in real-time the temperature and humidity inside the walls. This system enables the house to manage its own condition by detecting condensation in advance to maintain a long-lasting, comfortable living environment. Additionally, the homes include remote operation of air conditioning, lighting, and bath controls via smartphone or dedicated monitor. It also features an off-grid energy system.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.

While trying to come up with a pesticide solution to kill off bollworms, Dr Robert Mensah had his eureka moment. It was the 90s, and in Australia bollworms were devastating cotton farms. He experimented and eventually came up with a simple food spray, "a mixture of food ingredients, yeast and sugar-based, diluted in water and applied to crops. It emits an odour which is picked up by beneficial predatory insects and attracts them to the fields where they kill pests." It was the beginning of an international grassroots campaign, in which Mensah has worked with various charities to teach people about this sustainable farming method. Ever since the dangerous side effects of pesticides became widely known, alternatives have been sought. This approach to farming, which reduces our reliance on pesticides, is called integrated pest management. In 2005, Mensah took food sprays to Benin, where the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK) was helping farmers transition to organic farming. There, the misuse of chemical pesticides was seriously damaging people's health. The food sprays – cheap, safe and effective – caught on with farmers in Benin where thousands now use the technique. From there, Mensah took food sprays to southern Ethiopia, where they were also trialled successfully on vegetables ... and then to Vietnam where they were used successfully on maize. Another charity, Better Cotton, is now trialling food sprays in India ... where they've trained 214,000 farmers to use sprays.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and healing the Earth.

In 2021, Kristen Magnuson had to make a secret deal to continue a staple of her daily routine: swimming at her local outdoor pool. During the pandemic, the state of Washington required a vaccine passport to gain access to public spaces such as restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms. Ms. Magnuson chose not to get vaccinated. So the mother of two made a covert arrangement with gym staff. She could bypass the lobby by sneaking in through a back door. Ms. Magnuson was grateful, but she felt like a second-class citizen. Now she has a plea: Can we talk about what we went through? She isn't opposed to vaccines – her husband and children got them. She and others are asking: What would America do differently if the country could have a do-over, or faced a similar challenge in the future? Ms. Magnuson ... isn't ready to absolve top officials until they show "a recognition of harms." "I was surprised when some politicians and doctors said that those who remain unvaccinated should not be treated if they fall ill. People were not ‘bad' or ‘COVidiots' if they contracted COVID-19; they were human," [Dr. Monica] Gandhi wrote. "There is absolutely no place for stigma, judgment, and a shame-based approach in public health." The former NIH director [Dr. Francis Collins] proposed, instead, a reckoning modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the aftermath of apartheid. "That means people coming forward and confessing what they did that was harmful in public and asking for forgiveness," said Dr. Collins, who was appointed by President Obama and served as a science adviser to Biden. "That's very different than just amnesty."

Note: Read NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's powerful call for forgiveness despite being cancelled for having dissenting views on COVID policies. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

A 2024 mass monarch butterfly die-off in California was probably caused by pesticide exposure, new peer-reviewed research finds, adding difficult-to-obtain evidence to the theory that pesticides are partly behind dramatic declines in monarchs' numbers in recent decades. Researchers discovered hundreds of butterflies that had died or were dying in January 2024 near an overwintering site, where insects spend winter months. The butterflies were found twitching or dead in piles, which are common signs of neurotoxic pesticide poisoning, researchers wrote. Testing of 10 of the insects revealed an average of seven pesticides in each, and at levels that researchers suspect were lethal. As much as 90% of the monarch butterfly population in some US regions has been wiped out in recent decades, and evidence has pointed to pesticides, climate crisis and habitat loss as the drivers. The butterflies were found adjacent to the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary, one of about 400 wintering sites along California's coast that are crucial points in the monarchs' migratory and reproductive cycles. Though an investigation by a state agricultural official did not determine a source of the die-off, pesticide ... run off in shallow water sources near where high numbers of butterflies collectively drink present a risk for the type of mass die-off at Pacific Grove. All the butterflies showed high levels of the same three pyrethroids, a pesticide class widely used in California.

Note: Read more about the insect apocalypse. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals.

It's no secret that cable news networks have partisan reputations. But new research shows the divide extends beyond which party a network appears to support. Over the past decade, these networks have increasingly focused on criticizing the opposing political party, a tactic researchers say is less about informing viewers and more about "selling anger." "These networks are more interested in talking about the opposing political party rather than their own candidates. This was not the case 15, 20 years ago," said Diego Garcia, the ... co-author of the working paper. The findings show that politics dominates cable news, accounting for about 60% of all named individuals mentioned–rising to over 75% during election years. But more revealing is who gets talked about: MSNBC spends more time discussing Republicans than Democrats, while Fox News focuses more heavily on Democrats. In 2024, Fox covered Democrats 60% of the time, with MSNBC showing the reverse. Garcia speculates that cable networks began to test different kinds of content when social media became widespread in the mid-2010s, and discovered that outrage boosts viewership. "I think Fox was the first one to figure this out, and they started pushing this negative rhetoric in their news," he said. "They're actually now the No. 1 cable news channel in the U.S. by far." Fox News now commands over 60% of the cable news audience–a dramatic jump from a more evenly split landscape a decade ago.

Note: Watch our 31-min video titled, "How to Transform Media Polarization, One Echo Chamber At A Time." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on media manipulation.

Digital technology was sold as a liberating tool that could free individuals from state power. Yet the state security apparatus always had a different view. The Prism leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed a deep and almost unconditional cooperation between Silicon Valley firms and security apparatuses of the state such as the National Security Agency (NSA). People realized that basically any message exchanged via Big Tech firms including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. could be easily spied upon with direct backdoor access: a form of mass surveillance with few precedents ... especially in nominally democratic states. The leaks prompted outrage, but eventually most people preferred to look away. The most extreme case is the surveillance and intelligence firm Palantir. Its service is fundamentally to provide a more sophisticated version of the mass surveillance that the Snowden leaks revealed. In particular, it endeavors to support the military and police as they aim to identify and track various targets – sometimes literal human targets. Palantir is a company whose very business is to support the security state in its most brutal manifestations: in military operations that lead to massive loss of life, including of civilians, and in brutal immigration enforcement [in] the United States. Unfortunately, Palantir is but one part of a much broader military-information complex, which is becoming the axis of the new Big Tech Deep State.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the intelligence community and in Big Tech.

Certain kinds of gut microbes absorb toxic Pfas "forever chemicals" and help expel them from the body via feces, new first-of-its-kind University of Cambridge research shows. The findings are welcome news as the only options that exist for reducing the level of dangerous Pfas compounds from the body are bloodletting and a cholesterol drug that induces unpleasant side effects. The microbes were found to remove up to 75% of some Pfas from the gut of mice. Several of the study's authors plan to develop probiotic dietary supplements that boost levels of helpful microbes in the human gut, which would likely reduce Pfas levels. "If this could be used in humans to create probiotics that can help remove Pfas from the body then this would be a nicer solution in that it wouldn't have so many side effects," said Anna Lindell, Cambridge doctoral student and a co-author of the study. Pfas 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. The microbes [in the study] largely addressed "long-chain" Pfas, which are larger compounds and more dangerous than smaller "short chains" because they stay in the body longer.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and technology for good.

In Stockholm, Stina Larsson, 98, stood among fragrant lilacs, lilies and lavender, inspecting the garden that she has tended for more than 40 years. Ms. Larsson's garden, situated on a postage stamp of land beside the Karlbergs Canal, is one of more than 7,000 garden allotments, known as koloniträdgĂĄrdar, in Stockholm. The gardens, established as part of a social movement around the turn of the 20th century, offer city dwellers access to green space and a reprieve from crowded urban life. Though most are modest in size – Ms. Larsson's garden is about 970 square feet – koloniträdgĂĄrdar are prized for providing a rare kind of urban sanctuary, a corner of the city where residents can trade pavement for soil, and the buzz of traffic for birdsong. The garden programs were specifically designed to improve the mental and physical health of city dwellers. The idea was that a working-class family would be able to spend the summer there and work together but also have some leisure and fun. Cecilia Stenfors ... at Stockholm University, said her research shows that those who frequently visit green spaces, whether a forest or a koloniträdgĂĄrd, "have better health outcomes, in terms of fewer depressive symptoms, less anxiety, better sleep and fewer feelings of loneliness and social isolation." These positive effects can be particularly pronounced in older people and can help combat symptoms of age-related mental and physical decline.

Note: This article is also available here. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and healing social division.

If economic inequality increases within a country, the risk of civil war breaking out grows. This is the finding from a study by the Chair of Economic History at the University of TĂĽbingen. The study has been published in the Review of Income and Wealth. The calculations revealed a statistically significant connection between unequal distribution of income and the outbreak of civil wars. The results can be verified using historical events: for example, land was extremely unequally distributed in Russia before the October revolution of 1917–and this critically contributed to the outbreak of revolution and civil war, a marker that was also identified by the new benchmark with a correspondingly high probability. The new benchmark also makes it possible to predict the risk of civil war today: "In the U.S. the inequality in income distribution has risen sharply in the past 30 years. Accordingly, the risk of a civil war in the U.S. has risen drastically from 10% to 21%," says Baten. In Great Britain, China, India and Russia too, inequality has risen greatly in the same period. "We've checked what influence other variables had on the outbreak of civil wars," says Laura Radatz, co-author of the study. "For instance, the size of a country and its population naturally increase the probability that a civil war will break out somewhere in this country." The amount of economic growth in a country does not measurably influence the risk of a civil war, according to the study.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.

Not everyone pines for the days without cell phones, but what about social media? Would you erase social media from the history books if you could? If you said yes, you share the feelings of a staggering 46% of teenage respondents to a recent survey from the British Standards Institution (BSI), which also found that 68% of respondents said they felt worse when they spend too much time on their socials. Enter The Offline Club, (who ironically have 530,000 followers on Instagram) a Dutch social movement looking to create screen-free public spaces and events in cafes to revive the time before phones, when board games, social interaction, and reading were the activities observed in public. They also host digital detox retreats, where participants unplug from not only their smartphones, but computers too, and experience a life before the internet. BSI's research showed that out of 1,290 individuals aged 16-21, 47% would prefer to be young in a world without the internet, with 50% also saying a social media curfew would improve their lives. The Offline Club is taking advantage of this rising cross-cultural awareness and helps its followers replace "screen time with real time." Their founders envision a world where time spent in public is present and offline. It started in Amsterdam, but Club chapters quickly organized in Milan, Berlin, Paris, London, Barcelona, Brussels, Antwerp, Dubai, Copenhagen, and Lisbon. Anyone can start a club in a city.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

Einstein once wrote about his friend Michele Besso, "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Could death, as we understand it, be a construct of our consciousness rather than a universal truth? Proposed by Dr. Robert Lanza, a respected stem cell biologist and author, biocentrism is a revolutionary theory suggesting that life and consciousness are not byproducts of the universe, but the very forces that shape it. According to biocentrism: Space and time are not external, objective realities. They are tools of our perception, shaped by conscious observation. Reality does not exist without an observer. Biocentrism places consciousness at the center of the universe. In doing so, it opens the door to reevaluating what death really means–if the self is not simply the body, its "end" might not be defined by physical decay. In the [two-slit experiment]: When unobserved, particles act like waves and pass through both slits simultaneously. When observed, they behave like particles and choose one path. Quantum physics further supports the biocentric view by demonstrating that the universe behaves differently when observed. Quantum entanglement shows that particles can be instantly connected across vast distances–what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." This challenges our understanding of time and space, and suggests that reality is not locally bound or strictly linear. Redefining death redefines life. If consciousness persists in ways we don't yet understand, every aspect of human society–from science to ethics–will evolve.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences and the mysterious nature of reality.

The first White House report of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission ... was published yesterday. The Commission is chaired by [Robert F.] Kennedy, now Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and features other prominent administration officials including USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. The report outlines the massive increase in youth health problems in the country that spends more per capita on healthcare than any nation in history. Many of these diseases are metabolic: obesity, diabetes, and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Others involve the immune system, such as asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disorders. Still others are psychiatric, such as depression and anxiety. Perhaps the most baffling development is the massive spike in autism spectrum disorder. This once-rare condition reportedly affects one in 31 American children. The MAHA Commission focuses on four key drivers of such change: food, exposure to environmental chemicals, the pervasive use of technology and a corresponding decline in physical exercise, and the overuse of medication that sometimes creates more problems than it solves. The Commission's first report ... does not call for a ban on specific pesticides or vaccines. What it does manage, however, is to reframe the debate over public health and set a bold agenda to reform the system.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering.

Amber Scorah knows only too well that powerful stories can change society–and that powerful organizations will try to undermine those who tell them. While working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. "There is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again," she says. "You expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you." In September 2024, Scorah cofounded Psst, a nonprofit that helps people in the tech industry or the government share information of public interest with extra protections–with lots of options for specifying how the information gets used and how anonymous a person stays. Psst's main offering is a "digital safe"–which users access through an anonymous end-to-end encrypted text box hosted on Psst.org, where they can enter a description of their concerns. What makes Psst unique is something it calls its "information escrow" system–users have the option to keep their submission private until someone else shares similar concerns about the same company or organization. Combining reports from multiple sources defends against some of the isolating effects of whistleblowing and makes it harder for companies to write off a story as the grievance of a disgruntled employee, says Psst cofounder Jennifer Gibson.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.

When Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes went diving in the Cayman Islands in 2015, the experience changed his life. The highly decorated veteran had logged thousands of dives as a Special Ops Force Recon Marine in 18 years of service. But, as Reyes recalls, "As combat divers we operate at night, pushing 200 pounds of equipment, carrying massive weapons. It's very stressful and we focus on the mission – taking on the enemy." In the Caribbean, Reyes dove for the first time during daytime at his own pace, guided by his friend Jim Ritterhoff, who worked with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute. At the time, Reyes was struggling with depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. "I had a really hard drug habit after all these intense combat tours," he admits, but diving in the Caymans, surrounded by vibrant marine life, reignited a sense of wonder. "It brought me back to life. It inspired the same kind of protective spirit and willingness to go fight in the battlefield that I used in the Marine Corps, but now I wanted to use that passion to fight for ocean conservation." In 2016, Reyes, Ritterhoff and Keith Sahm co-founded Force Blue, a nonprofit that recruits veterans – especially Navy SEALs and Special Operations divers with military dive training – to channel their skills into marine conservation. "We're learning to transfer combat diving expertise into protecting and providing refuge for this incredible aquatic environment," Reyes explains.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and stories on healing the Earth.

In 2009, Pennsylvania's Lower Merion school district remotely activated its school-issued laptop webcams to capture 56,000 pictures of students outside of school, including in their bedrooms. After the Covid-19 pandemic closed US schools at the dawn of this decade, student surveillance technologies were conveniently repackaged as "remote learning tools" and found their way into virtually every K-12 school, thereby supercharging the growth of the $3bn EdTech surveillance industry. Products by well-known EdTech surveillance vendors such as Gaggle, GoGuardian, Securly and Navigate360 review and analyze our children's digital lives, ranging from their private texts, emails, social media posts and school documents to the keywords they search and the websites they visit. In 2025, wherever a school has access to a student's data – whether it be through school accounts, school-provided computers or even private devices that utilize school-associated educational apps – they also have access to the way our children think, research and communicate. As schools normalize perpetual spying, today's kids are learning that nothing they read or write electronically is private. Big Brother is indeed watching them, and that negative repercussions may result from thoughts or behaviors the government does not endorse. Accordingly, kids are learning that the safest way to avoid revealing their private thoughts, and potentially subjecting themselves to discipline, may be to stop or sharply restrict their digital communications and to avoid researching unpopular or unconventional ideas altogether.

Note: Learn about Proctorio, an AI surveillance anti-cheating software used in schools to monitor children through webcams–conducting "desk scans," "face detection," and "gaze detection" to flag potential cheating and to spot anybody "looking away from the screen for an extended period of time." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

Surveillance capitalism came about when some crafty software engineers realized that advertisers were willing to pay bigtime for our personal data. The data trade is how social media platforms like Google, YouTube, and TikTok make their bones. In 2022, the data industry raked in just north of $274 billion worth of revenue. By 2030, it's expected to explode to just under $700 billion. Targeted ads on social media are made possible by analyzing four key metrics: your personal info, like gender and age; your interests, like the music you listen to or the comedians you follow; your "off app" behavior, like what websites you browse after watching a YouTube video; and your "psychographics," meaning general trends glossed from your behavior over time, like your social values and lifestyle habits. In 2017 The Australian alleged that [Facebook] had crafted a pitch deck for advertisers bragging that it could exploit "moments of psychological vulnerability" in its users by targeting terms like "worthless," "insecure," "stressed," "defeated," "anxious," "stupid," "useless," and "like a failure." The social media company likewise tracked when adolescent girls deleted selfies, "so it can serve a beauty ad to them at that moment," according to [former employee Sarah] Wynn-Williams. Other examples of Facebook's ad lechery are said to include the targeting of young mothers based on their emotional state, as well as emotional indexes mapped to racial groups.

Note: Facebook hid its own internal research for years showing that Instagram worsened body image issues, revealing that 13% of British teenage girls reported more frequent suicidal thoughts after using the app. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.

The US has been accused of hiding evidence of UFOs from the public during a bipartisan congressional hearing on Thursday (May 1). A number of experts spoke to government officials ... at the briefing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) - as it is becoming more commonly referred to these days - about the possibility of alien life. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability ... held the event called 'Understanding UAP: Science, National Security & Innovation.' Scientists told the members of Congress that they required a bigger part in the role of investigating UAPs and other unexplained phenomena. Key speakers included former Pentagon official turned UAP whistleblower Luis Elizondo and Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. Research physicist Dr Eric Davis said the US government has been operating a secret program recovering crashed UFOs since the 1950s when Dwight Eisenhower was president. Dr Davis worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon UFO program since 2007. He claimed that the program began after the discovery of a crashed UAP in 1944. Since then he said that a lot of the technology recovered over the years from these wreckages have been secretly moved to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, without any congressional oversight or approval. He once concluded that "we couldn't make it ourselves" after seeing some of of the recovered materials himself.

Note: A 2019 leak revealed a top secret conversation in 2002 between astrophysicist and consultant for the Pentagon UFO program Dr. Eric Davis and Director of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Admiral Thomas R. Wilson. They discuss the existence of deeply classified black budget programs dealing with technology of non-human origin. For more, explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.

Hemp is one of the most sustainable materials available to manufacturers because it's cheap to grow, uses little water, doesn't need any toxic pesticides, and can absorb more carbon than trees. Hemp batteries have their own advantages, too. These batteries use lighter and more widely available materials like sulfur, boron, and hemp instead of the heavy metals used in traditional lithium-ion batteries. Some EVs use a device called a supercapacitor, which stores energy through static electricity rather than a chemical reaction, like in conventional batteries. In these batteries, a material called graphene is used. But graphene is expensive. To create ... "cannabis cars," scientists use hemp bark – a waste product created by cannabis plants – and cooked it to make a substance that resembles graphene. Hemp lasts longer than graphene. It also stores more power and is easy to source. Son Nguyen, Bemp Research's founder, told EnergyTech that the company's lithium-sulfur battery can help solve shortages in the EV battery supply chain. "Sulfur is very abundant. Boron is also relatively abundant, with the biggest boron mine being in California," Nguyen said. "Being an American company, our focus right now is to make batteries for American electric vehicles, and we do not see any supply chain problems. Bemp batteries are less reliant on rare earth metals from around the globe and thus will help U.S. national security."

Note: Read about why architects are choosing hemp walls for their superior insulation, resistance to mold and moisture, and environmentally friendly, biodegradable design. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.