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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.
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.
Scientific misconduct does not happen only at Stanford and Harvard. Of the nearly 5,500 retractions we catalogue in 2022, and the thousands of cases we have reported on since launching our watchdog website Retraction Watch in 2010, the vast majority involve researchers at institutions without anywhere near Stanford and Harvard's pedigrees. The number of retractions each year reflects about a tenth of a percent of the papers published in a given year – in other words, one in 1,000. Yet the figure has grown significantly from about 40 retractions in 2000, far outpacing growth in the annual volume of papers published. Retractions have risen sharply in recent years for two main reasons: first, sleuthing, largely by volunteers who comb academic literature for anomalies, and, second, major publishers' (belated) recognition that their business models have made them susceptible to paper mills – scientific chop shops that sell everything from authorships to entire manuscripts to researchers who need to publish lest they perish. These are not merely academic matters. Particularly when it comes to medical research, faker hurts real people. The truth, however, is that the number of retractions in 2022 – 5,500 – is almost definitely a vast undercount of how much misconduct and fraud exists. We estimate that at least 100,000 retractions should occur every year. Journals and publishers ... fail to do their part, finding ways to ignore criticism of what they have published, leaving fatally flawed work flagged.
Note: Back in 2015, the editor-in-chef of The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, wrote that much of scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. According to a revealing article by Nature, a leading science journal, medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. Who can we trust? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.
Newly declassified documents reveal that Gen. Leslie Groves–director of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret operation that built the atomic bomb during World War II–misled Congress and the public about the effects of radiation. He did so initially out of ignorance, then denial, and finally, willful deception. The documents also show that some scientists in the project, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos lab where the bomb was first tested, kept mum about Groves' lie rather than dispute him or confront the general directly. The cache of documents ... was released on Monday, within days of the 78th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in the wake of the release of Oppenheimer, the wildly (and deservedly) successful film. One of the new documents the archive obtained is a memo by four scientists, titled "Calculated Biological Effects of Atomic Explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki," dated Sept. 1, 1945. Until this memo was written, it had been assumed the A-bomb's victims would be killed by its blast and its heat. But this memo concluded that at least some of the deaths had been caused by radioactive fallout, days or weeks after the explosions. And yet, the day before the memo's date, at a press conference in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Groves said radiation had caused no deaths and that claims to the contrary–some published in Asian newspapers–were "propaganda."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
When the chemical giant 3M agreed in early June to pay up to $12.5bn to settle a lawsuit over PFAS contamination in water systems across the nation, it was hailed by attorneys as "the largest drinking water settlement in American history", and viewed as a significant win for the public in the battle against toxic "forever chemicals". A second June settlement with the PFAS manufacturers DuPont, Chemours and Corteva tallied a hefty $1.1bn. But while the sums are impressive on their face, they represent just a fraction of the estimated $400bn some estimate will be needed to clean and protect the nation's drinking water. Orange county, California, alone put the cost of cleaning its system at $1bn. Because PFAS are so widely used and the scale of their harm is so great ... the industry's final bill could exceed the $200bn paid by big tobacco in the 1990s. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds used to make products across dozens of industries resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver conditions, immune disorders, birth defects and other health problems. The chemicals are thought to be contaminating drinking water for over 200 million Americans. Tens of thousands of contaminated private wells are not included in the settlement. The chemicals are also widely used in thousands of consumer products from dental floss to cookware to clothing, and have been found to contaminate food, soil and air.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
A new investigation reveals the extent of the CIA's involvement in the war in Ukraine, where the agency operates clandestinely in what, under a formal declaration of war, would be the domain of the military. The author of the investigation [is] William Arkin, a national security reporter and senior editor at Newsweek, who says that the CIA has "got its hand in a little bit of everything" in Ukraine. "This might come as a surprise to some people, but, as my sources explained it to me, the reality is that Ukraine is not an ally of the United States," [said Arkin]. "We have no treaty obligations towards Ukraine. And the United States is not at war with Russia. So this is a particularly unique battlefield in which the CIA is playing an outsize role, but it is playing an outsize role because the Biden administration has been firm in saying that the U.S. military will not be involved in any direct way in the fighting or on the battlefield or, indeed, inside Ukraine." The CIA is no stranger to Ukraine. Clearly, in the post-World War II period, it was involved in developing right-wing groups within Ukraine that were opposing the Soviet Union, a lot of them former neo-Nazis. "I don't see much movement or much interest even on the part of the U.S. government in Washington ... to find a peaceful resolution" [said Arkin]. "So, really, no one is playing that role. The United Nations is not playing that role. There is no neutral party that really is playing the role of trying to end the conflict between the two parties."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
As the Ukraine war drags on, the Biden administration is now reportedly in the final stages of deciding whether to send more [cluster munitions] to the Ukrainian military. The decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine would likely be seen as a setback to nonproliferation efforts aimed at stopping use of the weapon. The report by Human Rights Watch analyzing the impact of previous cluster munition attacks carried out last summer by the Ukrainian military found numerous dead and wounded civilians in Izium who were hit by exploding cluster bomblets. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the manner in which "bomblets" are scattered around a targeted area, creating secondary explosions that can cause death and injury even long after a conflict has ceased. The bombs are currently at the center of an international campaign to ban their use in armed conflict. More than 100 states have signed an international convention on cluster munitions vowing not to employ them in war, produce them domestically, or encourage their use in foreign conflicts. Despite public pressure to join, the U.S. has not become a signatory to the convention. The Ukrainian military was reported to have requested significant transfers of the munitions late last year. "Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years," said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, in the report.
Note: The global cluster bombs trade is funded by the world's biggest banks. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and war from reliable major media sources.
A bipartisan group of Senators introduced legislation Wednesday to ensure the Defense Department passes a clean audit next year, with the bill following repeated concerns from Congress about fraud, waste and abuse in the Pentagon. The Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would require the Defense Department to pass a full, independent audit in fiscal 2024. Agencies within the Pentagon that fail to pass a clean audit would be forced to return 1 percent of its budget for deficit reduction, according to the legislation. The legislation comes after ... a CBS News report found defense contractors overcharged the Defense Department by nearly 40 percent to 50 percent. According to the Office of the Inspector General for the Defense Department, sometimes overcharging reached more than 4,000 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the Pentagon "and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades." "That is absolutely unacceptable," Sanders said in a statement announcing the legislation. "If we are serious about spending taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively, we have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in the federal government that has never passed an independent audit." The Defense Department failed its fifth audit last year and was unable to account for more than half of its assets, or more than $3 trillion.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
In 1998, Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands and began trafficking girls as young as 14 into "sexual servitude" at the secluded island. The same year, he opened his first account with JPMorgan Chase, the start of a lucrative partnership for the Wall Street giant that would continue for years after the late financier had been "red flagged" by the bank as a child sex offender. To keep his illicit sex-trafficking scheme running, Epstein needed access to large amounts of cash to pay off recruiters and attempt to silence victims. JPMorgan is alleged to have "pulled the levers" through which Epstein paid his network of enablers, according to a lawsuit filed by the US Virgin Islands (USVI) Attorney General in a US court. The lawsuit claims that JPMorgan concealed wire and cash transactions that were part of a "criminal enterprise" whose currency was vulnerable and desperate women and girls, groomed and recruited over decades by Epstein and his chief lieutenant Ghislaine Maxwell. In separate lawsuits, several survivors of Epstein's abuse sued JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank accusing them of actively enabling his abuse. The sprawling US Virgin Islands legal action is still pending. It has already drawn in some of the world's wealthiest individuals including billionaire JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk, Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. All have denied any involvement in Epstein's offending.
Note: One Nation Under Blackmail is a new book by Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist who explores the deep ties between Jeffrey Epstein and US and Israeli Intelligence criminal networks. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.
A secretive government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of controversial lockdown policies during the pandemic. The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to tackle supposed domestic "threats", and was used to target those critical of lockdown and questioning the mass vaccination of children. Critics of lockdown had posts removed from social media. There is growing suspicion that social media firms used technology to stop the posts being promoted, circulated or widely shared after being flagged by the CDU or its counterpart in the Cabinet Office. Documents revealed under Freedom of Information (FoI) and data protection requests showed that the activities of prominent critics of the Government's Covid policies were secretly monitored. An artificial intelligence firm (AI) was used by the Government to scour social media sites. The company flagged discussions opposing vaccine passports. Many of the issues being raised were valid at the time and have since been proven to be well-founded. The BBC also took part in secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation. It can now be revealed that the activities of Prof Carl Heneghan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), were monitored by government disinformation units.
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In less than three years the federal government intervened at least 4213 times to restrict or censor posts about the Covid-19 pandemic on digital platforms. A freedom of information request by Liberal senator Alex Antic has revealed the number of interventions, but details about the reasons or the guidelines under which they were made remain secret. "It is entirely unclear to me why the Department of Home Affairs, a department which is primarily charged with the duty of overseeing matters like border control, has been using a backdoor arrangement with social media companies to influence the media in relation into matters such as public health," Senator Antic said. Senator Antic ... is now in possession of the Department of Home Affairs Online Content Incident Arrangement Procedural Guideline, which details how the government works with digital platforms such as Facebook, Meta, Twitter, Instagram and Google to monitor and intervene on content. The document is subheaded "Australia's domestic crisis response protocol for online terrorist and extreme violent content". It runs to 28 pages but aside from the title, every page has been fully redacted. A separate document ... revealed that between January 2017 and December 2022 it "had made 13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content". More than 9000 of these were related to terrorism and violent extremism. But 4213 were "Covid-19-related referrals".
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Beyond human hearing, a cacophony of natural clicks, whistles and hums pass all around us, linking billions of living beings in networks of sound. Mother whales whisper to their young so predators can't hear them. Bees emit unique buzzing signals to distinguish threats from specific predators. Turtle embryos synchronise their collective moment of birth by making sounds through their shells. And unknown fish species buzz to one another in the depths – their very identities one of nature's countless sonic mysteries. What if tapping into these sounds could allow us to not only to learn more about the natural world, but actually help to begin healing it? An emerging appreciation for the biological importance of sound has led to new strategies for environmental conservation. From microscopic larvae lost at sea to birds that travel hundreds of miles from home, conservationists are now starting to use the sounds of nature to guide them back to where they belong. "Sound is so important," says Cheryl Tipp, curator of wildlife and environmental sound at the British Library. "In the natural world, it's used in mating displays, in territorial disputes, as alarm signals." For humans trying to support nature, meanwhile, sound can be used to identify new species, monitor populations and assess the health of ecosystems, she says. There is now a growing interest in the use of sound to accelerate habitat restoration itself, by coaxing certain species to certain locations using their very own sounds.
Note: Listen to a fascinating interview with biologist and innovation consultant Janine Benyus, who explores the power of biomimicry, a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies used by natural systems and species alive today. Benyus proposes that biomimicry can solve some of the gravest of societal and environmental problems by discovering how nature has already solved some of these challenges.
As school shootings proliferate across the country – there were 46 school shootings in 2022, more than in any year since at least 1999 – educators are increasingly turning to dodgy vendors who market misleading and ineffective technology. Utica City is one of dozens of school districts nationwide that have spent millions on gun detection technology with little to no track record of preventing or stopping violence. Evolv's scanners keep popping up in schools across the country. Over 65 school districts have bought or tested artificial intelligence gun detection from a variety of companies since 2018, spending a total of over $45 million, much of it coming from public coffers. "Private companies are preying on school districts' worst fears and proposing the use of technology that's not going to work," said Stefanie Coyle ... at the New York Civil Liberties Union. In December, it came out that Evolv, a publicly traded company since 2021, had doctored the results of their software testing. In 2022, the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, a government body, completed a confidential report showing that previous field tests on the scanners failed to detect knives and a handgun. Five law firms recently announced investigations of Evolv Technology – a partner of Motorola Solutions whose investors include Bill Gates – looking into possible violations of securities law, including claims that Evolv misrepresented its technology and its capabilities to it.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Pope Francis has decided to give women the right to vote at an upcoming meeting of bishops, an unprecedented change that reflects his hopes to give women greater decision-making responsibilities. Francis approved changes to the norms governing the Synod of Bishops, a Vatican body that gathers the world's bishops together for periodic meetings, following decades of demands by women to have the right to vote. The Vatican on Wednesday published the modifications he approved, which emphasise his vision for the lay faithful taking on a greater role in church affairs that have long been left to clerics, bishops and cardinals. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church, popes have summoned the world's bishops to Rome for a few weeks at a time to debate particular topics. At the end of the meetings, the bishops vote on specific proposals and put them to the pope, who then produces a document taking their views into account. Until now, the only people who could vote were men. But under the new changes, five religious sisters will join five priests as voting representatives for religious orders. In addition, Francis has decided to appoint 70 non-bishop members of the synod and has asked that half of them be women. They too will have a vote. The aim is also to include young people among these 70 non-bishop members, who will be proposed to the pope by regional blocs, with Francis making a final decision.
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JPMorgan Chase & Co. had ties to Jeffrey Epstein that ran deeper than the bank has acknowledged and extended years beyond when it decided to close the convicted sex offender's accounts. Mary Erdoes, a top lieutenant to Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, made two trips to Epstein's townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, in 2011 and 2013, when Epstein still was a client of the bank, said the people familiar with the matter. She exchanged dozens of emails with him and discussed sharing with him fees related to a charitable fund the bank was considering launching. John Duffy, who ran JPMorgan's U.S. private bank for the ultrarich, went to Epstein's townhouse for a meeting in April 2013, the people said. One month later, the private bank renewed an authorization allowing Epstein to borrow money against his accounts despite repeated warnings from compliance staffers about his unusual banking practices. Justin Nelson, one of Epstein's bankers at JPMorgan, had about a half-dozen meetings at Epstein's townhouse between 2014 and 2017. He also traveled to Epstein's ranch in New Mexico in 2016. Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008 and forced to register as a sex offender. The new details show that JPMorgan was treating Epstein like a star client after his first conviction and despite repeated warnings from its own employees. And after JPMorgan closed Epstein's accounts, bankers kept meeting with him for years.
Note: One Nation Under Blackmail is a new book by Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist who explores the deep ties between Jeffrey Epstein and US and Israeli Intelligence criminal networks. Epstein had many concerning associations, including with Noam Chomsky as reported in Webb's most recent article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on banking corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring from reliable major media sources.
The last time a trove of leaked documents exposed U.S. spying operations around the world, the reaction from allied governments was swift and severe. In Berlin, thousands of people protested in the streets, the C.I.A. station chief was expelled, and the German chancellor told the American president that "spying on friends is not acceptable." In Paris, the American ambassador was summoned for a dressing-down. That was a decade ago, after an enormous leak of classified documents detailing American surveillance programs by ... Edward Snowden. The latest leak of classified documents that appeared online this year, the motive behind which remains unknown, has again illustrated the broad reach of U.S. spy agencies, including into the capitals of friendly countries such as Egypt, South Korea, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. Though the documents mainly focus on the war in Ukraine, they include C.I.A. intelligence briefs describing conversations and plans at senior levels of government in those countries, in several cases attributed to "signals intelligence," or electronic eavesdropping. Unlike in 2013, however, U.S. allies appear to be mostly shrugging off the latest examples of apparent spying. So far, the only evident political fallout from the latest leaks has occurred in South Korea, where one classified U.S. document described a debate among senior national security officials about whether to send artillery shells abroad that might wind up in Ukraine, potentially angering Russia.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
The U.S. Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the "NATO brand," according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept. "NATO is one of our key brands that we are pushing, as far as our national security alliance," [Lt. Col. David Beskow] explained. The mass social media surveillance appears to be just one component of a broader initiative to use private-sector data mining to advance the Army's information warfare efforts. Beskow expressed an interest in purchasing access to nonpublic commercial web data, corporate ownership records, supply chain data, and more. While the U.S. national security establishment frequently warns against other countries' "weaponization" of social media and the broader internet, recent reporting has shown the Pentagon engages in some of the very same conduct. Researchers from Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory uncovered a network of pro-U.S. Twitter and Facebook accounts covertly operated by U.S. Central Command, an embarrassing revelation that led to a "sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare." Despite years of alarm in Washington over the threat posed by deepfake video fabrications to democratic societies, The Intercept reported last month that U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking vendors to help them make their own deepfakes to deceive foreign internet users.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
The centibillionaire club–those with over $100 billion in wealth–likely will be welcoming a new member soon. Forbes now estimates Michael Bloomberg's wealth at $94.5 billion, making him the sixth richest American. If his wealth continues to grow at the rate it's grown since 2013, Michael Bloomberg will join the centibillionaire club by the end of the year. At that point, he will be the 10th American to have reached that wealth level. Forty years ago, the mere billionaire club had just 13 members, and Daniel Ludwig, the richest American at the time, had a total wealth (adjusted for inflation) of $6.15 billion. Today, $1 billion of wealth in one person's hands often means far too much political power, but that astounding amount of money is now considered a rounding error in the context of America's largest fortunes. America's 20 richest billionaires spent more than the entire Biden campaign on the 2020 elections. According to political scientists Jeffrey Winters and Benjamin Page, the political influence of each of the 400 richest Americans is 22,000 times that of the average member of the bottom 90%. What all Americans whose wealth has passed the $100 billion threshold have in common ... is tax avoidance. Between 2013 and 2018, none made federal income tax payments greater than 11% of their wealth growth–and all but two paid less than 5%. Even Ronald Reagan recognized that it's "crazy" for a society to tax a bus driver at a higher rate than a millionaire.
Note: The pandemic response sharply increased the wealth of billionaires. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.
Bridge International Academies ... grew into a chain of schools providing a homogeneous curriculum developed by researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to hundreds of thousands of students in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia, and India. Today, it is the largest for-profit primary education chain in the world. The company is financed today by some of the highest-profile do-good donors in the game – or rather, the for-profit arms of their networks. In March 2022, the World Bank's financing arm – the International Finance Corporation – quietly divested from NewGlobe, the parent company of Bridge International. A series of abuse and neglect allegations in Kenya ... had caught the eye of a Nairobi-based human rights group, the East African Centre for Human Rights, or EACHRights, as well as the internal watchdog at the World Bank, known as the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, or CAO. "I find it deeply suspect that CAO uncovers explosive child sexual abuse allegations in the course of a compliance investigation and shortly thereafter, the World Bank president unexpectedly terminates the head of the CAO," said one well-placed civil society representative whose clients have complaints before the CAO. "Meanwhile, three years after the child sexual abuse allegations came to light, the CAO has still not produced an investigation report." It's very sad, because the CAO has always been the kind of beacon of accountability of any kind of institution, public or private. No more.
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During one of his many visits to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Siddharth Kara ... met a young woman sifting dirt for traces of cobalt. Priscille told him she had suffered two miscarriages and that her husband, a fellow "artisanal" miner, died of a respiratory disease. It is just one of many devastating personal accounts in Cobalt Red, a detailed exposé into the hidden world of small-scale cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The "quaint" moniker of artisanal mining, Mr. Kara points out, belies a brutal industry where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dig with bare hands and basic tools in toxic, perilous pits, eking out an existence on the bottom rung of the global supply chain. If you own a smartphone, tablet, laptop, e-scooter, [or] electric vehicle ... then it is a system in which you are unwittingly complicit. Around 75 per cent of the world's cobalt is mined in the DRC. The rare, silvery metal is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Congolese miners ... have experienced life-changing injuries, sexual assault, physical violence, corruption, displacement and abject poverty. Cobalt Red also documents many unreported deaths, including those of children buried alive in makeshift mining tunnels, and their bodies never recovered. Cobalt is toxic to touch and breathe in, and can be found alongside traces of radioactive uranium. Cancers, respiratory illnesses, miscarriages, headaches and painful skin conditions occur among adults who work without protective equipment. Children in mining communities suffer birth defects, developmental damage, vomiting and seizures from direct and indirect exposure to the heavy metals. Female miners, who earn less than the average two dollars per day paid to men, typically work in groups as sexual assault is common in mining areas. Major tech and EV companies extol commitments to human rights, zero-tolerance for child labor, and clean supply chains. Mr. Kara described these statements as "utterly inconsistent" with what's happening on the ground.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
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