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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.

Virginia Hislop took 83 years to get her master's degree from Stanford University. Now, at 105 years old, she's finally graduated. "My goodness, I've waited a long time for this," she said, walking across the stage on Sunday to receive her diploma. She was cheered on by her family, grandchildren and the 2024 graduating class. Hislop had to leave Stanford early in 1941 when her fiance, George, was called to serve in the second world war. Unable to complete her thesis, she put her degree on hold and her university days behind her, later moving to Washington to raise their family. When her son-in-law contacted the university recently, though, he discovered that the final thesis was no longer required to obtain the degree. Hislop was eligible to graduate decades later. "I've been doing this work for years, and it's nice to be recognized," she [said]. Hislop's educational journey at Stanford began in 1936 when she enrolled to study for her bachelor's degree in education. A few years later, she completed this milestone and immediately transitioned to her postgraduate studies, driven by her ambition to teach after university. In 1941, Hislop, like many other women across the US, was forced to trade her career for marriage in support of the broader war mobilization. Focusing on the family was seen as the pinnacle of American sacrifice in that period, and she left Stanford to marry George before his deployment.

Note: Explore more positive stories about human interest topics and amazing seniors.

The pharma firms behind blockbuster weight loss drugs could face up to 10,000 lawsuits from patients who claim the drugs caused debilitating side effects like stomach paralysis and 'tearing holes' in the food pipe. Ozempic and sister shots like Wegovy and Mounjaro have recently come under fire over claims that the injections cause a roster of complications patients were allegedly not warned about. One woman told DailyMail.com that she suffered life-threatening stomach paralysis after taking Mounjaro, and has now joined a massive lawsuit against its maker Eli Lilly and Ozempic manufacturer Novo Nordisk. She claims she may never eat a solid meal again. Another said Ozempic caused so much internal damage she had to have her gallbladder removed, while another said the drug induced such violent vomiting it tore a hole in her esophagus. Now, Robert Peirce & Associates, a law firm based in Pittsburgh, estimates that the number of plaintiffs could explode to as many as 10,000. In addition to lawsuits, some patients have also claimed the drugs caused suicidal thoughts, psychosis, and appearance issues like deflated breasts. 'Unfortunately, the manufacturers of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists failed to adequately warn of the associated risks,' the Robert Peirce & Associates team wrote. Attorney Ken Moll ... said it was 'unconscionable' that the firms still hadn't added warnings to their labels which warn about the risk of gastroparesis and stomach paralysis.

Note: It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.

This year's winner of the Templeton Prize, which highlights discoveries that yield "new insights about religion" ... was given to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a South African scholar who has explored ways to nurture deep empathy between victims and perpetrators of conflict. Her particular focus is on the power of forgiveness to expunge hatred and historical harms. Such an approach is now widely acknowledged as essential because of wars – from Ukraine and Gaza to Myanmar and Sudan – that have resulted in extensive harm to innocent civilians. Serving on South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s, Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela gained insights into both the needs of those who suffered under decades of apartheid and the motivations of those who upheld racial separation through violence. Her life work, she said following the award announcement Tuesday, involves understanding "the conditions necessary to restore the values of what it means to be human." "There's no better time to shove away prejudices, pull up a chair with a supporter of that party you can't stand, and talk with them about how we can work together for a brighter future," wrote Ian Siebörger, a senior lecturer of linguistics at Rhodes University. Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela offers ways to avoid "the passing on of grievance and a sense of victimhood from one generation to the next." The "reparative quest," she told Time magazine this week, is "a constant journey to repair and to heal" through atonement and forgiveness. It is not a singular moment. Victims and perpetrators move each other beyond the boundaries of their own experiences.

Note: To explore more stories of forgiveness and healing in the face of atrocities, check out our powerful interview with Marina Cantacuzino, journalist and founder of The Forgiveness Project. Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.

Elevatus, a Fort Wayne-based architecture firm ... has designed jails all over Indiana and in several other states. For counties that are considering expanding their current jail or building a new one, Elevatus produces feasibility studies that usually predict growing incarceration needs. In many cases, Elevatus also wins a contract to draw up the plans for the facility it recommended. That's what happened in Allen County. Four months after Elevatus released its study, the company was hired to design the new jail. If the county's elected officials approve the project, the firm's design fees – factored as a percentage of the project's total cost, as is standard for architecture firms – could be around $10 million. Elevatus is far from the only architecture firm creating feasibility studies and needs assessments that recommend substantially larger jails and then designing those buildings. Such blatant conflict of interest is occurring in counties all over the country. These studies rely on thin data to justify spending millions of dollars in public funds. The most significant consequence, though, is that more people wind up incarcerated. "Who's in jail is a product of the policies and practices of [the] criminal justice system," said David Bennett, a consultant for the National Institute of Corrections. "There's no correlation between crime and incarceration rates." Bennett [emphasizes] that the real way to reduce jail overcrowding is through policy, especially at the local level. Sheriffs have great discretion over how minor infractions are treated, who gets released on their own recognizance, and whether failure-to-appear warrants are called in. Changes like these were implemented during the pandemic, and jail populations dropped precipitously, with little downside.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

The greed of the prison industrial complex squeezing slave profits out of imprisoned people through the exploitation of the 13th amendment and the brutal system set up to limit opportunity usually leaves most who walk through the gates hopeless and abandoned. "At the point that I got to prison, I had never went into the liquor store and never pulled a tricker," [said former inmate Dorsey Nunn]. "I never did kill anybody. And I had never thought about killing anybody. We talked about the marriage of, of profit and you talk about the prison industrial complex, which is, essentially the practice of, marrying profit and punishment. One of the ugly realities in California under article one, section six, you still claim as a society to practice slavery, the right to practice slavery on the government level. They call it involuntary servitude. They mentioned it again in the 13th amendment. So people are still laboring without consent. The maximum amount of money that I was paid was 32 cents an hour. The maximum amount of money that I was paid for working a month. It's $32 a month, so at a certain point and the maximum amount of money that they gave me to start this fresh new life with was $200 gate money, and they've been giving that probably since the early seventies, no account for inflation, no account for anything. And they say, start your life over. People are rising up to do away with and challenge the notion of the 13th Amendment and the practice of slavery. Should we actually make a question of maintaining slavery, a question of morals, and do we actually want to actually profit off of slaves?"

Note: Dorsey Nunn wrote a book about his experiences advocating for the rights of former prison inmates titled, "What Kind of Bird Can't Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection." With about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire. For more, read about America's dystopian "pay-to-stay" incarceration system.

Candace Leslie was leaving church when she got the call she will never forget. Someone shot Leslie's son four times. Police recovered at least one gun. It was a Glock pistol. Unbeknownst to investigators at the time, the gun once served as a law enforcement duty weapon, carried by a sheriff's deputy more than 2,000 miles away in California. According to data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Glock was one of at least 52,529 police guns that have turned up at crime scenes since 2006, the earliest year provided. While that tally includes guns lost by or stolen from police, many of the firearms were released back into the market by the very law enforcement agencies sworn to protect the public. Law enforcement resold guns to firearms dealers for discounts on new equipment and, in some cases, directly to their own officers, records show. Some of the guns were later involved in shootings, domestic violence incidents, and other violent crimes. Reporters surveyed state and local law enforcement agencies and found that at least 145 of them had resold guns on at least one occasion between 2006 and 2024. That's about 90 percent of the more than 160 agencies that responded. Records from 67 agencies showed they had collectively resold more than 87,000 firearms over the past two decades. That figure is likely a significant undercount, however, because many agencies' records were incomplete or heavily redacted.

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

People who live in societies with wide gaps between the wealthy and everyone else turn out to live briefer lives than people who call more equal societies home. People who live in more equal societies, meanwhile, tend to live happier lives than their unequal-society counterparts. They face less crime. Their economies crash less often. Recent studies from Northwestern's Maryam Kouchaki and her colleagues ... have been illuminating how unequal distributions of income and wealth are serving to increase "the acceptability of self-interested unethical behaviors." The bottom line: People who live in highly unequal societies feel "a lower sense of control" and look less askance at unethical behaviors, either from others or from themselves, than do people who live in distinctly more equal societies. "Overall," Kouchaki and her colleagues conclude, "our results suggest inequality changes ethical standards." Other recent psychological research has come to the same core conclusion. "When are people more open to cheating?" asked the Canadian researchers Anita Schmalor, Adrian Schroeder, and Steven Heine in a paper published earlier this year. "Economic inequality makes people expect more everyday unethical behavior." The longer we let inequality define our contemporary daily lives, this new research helps us understand, the more the unethical behavior all around us will seem to reflect just the way our world naturally works. Economic inequality, in effect, normalizes unethical behavior.

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

Nearly 25 years ago, a group of suicide bombers attacked the U.S.S. Cole off Aden, Yemen, with the loss of 17 U.S. sailors. A Saudi, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, believed to be the mastermind of the attack, was captured in 2002, and was officially charged in 2011 with leading the attack. He has become the longest-running capital murder case at Guantanamo. Al-Nashiri, like so many captives at Guantanamo, was subjected to secret imprisonment by the CIA as well as waterboarding, rectal abuse, and prolonged sleep deprivation. A previous judge at Guantanamo excluded the confessions of al-Nashiri and others because of CIA's torture and abuse. The al-Nashiri case was particularly egregious because his interrogators found him to be compliant, but a senior CIA official ordered the reinstatement of torture and abuse to include waterboarding. The CIA has always maintained that secret memoranda of George W. Bush's Department of Justice permitted the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to include waterboarding in order to break the will of the captives. The CIA also had the support of psychologists and the American Psychological Association (APA) in conducting the coercive interrogation of terror suspects in Guantanamo and its secret prisons in East Europe and Southeast Asia. Two former military psychologists developed the CIA's sadistic techniques, which were based on Chinese efforts to obtain false confessions from American prisoners in the 1950s.

Note: Read more about how the American Psychological Association supported CIA torture operations. Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have caused so much concern in recent years that even Nasa launched a lengthy probe to find out what they were. Now some experts believe the hunt should move from the skies to the sea. The former head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is launching a probe into unidentified submersible objects (USOs) and, in particular, a strange anomaly seen on the seabed off the coast of California. Timothy Gallaudet, a former rear admiral in the US Navy, has spent the past 18 months interviewing dozens of sailors, submariners, military personnel and members of the US Coastguard, all who say they have seen unidentified craft in the water. One incident was filmed by the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in southern California in 2019, when a dark-shaped object was seen moving quickly before splashing down into the water. In the renowned Tic Tac incident in 2004, US Navy pilots described an oblong craft shaped like the sweet hovering just above the water off the California coast. Sonar has revealed an unusual trench on the seafloor as if an object has crashed into a ridge and then skidded to a halt. Mr Gallaudet believes that evidence for USOs may be present in the US Navy's acoustic data, but it is currently classified. This week Mr Gallaudet launched a report into the phenomenon alongside the Sol Foundation, a group of academics, military and government officials committed to researching UFOs.

Note: Watch this intriguing leaked video taken by a Navy ship and this video of more strange UFO sightings by US Navy warships. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.

Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos. In a just-unsealed case from Kentucky ... undercover cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker "elonmuskwhm," who they suspect of buying bitcoin for cash. In conversations with the user in early January, undercover agents sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then asked Google for information on who had viewed the videos, which collectively have been watched over 30,000 times. The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos. The cops argued, "There is reason to believe that these records would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, including by providing identification information about the perpetrators." The court granted the order and Google was told to keep the request secret. Privacy experts said the orders were unconstitutional because they threatened to undo protections in the 1st and 4th Amendments covering free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches. Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project [says that] "no one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I'm horrified that the courts are allowing this."

Note: The article refers to federal investigators and to undercover cops, but it doesn't specify who was actually doing the investigating. What agency or agencies were involved in these secret operations? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

COVID-19 may have been created in a Chinese lab, a British professor told the UN Wednesday. Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, was quoted saying in a new Wall Street Journal article that the virus that killed millions around the world may actually have been manmade in China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. He cited evidence found in a 2018 document from the lab that talked of making such a virus. "[The document] elevates the evidence provided by the genome sequence from the level of noteworthy to the level of a smoking gun," Ebright said. The papers from the lab cited by Ebright contained drafts and notes regarding a grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, which sought to test engineering bat coronaviruses in a way that would make them more easily transmissible to humans. The proposal was ultimately rejected and denied funding by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but Wade suggested that their work could have been carried out by researchers in Wuhan who had secured Chinese government funding. "Viruses made according to the DEFUSE protocol could have been available by the time Covid-19 broke out," wrote [Nicholas] Wade, a former science editor of the New York Times. Along with the research notes, Wade claimed the specific genetic structure of the coronavirus that allowed it to infect humans served as another strong indication of "the virus's laboratory birth."

Note: Explore a list of news article summaries on the significant likelihood that COVID was engineered in the context of bioweapons research with US funding and Chinese military involvement at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

As Army pain doctor Maj. Michael Stockin prepares to be arraigned Friday on charges that he sexually abused dozens of patients at Madigan Army Medical Center, near Tacoma, Washington, two of those former patients described to CBS News what they say was conduct that betrayed their trust. "Myself and Dr. Stockin were left alone in the room. He first checked my shoulders and then he asked me to stand up and to pull down my pants and lift up my gown," said one of the soldiers, who had consulted the Army physician for shoulder pain. "Dr. Stockin, he was face level with my groin, and he started touching my genitals." Both men, now retired after more than 20 years in the Army including three combat tours each, spoke exclusively to CBS News, describing alleged misconduct hidden under the guise of medical care. They described visits to a doctor who was supposed to treat their pain, but they say instead inflicted even worse. The Army has charged Stockin with 48 counts of abusive sexual contact and five counts of indecent viewing under the military code of justice. The Army has confirmed that all of the 42 alleged victims who were treated at the clinic at Joint Base Lewis-McChord are men. The case is being prosecuted by the Army's Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC). Ryan Guilds, a civilian attorney representing seven of Stockin's accusers ... says he believes there could be hundreds of victims, making the scope of this case "historic."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse by healthcare providers from reliable major media sources.

A penguin has become a ‘guide-bird' for a fellow African Penguin with poor eyesight, escorting her around their enclosure to get food and build confidence. The animal helper named ‘Penguin' has bonded with ‘Squid' the three-year-old that suffers from cataracts, a debilitating condition that clouds the lens of the eye. Squid is often disoriented during busy feeding times and relies on Penguin's "unwavering calmness". Penguin has become Squid's beacon, guiding her around the enclosure and acting as her ‘eyes'. The hand-reared birds are now inseparable–to the delight of their human keepers at Birdworld who are sharing their remarkable relationship. "The intuitive behavior observed between Penguin and Squid has revealed a remarkable level of empathy and understanding, showcasing the profound connections that can form within the animal kingdom," said Polly Branham a spokesperson for the aviary in Surrey, England. Having been nurtured within the colony, Squid honed her skills alongside her peers–learning the essence of being a penguin–but she used to be quite anxious about approaching the fish bucket at feeding time. "The excitement of the other penguins created a more unpredictable environment, and she would shy away from this for fear of getting caught in the crossfire of beaks," explained Branham. "That is how Penguin has been such an enormous help to her. "His stability was something she could rely on."

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

The rich tapestry of life on Earth is fraying, due in large part to human-caused habitat loss and climate change. As more species disappear, researchers are racing to track this global decline in biodiversity to understand its consequences and counteract it through conservation initiatives. Those efforts rely on accurate animal monitoring, which can be difficult, time-consuming and costly. Now, in new research published in the journal iScience, researchers present evidence for a new low-cost, noninvasive tool that can be used to monitor animals: spiderwebs. They're using environmental DNA, or eDNA, which is simply different creatures' DNA just lying around in the environment. Previous work showed that webs are good sources of insect DNA, including what spiders are gorging on. But [evolutionary biologist Morton] Allentoft and [student Josh] Newton wanted to see whether the webs were also trapping DNA from vertebrate animals. So Newton ... collected spiderwebs. Back in the lab, Newton amplified the small amounts of DNA from the webs. They were filled with genetic material from animals. "It was wonderful," says Allentoft. "We could see these kangaroos [and] wallabies." There were nine other mammals, 13 species of birds, the motorbike frog and the snake-eyed skink. In other words, the technique worked. It represents a new way of tracking animal biodiversity and alerting us when we should intervene to conserve native species.

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

The New Mexico attorney general, RaĂşl Torrez, who has launched legal action against Meta for child trafficking on its platforms, says he believes the social media company is the "largest marketplace for predators and paedophiles globally". The lawsuit claims that Meta allows and fails to detect the trafficking of children and "enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos", concluding that "Meta's conduct is not only unacceptable; it is unlawful". Torrez says that he has been shocked by the findings of his team's investigations into online child sexual exploitation on Meta's platforms. Internal company documents obtained by the attorney general's office as part of its investigation have also revealed that the company estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day. The idea of the lawsuit came to [Torrez] after reading media coverage of Meta's role in child sexual exploitation, including a Guardian investigation that it was failing to report or detect the use of Facebook and Instagram for child trafficking. If it progresses, the New Mexico lawsuit is expected to take years to conclude. Torrez wants his lawsuit to provide a medium to usher in new regulations. "Fundamentally, we're trying to get Meta to change how it does business and prioritise the safety of its users, particularly children."

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

After poking and prodding [Doyle] Hamm with needles for almost 3 hours, prison officials gave up as Mr. Hamm lay strapped to a gurney in a pool of blood. They called off the execution because they were unsuccessful in gaining IV access to administer the lethal injection. This was a risk Mr. Hamm's attorney had predicted given Hamm's advanced cancer and long history of IV drug use. At the time, ADOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn did not provide details to reporters about what happened. "I wouldn't characterize what we had tonight as a problem," Dunn said. Hamm's attorney later released photos and examination notes showing that prison employees had punctured Hamm's bladder and an artery causing him to urinate blood. The state ... privately agreed to never try to execute Doyle Hamm again. Counternarratives about death row can be found in the 2023 book titled Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices from Alabama's Death Row. The book is a collection of writings previously published by Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, or PHADP, the nation's only nonprofit formed on and operated from death row. The organization ... has a goal to educate the public about capital punishment and the features of inequality that define it, while advocating for an end to the death penalty. All of the featured writers have been convicted of murder, although based on the rate of death row exonerations, some are likely wrongly convicted.

Note: The current system often puts innocent people to death. Over half of all wrongful convictions are the result of government misconduct. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Researchers have discovered bottled water sold in stores can contain 10 to 100 times more bits of plastic than previously estimated – nanoparticles so infinitesimally tiny they cannot be seen under a microscope. At 1,000th the average width of a human hair, nanoplastics are so teeny they can migrate through the tissues of the digestive tract or lungs into the bloodstream, distributing potentially harmful synthetic chemicals throughout the body and into cells. One liter of water – the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters – contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics, of which 90% were identified as nanoplastics and the rest were microplastics. Microplastics are polymer fragments that can range from less than 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) down to 1/25,000th of an inch (1 micrometer). Anything smaller is a nanoplastic that must be measured in billionths of a meter. The new finding reinforces long-held expert advice to drink tap water from glass or stainless steel containers to reduce exposure. In the new study, published ... in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Columbia University presented a new technology that can see, count and analyze the chemical structure of nanoparticles in bottled water. Nanoplastics ... can invade individual cells and tissues in major organs, potentially interrupting cellular processes and depositing endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.

Court documents made public on Wednesday disclosed the names of dozens of powerful men with alleged connections to convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein who died by suicide in 2019. Federal Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan unsealed the documents, revealing the names of numerous individuals described in a 2015 civil lawsuit as associates, affiliates or victims of Epstein. The documents include references to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the magician David Copperfield, Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, actor Kevin Spacey, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore, among others. The fact that people were named in these documents doesn't mean any of them face allegations or evidence of wrongdoing. Federal prosecutors say Epstein – who worked for decades as a private financier for a secretive list of wealthy clients – also operated an underage sex-trafficking ring based in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. Epstein allegedly developed a scheme to identify and exploit "dozens" of vulnerable girls and young women, some as young as 14 years old, beginning around 1994 and continuing at least until 2004. Some of his victims later claimed in civil lawsuits that Epstein instructed them to have sex with a who's-who of powerful men. Authorities in Florida first investigated Epstein for alleged sexual activity involving minors as early as 2005.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.

The notorious and once portly defense contractor known as "Fat Leonard," who scammed the U.S. Navy out of millions of dollars for more than a decade, is being extradited to the U.S. as part of a prisoner swap deal with Venezuela, the White House announced. Leonard Glenn Francis, now 59, escaped from house arrest in San Diego in September 2022 after cutting off an ankle tracking bracelet shortly before a sentencing trial for his role behind one of the largest corruption scandals in the country's military history that ensnared more than two dozen U.S. Navy officials. But his life on the run was short lived. Francis was captured weeks later by authorities in Venezuela where he has remained in custody until now. In 2015 Francis pleaded guilty to plying more than 30 officials, including more than two dozen naval officers, with a slew of bribes to gain lucrative contracts for his Singapore-based company Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. According to the Department of Justice, officers were lavished with a criminal potpourri of cash, prostitutes, parties and luxury travel and items such as "Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pig." Francis also admitted to overcharging the Pentagon for made up services. In all, the Department of Justice said he bilked the Navy out of $35 million, leading officials to call it "one of the most brazen bribery conspiracies in the U.S. Navy's history." In exchange, officers handed over classified and other sensitive material to Francis' company.

Note: This massive conspiracy at one point redirected an aircraft carrier. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Many studies have shown that people living in greener neighborhoods have several health benefits, including lower levels of stress and cardiovascular disease. But new research indicates that exposure to parks, trees and other green spaces can slow the rates at which our cells age. The study, published in Science of the Total Environment, found that people who lived in neighborhoods with more green space had longer telomeres, which are associated with longer lives and slower ageing. Telomeres are structures that sit on the ends of each cell's 46 chromosomes, like the plastic caps on shoelaces, and keep DNA from unraveling. The longer a cell's telomeres, the more times it can replicate. When telomeres become so short that cells can't divide, the cells die. [Study co-author Aaron] Hipp and his colleagues looked at the medical records (that included measures of telomere lengths from biological samples) and survey responses from more than 7,800 people who participated in a national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey conducted between 1999 and 2002. The researchers connected that information with census data to estimate the amount of green space in each person's neighborhood. They found that a 5% increase in a neighborhood's green space was associated with a 1% reduction in the ageing of cells. "The more green the area, the slower the cell ageing," said Hipp.

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

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.