News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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From the headlines, [Sidney] Gottlieb had emerged as a kind of Dr. Strangelove. He had overseen a vast network of psychological and medical experiments conducted in hospitals, universities, research labs, prisons and safe houses, many of them carried out on unsuspecting subjects – mental patients, prostitutes and their johns, drug addicts, and anyone else who stumbled into the CIA's web. Some had been subjected to electroshock therapy in an effort to alter their behavior. Some endured prolonged sensory deprivation. Some were doped and made to sleep for weeks in an attempt to induce an amnesia-like state. Others suffered a relentless loop of audiotape playing the same message hundreds of thousands of times. As the CIA's sorcerer, Gottlieb had also attempted to raise assassination to an art form. Out of his labs had come a poisoned handkerchief designed to do in a Libyan colonel, a bacteriological agent for a Congolese leader and debilitating potions intended for Cuba's Fidel Castro. The name Sidney Gottlieb is but an obscure footnote. Yet for a generation of Americans who came of age in the Cold War, his experiments came to define the CIA as a rogue agency. The most notorious project was MK-ULTRA, created in 1953. It was, in Gottlieb's words, intended to explore 'various techniques of behavior control in intelligence operations.' It funded an array of research, including electric-shock treatments, hypnosis and experiments designed to program or deprogram a subject's memory.
Note: Read more about the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control from reliable major media sources.
The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building. The address reflects Carlyle's position at the very centre of the Washington establishment. For 14 years now, with almost no publicity, the company has been signing up an impressive list of former politicians - including the first President Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker; John Major; one-time World Bank treasurer Afsaneh Masheyekhi and several south-east Asian powerbrokers - and using their contacts and influence to promote the group. But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $3.5bn - has ... become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. Among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden. "It should be a deep cause for concern that a closely held company like Carlyle can simultaneously have directors and advisers that are doing business and making money and also advising the president of the United States," says Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity. "The problem comes when private business and public policy blend together. What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about US policy in the Middle East?"
Note: Watch a 45-minute video on this subject titled Exposed: The Carlyle Group. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
The owner of a data brokerage business recently ... bragged about the degree to which his industry could collect and analyze data on the habits of billions of people. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said that ... his company [can] deliver "personalized messaging at scale" to some 91 percent of the internet's adult web users. To deliver that kind of "personalized messaging" (i.e., advertising), Publicis must gather an extraordinary amount of information on the people it serves ads to. Lena Cohen, a technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that data brokers like Publicis collect "as much information as they can" about web users. "The data broker industry is under-regulated, opaque, and dangerous, because as you saw in the video, brokers have detailed information on billions of people, but we know relatively little about them," Cohen said. "You don't know what information a data broker has on you, who they're selling it to, and what the people who buy your data are doing with it. There's a real power/knowledge asymmetry." Even when state-level privacy regulations are passed (such as the California Consumer Privacy Law), those cases are often not given enough focus or resources for the laws to be enforced effectively. "Most government agencies don't have the resources to enforce privacy laws at the scale that they're being broken," Cohen said. Cohen added that she felt online behavioral advertising–that is, advertising that is based on an individual web user's specific browsing activity–should be illegal. Banning behavioral ads would "fundamentally change the financial incentive for online actors to constantly surveil" web users and share their data with brokers, Cohen said.
Note: Read more about the disturbing world of online behavioral ads. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is releasing new information on a financier's ties to Jeffrey Epstein's operations, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee announced. Since 2022, the committee has been investigating billionaire financier Leon Black – who co-founded and previously led asset management firm Apollo Global Management as CEO and has made payments to Epstein. Wyden is calling on the Department of Justice, the Treasury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "lift the veil" on financial support for Epstein. Wyden sent a letter to the federal agencies, providing the new findings from the committee's investigation, which is looking into payments of at least $158 million from Black to Epstein for "purported tax and estate planning advice." Wyden says the investigation led to new evidence through federal government records that show funds from Black to Epstein were used to finance Epstein's sex trafficking operations. The Finance Committee also obtained a 2023 settlement agreement between Black and the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Under the $62 million settlement, Black gained immunity from criminal prosecution in the USVI for financially supporting Epstein, according to Wyden, noting the settlement acknowledges "Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations." A major U.S. bank waited seven years to report Black's payments to Epstein to the Treasury Department.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial system corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex and blackmail ring.
An ex-JPMorgan Chase executive testified in London court that Jeffrey Epstein knew more about what was going on at the top levels of the bank than he did. Jes Staley – who went on to become chief executive of Barclays following his stint at JPMorgan – claimed that Epstein, the convicted child sex offender and disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019, had a "remarkable ability" to gather Wall Street intel. "Mr. Epstein was also well connected within the upper levels of JPMorgan itself," Staley said during his second day in the witness box as he appealed a proposed ban and $2.3 million fine from London's financial regulatory agency. "He seemed to be aware of things relating to the bank, that I was not aware of," Staley added. Staley – who is attempting to overturn a lifetime ban that the Financial Conduct Authority announced in 2023 – acknowledged his relationship with Epstein went beyond work. In 2000, JPMorgan's then-chief executive Douglas "Sandy" Warner told Staley he should get to know Epstein, Staley claimed in his witness statement. "Sandy Warner recommended that I should become acquainted with Mr. Epstein because he was an exceptionally well connected man who could help me, in my capacity at JPM, to form business relationships with influential and other well connected individuals," he said. Staley claimed he was not the only high-level figure at JPMorgan in touch with Epstein.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial system corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex and blackmail ring.
Animal factories–industrial-scale factory farm livestock operations–create ideal conditions for the emergence and rapid spread of disease, including avian flu. High-density confinement, genetic uniformity, and poor air quality weaken birds' immune systems and enable viruses to mutate and transmit quickly. Unlike in natural settings, where biodiversity and space act as buffers against disease, factory farms concentrate thousands or even millions of animals in close quarters, amplifying viral loads and increasing the risk of spillover to wild birds and even humans. The industry's reliance on mass culling, vaccines, and "biosecurity measures" fails to address the root cause of so many food safety and food security crises: an unnatural, high-stress system that prioritizes profit over resilience. Nowhere is this more evident than in today's egg crisis, resulting in soaring prices, plummeting availability, and over 120 million chickens killed due to avian flu scares. Under current protocols, if just one bird in a 100,000-strong confined flock is suspected of infection, the entire flock is exterminated. In conventional caged systems, as many as 500,000 hens suffer in a single facility, each trapped in a space barely larger than a sheet of printer paper. Even in so-called "cage-free" systems, up to 100,000 hens can be packed into a single barn, enduring a relentless cycle of laying, exhaustion, and slaughter.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.
US taxpayers spent an estimated $6 billion researching, developing, and implementing new blockbuster weight-loss drugs. Yet Americans are now paying pharmaceutical giants – including one in Denmark – up to eleven times more for these medicines than patients in other countries, markups that are inflating consumers' insurance premiums and risk bankrupting the country's health care system. According to data shared with the Lever by researchers at Bentley University, the federal government spent $6.2 billion from 1980 to 2024 on the discovery and development of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) molecules, as well as research on how to use GLP-1 drugs to treat diabetes, obesity, and other diseases. GLP-1, a hormone that regulates blood sugar, was the foundation of the diabetes drug Ozempic, whose 2017 approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched a wave of other GLP-1-based diabetes and weight-loss medications coming to market. More than fifteen million people nationwide currently take GLP-1-related drugs like Ozempic, bringing in more than $50 billion in sales for pharmaceutical companies in 2024 – much of which went to the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. A Senate report ... found that if half of all Medicare and Medicaid patients with obesity took Wegovy and other GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, it could cost the federal health care system $166 billion per year.
Note: The makers of these weight-loss drugs could be hit with over 10,000 lawsuits over severe adverse events from these drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in Big Pharma.
"Food is a weapon. When you sell real weapons, you control armies. When you control food, you control society. But when you control seeds, you control life on Earth," [Indian physicist and social advocate Vandana] Shiva says in her feature-length documentary The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, referring to industrial farming as the "single biggest destructive force on the planet today." Shiva may be most renowned for her work opposing Asia's Green Revolution, a well-meaning initiative in the 1960s to increase food production in less-developed countries. However, Shiva argued that the revolution's tactics were more harmful than helpful, increasing the use of toxic pesticides and polluting fertilizers while reducing indigenous seed biodiversity. Moreover, farmers became dependent on chemical solutions, which raised their operating costs. To combat this, the [Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology] founded seed banks across India in the 1990s as part of its Nine Seeds project, teaching farmers about sustainable agriculture, which incorporates practices that improve soil and ecosystem health, protect against erosion, and reduce the need for expensive chemicals. Shiva has also authored numerous books addressing corporate plundering of poorer countries, the potential pitfalls of seed biodiversity loss related to genetically modified crops, and proposing the development of innovative solutions. "We will continue to create a new world – seed by seed, person by person," Shiva says.
Note: Read more about Vandana Shiva's courageous activism. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.
"It's a movement, not a moment." That's the mantra from Sam "Coach" Balto, a former school teacher from Portland, Oregon who quit his day job to stoke a revolution called the "bike bus" – groups of kids and families cycling to school together. How did one person in a mid-sized American city turn a weekly bike ride into something of a phenomenon? He leaned on the power of social media. In the past two years his videos have been viewed by hundreds of millions of people. In Portland, a "bike train" movement kicked off in 2010 when a 24-year-old bike advocate named Kiel Johnson began organising what he referred to as "bike trains" at an elementary school, where riders would join a mass of cyclists at various stops along a route to school. It caught on and in just a few months Johnson had signed up six other schools, won a grant, and had been interviewed by a national television show. "When you joined one of the big bike trains it really felt like you were part of something," Johnson recalls. The children loved it, and why wouldn't they? It's good for children's health – mental and physical – and also has a ripple effect of advantages for the whole family, as any Dutch person will argue. Many of Balto's students say the best thing about the bike bus is that it's simply a cool thing to do with friends. In the past year alone, Balto's videos have been viewed more than 200m times. Balto, who now runs the nonprofit Bike Bus World, credits social media for building the movement.
Note: Watch an inspiring video of Sam Balto leading a massive bike bus on Earth Day in Portland. Explore more positive human interest stories.
The Trump administration's decision to pause USAID funding has plunged hundreds of so-called "independent media" outlets into crisis, thereby exposing a worldwide network of thousands of journalists, all working to promote U.S. interests in their home countries. USAID spends over a quarter of a billion dollars yearly training and funding a vast, sprawling network of more than 6,200 reporters at nearly 1,000 news outlets. Oksana Romanyuk, the Director of Ukraine's Institute for Mass Information, revealed that almost 90% of the country's media are bankrolled by USAID, including many that have no other source of funding. [Independent media is] defined as any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state. Some USAID-backed journalists candidly admit that their funding dictates ... what stories they do and do not cover. Leila Bicakcic, CEO of Center for Investigative Reporting (a USAID-supported Bosnian organization), admitted, on camera, that "If you are funded by the U.S. government, there are certain topics that you would simply not go after, because the U.S. government has its interests that are above all others." While the press may be lamenting the demise of USAID-backed media, many heads of state are not. "Take your money with you," said Colombian President Gustavo Petro, "it's poison." Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, shared a rare moment of agreement with Petro. "Most governments don't want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up," he wrote, explaining that: "At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda."
Note: The New York Times reported in 2014 that USAID was used as a front for CIA regime change operations all over the world, and played a central role in overseeing the trillion-dollar failure of the war and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. USAID has a long history of child sex abuse cover-ups, fraud allegations, indictments, and inadvertently funding terrorists.
Dark matter, which makes up about 85% of all matter in the Universe, plays a crucial role in shaping cosmic structures. Under gravity's influence, it forms a vast, intricate web of filaments. At the intersections of these filaments, the brightest galaxies take shape. This cosmic web serves as the backbone of the Universe, guiding the flow of gas that fuels star formation in galaxies. Studying how this gas moves and interacts could significantly improve our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. However, directly observing this intergalactic gas is extremely difficult. In [a] new study, an international team led by researchers at the University of Milano-Bicocca and including scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) obtained an unprecedented high-definition image of a cosmic filament using MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer), an innovative spectrograph installed on the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The study, led by Davide Tornotti, PhD student at the University of Milano-Bicocca, used this ultrasensitive data to produce the sharpest image ever obtained of a cosmic filament spanning 3 million light-years and connecting two galaxies, each hosting an active supermassive black hole. The discovery, recently published in Nature Astronomy opens new avenues to directly constrain gas properties within intergalactic filaments and to refine our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.
There is an undeniable link between fiscal integrity and the preservation of our freedoms as Americans. When government becomes corrupt, it erodes not only our personal liberties and financial security, but also fosters a culture of lawlessness in both the public and private sectors. The corruption has been institutionalized in the federal budget. It has been normalized as standard operating procedure. The waste of taxpayers' money is ubiquitous – trillions for wars, trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse. Trillions have been lost in an accounting jumble. This has been our government's system of checks and balances: The Administration writes the checks, and Congress doesn't know what the balance is. Most members do not know what is in the $7.3 Trillion spending bill, and those who do aren't talking. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported more than $100 billion in improper Medicare and Medicaid payments in 2023. A Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated the cost of waste, fraud, and abuse to be upwards of $60 BILLION, deriving from a lack of oversight, no internal controls in keeping track of who received the money, who spent it, and what it was spent for–and if indeed its purpose was accomplished. This hypocrisy–condemning endless wars while funding and escalating wars–allowed the military-industrial complex to thrive.
Note:This was written by Dennis Kucinich, former Democratic congressman and nationally recognized leader in peace and social justice. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and government waste.
Logan Sowell's suicide in July 2021 is one of at least seven in the past five years involving the Marine Corps' stable of drill instructors, according to military casualty reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2023, three occurred at Parris Island within less than three months. A study completed by the Marine Corps in 2019 found that during the previous decade, 29 drill instructors either ended their lives or openly acknowledged they had contemplated doing so – an aberration the study's authors characterized as startlingly high compared with the occurrence of suicidal ideation among Marines who had never held that job. Rates of addiction and divorce among drill instructors also were higher, researchers found. Critics and relatives of those who died accuse the Marine Corps of fostering an environment that contributed to their deaths. They describe routine 90-hour-plus workweeks, sleep deprivation and an always-on culture that frequently caused the job's requisite intensity to seep into their personal lives, igniting disputes with loved ones. Others detailed bouts of depression or alcohol dependency. The Marine Corps lacks adequate services for those who are struggling and need help, and tacitly condones a culture that stigmatizes those who seek it. "We put a drastic expectation on them to act perfect," said a Marine officer who has supervised dozens of drill instructors. This top-down pressure ... "causes this stress that trickles into their home life."
Note: Read about the tragic suicides and traumas of military drone operators. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and mental health.
Drugs were the elephant in the room during the failed U.S. war in Afghanistan. Because opium was such a large part of the poor and war-torn country's economy, the fighting between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan republic often looked more like a turf war between rival narco gangs, with the U.S. military protecting some opium fields and bombing others. Afghan farmers were happy to take USAID's help while continuing to grow opium. For example, opium cultivation increased by 119 percent in the Kandahar Food Zone between 2013 and 2015, after USAID helped expand the irrigation systems there. A USAID-funded charity in Kenya allegedly covered up rampant sex abuse of children, and USAID funded a second charity in the Central African Republic a month after a major sex abuse scandal broke. The Children of God Relief Institute, which ran an orphanage for Kenyan children affected by AIDS and similar projects, received high praise from the U.S. government. From 2013 onward, USAID gave the institute $29.3 million. In 2021, a whistleblower told USAID that the charity was harboring a dark secret. USAID's inspector general soon determined that Children of God Relief Institute officials "knew or should have known of multiple incidents" of child sex abuse "but failed to take effective remedial measures to address the abuse." In some cases, the victims were forced to apologize for provoking their own abuse, The Washington Post reports.
Note: Watch our latest video on government waste, where we take a thoughtful look at the current political landscape and explore powerful solutions that have the potential to tackle wasteful spending and restore financial freedom. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the war on drugs.
In coming days, Iraq will do something extraordinary in a Middle East where identities are often anchored by tribe, religion, or ethnicity. It will release detailed results of its first national census in decades – without any of those pigeonholing categories. In other words, data collated from a two-day, door-to-door survey conducted last November will not break down people by labels such as Shiite or Sunni, Kurd or Arab. Aimed at simply helping officials divvy up elected seats and spread resource wealth equally to everyone, the census will not reduce individuals to demographic stereotypes. For more than four decades, [Iraq] suffered major conflicts and several civil wars driven in large part by identity differences. In 2019, student-led protests against corruption took aim at a governing system that ensures the prime minister is always a Shiite Muslim, the parliamentary speaker a Sunni Muslim, and the president a Kurd. (That quota system is akin to one in Lebanon.) With the Mideast in high flux from Gaza to Syria to Iran – and with elections expected in Iraq this year – "There is a maturing among the Iraqi public and its leadership," wrote analyst Muhammad Al-Waeli in the website 1001 Iraqi Thoughts. Young Iraqis may be the most eager to define themselves as Iraqis first. Preliminary data from the census showed 56% of the population of 45.4 million was born after the 2003 American-led invasion that ousted a dictatorship. This cohort took the brunt of the 2013-2017 civil war fueled by the Islamic State. Civic ideals, not social stigmas, may now unite many Iraqis.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
The embattled US Agency for International Development has engaged in "willful sabotage of congressional oversight" over recent years while doling out taxpayer dollars to groups that overbilled the US and possibly gave funds to terrorists, Sen. Joni Ernst alleged. [Ernst] listed a slew of examples on social media this week on why "USAID is one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington." This includes $2 million in funding related to Moroccan pottery classes, some $2 million backing trips to Lebanon, over $1 million to fund research in the Wuhan lab, $20 million to make a Sesame Street in Iraq and $9 million in humanitarian aid that "ended up in the hands of violent terrorists." The White House has similarly outlined "waste and abuse" in USAID as the Trump administration eyes a dramatic overhaul of the agency. In a Wednesday letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ernst ... cited her concerns about wasteful spending and recounted obstruction she faced from USAID. In one example she highlighted, an inspector general discovered that Chemonics, a USAID contractor, overbilled the feds by "as much as $270 million through fiscal year 2019" and was caught "possibly offering kickbacks to terrorist groups." Chemonics had been heavily involved in a $9.5 billion USAID initiative to beef up global health supply chains, which ultimately ended in dozens of arrests and indictments over the resale of agency-funded products on the black market.
Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency?
Viral social media claims from last night regarding USAID and Politico ... suggested that ongoing spending cuts at USAID, the foreign aid agency, were shutting down domestic media outlets supposedly dependent on government money. There is no evidence that the freeze in USAID funding had any impact on Politico payroll. That said, USAID does separately fund various questionable news operations. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a major investigative news outlet responsible for the Panama Papers and other blockbuster news series, relies heavily on State Department and USAID funding. Officials have used their leverage over OCCRP to influence editorial and personnel decisions at the outlet. USAID money flows to contractors operating news outlets worldwide, such as Pact, Inc. and the East West Management Institute. Yesterday, I wrote about USAID contractor Internews, which operates and funds several Ukrainian news outlets, many of which have called for censoring pro-peace American journalists and activists over false allegations that they are Russian agents. Most insidiously, these Ukrainian outlets act as independent fact-checkers, providing outsourced content moderation services to Meta and TikTok. In other words, these outlets operate as convenient third parties for the U.S. government to censor dissident voices in ways it could not do directly.
Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency? For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.
For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous – and, in many cases, malicious – pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight. Here are only a few examples of the WASTE and ABUSE: $1.5 million to "advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities"; $70,000 for production of a "DEI musical" in Ireland; $47,000 for a "transgender opera" in Colombia; $32,000 for a "transgender comic book" in Peru; $2 million for sex changes and "LGBT activism" in Guatemala; $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt; Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a non-profit linked to designated terrorist organizations – even AFTER an inspector general launched an investigation; Millions to EcoHealth Alliance – which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab, Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria; Funding to print "personalized" contraceptives birth control devices in developing countries; Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund "irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan," benefiting the Taliban. The list literally goes on and on – and it has all been happening for decades.
Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency? For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government waste.
President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are undermining democracy and national security by taking over the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), say Democrats and the media. But there was nothing illegal, unethical, or inappropriate about DOGE's takeover of USAID, and nobody has presented any evidence that it threatens national security. The American people elected Trump who appointed Musk to oversee DOGE, as Trump has a right to do. "With regards to the USAID stuff," said Musk, "I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down." Trump sought to merge USAID with the State Department in 2017. Researchers have caught USAID abusing its powers, including by funding everything from censorship to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which may have done research that resulted in the Covid pandemic. Between 2004 and 2022, USAID was the largest US government funder of EcoHealth Alliance, which sub-awarded grant funding to WIV. USAID gave EcoHealth Alliance $54 million during that period, which was more even than the $42 million the group received from the Pentagon. As for progressive Democrats, they should be embracing Trump's actions against USAID. Left-wing anti-imperialist groups have for 50 years criticized USAID as an extension of US government interventionism abroad.
Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency?
High-level executives with the NFL's New Orleans Saints football team and the NBA's Pelicans basketball team had a deeper role than previously known in connection with a list of priests and deacons faced with credible allegations of child molestation. According to highly sensitive emails ... one top executive even described a conversation with the New Orleans district attorney at the time that allowed them to remove clergy names from the list. The initial allegations about the emails led to local and national media investigations, including by Sports Illustrated and the Associated Press, that highlighted a fierce closeness between the sports franchises and the Catholic church in New Orleans. [Senior vice president of communications for the Saints and Pelicans Greg] Bensel sought to convince media outlets to limit their scrutiny of a list that turned out to be so incomplete it eventually precipitated a joint federal and state law enforcement investigation into whether the archdiocese spent decades operating a child sex-trafficking ring whose crimes were illegally covered up. After first seeing the so-called Saints emails in 2019 through a subpoena, abuse survivors' attorneys alleged that the two franchises' top officials had a significant hand in trying to minimize what was then a public-relations nightmare for the city's archdiocese – but has since triggered a full-blown child sex-trafficking investigation aimed at the church by law enforcement. A [2019] newspaper article about a local deacon and alleged serial child molester thrust [New Orleans archbishop Gregory] Aymond into the center of the global Catholic church's clergy-abuse scandal. The article questioned how the deacon, George Brignac, had been allowed to keep reading scripture at masses ... after he'd been arrested multiple times on child molestation charges.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
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