News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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For nearly a year, cataracts have clouded out all sight from the 70-year-old grandmother's world. With no money, she assumed she'd die alone in darkness. But now she waits quietly outside the operating room for her turn to meet Nepal's God of Sight. More than 500 others — most of whom have never seen a doctor before — have traveled for days by bicycle, motorbike, bus and even on their relatives' backs to reach Dr. Sanduk Ruit's mobile eye camp. Each hopes for the miracle promised in radio ads by the Nepalese master surgeon: He is able to poke, slice and pull the grape-like jelly masses out of an eye, then refill it with a tiny artificial lens, in about five minutes. It's an assembly-line approach to curing blindness that's possible thanks to a simple surgical technique Ruit pioneered, allowing cataracts to be removed safely without stitches through two small incisions. Once condemned by the international medical community as unthinkable and reckless, this mass surgery "in the bush" started spreading from Nepal to poor countries worldwide nearly two decades ago. Thousands of doctors — from North Korea to Nicaragua to Nigeria — have since been trained to train others, with the hope of slowly lessening the leading cause of blindness that affects 18 million people worldwide. No one pays for anything, and the entire cost is about $25 per surgery. That's $12,750 for all 510 patients, equal to only about three or four surgeries in the U.S.
The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years. The "perversion files," a nickname the Boy Scouts are said to have used for the documents, have rarely been seen by the public, but that could change in the coming weeks in a Portland, Ore., courtroom. The attorney for a man who was allegedly molested in the 1980s by a Scout leader has obtained about 1,000 Boy Scouts sex files and is expected to release some of them at a trial that began [on March 17]. The lawyer says the files show the organization has covered up abuse for decades. The trial is significant because the files could offer a rare window into how the organization has responded to sex abuse by Scout leaders. The only other time the documents are thought to have been presented at a trial was in the 1980s in Virginia. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the organization over sex abuse allegations, but judges for the most part have either denied requests for the files or the lawsuits have been settled before they went to trial.
Note: Why isn't the leadership of the Boy Scouts being proactive in releasing these files. Do you think they might have something to hide?
The Vatican ... denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland. The Vatican's campaign to defend the pope's reputation and resolve in combating clergy abuse of minors followed acknowledgment by the Munich archdiocese that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there. Benedict is also under fire for a 2001 church directive he wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential. Germany's justice minister has blamed the directive for what she called a "wall of silence" preventing prosecution. Skeptical about the Vatican's handling of abuse, a U.S.-based advocacy group for abuse victims, Survivors Network of those Abused for Priests, urged faithful to bring candles and childhood photos to vigils outside churches, cathedrals and German consulates across the U.S. this weekend to remind people to "call police, not bishops" in cases of suspected abuse. Meanwhile, the scandal swirling around Benedict's brother, Georg Ratzinger, escalated with the first public allegations of abuse of choirboys during some of the 30 years he ran the boys' choir in Regensburg.
Note: If you want to know just how deep this goes, watch the powerfully revealing documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available at this link.
All dogs are to be compulsorily microchipped so that their owners can be more easily traced under a crackdown on dangerous dogs. Under the scheme a microchip the size of a grain of rice is injected under the skin of the dog between its shoulder blades. The chip contains a unique code number, the dog's name, age, breed and health as well as the owner's name, address and phone number. When the chip is "read" by a handheld scanner the code number is revealed and the details can be checked on a national database. The measures will be set out by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, who will point to rising public concern that "status dogs" are being used by some irresponsible owners to intimidate communities or as a weapon by gangs. If the scheme were made compulsory owners would face a fine for failing to microchip their dogs.
Note: Once all dogs are required to be microchipped, what will come next? To be informed of some disturbing plans to microchip all of us, click here. For lots more on microchipping from reliable sources, click here.
Per Segerbäck ... keeps limited human company, because human technology makes him physically ill. How ill? On a walk last summer, he ran into one of his few neighbors, a man who lives in a cottage about 100 yards away. During their chat, the man's cellphone rang, and Segerbäck, 54, was overcome by nausea. Within seconds, he was unconscious. Segerbäck suffers from electro-hypersensitivity (EHS), which means he has severe physical reactions to the electromagnetic radiation produced by common consumer technologies, such as computers, televisions and cellphones. Symptoms range from burning or tingling sensations on the skin to dizziness, nausea, headaches, sleep disturbance and memory loss. In extreme cases like Segerbäck's, breathing problems, heart palpitations and loss of consciousness can result. A cellphone has to be in use -- either making or receiving a call, or searching for a signal, when radiation levels are highest -- for it to have this kind of effect on Segerbäck. Sweden is the only country in the world to recognize EHS as a functional impairment, and Segerbäck's experience has been important in creating policy to address the condition. Swedish EHS sufferers -- about 3 percent of the population, or some 250,000 people, according to government statistics -- are entitled to similar rights and social services as those given to people who are blind or deaf. Today, local governments will pay to have the home of someone diagnosed with EHS electronically "sanitized," if necessary, through the installation of metal shielding.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on health issues, click here.
The Ministry of Defence will destroy all future UFO reports it receives so it does not have to make them public, a previously secret memo reveals. Britain's official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives. The MoD recorded 634 UFO sightings in 2009, the second highest annual total after 1978, when there were 750, according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke. This compares with an average of about 150 reports a year over the past decade. The document includes as an annex a printout from the US Department of Defence website explaining that the American government stopped collecting reports of UFO sightings in December 1969.
Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested [that] the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. "That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now," he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization. Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies. He said having other alternatives to the dollar "would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country." Several countries, including China and Russia, have called for an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the world financial and economic crisis, click here.
Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin. Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers. These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit. “It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house — you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich. As Greece’s financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country’s problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the global financial crisis, click here.
Lending by the banking industry fell by $587 billion, or 7.5 percent, in 2009, the largest annual decline since the 1940s, as the number of troubled financial institutions rose sharply, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [has] reported. The FDIC considered 702 banks to be in some danger of failing as of the end of 2009, more than double the number at the beginning of the year. [FDIC Chairman Sheila C.] Bair said that the vast majority of the lending decline was the result of cutbacks by the nation's largest banks, which have tightened qualification standards for borrowers and increased the proportion of money that they hold in reserve against unexpected losses. The decline in lending is a looming issue as the economy begins to recover. But for the recovery to continue, for businesses to expand and employment to grow, lending must begin to expand, too. The decline also has become a major political issue amid broad public anger that the federal rescue of the banking industry has restored profitability but not the flow of loans. The FDIC [said] that the nation's 8,012 banks posted an aggregate profit of $12.5 billion in 2009. The largest banks accounted for most of those profits as a growing number of smaller banks have struggled to survive losses on commercial real estate loans.
Note: Wasn't the main purpose of the huge stimulus packages given to banks to increase lending? Where did those trillions go? For a treasure trove of revealing reports from major media sources on the realities of the banking bailouts that were supposedly intended to increase lending, click here.
Flying Toblerones, mysterious illnesses and silky-white substances are among hundreds of close encounters described in previously top-secret files released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). More than 6,000 pages of material spanning from 1994 to 2000 holds hundreds of other-worldly experiences with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and apparent aliens across Britain. Aircraft of all shapes and sizes have been witnessed flying over a wide range of locations. One man told police he was physically sick and developed a ''skin condition'' after an eerie ''tube of light'' enveloped his car in Ebbw Vale, in Wales, at 10.40pm on January 27 1997. Other highlights include: -- A man arrived at his Birmingham home at 4am on March 20, 1997, to discover an illuminated blue triangle hovering over his garden. The craft shot off leaving behind a ''silky-white'' substance on the tree-tops, which he collected in a jam-jar. -- A UFO sighted by Boston and Skegness police, in Lincolnshire, was captured on film. The police reported the sighting to the coastguard, who in turn alerted ships in North Sea - where a crew saw more UFOs. -- A letter from senior MoD official Ralph Noyes in which he describes seeing a film of UFOs captured by RAF fighter pilots in 1956. Mr Noyes claims the footage was shown at a secret underground screening arranged for Air Defence staff at the MoD Main Building in 1970.
Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here. And for an excellent database compiled by a British police officer of intriguing UFO sightings reported by police, click here.
Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, once selected to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced ... to four years in prison for tax evasion and lying to White House officials. Kerik, 54, who as head of the city's police worked closely with former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks, pleaded guilty to the federal charges in November. A former police detective, and once Giuliani's driver, Kerik headed the New York City jail system before taking charge of the police department in 2000. His career began to unravel during background checks when President George W. Bush nominated him in 2004 to become Secretary of Homeland Security. Kerik withdrew, but his legal troubles later embarrassed Giuliani in his unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Along with pleading guilty to lying and evading taxes, Kerik admitted receiving apartment renovations from a construction firm suspected of organized crime ties and helping the company win city contracts. The four-year sentence imposed ... exceeded the sentencing guidelines of less than three years, as laid out in Kerik's plea deal, but fell far short of the maximum possible term of 61 years.
Note: The NY City chief of police at the time of 9/11 is now in jail. The former head of the NASDAQ stock exchange, Bernie Madoff, is now in jail. Do you think there is corruption at the highest levels of government? How many more have engaged in gross corruption and gotten away with it? To see how deep it goes, click here.
More than 1,000 people in New Jersey and New York, many of them adolescent Orthodox Jews, have been sickened with mumps since August, health authorities said Monday. Almost all of those infected with the virus are of the Orthodox or Hasidic Jewish population, and their average age is 14. The mumps outbreak began at a summer camp for Orthodox Jewish boys in Sullivan County, New York, according to the CDC. Health officials have linked the outbreak to an 11-year-old boy at the camp. He had recently returned from the United Kingdom, where a mumps outbreak had spread to 4,000 people. Rabbi Yehunda Pirutinsky was surprised when his 14-year-old son was diagnosed with mumps a week ago. "He was completely vaccinated," Pirutinsky said. "So it was a surprise to us he came down with mumps." Of the New Jersey cases, 77 percent were vaccinated, Terjesen said. But the vaccine is not 100 percent effective, according to the CDC. At two doses, the vaccine is 76 to 95 percent effective, the CDC says on its Web site.
Note: 77 percent of the over 1,000 who came down with mumps had been vaccinated against the disease, yet the CDC claims it is 76 to 95 percent effective. Hmmmm... For many reports from reliable sources that highlight serious problems with vaccines, click here.
The world's top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets. Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports. Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies. The arrival of the high-powered gathering coincided with a fresh meltdown on world sharemarkets, sparked by renewed concerns about global growth and sovereign debt. Fears countries including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Dubai could default on debt repayments combined with disappointing US jobs data to spook investors. "This does feel like '08 and '07 all over again whereby we had these sort of little fires pop up and they are supposedly contained but in reality they are not quite contained,'' said H3 Global Advisors chief executive Andrew Kaleel.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the secret deliberations by the highest levels of government and private elites in their attempts to bail out the biggest financial corporations, click here.
The director of national intelligence affirmed rather bluntly today that the U.S. intelligence community has authority to target American citizens for assassination if they present a direct terrorist threat to the United States. "We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community; if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee. "Whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American ... is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved." Blair explained. According to U.S. officials, only a handful of Americans would be eligible for targeting by U.S. intelligence or military operations. The DNI said that Internet and social media sites have become critical to terrorism recruitment efforts. "The homegrown radicalization of people in the United States is a relatively new thing." Blair said U.S. intelligence was rapidly working to counter the emerging problem.
Note: To read a valuable commentary on Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's claimed "war exception" to the Constitution, permitting assassination of American citizens by the US military and intelligence services without judicial review or legal process of any kind, click here. For the views of several legal experts, click here.
The CIA sequence for a Predator strike ends with a missile but begins with a memo. Usually no more than two or three pages long, it bears the name of a suspected terrorist, the latest intelligence on his activities, and a case for why he should be added to a list of people the agency is trying to kill. No U.S. citizen has ever been on the CIA's target list. But that is expected to change as CIA analysts compile a case against a Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico but now resides in Yemen. He is a U.S. citizen and until recently was mainly known as a preacher espousing radical Islamic views. Awlaki's status as a U.S. citizen requires special consideration, according to former officials familiar with the criteria for the CIA's targeted killing program. But while Awlaki has not yet been placed on the CIA list, the officials said it is all but certain that he will be. The CIA has carried out Predator attacks in Yemen since at least 2002, when a drone strike killed six suspected Al Qaeda operatives traveling in a vehicle across desert terrain. The agency knew that one of the operatives was an American, Kamal Derwish, who was among those killed. Derwish was never on the CIA's target list, officials said, and the strike was aimed at a senior Al Qaeda operative.
Note: As the last few sentences of this long report indicate, assassination of their own citizens by US military and intelligence agencies has been going on for years. For many key reports from reliable sources on assassination as state policy, click here.
Drug companies manipulated the World Health Organisation into downgrading its definition of a pandemic so they could cash in on a swine flu outbreak, it is claimed. An inquiry heard yesterday that the WHO allegedly softened its criteria for declaring a H1N1 flu pandemic last spring - just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak. Critics said the decision was driven by pharmaceutical companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007. As a result, millions of people have been vaccinated against a mild illness, and money that could have been used to prevent and treat major killers such as heart disease has been squandered. The claims, which emerged during the first of several Council of Europe hearings into the handling of the swine flu pandemic, were strongly rejected by the WHO. Following the organisation's declaration of a pandemic, the Department of Health warned of 65,000 deaths, set up a special advice line and website, and suspended normal rules so anti-flu drugs could be given without prescription. But with just 250 or so deaths in Britain and 14,000 worldwide, the WHO is being asked to account for its actions.
Note: For lots more on the swine flu "false pandemic" from reliable sources, click here.
The invasion of Iraq had no "legal basis in international law", the senior government lawyer Sir Michael Wood has told the Chilcot inquiry. Sir Michael ... was the most senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office at the time of the invasion. "I considered that the use of force against Iraq in March 2003 was contrary to international law," he said in a written statement. "In my opinion, that use of force had not been authorised by the (United Nations) Security Council, and had no other basis in international law." Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, rejected advice that the war would be unlawful, the inquiry heard. Sir Michael wrote to Mr Straw on January 24, 2003 to express concerns about comments [Straw] made to then-US vice president Dick Cheney. Mr Straw told Mr Cheney that Britain would "prefer" a second resolution but it would be "OK" if they tried and failed to get one "a la Kosovo". Sir Michael commented that this was "completely wrong from a legal point of view". Sir Michael said this was "probably the first and only occasion" that a minister rejected his legal advice in this way.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the real reasons behind the invasion of Iraq, click here.
AE911Truth will hold a press conference on Friday, February 19, at 11:00 AM at the Marines Memorial Club and Hotel in San Francisco. We will announce and honor the milestone of our achievement of obtaining 1,000 architects and engineers petitioning for a real investigation into the destruction of the 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers. The press conference will include a large-screen scrolling display of all 1,000 A/E's; statements by Richard Gage, AIA, founder of AE911Truth and several petition signers; and a short ten-minute presentation of "9/11: Blueprint for Truth" – the explosive evidence for the engineered destruction of the 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers. A press kit including the AE911Truth DVD will be made available to all attendees. We will also be inviting various leaders in the 9/11 Truth movement to this milestone event. We are working with We Are Change and other 9/11 Truth organizations to deliver hardcopy petition evidence press kits to every member of Congress. Join us on February 19 in San Francisco to honor this remarkable achievement and meet some of those who have made AE911Truth one of the most respected voices in the 9/11 Truth movement.
Note: For a powerful 10-minute video clip by the founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, click here. WantToKnow team member, Dr. David Ray Griffin, and Dr. Steven Jones will deliver keynote speeches at the press conference luncheon at noon.
With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding. Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy. As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned.
Note: The crux of the argument used by the Supreme Court is that under US law, corporations are treated as persons and therefore given Constitutional rights meant for people. Should we then give them the right to vote? For many key articles from reliable sources on serious flaws in the electoral process in the US, click here.
A clinical psychologist, [Mary Jo] Rapini had long worked with terminal cancer patients. When they told her of their near-death experiences, she would often chalk their stories up as a reaction to their pain medication. But in April 2003, she faced her own mortality. She suffered an aneurysm while working out [in] a gym and was rushed to the hospital. She was in an intensive care unit for three days when she took a turn for the worse. “All of a sudden [doctors] were rushing around me and inserting things into me, and they called my husband,” she [said]. “I looked up and I saw this light; it wasn’t a normal light, it was different. It was luminescent. And it grew. I kept looking at it like, ‘What is that?’ Then it grew large and I went into it. I went into this tunnel, and I came into this room that was just beautiful. God held me, he called me by name, and he told me, ‘Mary Jo, you can’t stay.’ And he said, ‘Let me ask you one thing — have you ever loved another the way you’ve been loved here?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s impossible. I’m a human.’ And then he just held me and said, ‘You can do better.’ ” While Rapini’s account may seem far-fetched, [Dr. Jeffrey] Long [in his book Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences] says her recollections mirror nearly all stories of near-death experiences.
Note: For a powerfully inspiring online lesson focused on near-death experiences, click here. For intriguing investigations into the nature of reality from reliable sources, click here.
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.