News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any country in the world [yet] consistently ranks near the bottom of high-income nations for life expectancy, chronic disease burden and preventable deaths. While many drugs are lifesaving and essential, prescription medications are now recognized as the third leading cause of death in industrialized countries, behind only heart disease and cancer. Research consistently shows that up to 80% of chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers, could be prevented or significantly reduced through natural health approaches such as nutrition, lifestyle change, supplements and other preventive interventions. If this is the case, why are these approaches not more central to chronic disease prevention and care? Health outcomes ... are shaped by who writes the rules, who controls the market and by whom health information is controlled. Natural health is constrained at the level of evidence, where money determines what qualifies as "science." In 1991, about 80% of industry-funded clinical trials were conducted in academic medical centers; by 2004, that figure had fallen to 26%, replaced by for-profit research organisations contracted by drug companies. This shift has untold impact: Study designs, publications, regulations and medical education reflect pharmaceutical interests, leaving natural therapies – without comparable capital – unable to produce the forms of evidence regulators, insurers and clinicians are structurally conditioned to demand. Following the Myriad case, naturally occurring substances are largely excluded from patent protection, leaving high research costs with little legal protection. Without intellectual property protection, investors see little upside, research dries up and innovation slows. Combined with regulatory capture and heavy pharmaceutical lobbying, control of money and markets systematically prioritises pharmaceutical over natural health and substances long before consumers are offered a real choice.
Note: Watch an educational presentation by WantToKnow.info director Amber Yang on the deepest challenges facing our media and public health systems today, including real world solutions that move beyond disease-care. For more along these lines, check out our Substack, Inspiring Remedies to the Chronic Illness Crisis.
The pandemic's most contentious question: Did SARS-CoV-2 emerge through natural spillover from animals to humans, or through a laboratory incident tied to research intended to anticipate the next outbreak? A flashpoint in that debate has been DEFUSE – a 2018 grant proposal submitted to DARPA, the Defense Department's advanced research agency. DEFUSE outlined plans to test spike-protein swaps and cleavage-site insertions in bat coronaviruses. Newly obtained NIH records suggest that the experimental concepts later spotlighted in DEFUSE – tuning bat coronavirus infectivity through spike swaps, receptor-binding changes, and cleavage-site insertions– were already embedded in multiple U.S.-funded coronavirus research projects years before the pandemic. NIH ... reviewers saw potential risk. In an internal "biohazard comment," a grants manager warned that recombinant coronaviruses engineered to enhance spike cleavage or strengthen ACE2 binding "may have novel and unexpected virulence phenotypes" – or, new and unpredictable traits that could make the virus more dangerous. NIH reviewed – and frequently approved – experiments designed to alter receptor-binding domains, swap spike proteins between viruses, or modify cleavage sites that influence how coronaviruses infect cells. American and Chinese researchers shared sequences, experimental ideas and preliminary findings in real time.
Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption.
New York City's public hospital system is paying millions to Palantir, the controversial ICE and military contractor. Since 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has paid Palantir nearly $4 million to improve its ability to track down payment for the services provided at its hospitals and medical clinics. Palantir, a data analysis firm that's now a Wall Street giant thanks to its lucrative work with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, deploys its software to make more efficient the billing of Medicaid and other public benefits. That includes automated scanning of patient health notes to "increase charges captured from missed opportunities," contract materials reviewed by The Intercept show. It's Palantir's work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is drawing the most protest today. The company provides a variety of services to help the federal government find and deport immigrants. ICE's Palantir-furnished case management software, for example, "plays a critical role in supporting the daily operations of ICE, ensuring critical mission success," according to federal contracting documents. Palantir's contract with New York's public health care system allows the company to work with patients' protected health information, or PHI. With permission from New York City Health and Hospitals, Palantir can "de-identify PHI and utilize de-identified PHI for purposes other than research," the contract states.
Note: Listen to an audio clip of Jeffrey Epstein promoting Palantir to Ehud Barak. Read how Palantir helped the NSA spy on the entire planet. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
A federal statement announcing Jeffrey Epstein's death has surfaced in newly released Justice Department files but it carries a date that appears to precede the moment he was officially found dead inside his New York prison cell. The document, issued by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and dated Friday, August 9, 2019, states that Epstein had already been found unresponsive and pronounced dead. But prison records and official accounts show Epstein was not discovered unresponsive until the morning of August 10, 2019. According to official accounts, Epstein was discovered unresponsive in his cell shortly after 6.30am on August 10 by a corrections officer. Medical personnel attempted to revive him, but he was pronounced dead soon afterward. Epstein's death came amid a cascade of failures inside one of the federal government's most secure detention facilities. Prison records show that guards assigned to monitor Epstein did not conduct required checks during the overnight hours before his body was discovered. Scheduled rounds at 3am and 5am were missed, according to official findings. Furthermore, cameras positioned outside Epstein's cell were not functioning properly that night. Investigators later confirmed that at least two surveillance cameras had malfunctioned, leaving critical gaps in visual monitoring. Because of those failures, officials were unable to establish a definitive timeline of Epstein's final moments.
Note: Mark Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein's brother, believes that his death involved an official cover-up. An email thread between high-level federal investigators discusses what appears to be an unnamed individual attempting to extort Mark Epstein. The sender claims: "with the coordination of the director of prison regulations, the cameras were tampered with and some the videos of the prison cameras were cut. At that time, prison guards [redacted] were paid $6,500 so that they would not visit prisoners at this time. Within 15 minutes, a man named [redacted] entered your brother's prison cell and strangled him." For more, internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures.
A scientist who has consulted for the Pentagon on UFO programmes claims he has already shared some of the most explosive truths about recovered extraterrestrial technology with Congress. Dr. Eric Davis, an astrophysicist, has stated that he briefed multiple congressional committees ... revealing details about UFO crash retrievals, hardware reverse-engineering and Non-Human Intelligence programmes. The briefings were conducted under conditions so controlled that the public remains largely unaware of the scope of what was disclosed. He said he briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee staff in a Pentagon SCIF in October 2019, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ... the same month, and a defence company's secure access facility in June 2021. Most recently, Davis appeared before Representative Marcos Luna's committee in a House SCIF in May. In each case, the briefings involved detailed accounts of legacy UFO crash retrieval programmes, recovery of off-world vehicles, and reverse-engineering efforts aimed at understanding technology not made on this Earth. The briefings underscore that the US government has long considered UFO phenomena not just as a scientific curiosity, but as a matter of national security. The existence of crash retrieval programmes and Non-Human Intelligence research indicates a multi-decade effort to catalogue, study and potentially utilise technology far beyond known human capability.
Note: Dr. Eric Davis has collaborated extensively with physicist Hal Puthoff, who directed the CIA's psychic research program. In our new 23-minute video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity, civil rights advocate and leading attorney for the UFO disclosure movement Daniel Sheehan and WantToKnow.info Director Amber Yang explore how this topic will open the door to technologies and ideas that could transform how we address humanity's greatest challenges. For more, explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
For the past decade, every year, Parisians like [Anne-ValĂ©rie] Desprez have been able to see their proposals come to life on the streets of the French capital. Under the city's Participatory Budget, any resident above the age of seven, regardless of their nationality, can propose a project to be paid for by municipal funds. The model, increasingly popular across the globe, is helping authorities spend resources efficiently and boost democratic participation. In Paris, more than 21,000 ideas have been submitted by citizens since the scheme launched in 2014, resulting in 1,345 funded projects and an expenditure of â‚Ź768 million (almost $900 million), including â‚Ź263 million set aside for low-income districts. Each proposal must pass a feasibility study by city hall before being voted on by residents. "It is a very good device and it's important," says Yves Sintomer, a French researcher and co-author of the book Participatory Budgeting in Europe. It's led to the creation of rooftop farms, children's play areas, community art murals, shade structures and baggage storage for the homeless, as well as a number of projects at the [Cherry Sociocultural Center], which was founded in 1999. In 2017, following the center's first successful budget proposal, benches were installed in the street out front, providing a place for people to congregate for free. Further funding from the participatory budget enabled the center to buy a cargo bike – shared with other local businesses – for short-distance deliveries in 2019.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and reimagining the economy.
Thousands of surveillance reports compiled by undercover police officers who spied on political campaigners were routinely passed to MI5, documents obtained by the spycops inquiry have revealed. Police sent undercover officers on long-term deployments to infiltrate mainly leftwing protest groups and gather enormous quantities of information about their political and personal activities. It can now be revealed that most of those clandestine reports were sent to MI5, helping the Security Service to build up large files on peaceful protesters who were engaged in democratic protests for an array of causes. MI5 still retains these surveillance reports in its files today. Officers have been criticised for spying on thousands of political organisations such as campaigns against racism and nuclear weapons, the Socialist Workers party, justice campaigns and trade unions. Their reports logged personal information about protesters, including their marriages, sexuality, holiday plans and bank accounts, as well as their plans for political action such as demonstrations. Stamped on the surveillance reports are a tell-tale sign – Box 500, a nickname for MI5 ... which confirms that they were sent to the Security Service by the police spies. Working in tandem, senior police officers running the undercover spies and MI5 met regularly to discuss the political groups they wanted to infiltrate. On several occasions, MI5 warned that particular police spies were in danger of being rumbled by activists.
Note: Read more about the spycops scandal and the dozens of activists tricked into having romantic relationships with undercover police. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.
A French ban on the production and sale of cosmetics and most clothing containing polluting and health-threatening "forever chemicals" goes into force on Thursday. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are human-made chemicals used since the late 1940s to mass produce the non-stick, waterproof and stain-resistant treatments that coat everything from frying pans to umbrellas, carpets and dental floss. Because PFAS take an extremely long time to break down – earning them their "forever" nickname – they have seeped into the soil and groundwater, and from there into the food chain and drinking water. The French law, approved by lawmakers in February, bans the production, import or sale from January 2026 of any product for which an alternative to PFAS already exists. These include cosmetics and ski wax, as well as clothing containing the chemicals, except certain "essential" industrial textiles. It will also make French authorities regularly test drinking water for all kinds of PFAS. A handful of US states, including California, implemented a ban on the intentional use of PFAS in cosmetics beginning in 2025, and several other states are slated to follow in 2026. Denmark has banned the use of PFAS in food packaging since 2020. The European Union has been studying a possible ban on the use of PFAS in consumer products, but has not yet presented or implemented such a regulation.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing the Earth.
Every year millions of people cycle through America's prisons and jails. Many of them never make it home. Using information from a federal government database of more than 21,000 deaths, The Marshall Project is now able to show how people are dying in America's prisons and jails. For incarcerated people under the age of 55, just under half of the deaths we could identify were from largely preventable causes – like suicide or drug overdoses. Older incarcerated people tended to die from natural causes. In more than a third of cases, we simply could not determine a cause of death, because there was not enough information. Our analysis is based on data collected by the Justice Department under the Death In Custody Reporting Act, which Congress passed a quarter-century ago with the intention of creating a record of everyone who dies in law enforcement custody. The data contained information like names, dates and brief descriptions of the circumstances surrounding each person who died in prisons, jails and during the course of arrest between Oct. 1, 2019 and Sept. 30, 2023. The government's data is riddled with errors. Not only did we find hundreds of deaths missing from the dataset, but the majority of the descriptions detailing how each person died didn't meet the government's own minimum quality standards. Almost one-in-10 of the deaths in the dataset were suicides – making it the third most common way people of all ages died.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.
On Thursday, lawmakers in the House approved a "pilot program" in the pending Pentagon budget bill that could eventually open the door to sending billions to big contractors, while providing what critics say would be little benefit to the military. The provision, which appeared in the budget bill after a closed-door session overseen by top lawmakers, would allow contractors to claim reimbursement for the interest they pay on debt they take on to build weapons and other gadgets for the armed services. One big defense contractor alone, Lockheed Martin, reported having more than $17.8 billion in outstanding interest payments last year, said Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the nonprofit Stimson Center. "The fact that we are even exploring this question is a little crazy in terms of financial risk for the government," Gledhill said. Gledhill said even some Capitol Hill staffers were "scandalized" to see the provision in the final bill, which will likely be approved by the Senate. The switch to covering financing costs seems to be in line with a larger push this year to shake up the defense industry. The Pentagon itself was dubious in a 2023 study conducted by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. The Pentagon found that policy change might even supercharge the phenomenon of big defense contractors using taxpayer dollars for stock buybacks instead of research and development.
Note: Read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption.
The idea of a "right to repair" – a requirement that companies facilitate consumers' repairs, maintenance, and modification of products – is extremely popular, even winning broad, bipartisan support in Congress. That could not, however, save it from the military–industrial complex. Lobbyists succeeded in killing part of the National Defense Authorization Act that would have given service members the right to fix their equipment in the field without having to worry about military suppliers' intellectual property. The decision to kill the popular proposal was made public Sunday after a closed-door conference of top congressional officials, including defense committee chairs. For the defense industry ... the proposal threatened a key profit stream. Once companies sell hardware and software to the Pentagon, they can keep making money by forcing the government to hire them for repairs. Defense lobbyists pushed back hard against the proposal when it arose in the military budgeting process. The CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association claimed that the legislation could "cripple the very innovation on which our warfighters rely." The contractors' argument was that inventors would not sell their products to the Pentagon if they knew they had to hand over their trade secrets as well. As a piece of legislation, the right to repair has likely died until next year's defense budget bill process. The notion could be imposed in the form of internal Pentagon policies.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
The city of San Francisco filed the nation's first government lawsuit against some of the largest manufacturers of ultra-processed foods on Tuesday, asserting that the 10 corporations knew the products were harming Americans' health but continued to market them anyway. The corporations include cereal giants Kellogg, Post Holdings and General Mills, candy makers NestlĂ© USA and Mars Incorporated, the soda companies behind Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as well as Kraft Heinz Company, ConAgra Brands and Mondelz International. The suit argues that the health care costs of treating related health conditions tied to consuming ultra-processed foods – upwards of $100 billion a year – have fallen on Americans, cities and states. "These companies created a public health crisis with the engineering and marketing of ultra-processed foods," San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said. "They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body." "We must be clear that this is not about consumers making better choices. Recent surveys show Americans want to avoid ultra-processed foods, but we are inundated by them. These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused," he added. Some 70 percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.
A recent report by UFO-tracking app Enigma reveals that thousands of sightings of Unidentified Submersible Objects (USOs) have been logged near rivers, lakes, and oceans, suggesting that unexplained phenomena are not confined to the skies. Some of these objects reportedly rise from the depths or plunge into the water without leaving a splash, defying conventional physics. The sheer volume and consistency of these reports challenge traditional explanations for UFOs. While aerial sightings have long been treated skeptically, the underwater dimension adds a new layer of complexity. If verified, USOs could represent either highly advanced technology or an entirely unknown phenomenon, raising urgent questions about national security, scientific inquiry, and humanity's understanding of the natural world. Enigma, billed as the "largest queryable historical sighting database for global UFO sightings," has recorded over 30,000 reports since its launch in late 2022. While most detail aerial phenomena, the recent report highlights more than 9,000 USO sightings within 10 miles of U.S. shorelines or major bodies of water. Of these, 500 were reported within five miles of the coast, and over 150 involve objects hovering above or entering the water, sometimes accompanied by strange lights or unexplained movements. Retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet said objects capable of moving seamlessly between air and water could carry "world-changing" ramifications.
Note: Our 26-minute video UFO Disclosure: Breakthrough Technology and Awakening Human Consciousness features our interviews with leading experts along with well-sourced, verifiable information to help you make sense of this fascinating issue and its immense potential to transform our world. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Virginia Giuffre says she feared she might "die a sex slave" at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, her posthumous memoir reveals. The BBC has obtained a full copy of Nobody's Girl, written by the prominent accuser of convicted sex offender Epstein, ahead of its publication ... almost six months after she took her own life. In the memoir, Ms Giuffre also says she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. At the centre of the abuse was Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges. She says Epstein subjected her to sadomasochistic sex which caused her "so much pain that I prayed I would black out". Ms Giuffre says she first met Prince Andrew [at age 17] in March 2001. Ms Giuffre says she had sex for a second time with the prince around a month later at Epstein's townhouse in New York. She says the third occasion was on Epstein's island as part of what Ms Giuffre called "an orgy". "Epstein, Andy, and approximately eight other young girls and I had sex together," she says. "The other girls all appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn't really speak English. "Epstein laughed about how they couldn't really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with." The Metropolitan Police said it was "actively" looking into media reports that Prince Andrew tried to obtain personal information about Ms Giuffre through his police protection officer (PPO).
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Epstein's criminal enterprise.
It was early 2012 when doctors found a tumor in Kim Franzi's brain. Franzi underwent a risky two-day brain surgery to remove the mass, which doctors warned could leave her paralyzed or prove fatal. The operation was successful, but more than 13 years later, she still suffers from side effects, including issues with her reflexes, teeth, hearing, and vision. Before discovering the tumor, Franzi used the birth control shot Depo-Provera for more than 15 years. The shot has been used by roughly one in four sexually active women in the United States, bringing in hundreds of millions in profits annually for the pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, which manufactures and distributes the drug. But according to more than 1,200 lawsuits, Pfizer has failed to properly warn the public about long-established links between Depo-Provera and meningiomas. That includes a lawsuit submitted on Franzi's behalf, plus more than 9,500 cases that have yet to be filed. In 2024, a large study of more than 18,000 cases of women undergoing surgery for meningiomas found that "prolonged use of [Depo-Provera] was found to increase the risk of intracranial meningioma." Specifically, the scientists found that use of Depo-Provera was associated with a more than five-fold heightened risk of developing a meningioma that required surgery, and that risk increased further if patients used Depo-Provera for more than a year. Drug labels for Depo-Provera in the European Union, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada ... warn about these brain tumors.
Note: Read the full article to learn about how Pfizer omitted six studies that found significant links between patients taking the birth control shot and brain tumors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption.
The United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges are terrorists or insurgents. President Donald Trump has taken this tactic to new extremes, boasting about lethal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and declaring the U.S. is in a "non-international armed conflict" with narcotics traffickers. Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. This comes as he's simultaneously ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities. The modern drug war began during President Richard Nixon's administration. In 1994, the journalist Dan Baum tracked down Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and interviewed him. He said, "Look. The Nixon campaign in '68 and the Nixon White House had two enemies: Black people and the antiwar left. [V]ilify them night after night on the evening news, and we thought if we can associate heroin with Black people in the public mind and marijuana with the hippies this would be perfect." And [Ehrlichman] said, "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." This line of thinking drove policies designed to "unleash" law enforcement. The Nixon administration tried to relax wiretapping laws, roll back Miranda rights, and erode Fourth Amendment protections against unconstitutional searches and seizures. And now we're seeing the Trump administration push even harder to roll back constitutional protections.
Note: Though President Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs by declaring drugs "public enemy No. 1," secretly he admitted in a 1973 Oval Office meeting that marijuana was "not particularly dangerous." The War on Drugs is a trillion dollar failure that has been made worse by every presidential administration since Nixon. Don't miss our in-depth investigation into the dark truths behind the War on Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and the War on Drugs.
Each planting season, Claudia Bashian-Victoroff ventures out into Bole Woods. Laced throughout, weaving an intricate, microscopic web, are the mycorrhizal fungi she's after – fungi that have spent 400 million years learning to live in symbiosis with plants, including the trees throughout Bole Woods and at least 80 percent of all species on the planet. Bashian-Victoroff doesn't need much soil. A single spoonful can contain miles of fungal hyphae and filaments, engaged in an ancient evolutionary exchange with the trees to which they've bonded. The fungi gather up water and nutrients, and deliver them to the trees. In return, they receive carbohydrates developed through photosynthesis, which they fix into the soil as they grow. It's a prosperous cycle, and Bashian-Victoroff is among a growing global community of researchers and conservationists taking advantage of this relationship to restore forests and other degraded ecosystems. Their goal: Promote the health of the soil beneath our feet and the plants it supports, sequester carbon and make agriculture more sustainable. Mycorrhizal fungi can be an important part of a broader suite of climate solutions, says Anne Polyakov, a fungal conservation and restoration scientist with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, or SPUN, which recently used machine learning to map the planet's mycorrhizal networks in an effort to promote conservation.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on technology for good and healing the Earth.
Senior officials in the Biden administration, including some White House officials, "conducted repeated and sustained outreach" and "pressed" Google- and YouTube parent-company Alphabet "regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate [Alphabet's] policies," the company revealed yesterday. While Alphabet "continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press [Alphabet] to remove non-violative user-generated content," a lawyer for Alphabet wrote in a September 23 letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. Administration officials including Biden "created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions" of private tech platforms regarding the moderation of misinformation. This is what has come to be known as "jawboning," and the fact that it doesn't involve direct censorship may make it even more insidious. Direct censorship can be challenged in court. This sort of wink-and-nod regulation of speech leaves companies and their users with little recourse. What's more, each time authorities stray from the spirit of the First Amendment, it makes it that much easier for future authorities to do so. And each time Democrats (or Republicans) use government power to try and suppress free speech, it gives them even less standing to say it's wrong when their opponents do that.
Note: Read more about the sprawling federal censorship enterprise that took shape during the Biden administration. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and government corruption.
Pesticides banned years ago in the European Union are drifting through the skies and turning up in clouds above France, raising concerns about how long these toxins persist and how far they can travel, with potentially harmful global health impacts, according to a pathbreaking new study. The research ... is the first to detect dozens of agricultural chemicals–including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other substances–suspended in cloud water droplets. That means pesticides not only linger in the environment but also move through the atmosphere and fall back to Earth in rain or snow, sometimes at levels exceeding European safe drinking water limits. The study found that clouds can carry current-use pesticides, long-banned compounds, and "emerging contaminants"–industrial chemicals that either build up in the environment or form when older pesticides break down. Some even transform into new compounds in the atmosphere itself, beyond what regulators have known to consider. Researchers estimate that French skies alone may contain anywhere from a few tons to more than 100 tons of pesticides at any given time–most carried in from distant sources. Out of 446 possible chemicals screened–including pesticides, biocides (compounds that kill harmful organisms), additives, and transformation products (breakdown products of pesticides)–researchers found 32 different compounds in cloud water.
Note: Across the US, a powerful legislative push is underway to protect pesticide manufacturers from being held accountable for the harms caused by their products. Check out our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate."
Amid escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric ... private prison corporations are once again expanding their grip on U.S. detention policy. In fact, today roughly 90 percent of detained immigrants are held in privately operated facilities, the highest share in history. The industry is instead preparing for explosive growth. On recent earnings calls, CoreCivic executives announced plans to triple the number of beds in their facilities within a few months. That would mean an additional $1.5 billion in revenue for the corporation, more than doubling its annual earnings. Meanwhile, growing scrutiny of immigration detention practices has led to reports of abuse, medical neglect, and deaths in custody. Privatization, with the cost-cutting practices that define it, is the structural driver of human rights violations at these facilities. Private prisons corporations are just one piece of the sprawling prison industry. The U.S. carceral system is comprised of a vast and deeply entrenched network of public-private partnerships that make billions from incarceration and detention. Commissary corporations mark-up basic hygiene items like toothpaste or tampons by 300 percent or more. Private healthcare providers routinely deny or delay treatment, contributing to suffering and preventable deaths behind bars. Private food vendors serve meals that are frequently expired or nutritionally inadequate, all in the name of cutting costs and maximizing returns.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.
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