News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic. We’ve learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday that it is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests, even though the two tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons. This is not merely a technical error. The upshot is that the government’s disease-fighting agency is overstating the country’s ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19. States have set quantitative guidelines for reopening their economies based on these flawed data points. Several states - including Pennsylvania, the site of one of the country’s largest outbreaks, as well as Texas, Georgia, and Vermont - are blending the data in the same way. Virginia likewise mixed viral and antibody test results until last week, but it reversed course and the governor apologized for the practice. These results damage the public’s ability to understand what is happening in any one state. On a national scale, they call the strength of America’s response to the coronavirus into question. The number of tests conducted nationwide each day has more than doubled in the past month. At the same time, the portion of tests coming back positive has plummeted.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Spit into a cup when you land in an airport, and your DNA is stored. Every phone in every city talks to every other nearby device. Cross-border travel is enabled only by governments sharing data about millions of private movements. These are all possible visions of a future that the coronavirus pandemic has rushed on us. But a lurch into an even more intense era of mass data-collection - the vast hoovering up of who went near whom and when, who is healthy to travel, and even scraps of personal DNA languishing in databases - appears to be on the verge of becoming the new reality. It took the attacks of September 11, 2001 to shove aside the previous decade's phobia of mass surveillance ... in exchange for keeping us safe from terror. Over the next 15 years, billions of people agreed to a tacit deal where Facebook or Google were permitted to learn a staggering amount about them. But the challenge presented by Covid-19 - and the urgent need to trace contacts and movements - is of another scale of intimacy. South Korea located over 10,000 cellphones near the latest outbreak and texted them. The UK government has toyed with a centralized database of movements and health records, secured by government cyber-spies, able potentially to see who has been sick and who they have been near. Russia and many others have issued QR codes. China is putting surveillance cameras right outside people's doors. Will we look back at 2020 as the moment privacy finally evaporated?
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
The Bahamian pleasure palace featured a faux Mayan temple, sculptures of smoke-breathing snakes and a disco with a stripper pole. The owner, Peter Nygard, a Canadian fashion executive, showed off his estate on TV shows ... and threw loud beachfront parties, reveling in the company of teenage girls and young women. Next door, Louis Bacon, an American hedge fund billionaire, presided over an airy retreat. Lawyers and investigators funded in part by Mr. Bacon claim that Mr. Nygard raped teenage girls in the Bahamas. This month, a federal lawsuit was filed by separate lawyers in New York on behalf of 10 women accusing Mr. Nygard of sexual assault. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Nygard used his company, Nygard International, and employees to procure young victims and ply them with alcohol and drugs. He also paid Bahamian police officers to quash reports, shared women with local politicians and groomed victims to recruit "fresh meat," the lawsuit says. Over months of interviews with The New York Times, dozens of women and former employees described how alleged victims were lured to Mr. Nygard's Bahamian home by the prospect of modeling jobs or a taste of luxury. "He preys on poor people's little girls," said Natasha Taylor, who worked there for five years. Mr. Nygard ... had employees sign confidentiality agreements and sued those he suspected of talking. Multiple women said he had handed them cash after sex, helping to buy silence.
Note: Read an excellent, well researched essay on this disturbing case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
A 5-year-old student at an elementary school in Vista, California, collected enough money to pay off the negative lunch balances of 123 students at her school. Katelynn Hardee, a kindergartner at Breeze Hill Elementary School, overheard a parent say she was having difficulty paying for an after school program. So Katelynn decided to set up a stand on December 8, spending her Sunday selling hot cocoa, cider, and cookies. Katelynn and her mom donated the $80 collected, which went towards paying off the negative lunch balances of over 100 students at her elementary school. By doing this, the youngster hopes that other students "can have a snack and lunch. If they don't, their tummies grumble," Katelynn said. Katelynn's next goal is to raise enough money to pay off not only all the negative lunch balances at Breeze Hill, but the "thousands of negative accounts" at schools in the Vista Unified School District, Hardee said. To help in her new mission, which she calls #KikisKindnessProject, other students and staff at Breeze Hill will host a hot cocoa and baked goods stand on Saturday to raise more money to pay off negative school lunch accounts at the school. After all the accounts in the entire district have been paid off, Katelynn will then use the money raised to help support school programs which will be removed due to budget cuts. "It's all about kindness. With everything that's going on in the world, we just need a little bit more kindness out there," Hardee said.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Early support from deep-pocketed financial executives could give Democrats seeking to break out of the pack an important fundraising boost. But any association with bankers also opens presidential hopefuls to sharp attacks from an ascendant left. And it’s left senior executives on Wall Street flailing over what to do. “I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat and get Trump out of the White House,” said the CEO of one of the nation’s largest banks, who, like a dozen other executives interviewed for this story, declined to be identified. After mentioning Bloomberg, Wall Street executives who want Trump out list a consistent roster of appealing nominees that includes former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California. Bankers’ biggest fear: The nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Sanders. “It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,” said the CEO of another giant bank. “It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.” Clearly, they're not afraid that Senator Professor Warren or Bernie Sanders "can't win," but, rather, they're struck into incoherence that one of them can. Somewhere in the gated community holding their souls, they know that there still is a considerable reckoning out there for what they did throughout the Aughts, and that scares them to death. And now, there are popular vehicles through which that reckoning can be wrought. The universe may be shopping for new masters.
Note: Trump promised to drain the swamp of corrupt bankers, only to then appoint many of them to key positions in his administration. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
A second alleged trafficking victim of Jeffrey Epstein says the billionaire pedophile "directed" her to have sex with Alan Dershowitz — a claim the prominent attorney adamantly denies. The revelation regarding Sarah Ransome ... alleges in her suit that even as Epstein used an army of powerful attorneys — including Dershowitz — to fight a sex trafficking investigation in Florida, he continued "transporting young females" in New York. Virginia Roberts was the first alleged Epstein victim to claim that he directed her to have sex with Dershowitz. Dershowitz insists he also has never met Roberts, who now lives in Australia. Roberts alleged that [Ghislaine Maxwell] recruited her for Epstein in 1998, when she was 15 years old and working a summer job at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. Roberts sued Maxwell for defamation, claiming the media heiress smeared her by denying the disturbing sex scheme. They settled the case last year. Epstein, a hedge fund manager with a mansion on the Upper East Side and a private Caribbean island, was once friends with the likes of Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Woody Allen, among other celebs and business titans. "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side," Trump said of Epstein in 2002. The new scrutiny of the Epstein case prompted Dershowitz to tell Axios that the billionaire had once let him and his family stay at his Palm Beach home.
Note: Read a great interview with Julie Brown, the intrepid reporter who broke the Epstein case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources. Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US.
We all now know the name of Arab journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but very few of us know the name of Arab journalist Tareq Ayoub. An elected president of the United States has been blamed for killing Ayoub. We rightly demand justice in the case of Khashoggi, so why not in the case of Ayoub? On the morning of April 8, 2003, less than three weeks after U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq, Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayoub was on the rooftop of his network’s Baghdad bureau ... reporting live. An American A-10 Warthog attack jet appeared. “The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof,” Maher Abdullah, the network’s Baghdad correspondent, later recalled. “We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit.” Ayoub was killed. Fifteen minutes later, a second American warplane launched a second missile at the building. But the U.S. government, like the Saudi government in recent weeks, tried to duck responsibility. It was just a “grave mistake,” according to a State Department spokesperson. “This coalition does not target journalists,” a U.S. general told reporters. Al Jazeera’s managing director, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, had written a letter to the Pentagon less than two months earlier ... providing U.S. officials with the exact address and coordinates of the Baghdad bureau. The U.S. military had bombed Al Jazeera’s Kabul office in November 2001, and the network’s bosses wanted to prevent a repeat of such an incident.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
Former patients of a retired Indianapolis fertility doctor expressed anger that he avoided jail time Thursday for lying about using his own sperm to impregnate as many as dozens of women after telling them the donors were anonymous. Dr. Donald Cline was given a one-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice. No other charges were filed ... because Indiana law doesn't specifically prohibit fertility doctors from using their own sperm. The charges stemmed from two confirmed cases of paternity. Matt White and his mother, Liz White, said Cline deserved far greater punishment. He said DNA tests showed that Cline was his biological father even though Cline told his mother decades ago that he used anonymous sperm donations. "There's dozens of us," said Matt White. Some of the now-adult children of Cline's former patients filed a complaint with the Indiana Attorney General's Office in 2014, after they became suspicious while scouring online records to find biological relatives. Paternity tests performed the Marion County prosecutor's office determined Cline was likely the biological father of at least two of his patients' children. Cline, who retired in 2009, initially denied the allegations when he wrote to investigators, saying the women who filed the complaints were trying to slander him. On Thursday, he acknowledged that he had lied. Matt White said private DNA tests have identified 23 people as Cline's biological children with mothers who were his patients.
Note: See a list of powerful articles revealing egregious and rampant sexual abuse by doctors around the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals and health.
The last weekend of June every year for 37 years has been given over to the running of the Western States 100 Mile Trail Run, the premier endurance running race in the world. It starts [in] Squaw Valley and ends ... in Auburn, California, 100 miles distant with a cumulative altitude gain of 15,000 feet and a 22,000 foot descent. The lead runners take about 16 hours to finish. In comparison running a marathon is trivial. Thirty seven years ago my wife Ruth Anne and I created prizes for the oldest male and female finishers as a celebration of the human potential. 3500 masochists apply, 350 gain a lottery start, 280 finish, the ultimate goal is to finish under 24 hours which is rewarded by a silver buckle, the second prize is finishing under 30 hours and a bronze buckle. Last year, 2015, was Ruth Anne’s last hurrah. Her Alzheimer’s disease was brutal, she scarcely knew what was going. She died three weeks later, but she was there to join in the ecstasy as Gunhild Swanson became the first woman over 70 years of age to win a buckle. This year the joint was jumping as 72-year-old Wally Hesseltine hoped to be the oldest ever finisher. He made the finish in thirty hours and one minute. I presented our awards to the oldest female and male as usual. But I gave an extra shout out to Bruce Labelle, 60 years of age who finished nobly just as he had 35 years before. Any youngster can do the 100 mile race and keep it up once or twice, but for a 60-year-old to keep it up for 35 years should be celebrated and emulated.
Note: Watch a 12-minute video of 72-year-old Wally Hesseltine's attempt to complete 100 miles in 30 hours. Wow!!!
Half buried in the sand, the vast structure looks like a downed UFO. At the summit, figures carved into the weathered concrete state only the year of construction: 1979. Officially, this vast structure is known as the Runit Dome. Locals call it The Tomb. Below the 18-inch concrete cap rests the United States’ cold war legacy to this remote corner of the Pacific Ocean: 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris left behind after 12 years of nuclear tests. Sections of concrete have started to crack away. Underground, radioactive waste has already started to leach out of the crater: according to a 2013 report by the US Department of Energy, soil around the dome is already more contaminated than its contents. The US has never formally apologized to the Marshall Islands for turning it into an atomic testing ground. When the UN special rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste, Calin Georgescu, visited the Marshall Islands in 2012 he criticized the US, remarking that the islanders feel like ‘nomads’ in their own country. Nuclear testing, he said, “left a legacy of distrust in the hearts and minds of the Marshallese”. “Why Enewetak?” asked Ading, Enewetak’s exiled senator during an interview in the nation’s capital. “Every day, I have that same question. Why not go to some other atoll in the world? Or why not do it in Nevada, their backyard? I know why. Because they don’t want the burden of having nuclear waste in their backyard. They want the nuclear waste ... thousands miles away. That’s why they picked the Marshall Islands.”
Note: Reports of the effects of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were systematically suppressed while this nuclear testing occurred. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling. The memory transmission extended out another generation when these male mice bred. Neuroscientists at Emory University found that genetic markers, thought to be wiped clean before birth, were used to transmit a single traumatic experience across generations, leaving behind traces in the behavior and anatomy of future pups. The study, published ... in the journal Nature Neuroscience, adds to a growing pile of evidence suggesting that characteristics outside of the strict genetic code may also be acquired from our parents through epigenetic inheritance. Epigenetics studies how molecules act as DNA markers that influence how the genome is read. We pick up these epigenetic markers during our lives and in various locations on our body as we develop and interact with our environment. The researchers also artificially inseminated females using the sperm from the original fear-conditioned mice. The results were the same, suggesting epigenetic inheritance rather than environment.
Note: The emerging field of epigenetics implies that lifestyle and environment influence the expression of DNA. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
The indictment Tuesday of a top adviser to former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci on charges of conspiring against the United States casts a spotlight on years of efforts to subvert public records laws and conceal key COVID-era communications from the public. The adviser, David Morens ... is accused by federal prosecutors of using private email accounts to conduct government business, deleting records and coordinating with others to conceal communications related to COVID origins, high-risk coronavirus research and grant funding. According to the indictment, Morens and others agreed in writing to "intentionally hide" their communications from public records requests. Morens ... discussed strategies to "make emails disappear" to evade FOIA searches and avoided creating written records altogether – actions that Morens later admitted and apologized for during congressional testimony. Other records show Morens in ongoing contact with [Peter] Daszak and a small circle of allies after the pandemic's onset. Their communications include strategizing about how to restore EcoHealth Alliance's standing with federal funders, counter scrutiny from Congress and the media, and shape public narratives around the origins of COVID-19. While [Anthony] Fauci is not a direct participant in the communications cited in the indictment, the document refers to a "Senior NIAID Official 1" whose description corresponds with the former director.
Note: Watch our 15-minute video on the cover-up of COVID origins. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and the COVID cover-up.
On Thursday, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was involved in the raid to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela was arrested on charges that he used classified information to make more than $400,000 by betting on the operation before it happened. In the hours before the U.S. attacked Iran, hundreds of anonymous bets over $1,000 were placed on the U.S. striking Iran by the next day, which the New York Times said suggested that some users might've "seen the strike coming." Prediction markets, such as industry leaders Polymarket and Kalshi, have exploded in popularity. They create or exacerbate an array of problems, but at the Media and Democracy Project, or MAD, we believe they have the potential to severely harm the way news is reported, perceived, and engaged with. Suppose that prediction markets achieve their claims of providing better forecasts than other methods. Casino journalism [would still be] bad for journalism and the public. Most of the "propositions" offered on these markets are based on news reports; reporters provide the raw material on which these bets are made. In effect, traders on prediction markets are betting on the content of news stories. An Israeli journalist recently received death threats over his refusal to rewrite his report on an Iranian missile strike, on which $23 million of prediction market "investments" were riding. As the markets become larger, and their use in news increases, the incentive for market manipulation will also grow.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and Big Tech.
Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time. The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks's landmark 1979 book, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate." Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive "advanced" interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of "controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation." The declassified documents, which the National Security Archive released between December 2024 and April 2025, are available through a special collection titled "CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MK-ULTRA." [A] memo includes detailed plans for interrogation teams trained to utilize the polygraph, various drugs, and hypnotism "for personality control purposes." In a later memo from February 2, 1951, there are inquiries into acquiring six "hypospray" devices: experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via "jet injection."
Note: Read a timeline of known incidents of human experimentation. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
Your neighbors' Ring cameras film your walk to the car. Your car's sensors, cameras and microphones record your speed, how you drive, where you're going, who's with you, what you say, and biological metrics such as facial expression, weight and heart rate. Your car may also collect text messages and contacts from your connected smartphone. Meanwhile, your phone continuously senses and records your communications, info about your health, what apps you're using, and tracks your location. As you enter [a] store, its surveillance cameras identify your face and track your movements through the aisles. If you then use Apple or Google Pay to make your purchase, your phone tracks what you bought and how much you paid. All this data quickly becomes commercially available, bought and sold by data brokers. Aggregated and analyzed by artificial intelligence, the data reveals detailed, sensitive information about you that can be used to predict and manipulate your behavior, including what you buy, feel, think and do. Companies unilaterally collect data from most of your activities. This "surveillance capitalism" is often unrelated to the services device manufacturers, apps and stores are providing you. The U.S. government ... now purchases massive quantities of your information from commercial data brokers. Disclosure of documents allegedly hacked from Homeland Security reveal a massive surveillance web that has all Americans in its scope.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy.
[Veteran journalist Katrina Manson's] new book, "Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare," is an ... account of the ongoing reconfiguration of the U.S. armed forces for a new technological era. "Project Maven" is structured as an intellectual and professional biography of Drew Cukor, a Marine Corps intelligence officer largely responsible for ... this military transformation. Cukor insists that Maven was never supposed to be a weapon. He frequently defends the project as nothing more than an integrated data platform ... for a world made better and safer by A.I. warfare. In 2018, Google employees staged a massive walkout to protest the company's work on a primitive iteration of the project. In the aftermath of the Google fiasco, Cukor turns to Palantir (in addition to Microsoft and Amazon) to make Maven a reality. NATO now has its own Maven contract with Palantir, and that prompted ten member nations to pursue one, too. The Maven Smart System has become a global surveillance apparatus–it can keep track of forty-nine thousand airfields all over the world–but its current work is hardly limited to intelligence provision and analysis. A "single click," [journalist Katrina] Manson reports, "could send coordinates through a tactical data link to a specific weapons platform so that it could fire at the target." The entire process, from target identification to target destruction, is four clicks. Officials told Manson that Maven was "accelerating operations and â€enabling lethality' at combat headquarters around the world." Maven is only one part of the A.I. tool kit. Manson uncovers evidence of two clandestine killer-robot programs, one aerial and the other aquatic, which are being developed in haste. For the first time, the Pentagon's proposed budget contained a line item for comprehensively self-directing systems. A machine can shoot, Manson reports, up to "ten times faster than an assassin."
Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.
The human brain remains deeply mysterious. Scientists have mapped its synapses and neurons in extraordinary detail, yet ... the felt experience of being you still defies efforts at a full explanation. However, researchers do have one fascinating window into that inner world: near-death experiences, or NDEs. As the name suggests, near-death experiences are altered states of consciousness reported by upwards of one-fifth of people who experience a life-threatening medical emergency. Some common traits of NDEs have emerged over nearly 50 years of research: intense emotions of peace and joy, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), encounters with dead relatives, altered perceptions of time, and elevated lucidity, among others. These accounts from people who've nearly died appear to contradict what scientists expect to occur in the brain as its regions begin to shut down one by one. In a new qualitative study published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, [researcher Nicole] Lindsay and her colleagues reveal details of how individuals' dreams changed drastically following an NDE. A participant named Basil said he could confidently recall one dream every week or two, but after his near-death experience, that recall became a nightly occurrence. Others reported that dreams become intensely vivid after an NDE and that the separation between dreaming and waking was much more ambiguous than it was before.
Note: For more inspiring and credible material on this topic, read our Substack investigations: How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World and Insights from Near-Death Experiences Remind Us of Who We Are and What Unites Us. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.
Beneath the surface of the Strait of Hormuz and the surrounding Gulf lies a biological sanctuary. The region is home to around 7,000 dugongs and fewer than 100 Arabian humpback whales–a nonmigratory population that cannot leave these waters. Naval mines, residual military activity, and congested shipping lanes mean the strait remains a high-risk environment–not just for vessels but also for the ecosystems beneath them. Underwater explosions and military sonar don't just scare whales, they can physically blind them, leading to stranding and death. The Arabian humpback whale, unlike its cousins in the Atlantic, does not migrate. For them, the Gulf is not a corridor but home, a permanent habitat. Olivier Adam, a researcher at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, says that the Gulf's resident cetaceans–better known as marine mammals–have limited options: Either abandon their habitat or remain and endure prolonged exposure to noise. In the case of Arabian humpback whales, relocation is not realistic, as they are one of the only populations that do not migrate between feeding and breeding areas. "These baleen whales have no way to escape," he says. Whales rely on sound for nearly every essential function: feeding, navigation, reproduction, and social interaction. When that acoustic environment is disrupted, the effects are immediate. In shallow coastal zones, where biodiversity is concentrated, even small disruptions can cascade through the ecosystem.
Note: Read more about the decimation of populations of whales and dolphins over the last decade resulting from the year-round, full-spectrum military practices carried out in the oceans. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and marine mammals.
One of the most intriguing secrets of Operation Epic Fury is how, using an "exquisite" piece of classified technology, the CIA succeeded in finding the injured airman in Iran by detecting his heartbeat, the tiniest evidence of human life concealed in a narrow crevice up a 7,000ft mountain ridge. The technology that led to the airman's rescue by Seal Team Six commandos has been outed as a CIA "tool" called Ghost Murmur. It was reportedly developed as a highly classified "blue skies" invention by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, the famous laboratory where young, brilliant scientists and engineers devote their time to finding solutions to impossible concepts. John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, hinted at the new technology in a press conference this week. "We deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possess to a daunting challenge, comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert," Ratcliffe said. On the face of it, a futuristic magnetic sensing device ... pinpointed the missing colonel's heartbeat across a 40-mile stretch of land. Ghost Murmur, as described, would appear to push the boundaries of physics beyond even the most exceptional human brain or computer. Intelligence sources would not confirm or deny the existence of Ghost Murmur. But reportedly the "CIA tool" relies on what is called quantum magnetometry, which can find signals of human hearts, aided by artificial intelligence to separate out all the other noises getting in the way.
Note: While it's unclear whether the Ghost Murmur tool was actually responsible for rescuing the injured soldier, this technology is not out of the realm of possibility. Since the 1960s, the CIA had already developed poison weapons capable of causing heart attacks remotely. Learn more about real-life exotic weapon technologies used by militaries around the world. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and intelligence agency corruption.
With all of his appeals exhausted, Charles "Sonny" Burton had already chosen the last meal he would have before being put to death by nitrogen gas at Alabama's Holman correctional facility. His fate was in the hands of Kay Ivey, Alabama's governor and a staunch supporter of capital punishment who has presided over more than 25 executions – more than any other Alabama governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. But on the morning of 10 March, just two days before Sonny was to be put to death, Ivey commuted his sentence to life without parole. No new court ruling or legal evidence had come out, but the governor was forced to respond to an unusually diverse coalition [that] made the case that executing a 75-year-old man who didn't pull the trigger – while the man who did died in prison with a life sentence – was simply wrong. Burton had been on death row since 1992 for the killing of Doug Battle during a robbery at a Talladega AutoZone. Derrick DeBruce, the man who fired the weapon, had his sentence reduced to life without parole in 2014 after winning a federal appeal. That meant that of the six people who took part in the robbery, Burton alone was facing execution. Schulz's clemency petition cited precedents from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas – states where Republican governors who supported the death penalty had refused to execute inmates who played a lesser role in a killing than a co-defendant who got a lighter sentence.
Note: More than half of all wrongful criminal convictions are caused by government misconduct. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on judicial system corruption and repairing criminal justice.
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