News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
A remote and unique indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon called the Tsimane (pronounced chee-MAH-nay) sparked the interest of scientists when they were found to show almost no cases of age-related heart disease. Since then, scientists have carried out various studies into the Tsimane community due to their exceptional health even in old age. In 2017, researchers from The Tsimane Health and Life History Project were astonished to find that the elderly Tsimane experienced unusually low levels of vascular aging, and a study in The Lancet reported that the average 80-year-old Tsimane adult demonstrated the same vascular age as a 55-year-old American. Researchers are now looking into the brain health of the Tsimane community, in particular the prevalence of dementia. Only five cases of dementia were detected, which equates to about one percent of the population studied–significantly below the 11 percent of the equivalent American population known to be living with dementia. Researchers also studied 169 individuals hailing from the Moseten community, a community genetically and linguistically similar to the Tsimane. The Moseten also showed very low levels of dementia, even though they lived in closer proximity to modern Bolivian society. "Something about the pre-industrial subsistence lifestyle appears to protect older Tsimane and Moseten from dementia," says Margaret Gatz, lead author of the study.
Note: The profoundly inspiring documentary "Alive Inside" presents the astonishing experiences of elderly individuals with severe dementia who are revitalized through the simple experience of listening to music that meant something to them in their earlier years. Featuring experts including renowned neurologist/best-selling author Oliver Sacks and musician Bobby McFerrin, this beautiful portrait of senile patients coming back to life was the winner of Sundance Film Festival Audience Award.
Since June 2020, the mental health clinicians and paramedics working for Denver's Support Team Assisted Response program have covered hundreds of miles in their white vans responding to 911 calls instead of police officers. They've responded to reports of people experiencing psychotic breaks. They've helped a woman experiencing homelessness who couldn't find a place to change, so she undressed in an alley. They've helped suicidal people, schizophrenic people, people using drugs. They've handed out water and socks. They've helped connect people to shelter, food and resources. The program, known as STAR, began 20 months ago with a single van and a two-person team. More than 2,700 calls later, STAR is getting ready to expand to six vans and more than a dozen workers – growth the program's leaders hope will allow the teams to respond to more than 10,000 calls a year. The Denver City Council last week voted unanimously to approve a $1.4 million contract with the Mental Health Center of Denver for the program's continuation and expansion. The contract means the program that aims to send unarmed health experts instead of police officers to certain emergency calls will soon have broader reach and more operational hours. "STAR is an example of a program that has worked for those it has had contact with," Councilwoman Robin Kniech said. "It is minimizing unnecessary arrests and unnecessary costs – whether that be jail costs or emergency room costs."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public. When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected. The agency recently debuted a dashboard of wastewater data on its website that will be updated daily and might provide early signals of an oncoming surge of Covid cases. Some states and localities had been sharing wastewater information with the agency since the start of the pandemic, but it had never before released those findings. Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country's response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said. But the C.D.C. has been routinely collecting information since the Covid vaccines were first rolled out last year. The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public, [an] official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective. Experts dismissed the potential misuse or misinterpretation of data as an acceptable reason for not releasing it.
Note: Learn also about why Pfizer wanted to hide their COVID clinical data for 75 years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
As Russia perpetrates war crimes against the people of Ukraine, the fossil fuel industries in Colorado and across the country are licking their collective chops and preparing to cash in on the crisis, likely generating yet another round of record profits in adherence to one of the most famous maxims, often attributed to Winston Churchill, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." The price of gasoline is high right now. Big Oil is exploiting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on the price of gas to run up record profits. At the end of 2021, BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Chevron all reported the highest profits they've seen since 2014, and every single company attributed those record profits to surging oil prices as post-pandemic demand increased and supply had not yet met that demand. Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pointed out that U.S. oil companies are sitting on over 9,000 federal drilling permits, claiming that these should be tapped before additional leases are granted. The industry balked, arguing that "developing a lease takes years and substantial effort to determine whether the underlying geology holds commercial quantities of oil and/or gas," undermining their own point while they're making it: if it takes so long to produce oil from a new lease, how on earth would issuing new leases have any discernible effect on gas prices today? When record-high prices coincide with record profits, as they almost always do, it is lunacy to ignore the obvious connection between the two.
Note: Explore an alternative viewpoint on the Ukrainian situation from a respected source. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy. The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, according to internal emails to its content moderators. "As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as 'death to the Russian invaders.' We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. The calls for the leaders' deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method, one email said, in a recent change to the company's rules on violence and incitement. Last week, Russia said it was banning Facebook in the country in response to what it said were restrictions of access to Russian media on the platform. Moscow has cracked down on tech companies, including Twitter, which said it is restricted in the country, during its invasion of Ukraine, which it calls a "special operation." Emails also showed that Meta would allow praise of the right-wing Azov battalion, which is normally prohibited.
Note: Read more about Facebook permitting praise for the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Intrepid reporter Ben Swann gives a great, balanced view on the biolabs in the Ukraine, including efforts to scrub one particularly incriminating video from the Internet. And explore an alternative viewpoint on the Ukrainian situation from a respected source. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.
From 2012 to 2017, I worked as a US air force nuclear missile operator. Each time I descended into the missile silo, I had to be ready to launch, at a moment's notice, a nuclear weapon that could wipe a city the size of New York off the face of the earth. I'm glad that people are finally discussing the existential dangers of nuclear weapons. There have been more near-misses than the world knows. After the end of the cold war, the general public allowed the threat of nuclear warfare to recede into the background. The threat simply didn't feel real to new generations like it did to those who grew up huddling under their desks during nuclear attack drills. And the young crews who steward this nuclear arsenal today aren't immune from the post-cold war malaise. In 2013, during my first year on crew, 11 ICBM officers were implicated in a drug scandal. The following year, 34 ICBM launch officers were implicated in a cheating scandal on their monthly proficiency exams. Deborah Lee James, the secretary of the air force at the time, said, "This was a failure of integrity on the part of some of our airmen. It was not a failure of our nuclear mission." In this attempt to save face, Secretary James revealed a state of dissonance that every nuclear missile operator lives with. We are told, day in and day out, that our integrity is crucial to the deterrent value of nuclear weapons and helps make the world a safer place. But what man or woman of integrity could possibly launch a nuclear weapon? Life with nuclear weapons is not safer or more peaceful.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Canadian pharmaceutical company SaNOtize Research & Development Corp., (SaNOtize), and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited (Glenmark), a global, innovation-driven pharmaceutical company, today announced successful results of Phase 3 clinical trials and approval from India's drug regulator for the treatment of adult patients with COVID-19 who have a risk of progression of the disease. The study confirmed that SaNOtize's Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) represents a safe and effective antiviral treatment that shortens the course of COVID-19, and could prevent the transmission of COVID-19. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-arm study ... NONS reduced the SARS-CoV-2 log viral load in COVID-19 patients by more than 94% within 24 hours of treatment, and by more than 99% in 48 hours as compared to saline control. Treatment also demonstrated ... a statistically significant greater proportion of patients who achieved a combination of clinical and virological cure, based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Progression Scale. Moreover, the median time to negative PCR, in this group, was 4 days in the treatment group compared with 8 days in the control. Test subjects included patients infected with different variants, likely including Delta and Omicron. There were no significant adverse health events recorded. The reduction in log viral load corroborates the reduction of viral load in the UK Phase 2 trials (a reduction of 95% in 24 hours and 99% in 72 hours), conducted in March 2021.
Note: Why isn't this getting major attention in the media? Could it be because big Pharma will lose billions of dollars if this goes global? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
A group of US pilots has filed a lawsuit over the country's federal mask mandate, which stipulates that all passengers must wear a face covering on public transport, including on flights and at airports. The 10 pilots span several airlines – JetBlue, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines – and claim that the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate is "an illegal and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority." Filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the suit alleges that the mask mandate, first introduced in February 2021, has caused "chaos", and claims the CDC "ignored countless scientific and medical studies" disproving the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data shows that masks have been linked to a surge in disruptive passenger behaviour on board American flights - of 5,981 onboard disputes recorded on the country's airlines last year, 72 per cent were related to masks. The plaintiffs have also requested that authorities "remove all signs informing passengers" to wear a mask, and that they be awarded any costs and fees they incurred within the course of the suit. Following an extension last week, the mask mandate is currently due to stay in place until at least 18 April. The news comes after an announcement from London's Heathrow airport that passengers are no longer required to wear a face covering. The change applies across all of Heathrow's terminals, bus and railway stations and office spaces.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Robert Mazur was a federal agent. He infiltrated Pablo Escobar's Colombian drug cartel for two years in the mid-1980s by pretending to be Robert Musella, a money-laundering, mob-connected businessman. "My role was to come across to the cartel as a credible money launderer," Mazur said. As an undercover operative, he was working with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a Luxembourg-based bank with branches in more than 70 countries, in order to launder the cartel's money. BCCI was known to have accounts of drug operatives, terrorists, dirty bankers and others who want to hide money. At one point, he was out at a social event in Miami with a senior bank officer at BCCI who asked him point blank, "You know who the biggest money launderer in the world is? It's the Federal Reserve, of course." That sounds like a crazy allegation, but Mazur said the banker connected the dots for him: In Colombia, it's illegal for anyone to have a U.S. dollar account. But at the state-run Bank of the Republic there is a window they call the "sinister window" or the "anonymous window." There, you can trade in as much U.S. currency as you want. The central bank exchanges it for Colombian pesos at a high rate immediately. Mazur recalls the banker asking: "What do you think happens with that cash? It gets put on pallets, they shrink-wrap it and they're sending hundreds of millions of dollars back to the Federal Reserve. Why didn't anyone ... ask where this money was coming from?"
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Promotion of influenza vaccines is one of the most visible and aggressive public health policies today. Twenty years ago, in 1990, 32 million doses of influenza vaccine were available in the United States. Today around 135 million doses of influenza vaccine annually enter the US market, with vaccinations administered in drug stores, supermarkets–even some drive-throughs. This enormous growth has not been fueled by popular demand but instead by a public health campaign that delivers a straightforward ... message: influenza is a serious disease, we are all at risk of complications from influenza, the flu shot is virtually risk free, and vaccination saves lives. Yet across the country, mandatory influenza vaccination policies have cropped up, particularly in healthcare facilities, precisely because not everyone wants the vaccination, and compulsion appears the only way to achieve high vaccination rates. Closer examination of influenza vaccine policies shows that although proponents employ the rhetoric of science, the studies underlying the policy are often of low quality, and do not substantiate officials' claims. The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated. Since 2000, the concept of who is "at risk" has rapidly expanded, incrementally encompassing greater swathes of the general population. Today, national guidelines call for everyone 6 months of age and older to get vaccinated. Now we are all "at risk."
Note: Full text available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Isaac Oduro will never forget the day he was doing deliveries and received a $100 tip. It was so different than what Isaac experienced back in Africa. Isaac moved to Canada alone and worked for years to support his wife and sons in Ghana before they could join him. Two years ago, he returned to his hometown. "I feel so sad when I went back," Isaac says of the old elementary school he last attended 30 years ago. "(It) was in a deplorable state." Issac says the problems ranged from a roof filled with holes to classrooms empty of books. "I wasn't happy about what I saw, so I decided I'm going to do something." Isaac immediately bought seven whiteboards for the school, before making a commitment to do even more later. "I'm going to go back to Canada," Isaac says, after posing for pictures in the school with the new boards. "And in two years I'm going to come back and build a library." When Issac isn't working two jobs (10 hours a day, seven days a week) to earn funds for the renovations, he's requesting book donations from local companies. "Right now, I have 3,000 books," Isaac says. Isaac has packed up most of the books and arranged for them to be shipped to Ghana, along with bags of new school supplies. The library is slowly but surely being transformed, with a new roof, floor, paint and fans. It's on schedule for Isaac's return this fall to help finish the project and fill the school with with hope again. "(I hope) to keep them reading, to keep them learning," Isaac says.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
A motorist in the Netherlands sacrificed his own vehicle to save another motorist who was having a seizure on the highway. Henry Temmermans from Nunspeet was driving on the A28 highway near Harderwijk on Friday afternoon when he saw another car driving in the grass on the highway. He peered into her window and realized she was unconscious. "I didn't hesitate for a moment. I had to do something," he [said]. He sped up to get in front of the woman's car and then slowed down so she would crash into him. His plan worked. The woman crashed into the back of his car and came to a complete stop. Behind them was another motorist who managed to record the entire incident on his dashcam. "We both got out immediately. He called 112 and then we looked in the car together," Temmermans said. An ambulance arrived 10 minutes later and took the woman to the hospital. She suffered a few broken ribs but will be okay. Temmermans had to call a [tow] truck as his vehicle was no longer drivable. "The other driver took me home. That turned out to be an old acquaintance from 25 years ago, when we were both young and wild," he said. The next day, the daughter and husband of the woman contacted Temmermans. "They were very grateful to me," he said.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Congress passed a bill last week explicitly prohibiting federal law enforcement officers from having sex with people in their custody, closing a loophole that previously allowed them to avoid a rape conviction by claiming such an encounter was consensual. The legal loophole gained widespread attention in 2018, after an 18-year-old woman in New York, Anna Chambers, said that two detectives raped her inside their police van. The detectives, who have since resigned, said she consented. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the sexual assault charges, and the men were sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty to bribery and official misconduct. In February 2018, BuzzFeed News reported that laws in 35 states allowed police officers to claim that a person in their custody consented to sex, and that of at least 158 law enforcement officers charged with sexual assault, sexual battery, or unlawful sexual contact with somebody under their control from 2006 to 2018, at least 26 were acquitted or had charges dropped based on the consent defense. Last week ... the Closing the Law Enforcement Consent Loophole Act passed the House and Senate as part of a broader appropriations bill. The act also requires states that receive certain federal grants to annually report to the Department of Justice the number of complaints alleging a sexual encounter between a local law enforcement officer and a person in their custody. The ... Act applies to the 100,000 or so law enforcement officers across all federal agencies.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
For some time, expressing interest in unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, has been deemed mostly unacceptable in wider society. But attitudes appear to be changing in America this week, with luminaries from Barack Obama to the former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal sharing their thoughts. Obama was asked about the issue of UFOs during an interview. Much of the newfound, and newly sincere, interest in UFOs, this week appears to stem from a report on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday, which tackled "the US government's grudging acknowledgment" of UFOs. With the defense department and intelligence agencies due to deliver a much-anticipated official report on mysterious aerial sightings next month, 60 Minutes interviewed a number of credible witnesses, including a former navy pilot who said he had seen unidentified aerial phenomena – the government's preferred term – "every day for at least a couple years". That prompted Obama's discussion of aerial phenomena. "What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there's footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don't know exactly what they are, we can't explain how they moved, their trajectory," Obama told CBS. "They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today." On Monday, O'Neal shared his experience of seeing a "flying saucer" with ABC.
Note: Read the public testimony of very high level officials revealing a major cover-up around UFOs for over 75 years. Most serious UFO researchers believe that this is a planned rollout to avoid showing how the US military has been hiding and even deceitfully ridiculing this information for decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.
Former US Navy pilot Ryan Graves told CBS's 60 Minutes that pilots training off the US coast sighted UFOs nearly every day. The show on Sunday explored a series of alleged recent encounters between US military pilots and UFOs, some of which were caught on film and have been released by the Pentagon. One encounter took place in 2014, when Graves and his F/A-18F squadron sighted UFOs in restrictive airspace near Virginia Beach, in southeastern Virginia. In 2019, US military pilots recorded UFOs in the same area in images obtained by the program. The Pentagon told CBS News that it had not been able to identify the objects. Graves said that such sightings were a nearly daily occurrence. "Every day. Every day for at least a couple years," he said of the sightings. He discussed an encounter off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, in 2015, captured by one of his pilots on camera. "This is a difficult one to explain. You have rotation, you have high altitudes. You have propulsion, right? I don't know. I don't know what it is, frankly," remarked Graves. Lue Elizondo, the former head of a Pentagon project to investigate UFO sightings, said that some objects seemed to defy what was believed to be technologically possible. In April the US military certified the authenticity of several videos showing encounters between pilots and UFOs that had been published in the media. It followed the declassification last year of several videos showing encounters with UFOs.
Note: Don't miss the 15-minute "60 Minutes" segment on this fascinating topic at the link above. Read the public testimony of very high level officials revealing a major cover-up around UFOs for over 75 years. Most serious UFO researchers believe that this is a planned rollout to avoid showing how the US military has been hiding and even deceitfully ridiculing this information for decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.
"Would you like to sign in with your palm?" That was the question a cheerful Amazon employee posed when greeting me last week at the opening of a Whole Foods Market in Washington's Glover Park neighborhood. For the next 30 minutes, I shopped. Then I simply walked out, no cashier necessary. Whole Foods – or rather Amazon – would bill my account later. More than four years ago, Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13 billion. Now the Amazon-ification of the grocery chain is physically complete. Amazon designed my local grocer to be almost completely run by tracking and robotic tools for the first time. The technology, known as Just Walk Out, consists of hundreds of cameras with a god's-eye view of customers. Sensors are placed under each apple, carton of oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread. Deep-learning software analyzes the shopping activity to detect patterns and increase the accuracy of its charges. The Whole Foods in Glover Park ... has sparked a spirited local debate, with residents sparring on the Nextdoor community app and a neighborhood email list over the store's "dystopian" feeling versus its "impressive technology." Some ... said they had found errors in their bills and complained about the end of produce by the pound. Everything is now offered per item, bundle or box. Some mourned the disappearance of the checkout line, where they perused magazines. Many were suspicious of the tracking tech. "It's like George Orwell's â€1984,'" said Allen Hengst, 72, a retired librarian.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
In the late summer of 2020, Bruce Bartman went to Pennsylvania's voter registration website and signed up his mother and mother-in-law to vote. Both women were dead. A few months later, Bartman, who is white, requested a mail-in ballot for his late mother and cast her vote for Donald Trump. Bartman was arrested that December and charged with perjury and unlawful voting. He pleaded guilty, admitted he made a "stupid mistake", was sentenced to five years of probation and barred from serving on a jury or voting for four years. When Bartman pleaded guilty, nearly 1,000 miles away, in Memphis, a Black Lives Matter activist named Pamela Moses was facing her own election-related criminal charges. A few years previously, Moses, who is Black, permanently lost the right to vote after committing a felony. But no one had actually removed Moses from the voter rolls or told her she couldn't vote. And in 2019, when state officials began looking into her eligibility, a probation officer signed a certificate saying Moses had completed her sentence and was eligible to vote. So she applied to do so. Even though corrections officials conceded they made an error, Moses was indicted anyway. She was sentenced to six years and one day in prison. The case ... underscored what many experts see as a double standard in the US criminal justice system: white people face relatively light punishment for intentional cases of fraud, while Black people face tougher punishments for unintentional voting errors.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on court system corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the federal government can shield former government contractors from testifying about the torture of a post-9/11 detainee. The decision likely will make it harder for victims to expose secret government misconduct in the future. Abu Zubaydah was the first prisoner held by the CIA to undergo what, at the time, was euphemistically called "enhanced interrogation." During one 20-day period, he was waterboarded 83 times, 24 hours a day. During that period, the suspected terrorist was also slammed against walls, put in a coffin-like box for hours at a time to simulate live burial, and subjected to something the government called "rectal rehydration." In the end, the two CIA contractors who supervised Zubaydah's interrogation concluded that they had the wrong man. But when lawyers for Zubaydah subpoenaed them, the U.S. government blocked the move by invoking the so-called "state secrets" privilege. In this case, both the Trump and Biden administrations argued that even though the information about the torture program is widely known, confirming the existence of CIA black sites in Poland would jeopardize the U.S. government's relationship with foreign intelligence services. Josh Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer who represents other Guantanamo Bay detainees, was ... critical. "There has been no accountability for the U.S. program that subjected people to torture," he said in a statement.
Note: Read more about the CIA's torture program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
The fallout from a huge leak of Credit Suisse banking data threatened to damage Switzerland's entire financial sector on Monday after the European parliament's main political grouping raised the prospect of adding the country to a money-laundering blacklist. The European People's party (EPP), the largest political grouping of the European parliament, called for the EU to review its relationship with Switzerland and consider whether it should be added to its list of countries associated with a high risk of financial crime. Experts said that such a move would be a disaster for Switzerland's financial sector, which would face the kind of enhanced due diligence applied to transactions linked to rogue nations including Iran, Myanmar, Syria and North Korea. The EPP released the proposal after media outlets including the Guardian, SĂĽddeutsche Zeitung, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and Le Monde revealed how a massive leak of Credit Suisse data had uncovered apparently widespread failures of due diligence by the bank. The investigation, called Suisse secrets, identified clients of the Swiss bank who had been involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes. The country's addition to the EU high-risk third countries list would mean regulated professions, such as bankers, lawyers and accountants, would be required to conduct enhanced due diligence on any transaction or commercial relationship with a person or company in the country.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.
In the Arctic, microscopic particles of plastic are falling out of the sky with snow. Scientists said they were shocked by the sheer number of particles they found: more than 10,000 of them per litre in the Arctic. Even there, people are likely to be breathing in microplastics from the air. The health implications remain unclear. The region is often seen as one of the world's last pristine environments. A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances. The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow. Researchers collected snow samples from the Svalbard islands. In the laboratory ... they discovered far more contaminating particles than they'd expected. Many were so small that it was hard to ascertain where they had come from. The majority appeared to be composed of natural materials like plant cellulose and animal fur. But there were also particles of plastic, along with fragments of rubber tyres, varnish, paint and possibly synthetic fibres. The lead scientist, Dr Melanie Bergmann, told BBC News: "We expected to find some contamination but to find this many microplastics was a real shock." She said: "The majority of the microplastic in the snow comes from the air." Microplastics are defined as those particles below 5mm in size. Addressing their potential effects on people, Dr Bergmann explained: "We don't know if the plastics will be harmful to human health or not. But we need to take much better care of the way we're treating our environment."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.