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.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a nonprofit privacy rights group have called on several states to investigate why "hundreds" of data brokers haven't registered with state consumer protection agencies in accordance with local laws. An analysis done in collaboration with Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) found that many data brokers have failed to register in all of the four states with laws that require it, preventing consumers in some states from learning what kinds of information these brokers collect and how to opt out. Data brokers are companies that collect and sell troves of personal information about people, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, financial information, and more. Consumers have little control over this information, posing serious privacy concerns, and attempts to address these concerns at a federal level have mostly failed. Four states – California, Texas, Oregon, and Vermont – do attempt to regulate these companies by requiring them to register with consumer protection agencies and share details about what kind of data they collect. In letters to the states' attorneys general, the EFF and PRC say they "uncovered a troubling pattern" after scraping data broker registries. They found that many data brokers didn't consistently register their businesses across all four states. The number of data brokers that appeared on one registry but not another includes 524 in Texas, 475 in Oregon, 309 in Vermont, and 291 in California.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
The blockchain is a revolution that builds on another technical revolution so old that only the more experienced among us remember it: the invention of the database. IBM's database model stood unchanged until about 10 years ago, when the blockchain came into this conservative space with a radical new proposition: What if your database worked like a network – a network that's shared with everybody in the world, where anyone and anything can connect to it? Blockchain experts call this "decentralization." Decentralization offers the promise of nearly friction-free cooperation between members of complex networks that can add value to each other by enabling collaboration without central authorities and middle men. In a world without middle men, things get more efficient in unexpected ways. A 1% transaction fee may not seem like much, but down a 15-step supply chain, it adds up. These kinds of little frictions add just enough drag on the global economy that we're forced to stick with short supply chains and deals done by the container load, because it's simply too inefficient to have more links in the supply chain and to work with smaller transactions. The decentralization that blockchain provides would change that, which could have huge possible impacts for economies in the developing world. Any transformation which helps small businesses compete with giants will have major global effects.
Note: This article is also available here. Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and technology for good.
Look at the modus operandi of today's internet giants – such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, or Airbnb – and you'll notice they have one thing in common: They rely on the contributions of users as a means to generate value within their own platforms. All of the profits are captured by the large intermediaries who operate the platforms. Recently, a new technology has emerged that could change this imbalance. Blockchain facilitates the exchange of value in a secure and decentralized manner, without the need for an intermediary. With a blockchain, software applications no longer need to be deployed on a centralized server: They can be run on a peer-to-peer network that is not controlled by any single party. These blockchain-based applications can be used to coordinate the activities of a large number of individuals, who can organize themselves without the help of a third party. Blockchain technology is ultimately a means for individuals to coordinate common activities, to interact directly with one another, and to govern themselves in a more secure and decentralized manner. New forms of organizations ... which have no director or CEO, or any sort of hierarchical structure – are administered, collectively, by all individuals interacting on a blockchain. And since there is no intermediary operator, the value produced within these platforms can be more equally redistributed among those who have contributed to the value creation.
Note: This article is also available here. Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and technology for good.
No toilets, expensive food of dubious quality, crowded housing. This was the reality for many in 1840s Britain. Something had to change. And the Rochdale Pioneers knew it. The group of 28 artisans and cotton weavers ... wanted to start a co-operative society in order to provide their community with affordable and unadulterated food. Their small grocery shop started by selling only flour, sugar, oatmeal and butter and opened just before Christmas 1844. Any profit was shared among member-owners. With this, the co-operative movement took root. Today, these businesses employ some 280 million people around the world – 10% of the employed population. Approximately 3m co-ops with an astonishing 1.2bn members, more than an eighth of the world's population, exist internationally. Shared Interest is a UK-based social lender that supports farmers and handcraft producers in 47 countries around the world. From sphagnum moss farmers in Peru to coffee farmers in Rwanda, the organisation provides finance for smallholder communities that collectively provide around a third of the world's food but are often stuck in cycles of poverty. Uganda-based coffee producer Bukonzo Organic Farmers Cooperative Union (BOCU), which Shared Interest has supported since 2014 ... negotiates prices, undertakes marketing and manages export on behalf of 13 smaller primary co-ops. Having this tiered system is crucial for small-scale farmers who don't speak English.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.
Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics. Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers' widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. "Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls," he said. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has insisted masks are necessary to protect officers' privacy, arguing, without providing evidence, that there has been an uptick in violence against agents. "It is absolutely shocking and frightening to see masked agents, who are also poorly identified in the way they are dressed, using force in public without clearly identifying themselves," [said German]. "Our country is known for having democratic control over law enforcement. When it's hard to tell who a masked individual is working for, it's hard to accept that that is a legitimate use of authority. The recent shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, by a suspect who allegedly impersonated an officer, highlights the danger of police not looking like police. Federal agents wearing masks and casual clothing significantly increases this risk of any citizen dressing up in a way that fools the public into believing they are law enforcement so they can engage in illegal activity."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.
From facial recognition to predictive analytics to the rise of increasingly convincing deepfakes and other synthetic video, new technologies are emerging faster than agencies, lawmakers, or watchdog groups can keep up. Take New Orleans, where, for the past two years, police officers have quietly received real-time alerts from a private network of AI-equipped cameras, flagging the whereabouts of people on wanted lists. In 2022, City Council members attempted to put guardrails on the use of facial recognition. But those guidelines assume it's the police doing the searching. New Orleans police have hundreds of cameras, but the alerts in question came from a separate system: a network of 200 cameras equipped with facial recognition and installed by residents and businesses on private property, feeding video to a nonprofit called Project NOLA. Police officers who downloaded the group's app then received notifications when someone on a wanted list was detected on the camera network, along with a location. That has civil liberties groups and defense attorneys in Louisiana frustrated. "When you make this a private entity, all those guardrails that are supposed to be in place for law enforcement and prosecution are no longer there, and we don't have the tools to ... hold people accountable," Danny Engelberg, New Orleans' chief public defender, [said]. Another way departments can skirt facial recognition rules is to use AI analysis that doesn't technically rely on faces.
Note: Learn about all the high-tech tools police use to surveil protestors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and police corruption.
The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. It is still going on. And there has been no justice for the vast majority of the victims. Every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up. Social workers were intimidated into silence. Local police ignored, excused, and even abetted pedophile rapists across dozens of cities. Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called "community relations." Local councilors and Members of Parliament rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs, and Labour MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and Islamophobia. A 2014 inquiry estimated that 1,400 girls had been serially raped in Rotherham alone. The suffering described in ... court papers is sickening to read: The girls were drugged, beaten, sodomized, gang-raped, trafficked, and tortured. Welfare workers admit that they failed to report crimes because the police told them they would be accused as racist. In multiple cases, local Labour politicians of Pakistani background interfered with police inquiries. "No justice, no peace" is a common slogan among the activist class that chose not to act against the rape gangs. There will be no peace in Britain until the full truth is known.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is fronting media after a walkabout with police in central Auckland. Earlier, the Prime Minister encouraged people with information about allegations of a paedophile ring in the 1980s to come forward to police. It follows the release of the final report from the Royal Commission into abuse in care, which referenced allegations of offending against children by politicians and public servants in the 1980s. The report states it received "deeply suspicious" evidence but it was "unable to make a finding that organised abuse of children and young people in State care occurred by groups of people in public positions of influence". The long-awaited Royal Commission report into abuse in state and faith-based institutions was released on Wednesday. It found an estimated 200,000 people out of 655,000 in care were abused and many more neglected. The true number will never be known because some records were never created, had been lost or, in some cases, destroyed. The "unimaginable" abuse was widespread between 1950 and 2019 – and amounted to a "national disgrace". Violence and sexual abuse were common, and in some cases children and young people were "trafficked" to members of the public for sex. "Instead of receiving care and support, children, young people and adults in care were exposed to unimaginable physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse, severe exploitation and neglect," the report says.
Note: This article is also available here. 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. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
Andre Daigle, 27, went missing on June 9, 1987, after a night of drinks and pool with friends, following which, the New Orleans resident was never seen alive again. Four days later, Andre's sister Elise, who lived out in California, went to psychic Rosemarie Kerr of Cypress with her brother's photo, whose body and killers were found 13 days later thanks to the clairvoyant. In researching the validity of psychics in police work, Euro Weekly News came across a highly surprising and unexpected 5-page US DoJ report published in 1993 entitled "Psychics and Police Work." "The usefulness of psychics in police investigations is controversial, but psychics have long been and will undoubtedly continue to be involved in unsolved criminal investigations," it reads. The Department of Justice document compares the work of psychics and detectives, saying "both base their work on intuition to some extent, and then they specifically mention one psychic who they say helped police in thousands of cases." In an August 2000 CIA document entitled "Use of Psychics in Law Enforcement," the US intelligence agency acknowledged that psychics have been helpful to police in many cases and outlined some guidelines on when and how to deal with them. "Psychics have provided information that was helpful to law enforcement, contributing to the successful resolution of cases," the CIA confirms. "Using psychics can be legitimate when traditional methods fail."
Note: Explore our resources on remote viewing programs. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on the mysterious nature of reality.
The CIA claimed to have confirmed the existence of the Ark of the Covenant by way of remote viewing – aka extra sensory perception or ESP – alleging the mysterious and sacred object is guarded by "entities" with an "unknown" power, a recently resurfaced declassified document claims. When a remote viewer is tasked with searching for a target, the desired object is written down on a piece of paper and put into an envelope. The remote viewer does not know what is written and is guided through the process by another person, retired US Army Chief Warrant Joe McMoneagle explained. McMoneagle, aka remote viewer #1, was the first to do the psychic phenomena experiments for the CIA. Remote viewer #32's vision described a secret Middle Eastern location of the object – which they don't know is the Ark – but they say is "protected by entities," the document reveals. "Target is a container. This container has another container inside of it. The target is fashioned of wood, gold and silver... similar in shape to a coffin and is decorated with seraphim," they relayed, per the file. "The target is protected by entities and can only be opened by those who are authorized to do so – this container will not/cannot be opened until the time is deemed correct," they said. "The purpose of the target is to bring people together. It has something to do with ceremony, memory, homage, the resurrection. There is an aspect of spirituality, information, lessons and historical knowledge," they said.
Note: Explore our resources on remote viewing programs. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on the mysterious nature of reality.
In 1972, American artist and psychic Ingo Swann altered the magnetic field inside a thickly shielded vacuum container located underground. As Harold Puthoff, a physicist with the Stanford Research Institute, witnessed the output from his magnetometer changing, he was mind-blown. By the time Puthoff and his colleague Russel Targ ... presented their results at an international meeting on quantum physics and parapsychology, the CIA had already begun working with SRI to perform top-secret research on paranormal phenomena–primarily "remote viewing" for intelligence collection. Remote viewing refers to a type of extra-sensorial perception that involves using the mind to "see" or manipulate distant objects, people, events, or other information. By the mid-1980s, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) took the program over, calling it "Stargate." DIA had three main goals for its research: 1. Determine how to apply remote viewing to intelligence gathering against foreign targets; 2. Figure out how other countries could be doing the same thing and using it against the U.S.; and 3. Perform laboratory experiments to find ways to improve remote viewing for use in the intelligence field. [Scientist Dean Radin] remembers asking one of his supervisors what would happen if they had a breakthrough–say, coming up with a drug to make someone super psychic. The response was immediate. "It would disappear and you would never be able to talk about it again," Radin recalls."
Note: Explore our resources on remote viewing programs. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on the mysterious nature of reality.
One of the most enduring ideas about crime – and violence more broadly – is that a lot of it is committed by people we call "psychopaths." To summarize the various popular and scientific definitions: People with psychopathy lack feelings of empathy and remorse, and can be charming, manipulative and impulsive as they seek to dominate and harm. But there is shockingly little science behind the diagnosis of psychopathy, according to a new book by Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen. In "Psychopathy Unmasked: The Rise and Fall of a Dangerous Diagnosis," Larsen argues that the widespread use of this personality disorder in legal settings has had massive and largely negative consequences in courts and prisons across the world. Hundreds of thousands of people suspected or convicted of crimes have been assessed with some version of the "Psychopathy Checklist" since its publication in 1991. Larsen ... found that incarcerated people with high scores were not significantly more likely to commit more crimes after release. Larsen suggests the diagnosis itself may be little more than a way to make some sentences harsher while scaring and titillating the wider public. Judges, parole boards and others in the justice system came to see people with the psychopathy diagnosis as chronic offenders, and could justify keeping them in prison for longer. They could withhold therapy because the emerging theory was that it's a waste of time.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on judicial system corruption and mental health.
Four top tech execs from OpenAI, Meta, and Palantir have just joined the US Army. The Army Reserve has commissioned these senior tech leaders to serve as midlevel officers, skipping tradition to pursue transformation. The newcomers won't attend any current version of the military's most basic and ingrained rite of passage– boot camp. Instead, they'll be ushered in through express training that Army leaders are still hashing out, Col. Dave Butler ... said. The execs – Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, the chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was formerly the chief research officer for OpenAI – are joining the Army as lieutenant colonels. The name of their unit, "Detachment 201," is named for the "201" status code generated when a new resource is created for Hypertext Transfer Protocols in internet coding, Butler explained. "In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems," read the Army press release. "By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal." Lethality, a vague Pentagon buzzword, has been at the heart of the massive modernization and transformation effort the Army is undergoing.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and military corruption.
The bidding opens at $9,000. For sale? A Yazidi girl. She is said to be beautiful, hardworking, and a virgin. She's also just 11 years old. This advertisement – a screengrab from an online marketplace used by ISIS fighters to barter for sex slaves – is one of many Abdullah Shrem keeps in his phone. Each offers vital clues – photographs, locations – that he hopes will help him save Yazidi girls and young women like this girl from the militants holding them captive. Shrem was a successful businessman ... when ISIS came and kidnapped more than 50 members of his family from Iraq's Sinjar province. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled their homes ... while thousands of women and girls were abducted and sold into slavery. Desperate – and angered at what he saw as a lack of support from the international community – he began plotting to save them himself, recruiting cigarette smugglers used to sneaking illicit produce in and out of ISIS territory to help his efforts. So far, he says, his network has freed 240 Yazidis; it hasn't been easy, or cheap – he's almost broke, having spent his savings paying smuggling fees. A number of the smugglers have been captured and executed by ISIS while trying to track down Yazidi slaves. But Shrem insists the risks are worth it: "Whenever I save someone, it gives me strength and it gives me faith to keep going until I have been able to save them all." Once they manage to make contact ... it can take days or even weeks to get safely out of ISIS territory.
Note: A 2021 news article by the CBC about his heroic work reported that he has saved about 400 individuals from ISIS forces. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine and ending human trafficking.
Until 2014, Abdullah Shrem was a beekeeper in Iraq. Then Islamic State forces arrived, announcing their terror in symbols daubed on the doorways of the homes they raided: "They wrote the letter Y on our homes and on our stores and built a barrier like the Berlin Wall – N for the Christians, and Y for the Yazidis. S for the Sunnis, and Sh for the Shi'ites," Shrem recalls. The Yazidis met the worst fate: men were marched into mass graves and shot, while women were separated – young from old, mothers from children, wives from virgins. The younger were taken to a "marketplace" to be sold as sex slaves or sabaya; the older were killed or sold as domestic slaves. Shrem's response was extraordinary: he left beekeeping to create a network of rescuers – modelled on the female-led fortress of the beehive – who would return the kidnapped women to their families. "I cultivated a hive of transporters and smugglers from both sexes to save our queens," he tells Dunya Mikhail, an American-Iraqi journalist, whose book is centred on the women Shrem rescues. The women form the book's heart. Their stories, however courageous, read like a litany of horrors, some painfully detailed. What is striking is the unaugmented record of experiences, transcribed in first-person testimonies and knitted together with Shrem's words. The multiplicity of voices creates a verbatim record – a chorus of experience – rather than following the ... narrative arc of heroic exceptionalism.
Note: A 2021 news article by the CBC about his heroic work reported that he has saved about 400 individuals from ISIS forces. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine and ending human trafficking.
For 13 years, the Brazilian government has offered its incarcerated citizens a simple deal: read a book, serve less time. This "Remission for Reading" program is now serving as a template to other nations, and prison populations are enjoying similar deals in countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. With a recidivism rate of more than 80% and the 15th highest imprisonment rate on the planet, the Brazilian criminal justice system was for decades failing its 1984 mandate which states that prisoners must have access to programs that will help prepare them to reenter society. Remission for Reading works by offering all Brazilian prisoners regardless of literacy skill or mental faculties access to the prison library, which includes books in Braille and audiobooks for those with poor eyesight. Once a book is checked out, the inmate has 21 to 30 days depending on the page count to finish it, and then 10 days to complete a written book report to demonstrate their knowledge of the text. Assistance is offered to those who speak different languages or who are intellectually impaired. For each report, the prisoner's sentence is commuted by 4 days. An inmate can submit up to 12 reviews per year, which if maxed out equates to 48 days of commuted sentence. According to a study conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics, Brazilian prisoners read nine times more than the national average of five books per year.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
In 2018, still in the throes of painful withdrawal from a psychiatric drug cocktail, U.S. Air Force veteran Derek Blumke began connecting the dots. He heard horror story after horror story that followed a disturbingly familiar pattern: starting, adjusting the dose, or abruptly stopping antidepressants was followed by personality changes, outbursts and acts of violence or suicide, leaving countless families and lives destroyed. Timothy Jensen ... an Iraq war veteran who served in the Marines, had been researching psychiatric drug overprescribing in the Veterans' Health Administration (VA) system for years. He had his own harrowing personal story of antidepressant harm, and he had lost his best friend, a fellow veteran, to suicide soon after he was prescribed Wellbutrin for smoking cessation. Poring through the data, Blumke landed on some startling statistics: 68% of all veterans seen at least one time for care at the VA in 2019 had been prescribed psychotropic drugs, and 28% were issued prescriptions for antidepressants. "It should be zero shock that veterans have the suicide rates we do," Blumke said. "Veteran suicide rates are two to two and a half times that of the civilian population. Prescription rates of antidepressants and psychiatric drugs are of the same multiples, which are both the highest in the world." Antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs have huge risk profiles, but doctors and counselors aren't even being trained about these issues.
Note: Suicide among post-9/11 veterans rose more than tenfold from 2006 to 2020. Why is Mad in America the only media outlet covering this important issue affecting so many veterans? Along these lines, the UK's medicines regulator is launching a review of over 30 commonly prescribed antidepressants, including Prozac, amid rising concerns about links to suicide, self-harm, and long-term side effects like persistent sexual dysfunction–especially in children.
Outro Health [is] a telehealth startup that CEO and cofounder Brandon Goode describes as "Uber for getting off antidepressants." Outro officially launched in the US last month and is currently available in seven states. The startup is betting that many of the growing number of Americans taking antidepressants will eventually want help coming off them. Over 11 percent of US adults took medication for depression in 2023. Research has found the prevalence of adverse withdrawal symptoms may be much higher, particularly among patients who have been on them for long periods. Outro pairs patients with a clinician who meets with them on a custom schedule and guides them through a tailored tapering program. Outro currently employs a small group of medical contractors, including nurse practitioners specializing in psychiatry and general nurse practitioners, who are supervised by psychiatrists. [British academic psychiatrist and co-founder of Outro] Mark Horowitz ... was driven by his own harrowing experience coming off antidepressants ... when he was a psychiatry doctoral student. Severe insomnia and dizziness were so debilitating ...It took me years to come off, not weeks as guidelines recommended." After he recovered, Horowitz began pushing for doctors to adopt new clinical guidelines for getting off antidepressants. He coauthored the Royal College of Psychiatry's guidance for psychiatric drug cessation and joined the UK's National Health Service as a clinical research fellow. "To me, it is actually a very leftist issue to de-medicalize the way we treat anxiety and depression," [Horowitz] says, noting that such illnesses are often caused "by social circumstances, by poverty, by loneliness."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption and mental health.
Financed partly with US taxpayers dollars, [a] firm in Missouri called v-Fluence [was] founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne. [v-Fluence] established a "private social network" to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. A profile of former New York Times food writer Mark Bittman ... includes a description of where he lives, details of two marriages and personal hobbies, and an extensive Criticisms section. Bittman said that it was a "terrible thing," for taxpayer dollars to be used to help a PR agency "work against sincere, legitimate, and scientific efforts to do agriculture better." Syngenta signed a contract with v-Fluence in 2002 to help the company deal with negative information coming to light about its paraquat herbicides. v-Fluence went on to help Syngenta create false or misleading online content that was "Paraquat-friendly," used search engine optimization to suppress negative information about paraquat in Internet searches and investigated the social media pages of victims who reported injuries to Syngenta's crisis hotline. Syngenta's internal research found adverse effects of paraquat on brain tissue decades ago but the company withheld that information from regulators, instead working to discredit independent science linking the chemical to brain disease and developing a "SWAT team" to counter critics. In its response to those stories, Syngenta asserted that no "peer-reviewed scientific publication has established a causal connection between paraquat and Parkinson's disease."
Note: Read more about how v-Fluence was used to censor the web and silence dissenting voices. "Trust the science" sounds noble–until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest.
More than 90% of samples of a dozen fruits and vegetables tested positive for potentially harmful pesticide residues, according to the 2025 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce. Dubbed the "Dirty Dozen," the list is compiled from the latest government testing data on nonorganic produce by the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a health advocacy organization that has produced the annual report since 2004. Spinach topped the list, with more pesticide residue by weight than any other produce tested, followed by strawberries, kale (along with mustard greens and collards), grapes, peaches, cherries, nectarines, pears, apples, blackberries, blueberries and potatoes. The annual report is [meant] to provide tools for decisions on whether to buy organic for the fruits or vegetables their families consume the most, said Alexis Temkin, EWG's vice president of science. "One of the things that a lot of peer-reviewed studies have shown over and over again (is) that when people switch to an organic diet from a conventional diet, you can really see measurable levels in the reduction of pesticide levels in the urine." EWG also creates an annual "Clean Fifteen" – a list of conventional produce with the least amount of pesticide residue. Pineapple was the least contaminated produce tested, followed by sweet corn (fresh and frozen), avocados, papaya, onions, frozen sweet peas, asparagus, cabbage, watermelon, cauliflower, bananas, mangos, carrots, mushrooms and kiwi.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.
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.