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 New York judge has granted a request by Ghislaine Maxwell's legal team to redact segments from the case filed against her, claiming they would "serve to cater a â€craving for that which is sensational and impure.'" US District Judge Alison J Nathan issued the ruling last week on redactions from portions of a transcript the government filed under seal that Ms Maxwell's legal team had requested on the grounds of privacy concerns. The judge also granted redactions that prosecutors made when filing the transcript on the basis of protection of the "integrity of an ongoing criminal investigation and to protect third parties' personal privacy interests." "As a general matter, these interests are legitimate and provide a basis for overcoming the presumption of access," the judge ruled. Judge Nathan denied Ms Maxwell's objections to some of these redactions. The British socialite's lawyers argued that "some of the information contained in the redactions has been made public by other means." The judge wrote: "Though the Defendant contends that some of the information contained in the redactions is public, she furnishes no evidence to that effect", adding that the privacy interests at stake "justify the limited and narrowly tailored redactions." Ms Maxwell, a former confidante of disgraced financier and convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, was charged by the FBI last year with multiple counts of sex exploitation and abuse of minor girls.
Note: Maxwell's trial has now concluded. Why has this trial been given so little attention by the media? Explore an excellent Whitney Webb article revealing links to Maxwell and Israeli intelligence, and much more. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.
Closures from COVID-19 have affected 1.6 billion children worldwide. Nearly two years into the pandemic, experts say the economic costs are in the trillions and the social costs are incalculable. $17 trillion. That's how much the pandemic could cost children around the world in terms of lost lifetime earnings. The number comes from a new report by the United Nations and the World Bank. Closed schools combined with the economic crashes all around the world not only means lost learning, it means students driven into the workforce. And some of them are going to stay there. So that all translates to children learning fewer basic skills, which makes them less qualified for higher-waged jobs. And that is how they get that estimate of $17 trillion of lost wages potentially over the lifetimes of these children. UNESCO actually has a really simple benchmark, which is can a child, by the age of 10, read a sentence in their native language? And if they can't, they call that learning poverty. And they found that even before the pandemic, more than half of the children in low- and middle-income countries couldn't do that. And now learning poverty is projected to potentially reach up to 7 in 10 of those children. UNICEF says that 10 million more girls around the world could be forced into child marriage in the next decade as one of the most unusual cascading impacts of the pandemic. Essentially, they've run out of options for survival. So this is really a human toll that they're talking about here.
Note: The media continually blame the many harmful effects of the lockdown on COVID. The virus did not cause these problems, the lockdowns did. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity physician known as the host of the "Dr. Oz Show," announced on Tuesday that he would run for Senate in Pennsylvania, jumping into a crowded Republican primary. Dr. Oz said he had been motivated to run because of the pandemic. In an online statement announcing his candidacy ... he criticized official responses to Covid-19 in terms embraced by conservatives. The pandemic, he wrote, has been mishandled by "elites" who stifled dissenting opinions, "mandated" policies and "closed our parks, shuttered our schools, shut down our businesses and took away our freedom." Dr. Oz, 61, is a heart surgeon who first came to the public's attention as a regular guest on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" before starting his own long-running daytime show, where he dispenses medical advice. He has also appeared regularly on Fox News discussing Covid-19, sometimes making controversial statements. In April 2020, citing a medical journal, he said that opening schools "may only cost us 2 to 3 percent in terms of total mortality" of the population. The previous month, Dr. Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine to fight the coronavirus, even though researchers at the time warned that the drug was unproven. In his statement announcing his run on Tuesday, Dr. Oz positioned himself more aggressively as a foe of elites and as someone who has "fought the establishment" throughout his career. "Elites with yards told those without yards to stay inside, where the virus was more likely to spread," he wrote.
Note: This article fails to mention Oz is specifically targeting Fauci, as made clear in this Forbes article. Dr. Oz is not the only one who feels the collateral damage of the lockdowns is considerably worse than the damage caused by the virus. Depression, suicides, violent crime, and starvation have spiked worldwide and many millions have lost their jobs while the income of the elite has soared to unprecedented new highs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
When lawyers were preparing to defend against a lawsuit over a death in police custody in Fresno, Calif., they knew whom to call. Dr. Gary Vilke has established himself as a leading expert witness by repeatedly asserting that police techniques such as facedown restraints, stun gun shocks and some neck holds did not kill people. Officers in Fresno had handcuffed 41-year-old Joseph Perez and, holding him facedown on the ground, put a spinal board from an ambulance on his back as he cried out for help. The county medical examiner ruled his death, in May 2017, a homicide by asphyxiation. Dr. Vilke, who was hired by the ambulance provider, charged $500 an hour and provided a different determination. He wrote in a report ... that Mr. Perez had died from methamphetamine use, heart disease and the exertion of his struggle against the restraints. Dr. Vilke ... is an integral part of a small but influential cadre of scientists, lawyers, physicians and other police experts whose research and testimony is almost always used to absolve officers of blame for deaths, according to a review of hundreds of research papers and more than 25,000 pages of court documents, as well as interviews with nearly three dozen people. Their views infuriate many prosecutors, plaintiff lawyers, medical experts and relatives of the dead, who accuse them of slanting science, ignoring inconvenient facts and dangerously emboldening police officers to act aggressively. Many of the experts also have ties to Axon, maker of the Taser.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.
According to the nonprofit organization Airwars, the U.S. has conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes in seven major conflict zones since 2001, with at least 22,000 civilians killed and potentially as many as 48,000. How does America react when it kills civilians? Just last week, we learned that the U.S. military decided that nobody will be held responsible for the August 29 drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children. After an internal review, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin chose to take no action, not even a wrist slap for a single intelligence analyst, drone operator, mission commander, or general. U.S. bombings since 2014 have consistently killed civilians but ... the Pentagon has done almost nothing to discern how many were harmed or what went wrong and might be corrected. Savagery consists of more than the act of killing. It also involves a system of impunity that makes clear to the perpetrators that what they are doing is acceptable, necessary – maybe even heroic – and must not cease. To this end, the United States has developed a machinery of impunity that is arguably the most advanced in the world, implicating not only a broad swathe of military personnel but also the entirety of American society. The machinery of impunity actually has two missions: The most obvious is to excuse people who should not be excused. The other is to punish those who try to expose the machine, because it does not function well in daylight.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Drug makers and other healthcare companies spent almost $30 billion in a single year to influence the medical choices made by Americans and steer them toward treatments that were newer, vastly more expensive and sometimes riskier than their tried-and-true alternatives, new research shows. The 2016 expenditures paid for TV commercials, sponsorships of patients' groups, promotional meetings for doctors, free drug samples and perks for prescribers. The amount represents a 70% increase since 1997, when drug companies began making direct appeals to American consumers. The study ... offers the most comprehensive accounting of healthcare marketing efforts to date. It traces broad shifts in the media and regulatory environment in which health companies operate, as well as the drugs and services – including erectile dysfunction pills, DNA testing kits and robotic surgery services – they are keen to sell. While lawmakers and regulators have tried to counter the impact of healthcare marketing in recent years, the reforms have had little effect on an industry that accounts for nearly 18% of the country's gross domestic product. The drug industry has increasingly turned to a more indirect approach in its marketing: sponsoring disease-awareness campaigns. Such campaigns, in which a company sponsors ads that do not name a particular medication, rose from 44 in 1997 to 401 in 2016, with an attendant spending increase from $177 million to $430 million.
Note: The pharmaceutical industry provides 75% of television advertising revenue when many countries do not allow drug advertising. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.
Four years ago, rapper Logic released his hit song "1-800-273-8255" – a reference to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – in hopes of helping others. A new study released this week found it did just that: researchers say the song potentially helped saved hundreds of lives. The study, published Monday in the BMJ, found almost 10,000 calls went to the Lifeline – a 6.9% increase over the expected number – during 34 days in 2017 and 2018 when the song was receiving heightened public attention. And an estimated 245 fewer suicides took place in that same time period – 5.5% below the expected number. The study authors' looked at the days immediately following the song's release, Logic's performance at the 2017 MTV Awards with singers Alessia Cara and Khalid, and their act at the 2018 Grammys. According to the research, those events were also linked to a surge of activity connected to the song on Twitter. "To know that my music was actually affecting people's lives, truly, that's what inspired me to make the song," Logic said in a statement to CNN. "We did it from a really warm place in our hearts to try to help people. And the fact that it actually did, that blows my mind." The song centers around a high school student struggling with his sexuality and contemplating suicide. However, after a call to a hotline, he realizes he wants to live. The song went quintuple platinum and remained Logic's best performing song on Spotify.
Note: Watch this inspiring song which has been viewed over 400 million times at this link. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Ebony Johnson's enthusiastic service at a Dunkin' location in Ohio is so memorable that regular customer Suzanne Burke noticed when she had not been working the drive-thru for a few weeks in March. When Johnson, 33, returned to work at the Mount Healthy location, where she's been employed for three years, she shared with Burke that she had been struggling financially while also trying to find housing for her and her three children following an eviction. Burke left Johnson a note saying that if Johnson wanted help, Burke would gladly do her best. Johnson accepted, and Burke, who has done work with social services in her career, got to work on reaching out to different businesses and organizations. It all led to a moment nine months in the making on Dec. 3 when Johnson broke down in tears and her young children broke out in smiles when they moved into a fully furnished apartment in Cincinnati. "Oh my God, it was so amazing, I just busted out crying," Johnson said. "I never had a full furnished house. I never had help like this. I had been asking God to put us in a home before Christmas, and He really did. I'm just so thankful." "It was so exciting, we all cried," Burke told TODAY. "I've got three kids, and I can't imagine not having a home to go to and then to have to get up, get the kids to school, and show up at work with a positive, happy attitude? I've been in awe of her." Johnson was able to secure the apartment through the help of the Cincinnati-based organization Strategies to End Homelessness.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
We all talk to our dogs, whether it's calling their name, playing fetch or teaching them new tricks. But do they actually understand the words we're saying? Well according to a new study, they do! The research has found that dogs can recognise an average of 89 words or phrases. The study asked 165 owners of different dog breeds to note down words that they thought their dogs responded to. The results showed the most common words the pooches understood were commands like sit, stay and wait. The research was carried out by Catherine Reeve and Sophie Jacques, from the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, in Canada. During the study, dog owners were asked to say if they thought their pup responded to the words or commands they were giving. The owners then had to record if their pet got excited, looked for something, looked up or did an action in response to a command. The research found that 89 words was the average number that the dogs could understand - one clever canine is believed to have understood 215 words in total - but the worst performing pooch knew only 15. Nearly all of the dogs that took part in the study reacted to their own name and many gave a response when being praised. The researchers said: "Those of us who have owned dogs would not be surprised to see most dogs respond with an enthusiastic tail wagging or a treat-seeking response on hearing, good girl/good boy."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The caption read "hanging with the homies." The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched. Another photo asked what someone should do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The answer, according to the caption, was to break "a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him." The comments represent a sliver of a trove of racist text messages exchanged by more than a dozen current and former Torrance police officers and recruits. The Times examined some of the contents of the until-now secret texts and identified a dozen Torrance police officers under investigation for exchanging them. The broad scope of the racist text conversations, which prosecutors said went on for years, has created a crisis for the Torrance Police Department and could jeopardize hundreds of criminal cases in which the officers either testified or made arrests. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday his office will investigate the department in the wake of the scandal. The officers' comments spared no color or creed. While no officers currently face criminal charges in direct relation to the text messages, the racist exchanges have led to the dismissal of at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers implicated in the scandal. County prosecutors had tossed 35 felony cases as of mid-November, and the Torrance city attorney's office has dismissed an additional 50, officials said. In total, the officers were listed as potential witnesses in nearly 1,400 cases in the last decade.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.
At least 12 major U.S. cities have broken annual homicide records in 2021 - and there's still three weeks to go in the year. Of the dozen cities that have already surpassed the grim milestones for killings, five topped records that were set or tied just last year. Philadelphia, a city of roughly 1.5 million people, has had more homicides this year (521 as of Dec. 6) than the nation's two largest cities, New York (443 as of Dec. 5) and Los Angeles (352 as of Nov. 27). That's an increase of 13% from 2020, a year that nearly broke the 1990 record. Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, leads the nation with 739 homicides as of the end of November, up 3% from 2020. Experts say there are a number of reasons possibly connected to the jump in homicides, including strained law enforcement staffing, a pronounced decline in arrests and continuing hardships from the pandemic. According to the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report released in September, the nation saw a 30% increase in murder in 2020, the largest single-year jump since the bureau began recording crime statistics 60 years ago. The retirement rate in police departments nationwide jumped 45% over 2020 and 2021. And another 18% of officers resigned
Note: What is glaringly missing from this article is the impact of the COVID lockdowns on mental health and violent crime, including homicide. Violent crime in the U.S. had been declining dramatically for decades, but then spiked dramatically once the lockdowns were instituted. How much have the lockdowns damaged mental health and made us less safe? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
British people are [asking]: What is the deal with all of these medicine ads in the U.S.? England doesn't allow commercials for prescription drugs. While there are ads for over-the-counter drugs in most of the world, the U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow drug companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. Commercials for prescription drugs do not exist in Europe or South America or Asia or Africa or Mexico or Australia, just in the U.S. and New Zealand, which is a much smaller market. It wasn't too long ago that TV in the U.S. was like the rest of the world, completely free of prescription drug ads. The '60s, the '70s, most of the '80s, there are no ads like this. By the '80s, though, ... drug companies started saying, we don't want to advertise our drugs just to doctors and pharmacists anymore. We want to market our drugs directly to consumers. The FDA was worried about how commercials would impact demand for drugs - misuse, overuse, all kinds of things. But there were compelling reasons to go directly to consumers. So in 1981, the first direct-to-consumer ad runs in print in Reader's Digest. The FDA [decided television] commercials need to say, out loud, the major risks of a drug. You just had to include the major risks of a drug, along with places where consumers could get more information about the drug, like a phone number or a website or a recommendation just to talk to your doctor. And this is what really opens the TV ad floodgates.
Note: The pharmaceutical industry provides 75% of television advertising revenue in the US. So how likely are TV stations to carry stories that reveal problems with drugs or corruption in the industry? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.
A journalist writing for The BMJ has won a British Journalism Award for his series on the financial interests of medical experts advising US and UK governments during the covid-19 pandemic. As a result of the articles written by Paul Thacker, an investigative journalist, the financial disclosures of members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were published for the first time. Thacker's first story looked at two groups critical to the UK government's pandemic response–SAGE and the Vaccine Taskforce. He examined both and found that they did not disclose their members' financial conflicts. Some members were tied to companies with a monetary interest in the government's purchases. Thacker ... filed freedom of information (FoI) requests with multiple government departments and Oxford University. In a second story he wrote about the government's repeated refusal to turn over these data. However, the FoI ... revealed that Thacker's original request was apparently sent to a special government department to handle any reporter considered a "campaigner" or to have "extreme views." Eventually, the government relented and published the financial conflicts for the members of SAGE. In the final story of the series Thacker looked at the panels that the US and UK governments used to authorize vaccines and revealed that ... disclosure policies were inadequate. Some experts evaluating the vaccines had significant industry ties that were not disclosed.
Note: Read the full text of Thacker's article titled, "Covid-19: How independent were the US and British vaccine advisory committees?" and another titled "How the case of the Oxford professor exposes a transparency crisis in government." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
High COVID-19 vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in populations by reducing the number of possible sources for transmission and thereby to reduce the burden of COVID-19 disease. Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing. In the UK it was described that secondary attack rates among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% for vaccinated vs 23% for unvaccinated). 12 of 31 infections in fully vaccinated household contacts (39%) arose from fully vaccinated epidemiologically linked index cases. Between week 39 and 42, a total of 100.160 COVID-19 cases were reported among citizens of 60 years or older. 89.821 occurred among the fully vaccinated (89.7%), 3.395 among the unvaccinated (3.4%). One week before, the COVID-19 case rate per 100.000 was higher among the subgroup of the vaccinated compared to the subgroup of the unvaccinated. The [CDC] identifies four of the top five counties with the highest percentage of fully vaccinated population (99.9–84.3%) as "high" transmission counties. It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission.
Note: This paper in the UK's highly esteemed Lancet shows that the vaccines are not stopping the spread of infection of COVID. They clearly are greatly decreasing the number of hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated, but they are not helping to stop the spread of this virus. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
If there's one thing we know about the virus, it's that the elderly are more susceptible to severe disease and death. But in the nation with the world's oldest population, Covid fatalities have plummeted. There were just six confirmed Covid deaths in Japan over the past week, the lowest since July 2020. Compared with other developed nations such as Germany or the U.S., it's even more remarkable - no Group of Seven member has seen its daily death toll fall so low since the pandemic started in earnest. Of course, that slump parallels a collapse in reported cases in Japan, to fewer than 200 a day the past three weeks, down from more than 25,000 daily infections in August, when an outbreak of the more transmissible and harder-to-control delta variant peaked and quickly receded. It's unclear exactly why the wave of cases seen in late summer and early fall reversed so dramatically. A slow-to-start but now comprehensive vaccination campaign is at least partly responsible, along with almost universal but voluntary use of masks. Japan has never locked down, but many people have cut back on going out in public to crowded places. Across the whole pandemic, Japan has seen more deaths than places such as China, New Zealand, Taiwan or Australia that tried to completely eliminate the virus, or South Korea, which has also kept deaths very low. But at this point, the daily number of deaths in Japan is below even Australia or South Korea.
Note: This article barely mentions that Japan never instituted a lockdown and mask wearing is voluntary. How is it that both Sweden and Japan, which never instituted lockdowns, have done better than so many countries that did? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Laurie Valeriano first heard about DINP decades ago. "I started to worry about the chemicals that come out of all these plastics," she said. DINP, one of a group of chemicals called phthalates that makes plastic more pliable, was one of them. It was already clear that DINP could cause cancer and interfere with hormonal functioning. In February 2000, Valeriano and her employer, the Washington Toxics Coalition, asked the Environmental Protection Agency to add DINP to the list of chemicals it monitors through a nationwide program called the Toxics Release Inventory. Seven months later ... the EPA announced that it planned to grant the group's request and issued a proposed rule that would add DINP to the toxics inventory. Yet more than 20 years later, the EPA has yet to make good on its promise to add DINP to the list of chemicals. It never finalized the rule. Companies have continued to churn out DINP ... in astounding amounts without disclosing how much individual plants make and emit. In addition to the cancer and hormone disruption that sparked Valeriano's claim 21 years ago, we now know more about how DINP affects the sexual development of children. It decreases sperm motility, increases malformations of the testes and other organs, and makes boys ... more likely to be infertile later in life. In fact, the entire group of phthalates – an estimated half-billion pounds of which are made and used in the U.S. each year – seem to cause a similar constellation of health problems.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is rewriting history. He is doing so to disguise his shameful role in delaying promotion of an AIDS treatment that would have prevented tens of thousands of deaths in the first years of the epidemic. In my book, Body Counts, A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival, I recount how slow the federal government was in publicizing the use of Bactrim and other sulfa drugs to prevent PCP (the pneumonia that was then the leading killer of people with AIDS). Had Fauci listened to people with AIDS and the clinicians treating them, and responded accordingly, he would have saved thousands of lives. Between 1987, when [AIDS activist Michael] Callen met with Fauci and 1989, when the guidelines were ultimately issued, nearly 17,000 people with AIDS suffocated from PCP. Most of these people might have lived had Fauci responded appropriately. Callen and others ... met with Fauci to plead for his support. They explained that many frontline AIDS physicians, following the lead of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, were already using Bactrim effectively to prevent the recurrence of PCP. The science was clear. Fauci refused to acknowledge the evidence and, according to one account, even encouraged people with AIDS to stop taking treatments, like Bactrim. Treatment activist Richard Jefferys wrote in 2001 that Fauci "went as far as telling activists attending a 1987 meeting that there was no data to suggest PCP prophylaxis was beneficial and that it may, in fact be dangerous."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
Brenda Thomas's heart became a shell when her 21-year-old son died in a motorcycle accident. But she has found something that helps her grief: She keeps folded pieces of paper, tucked in her purse at all times. They are "acts of kindness" cards. Whenever she does a good deed for a stranger – which is about once a week – she passes along a card with a message: "If you receive this card, then you must be a recipient of a random act of kindness." At the top of each note is her son's name, Trevor Paul Thomas. He died in September 2019. His most standout quality was his compassion for others, no matter who they were or how well he knew them. "He was always kind to everyone," said Thomas. "That's just who he was." Trevor regularly shoveled snow off the driveways of older neighbors, delivered hot meals to those in need and befriended classmates who struggled to fit in, she said. The Thomas family decided to create cards and distribute them around their community, in the hope that it would encourage people to do a good deed as part of Trevor's legacy. The goal, they said, was to launch an ongoing chain of kindness. "We not only want people to understand that they're a recipient of an act of kindness, but we also want them to pay it forward," said Whitney Thomas. On each card they wrote the hashtag #liveliketrev23, and urged recipients to consider sharing their experience on social media so that the family could read about the heartwarming gestures.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The laboratories and other buildings that once housed a chemical manufacturer here in New Jersey's most populous city have been demolished. More than 10,000 leaky drums and other containers once illegally stored here have long been removed. Its owner was convicted three decades ago. Yet the groundwater beneath the 4.4-acre expanse once occupied by White Chemical Corp. in Newark remains contaminated, given a lack of federal funding. But three decades after federal officials declared it one of America's most toxic spots, it's about to get a jolt. This plot in Newark is among more than four dozen toxic waste sites to get cleanup funding from the newly-enacted infrastructure law, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday, totaling $1 billion. "This work is just the beginning," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said. President Biden signed legislation reviving a polluter's tax that will inject a new stream of cash into the nation's troubled Superfund program. The renewed excise fees, which disappeared more than 25 years ago, are expected to raise $14.5 billion in revenue over the next decade and could accelerate cleanups of many sites that are increasingly threatened by climate change. The Superfund list includes more than 1,300 abandoned mines, radioactive landfills, shuttered military labs, closed factories and other contaminated areas across nearly all 50 states.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
As the year draws to a close, there are reasons to feel cautiously optimistic about areas in which the environment scored victories in 2021. Delayed by a year as a result of COVID-19, November's COP26 - the United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Glasgow - welcomed the world's second-largest fossil-fuel emitter, the United States, back to the negotiating table after four years of inaction on climate change. By the summit's end, the U.S. and China had made a surprise joint declaration to work together on meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. The biggest news in forest conservation was the pledge at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow to end deforestation by 2030; the commitment includes a pledge to provide $12 billion in funding to "help unleash the potential of forests and sustainable land use." The Biden administration spent part of its first year restoring habitat protections that had been rolled back by its predecessor. Perhaps the most prominent was the re-establishment of full protection for the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in southern Utah, as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off New England. Populations of some of the world's most iconic species are showing some improvement as a result of protective measures. Humpback whales, whose haunting songs helped build support for the "Save the Whales" campaign that ushered in the modern environmental movement, are increasing in number in many parts of their range.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
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.