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.
Several hundred thousand [soldiers] took part in atmospheric nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific and in Nevada. They were posted within range of exploding bombs — in effect made to be guinea pigs in studies of how combat troops might stand up in a war fought with nuclear arms. Many among these “atomic veterans” suffered cancers and other diseases. Frank Farmer ... witnessed 18 atomic detonations in 1958. “It’s so bright you actually see your bones in your hands.” He and his shipmates were issued no protective gear. Despite government assurances that their exposure to radiation had been insufficient to inflict physical harm, veterans could see they were getting sick in disproportionate numbers. Some began to speak out, ignoring oaths they had signed never to discuss their experiences. “More and more I heard about guys that had prostate cancer and lung cancer and all kinds of cancers,” said Mr. Farmer, who suffered hearing loss and a body rash that did not go away. Decades passed before corrective measures were taken. Issues raised by [these] difficulties resound in modern wars. As with the atomic veterans, officialdom’s default position has generally been to wave off any suggestion of a link between a soldier’s illness and a command-level decision. That was the case with Agent Orange ... in Vietnam. Years passed before the government accepted a “presumptive” connection between herbicides and cancers afflicting Vietnam veterans. Soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war complain of breathing problems, neurological damage, gastrointestinal disorders and other illnesses. Many suspect that blame lies with practices off the battlefield.
Note: Don't miss a profoundly moving 22-minute documentary in which several atomic veterans describe in detail what happened, how they suffered, and how the government denied responsibility for decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our War Information Center.
I’ve always been fascinated by nuclear weapons and the self-destructive tendencies of mankind. So when I found declassified United States Civil Defense footage of soldiers maneuvering in the glare of a mushroom cloud, I wanted to learn more about their stories. I discovered that as many as 400,000 American soldiers and sailors observed nuclear explosions just a few miles from ground zero in more than 200 atmospheric tests conducted between 1946 and 1962. It was difficult to get a precise count of how many men were involved, because most information was classified — including reports on the illnesses the veterans suffered and the radioactive pollution that was released into the environment around the test sites. They served near dangerous nuclear tests — and it has haunted them ever since. With so little information available and the number of remaining veterans dwindling rapidly, I wanted to prevent these stories from disappearing. I decided to interview some of them as research for a fiction film on the topic and wound up making this documentary in the process. Because of secrecy agreements they had signed, some of them were hesitant to talk about their experiences. Getting to know these men was an experience I will never forget. I realized that my own generation seems to have become numb to what nuclear war could do to humanity. The accounts of the atomic soldiers can help us understand that horror.
Note: The author of this article, Morgan Knibbe, is a Dutch documentary filmmaker. The 15-minute documentary he made, available at the link above, is so important. These men were used as guinea pigs in nuclear bomb tests and have suffered in silence for decades because of those who promote war on our planet. Please watch and spread the word far and wide. For lots more on humans being used mercilessly as guinea pigs, see this webpage.
Fifty-eight years ago, Edward Pittson says, the Scoutmaster who had taught him skills like how to use a compass and light a campfire said he was going to teach Pittson about sex. The Scoutmaster invited Pittson, who was 12, to his house and asked him to lie on the bed. “This is the normal way to learn about sex,” Pittson recalls the Scoutmaster telling him. “He said, ‘But don’t tell your parents what I’m doing.’” Now, Pittson is one of hundreds of men and boys hoping for a last chance at restitution if the Boy Scouts of America, in the face of a new wave of abuse allegations, files for bankruptcy. On Thursday, a group of attorneys said they’d collected information from at least 428 men and boys whose accounts of rape, molestation and abuse indicate the Boy Scouts’ pedophile problem is far more widespread than the organization has previously acknowledged. If the Boy Scouts file for bankruptcy, the accusers will have a limited window to file claims against the organization. Hundreds of individual sex abuse cases have been brought against the Scouts ... and in 2010, a judge ordered the organization to make public an internal list of men accused of preying on boys. Within Scout headquarters, the list was known as the “P Files” or “Perversion Files.” In January, a child abuse expert hired by the Boy Scouts to analyze the files testified that she found 12,254 boys had reported experiencing sexual abuse at the hands of at least 7,800 suspected assailants between 1944 and 2016.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Some Democratic presidential candidates say that America’s economic system is badly broken and in need of sweeping, structural change. In its new Distributive Financial Accounts data series, the central bank offers a granular picture of how American capitalism has been distributing the gains of economic growth over the past three decades. Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project took the Fed’s data and calculated how much the respective net worth of America’s top one percent and its bottom 50 percent has changed since 1989. He found that America’s superrich have grown about $21 trillion richer ... while those in the bottom half of the wealth distribution have grown $900 billion poorer. Notably, this measure of wealth includes liabilities. And it does not include consumer goods. But if one did include the Fed’s data on the distribution of consumer goods, the wealth gap between the top one percent and bottom 50 would actually be even larger. In 2011, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University published a study on Americans’ views of how wealth was distributed in their society, and how they felt it should be distributed. They found that, in the average American’s ideal world, the richest 20 percent would own 32 percent of national wealth. In reality, the top quintile owned 84 percent as of 2011. And that share has grown in the intervening years. Today, the one percent alone commands roughly 40 percent of all America’s wealth.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.
The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections. In August of 2018, President Trump signed [an] executive order ... called National Security Presidential Memorandum 13. Its contents are still classified, but essentially it allows the Cyber Command to go ahead and conduct all kinds of operations inside foreign networks without going back to the president for prior approval. The first thing it did was go after those units in Russia that were responsible for a lot of the election-hacking. They went after the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence unit that had been responsible for breaking into the D.N.C.. A lot of that ... was made public. What wasn’t made public was a parallel effort to go inside the Russian power grid, to put some code in places where the Russians ... wouldn’t see it, in case the U.S. ever needed to act against Russia’s utilities as the Russians were putting malware in our systems.
Note: A 2007 New York Times article describes the formation of the Air Force Cyberspace Command to arm the US military in anticipation of widespread computer-based warfare. A more recent Guardian article says, "we might already be living through the first world cyberwar." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
South-east Asia is battling to contain the spread of highly contagious African swine fever, known as “pig Ebola”, which has already led to the culling of millions of pigs in China and Vietnam. African swine fever, which is harmless to humans but fatal to pigs, was discovered in China in August, where it has caused havoc, leading to more than 1.2m pigs being culled. China is home to almost half of the world’s pigs. There is no vaccination for African swine fever, which causes pigs to internally haemorrhage until they die, so the only option to contain the disease is to kill any contaminated animals. Some estimates say that in China up to 200m animals may eventually be slaughtered. The virus can last for several weeks on anything from clothes to vehicles, allowing for it to easily travel long distances. “This is the biggest animal disease outbreak we’ve ever had on the planet,” said Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist. Currently the battle to contain the disease is being lost. “There are concerns that the disease will continue to spread across the countries in south-east Asia,” said Dr Wantanee Kalpravidh, regional manager for UNFAO, who said they believed the swine fever cases being reported by governments in the region were “underestimates”. Wantanee said problems included the lack of compensation for pig farmers in south-east Asia whose herds were culled, giving them little reason to report a disease outbreak, and fears that banning movement of pigs and pork across borders would only create a “black market”.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
"Ultraprocessed" describes many foods, including pre-prepared dishes found in grocery store freezers, packaged baked goods, dehydrated soups, ice cream, sugary cereals and fizzy beverages. Two separate studies published Wednesday in The BMJ link eating the popular factory-made fare with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of early death. Previous studies have associated highly processed food consumption with higher risks of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and even some cancers. "Ultraprocessed foods already make up more than half of the total dietary energy consumed in high-income countries such as USA, Canada and the UK," [said] Maira Bes-Rastrollo, senior author of one study. "Products in this category are rich in poor quality fat, added sugar and salt, along with low vitamin density and fiber content, and they "are economically profitable (low cost ingredients), very palatable and convenient," said Bes-Rastrollo. Worst of all, she explained, they are replacing unprocessed or minimally processed foods and freshly prepared meals in our diets. Bes-Rastrollo and her colleagues also collected information on lifestyle, demographic factors, physical activity, weight and health. Analyzing the data, the team found that a higher consumption of heavily processed foods - more than four servings each day - was associated with a 62% increased risk for early death due to any cause relative to those who ate these foods less frequently.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Trump Administration is responsible for causing the largest reduction of protected public lands in U.S. history, according to a comprehensive study published this week in the journal Science. In 2017, the study noted, President Trump enacted two of the largest reductions of federally protected lands, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument in southern Utah by 51 percent. Also in 2017, Congress voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas development. By removing federal protections, the study said, Trump is opening up these lands to oil and natural gas companies. And while the 2017 reductions are now being argued in federal court, the study said, the government already has plans to downgrade or downsize nine more land and marine national monuments. The study was conducted by 21 international scientists analyzing 200 years of data about protected areas. The scientists found that vast reduction of federal lands is a relatively recent phenomenon; 90 percent of reductions in U.S. federal lands have occurred since the year 2000. This is part of a disturbing global trend, where 78 percent of global land reductions have taken place since 2000. “As human pressures on the biosphere accelerate, it is critical to strengthen—not roll back—conservation efforts,” the study authors concluded.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
People are developing dementia a decade before they were 20 years ago, perhaps because of environmental factors such as pollution and the stepped-up use of insecticides, a wide-ranging international study has found. The study, which compared 21 Western countries between the years 1989 and 2010, found that the disease is now being regularly diagnosed in people in their late 40s and that death rates are soaring. The study was published in the Surgical Neurology International journal. The problem was particularly acute in the United States, where neurological deaths in men aged over 75 have nearly tripled and in women risen more than fivefold, the leader of the study, Colin Pritchard from Bournemouth University, [said]. Scientists quoted in the study said a combination of environmental factors such as pollution from aircraft and cars as well as widespread use of pesticides could be the culprit. Early-onset dementia used to cover people developing the disease in their late 60s. Now, it’s meant to mean people much younger than that, the research showed. The study found that deaths caused by neurological disease had risen significantly in adults aged 55 to74, virtually doubling in the over-75s. The sharp increase in death rates from dementia-related diseases cannot simply be blamed on an aging population or stepped-up diagnosis, Pritchard said. “The rate of increase in such a short time suggested a silent or even a hidden epidemic, in which environmental factors must play a major part.”
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
A former Central Intelligence Agency employee told a Senate subcommittee today that he and another C.I.A. employee were sent to San Francisco in 1959 to lure unsuspecting people to a party at which the two agents were to spray the air with LSD 25 as part of the agency's secret drug testing program. The test [was] part of a much larger drug testing program known by the cryptonym MK ULTRA,” David Rhodes told the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research. Mr. Rhodes, two former C.I.A. employees, two former Bureau of Narcotics agents and Dr. Charles Geschickter, head of a foundation that channeled C.I.A. medical research funds to universities for nine or 10 years, were questioned this morning in the first of two days of hearings into C.I.A. testing of drugs on human beings. Today's testimony by Mr. Rhodes provided the first look the public has had at an LSD test inside a C.I.A. safehouse. The agency carried out other drug tests in both California and New York City from 1953 to 1966 in such safehouses, mainly apartments and motel rooms. These were secretly rented for the agency by George H. White, an official of the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which has since been supplanted by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Mr. Rhodes, a psychologist employed by the C.I.A. from 1957 to 1961, said he went to California in 1959 with Walter P. Pasternak. Mr. Pasternak, a former employee of the agency, was also an official with the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.
Note: Read more about the CIA's MK ULTRA program. Shortly before his death, George White summed up his CIA career by saying, 'It was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill and cheat, steal, deceive, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the all highest," as reported in this ABC documentary on MK ULTRA. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control from reliable major media sources.
One day, during her usual chat with her eight-year-old son about school, Tracey Cooney got an answer she didn't expect. "There was nobody to play with. Everyone was playing in their own little groups," he confided. She was surprised because he was usually outgoing and confident. Cooney felt a little upset, but remembered something she had seen on social media and wondered if it could help children in his situation. It's called a Buddy Bench. The idea is simple - if a child feels lonely, they can go to the bench as a signal that they need someone to play with. Another child will see them, go and talk to them and include them in their games. So Cooney asked other parents and the head teacher at Castlemartyr National School in Cork, Ireland, whether they would be interested in getting one - their answer was, "Yes." "We use the bench as a reminder for children of things like communication, mutual support and opening up about feelings," says Judith Ashton, a psychotherapist and co-founder of ... Buddy Bench Ireland. Apart from reducing social isolation and improving mental wellbeing, the hope is that the benches can tackle another problem: bullying. But do children actually use the bench? "They don't see it as stigmatised," says Sinead McGilloway ... who led a study of 117 pupils at three schools which have benches. Forty per cent of the children she questioned said they had used the bench, and 90% said if they saw someone else sitting on it they would talk to them.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
We all know how good being in nature can make us feel. In Japan, we practice something called forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku. Shinrin in Japanese means forest, and yoku means bath. So shinrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere, or taking in the forest through our senses. This is not exercise, or hiking, or jogging. It is simply being in nature, connecting with it through our senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Shinrin-yoku is like a bridge. By opening our senses, it bridges the gap between us and the natural world. Numerous studies Ive conducted have shown that shinrin-yoku has real health benefits. So how does one go about forest bathing? First, find a spot. Make sure you have left your phone and camera behind. You are going to be walking aimlessly and slowly. You dont need any devices. Let your body be your guide. Listen to where it wants to take you. The key to unlocking the power of the forest is in the five senses. Let nature enter through your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hands and feet. Listen to the birds singing and the breeze rustling in the leaves of the trees. Look at the different greens of the trees and the sunlight filtering through the branches. Smell the fragrance of the forest. Taste the freshness of the air as you take deep breaths. You can forest-bathe anywhere in the world wherever there are trees ... in rain, sunshine or snow. You dont even need a forest. Once you have learned how to do it, you can do shinrin-yoku anywhere in a nearby park or in your garden.
Note: The above is excerpted from the book "Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness" by Dr. Qing Li. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Each year, beginning in the fall, a group of third-year architecture students from Auburn University take up residence in a small rural Alabama town to begin building a house. In the winter, when a new semester begins, they are replaced at the Newbern, Alabama, project site by another cohort of 16 students who finish up the job and prepare the house for its new occupants. The 20K Home Project began 13 years ago as a challenge to architecture students at Auburn to build a $20,000 house, with $12,000 in material and $8,000 for labor. The idea was to create the perfect house for needy families in rural areas where dwellings are often substandard and where affordable building can be a logistical challenge. To date, the student-led project has designed and built homes for nearly 30 households as part of Auburns Rural Studio, an off-campus, hands-on architecture program that has also constructed community centers, a library and other projects around Hale County, where Newbern is located. Created in 1993, Rural Studio partners with local nonprofits and uses cash and in-kind donations to cover the cost of the homes. It then makes a gift of the finished houses to low-income Newbern residents. Over the years, Rural Studio has developed design criteria for the homes, which are typically one- or two-bedroom single-family dwellings. In Newbern, a community of just under 200 people in the west-central part of Alabama, the median price of a home is about $65,000.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
UFOs have historically been associated with crackpot ideas. The obvious reason for this is that the term “UFO” is usually assumed to be a synonym for “extraterrestrial life.” Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall ... argued that the real reason UFOs have been dismissed is because of the existential challenge that they pose for a worldview in which human beings are the most technologically advanced life-forms: "UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling." In recent years ... discussion of actual UFOs has been the topic of some serious mainstream media coverage. There was the December 2017 New York Times story by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean about the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which was tasked with cataloguing UFOs recorded by military pilots. DoD officials confirmed its existence. This story ... represented the first time the U.S. government acknowledged the existence of such a program. Then, there were the reports last November about Oumuamua, “a mysterious, cigar-shaped interstellar object [that] fell through our solar system at an extraordinary speed,” according to New York’s Eric Levits. What appears to be happening is that official organs of the state are now acknowledging that UFOs exist. They are doing so because enough pilots are reporting UFOs and near-air collisions so as to warrant better record-keeping.
Note: The fact that the media is no longer debunking UFOs suggests that a gradual acculturation process is being used. Those in the know have been aware of many intense UFO encounters reported by military officers and more for many decades. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.
A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent. The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial - and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed. Researchers in the company’s division of inflammation and immunology urged Pfizer to conduct a clinical trial on thousands of patients, which they estimated would cost $80 million ... according to an internal company document obtained by The Washington Post. Pfizer’s deliberations, which previously have not been disclosed, offer a rare window into the frustrating search for Alzheimer’s treatments inside one of the world’s largest drug companies. Pfizer did share the data privately with at least one prominent scientist, but outside researchers contacted by The Post believe Pfizer also should at least have published its data, making the findings broadly available to researchers. “Of course they should. Why not?” said Rudolph E. Tanzi, a leading Alzheimer’s researcher and professor at Harvard Medical School. “It would benefit the scientific community to have that data out there,” said Keenan Walker, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.
Soon, soybeans will be bred to yield stable oil without the addition of dangerous trans fats. Lettuce will be grown to handle warmer, drier fields. Wheat to contain less gluten. And pigs bred to resist deadly viruses. Ten years ago, such genetic changes would have been considered science fiction – or so far off into the future of breeding as to be almost unimaginable. But gene editing, particularly with a tool called Crispr-Cas9, has made it much easier and more efficient to tinker with the genomes of plants and animals. The first Crispr-edited products will begin reaching the market this year, and researchers believe it’s only a matter of time before US grocery shelves could be filled with gene-edited produce, grains and meat. The technology will be subject to stringent health and environment review, as well as labeling requirements in the EU, but not in the US. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a statement last March saying it would not regulate crops whose genetic changes could have been produced with conventional breeding. The European court of justice, by contrast, ruled last summer that gene-edited crops should be regulated as GMOs. The scientific challenges have been largely settled. But political and social ones remain. Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, said US consumers are willing to pay 20% more to avoid GMO foods, and nearly half of the public reports actively avoiding genetically modified ingredients and food.
Note: Read an excellent addendum to this important article by GMO expert Jeffrey Smith recommending caution in these little-tested new products. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Christi Bragg listened in disbelief. It was a Sunday in February, and her popular evangelical pastor, Matt Chandler, was preaching on the evil of leaders who sexually abuse those they are called to protect. But at the Village Church, he assured his listeners, victims of assault would be heard, and healed. Ms. Bragg nearly vomited. She stood up and walked out. Exactly one year before that day, on Feb. 17, 2018, Ms. Bragg and her husband, Matt, reported to the Village that their daughter, at about age 11, had been sexually abused at the church’s summer camp for children. Since then, Matthew Tonne, who was the church’s associate children’s minister, had been investigated by the police, indicted and arrested on charges of sexually molesting Ms. Bragg’s daughter. Ms. Bragg waited for church leaders to explain what had happened and to thoroughly inform other families in the congregation. But none of that ever came. Nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders, from youth pastors to top ministers, have pleaded guilty or been convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998, according to a recent investigation by The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News. At the Village, one of the most prominent Southern Baptist churches in the country ... Ms. Bragg said leaders had offered prayer. But as months passed, she came to believe their instinct to protect the institution outweighed their care for her daughter or their interest in investigating the truth.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Over the last 80 years, much of the land surrounding Venetucci Farm was sold to the US army to establish the base now known as Fort Carson. Farming activities have stopped. In 2016, irrigation water was found to be contaminated with elevated levels of perfluorinated compounds (PFCs). The foundation that runs the farm has joined forces with a local water district to sue the US Air Force, alleging that toxic chemicals used in firefighting foam at a nearby base have tainted the water. Similar concerns have been raised about dozens of other bases across the country. But the problem is not limited to areas close to military installations. PFCs and related human-made chemicals, more generally known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), have been virtually unregulated since at least the 1950s. As well as at industrial sites, airports and bases, PFAS have long been used in household products. They are everywhere. A 2007 study estimated that PFAS are in the blood of 98% of Americans, while last year an analysis by the not-for-profit Environmental Working Group found that more than 1,500 drinking water systems nationwide could be contaminated by PFAS. Studies suggest that certain PFAS may affect the growth, learning and behaviour of infants and older children; lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant; interfere with the body’s natural hormones; increase cholesterol levels; affect the immune system; and increase the risk of kidney and testicular cancer and thyroid problems.
Note: Read more about these chemicals contaminating the drinking water of 110 million Americans. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
After years of lobbying and experimental research, the FDA has granted "breakthrough therapy" status for the drug MDMA as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The designation does not mean the drug is FDA-approved, but it does ease the way for clinical trials to test its safety and effectiveness in patients with PTSD. The non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which has been advocating and fundraising for MDMA research for three decades, announced the FDA's designation. More commonly known as its street names ecstasy or Molly, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a psychoactive drug that produces feelings of energy and euphoria, often followed by an emotional crash. In recent years, some in the scientific community have suggested it could have medical benefits, as well. In previous phases of clinical trials, the drug was shown to offer significant relief to sufferers of PTSD, a mental health disorder characterized by nightmares or flashbacks and heightened anxiety or depression after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. In phase 2 clinical trials sponsored by MAPS, 61 percent of the 107 participants with chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD no longer had the disorder after two months of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy treatment. At a 12-month follow up, 68 percent no longer had PTSD. The organization expects to begin phase 3 trials with a larger group of participants next year.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind-altering drugs from reliable major media sources.
Chicago isn’t known as a hotbed of UFO activity, but O’Hare Airport is the home of one of the most publicized sightings of the last decade. A “flying saucer-like object” was spotted over Concourse C of the United terminal in November 2006 by pilots, airline management and mechanics. The incident, reported by a Chicago Tribune columnist a few weeks later, noted the object was first seen by a United ramp worker around 4:30 p.m.. After that, a variety of witnesses said the object was dark gray and 6 to 24 feet in diameter. The object was silent and appeared just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds and leaving a circular hole shape in the clouds. The Federal Aviation Administration ... dismissed the incident as a weather phenomena. But for Center for UFO Studies Scientific Director Mark Rodeghier, the possible alien craft that appeared in the center’s own proverbial backyard remains a mystery worth exploring. “It’s an unknown object over O’Hare, and it’s seen by official personnel, and does United or the FAA take it seriously? Of course not, they have zero interest because UFOs can’t exist. But how can you not worry about something hovering over an airport after 9/11? It doesn’t make sense,” Rodeghier said. Journalist Leslie Kean also wrote about it in her book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record” and talked about in on “The Colbert Report” with Stephen Colbert in 2010, saying the government should investigate the O’Hare incident.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs 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.