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.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook has done "too much censorship" as he revealed the social network is scrapping fact-checking and restrictions on free speech as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House. The 40-year-old tech tycoon – who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago the day before Thanksgiving and gave him a pair of Meta Ray Ban sunglasses, with Meta later donating $1 million to his inaugural fund – claimed on Tuesday that the dramatic about-face was signal that the company is returning to an original focus on free speech. The stunning reversal will include moving Meta's content moderation team from deep-blue California to right-leaning Texas in order to insulate the group from cultural bias. "As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help build trust to do this work in places where there's less concern about the bias of our team," the Meta boss said. Facebook will do away with "restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse," Zuckerberg said. "What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas," he said, adding: "It's gone too far." In late July, Facebook acknowledged that it censored the image of President-elect Donald Trump raising his fist in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced he is scrapping fact-checks on Facebook, claiming the labels intended to warn against fake news have "destroyed more trust than they have created". Facebook's fact-checkers have helped debunk hundreds of fake news stories and false rumours – however, there have been several high-profile missteps. In 2020, Facebook and Twitter took action to halt the spread of an article by the New York Post based on leaked emails from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. As coronavirus spread around the world, suggestions that the vaccine could have been man-made were suppressed by Facebook. An opinion column in the New York Post with the headline: "Don't buy China's story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab" was labelled as "false information". In 2021, Facebook lifted its ban on claims the virus could have been "man-made". It was months later that further doubts emerged over the origins of coronavirus. In 2021, Facebook ... was accused of wrongly fact-checking a story about Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine. A British Medical Journal (BMJ) report, based on whistleblowing, alleged poor clinical practices at a contractor carrying out research for Pfizer. However, Facebook's fact-checkers added a label arguing the story was "missing context" and could "mislead people". Furious debates raged over the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Facebook's fact-checkers were accused of overzealously clamping down on articles that questioned the science behind [mask] mandates.
Note: Read a former senior NPR editor's nuanced take on how challenging official narratives became so politicized that "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that should have been guiding our work." Opportunities for award winning journalism were lost on controversial issues like COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and more. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and Big Tech.
In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America's overdose crisis. Why hadn't the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, acted sooner to address a crisis that had been building for decades? One reason, a New York Times investigation found: Drugmakers had been paying them not to. For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments. The P.B.M.s exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price. The three dominant companies – Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx – oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million. The P.B.M.s are hired by insurers and employers to control their drug costs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical manufacturers. They often pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs, while driving independent pharmacies out of business. Regulators have accused the largest P.B.M.s of anticompetitive practices. In addition ... P.B.M.s sometimes collaborated with opioid manufacturers to persuade insurers not to restrict access to their drugs.
Note: A former DEA agent has said that Congress helped drug companies create the opioid epidemic. Read how pharmacy benefit managers inflate the price of medications behind the scenes. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.
My colleagues Ruth Talbot, Asia Fields, Maya Miller and I have investigated how cities have sometimes ignored their own policies and court orders, which has resulted in them taking homeless people's belongings during encampment clearings. We also found that some cities have failed to store the property so it could be returned. People told us about local governments taking everything from tents and sleeping bags to journals, pictures and mementos. Even when cities are ordered to stop seizing belongings and to provide storage for the property they take, we found that people are rarely reunited with their possessions. The losses are traumatizing, can worsen health outcomes, and can make it harder for people like Stratton to find stability and get back inside. Cities have recently passed new camping bans or started enforcing ones already on the books following a Supreme Court decision in June that allows local officials to punish people for sleeping outside. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness earlier this year released updated strategies for addressing encampments "humanely and effectively," advising communities to treat encampment responses with the same urgency they would any other crises. The council recommends providing 30 days' notice before a removal and giving people two days to pack. The council also recommends that cities store belongings for as long as it typically takes for someone to get permanent housing.
Note: Read about the private contractors clearing California's homelessness camps. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it's banning the use of Red No. 3, a synthetic dye that gives food and drinks their bright red cherry color but has been linked to cancer in animals. The dye is still used in thousands of foods, including candy, cereals, cherries in fruit cocktails and strawberry-flavored milkshakes, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group that petitioned the agency in 2022 to end its use. More than 9,200 food items contain the dye, including hundreds of products made by large food companies. The FDA is not prohibiting other artificial dyes, including Red No. 40, which has been linked to behavioral issues in children. The FDA's decision is a victory for consumer advocacy groups and some U.S. lawmakers who have long urged it to revoke Red No. 3's approval, citing ample evidence that its use in beverages, dietary supplements, cereals and candies may cause cancer as well as affect children's behavior. "At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick, but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy," said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the CSPI. The agency banned the additive in cosmetics in 1990 under the Delaney Clause, a federal law that requires the FDA to ban food additives that are found to cause or induce cancer in humans or animals. Food manufacturers will have until Jan. 15, 2027, to reformulate their products.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption.
The payment scheme for people injured by vaccines has cost taxpayers more to run than it has paid out to victims, official figures suggest, fuelling calls for "urgent reform". The Government has spent more than Ł25 million since Nov 1 2021 on medically assessing thousands of claims that vaccinations have left people seriously disabled. It is more than the total Ł23.6 million that since that date has been paid out to 197 victims, with each claim worth Ł120,000. The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) was established in 1979 and pays tax-free cash to those deemed to have suffered life-changing injuries as a result of certain vaccinations – including those against Covid-19. It awards a one-off Ł120,000 tax-free payment to people who have been severely injured, or to the families of those who have died, as a result of a vaccination. The scheme has been heavily criticised for being too slow to assess cases. Victims also claim that the payouts are insufficient and that the threshold claimants must meet to qualify for a payout is too harsh a measure. Kate Scott, whose husband was left with permanent brain damage after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19, criticised the imbalance between the money the scheme costs to run and the sums paid out. Public hearings for the fourth module of the Covid-19 inquiry started in London on Tuesday. It will hear issues around vaccine safety from families of those who suffered side effects from Covid jabs.
Note: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 38,264 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,658,330 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports. Our Substack dives into the complex world of COVID vaccines with nuance and uncensored investigation.
MANNA [is a] nonprofit that provides free, medically-tailored meals (MTMs) and education about how nutrition affects health conditions to Philadelphians who need it. Last month, the journal BMC Nutrition released research ... showing that its clients achieved a "significant decrease in malnutrition risk" and meaningful changes in conditions like diabetes and hypertension. "This is the first of its kind," explains Jule Anne Henstenburg, PhD, director of The MANNA Institute. "There has never been research involving an in-depth evaluation of a functioning medically tailored meal program." Of the clients at risk for malnutrition when starting the program, 56 percent experienced a clinically significant reduction in malnutrition risk by program finish; 62 percent of clients with hypertension reduced their blood pressure by five or more units; among clients with diabetes, median hemoglobin A1C dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent, indicating improved blood sugar control. Body mass index (BMI) remained stable or decreased for 88 percent of clients who started the program with obesity. Clients can be referred to MANNA either by their medical care provider or through their health insurance plan. The majority of MANNA's clients are low-income, a population that often lives in food deserts, where healthy food is already hard to come by, and health literacy (the kind of insight needed to understand medically complex diets) can be low. "I see MANNA as the pharmacy for your prescription diet," [Chief executive officer of MANNA Sue] Daugherty says. "Imagine getting a prescription for your high blood pressure medicine and not having a pharmacy to fill it – that's what happens every day when folks are discharged with complex diets." The top five illnesses MANNA serves are heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV / AIDS and congestive heart failure. Originally created in 1990 to provide comfort foods to patients with AIDS, MANNA overhauled its menu and began expanding its reach to anyone with a life-threatening illness 10 years later.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.
"Hospitals are the ugliest places in the world," says Jacques Herzog. "They are a product of blind functionalist thinking, while neglecting basic human needs." Welcome to Zurich's remarkable new children's hospital, the Kinderspital – or "Kispi" for short – a 14-year endeavour to revolutionise how we think about the architecture of healing. It is not trying to be a fancy hotel, like some private hospitals. It is just a place where simple things like the quality of light and views, the scale and proportion of spaces and the texture of materials have been thought about with immense care, and honed to make the experience as pleasant as possible for everyone. The firm [Herzog & de Meuron] completed an impressive, yet oddly undersung, rehabilitation clinic in Basel in 2002, and is now building a huge amoeba-shaped hospital in Denmark as well as a terracotta-clad ziggurat teaching hospital in San Fransisco. "I am totally convinced that architecture can contribute to the healing process," [Herzog says]. The 600-strong practice has been quietly tackling the topic of healthcare for the last two decades. Kispi ... is unlike any other hospital. The rooms have a more domestic feel than typical hospital rooms, like being in the attic of an alpine chalet. They have big picture windows and clever window seats that can be pulled out to become beds, giving weary parents a place to sleep. Having a sloped wooden roof and natural light makes a huge psychological difference when you're lying in bed staring at the ceiling all day. Fun porthole windows at child height can be opened for natural ventilation, while every room has an en suite bathroom. Wooden floors add a sense of warmth in contrast to the usual stark vinyl – and they're just as hygienic, coated with ultra-hardwearing polyurethane. "We've tried to make the architecture address the curiosity of children," says Christine Binswanger, partner in charge of the project.
Note: Don't miss the incredible photos of this children's hospital at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.
Nine years ago, Cecilia Llusco was one of 11 Indigenous women who made it to the summit of the 6,088 metre-high Huayna PotosĂ in Bolivia. They called themselves the cholitas escaladoras (the climbing cholitas) and went on to scale many more peaks in Bolivia and across South America. Llusco takes enormous pride in being an Indigenous woman and always goes up mountains wearing her pollera, a voluminous traditional floral skirt. Her belief in the strength of others, particularly women, is steadfast and reassuring. Though he cannot speak or hear, Asom Khan has so much to say. When I arrived at his shelter in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, he was quick to dig out his art books so I could see his drawings, to show me the photos he takes with his phone, and to tell me his story through the makeshift sign language he has developed. Photography has allowed Asom to communicate to the world what it is like to live in a refugee camp, where he has now spent almost half of his life. [Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh's] determination to stand up for victims of injustice in Iran is resolute. For decades she has fought for justice, defending children on death row, child victims of domestic abuse and prominent activists. The government has been relentless in its efforts to crush her spirit, but Sotoudeh refuses to give up hope. Some question how, as a wife and mother, she could risk imprisonment, after she was sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes for her human rights work in 2019. But her husband and children's support is unwavering: "People say life is precious, don't sacrifice your family life, but human rights and freedom are also valuable and precious."
Note: Explore more positive and inspiring human interest stories.
The United States prepared a rebel force to join the offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, fighters have claimed. British and American-trained fighters in the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA), a group aligned against Islamic State, were told "this is your moment" in a briefing by US Special Forces before Assad was ousted. The RCA revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and "be ready" for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad regime. Having worked with the RCA to dismantle the Islamic State's Syrian caliphate, the US still pays its fighters a salary to prevent the terror group's resurgence. Syria's 13-year civil war ... threw up a bewildering array of militias and alliances, most of them backed by foreign powers. It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until it broke away in 2017. It is equally ironic that rebel factions supported by the US are co-operating with those backed by Turkey in places like Palmyra, while fighting against each other elsewhere in the country. While Turkey opposed the US-supported Kurds in Syria, it was in full agreement about the threat posed by Isis. In recent days, the US has carried out dozens of air strikes on Isis positions even as its Kurdish allies have come under sustained attack from Syrian factions supported by Turkey.
Note: Watch former CIA director John Brennan suggest that the Syrian rebels we previously supported now pose more of a threat to Syrians and American interests. As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
Videos have surfaced online of Syria's new justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi, overseeing the execution of two women in 2015 over charges of adultery and prostitution. Al-Waisi is part of the new Syrian government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which took power after ousting former President Bashar al-Assad on December 8. In one video, al-Waisi is seen reading a ruling that the woman was found guilty of "corruption and prostitution" and sentencing her to death. In the other video, al-Waisi appears to be carrying a gun and tells a woman to sit down as she's pleading for her life. Once she moves down, another armed man shoots her in the head. At the time, al-Waisi was working as a "judge" enforcing Sharia law in areas of Syria's northwest Idlib province that were under the control of the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that merged with other Islamist groups in 2017 to form HTS. HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who has been going by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, have tried to present themselves as moderates since taking over Syria despite their al-Qaeda past. An HTS official speaking to Verify-Sy downplayed the video, insisting the group has "moved beyond" such practices. The US supported the HTS takeover of Syria even though the group still being listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. US officials also seem to be buying the rebranding campaign despite HTS's brutal history.
Note: Watch former CIA director John Brennan suggest that the Syrian rebels we previously supported now pose more of a threat to Syrians and American interests. As recently as 2016, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting with Syrian militias armed by the CIA. Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
Even before 9/11, as the US hunted for terrorists, the CIA launched "extraordinary rendition"–an ingenious scheme to interrogate "high-value" suspects outside the country and thus avoid US laws on torture. The first suspects were taken to Egypt as early as in the mid-1990s and the program continued until 2007. How many did the CIA render? A 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report noted that exact numbers can't be known. But according to a ... Washington Post article, "thousands were arrested and held with US assistance in countries known for brutal treatment of prisoners." In 2004, former CIA agent Robert Baer [said] that "conceptually, the practice is a rendition to torture. If you wanted a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear, Egypt." Survivors [of Syria's Sednaya military prison] tell horrific tales: they were sodomized with swords, suspended in shackles from cages, beaten with iron rods, kept naked in freezing cells the size of coffins, forced to kill cellmates and starved. Some say their genitals were subject to electric shocks. Besides Syria, the CIA dispatched suspects to Egypt, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Pakistan, Poland, Thailand and Romania. The Senate report stated that "the CIA provided millions of dollars in cash payments to foreign government officials to host secret CIA detention sites."
Note: Most of the Senate Torture Report remains classified. Read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture." Learn more about US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has failed for the last 33 years to pass a financial audit. With assets that are approximated at $3.8 trillion probably maybe ... the DoD is surpassed by only JPMorgan/Chase and its $4.2 trillion as the largest U.S. entity when ranked by assets. According to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report last year, "DOD financial management has been on our High-Risk List since 1995. DOD's spending makes up about half of the federal government's discretionary spending. Its physical assets comprise almost 68 percent of the federal government's physical assets. DOD has not yet received an audit opinion on its annual department-wide financial statements. It has been unable to accurately account for and report on its spending or physical assets." The DoD's Number 2 largest supplier, Raytheon and the Government's Number 31 largest supplier, Dell, both agreed to pay millions to resolve Department of Justice (DoJ) investigations this past October and November. The DoJ reported that Raytheon agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve the government's investigations into a major government fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
Matthew Livelsberger, a Green Beret and the main suspect in the Cybertruck attack in Las Vegas, reportedly sent a manifesto-like email to retired U.S. Army intelligence officer Sam Shoemate just days before a car bomb exploded in front of Trump International Hotel. Shoemate revealed the email on The Shawn Ryan Show podcast, describing its contents as allegations of advanced drone technology, a cover-up of a 2019 airstrike in Afghanistan, and claims of being under U.S. government surveillance. Livelsberger allegedly [detailed] concerns about advanced drones using "GDIC propulsion systems," which he described as anti-gravity technology. Livelsberger claimed that the U.S. and China developed and deployed the drones. He alleged that China launched them from submarines along the U.S. East Coast, calling them "the most dangerous threat to national security" because of their stealth, ability to evade detection and unlimited payload capacity. Livelsberger also referenced his involvement in a 2019 U.S. airstrike in Nimruz Province, Afghanistan. He claimed the operation, which targeted drug facilities, caused civilian casualties, including women and children, and was covered up by U.S. authorities. The allegations align with a 2019 U.N. report criticizing the strikes as unlawful. Livelsberger said the incident pushed him to speak out. Additionally, he accused the FBI and Homeland Security of monitoring and tracking him, describing efforts to avoid being detained.
Note: Watch this episode of the The Shawn Ryan Show. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs and military corruption.
The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year's Day – killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas – both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon. From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year. Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a "mass casualty offender," far outpacing mental health issues, according to a ... study of extremist mass casualty violence. From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals. From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries – a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. [Matthew] Livelsberger's weaponized Tesla Cybertruck was rented from Turo, the vehicle-sharing service that was also used in the New Orleans attack. [Shamsud-Din] Jabbar reportedly used the Turo app. Both Livelsberger and Jabbar spent time at the military base formerly known as Fort Bragg and now called Fort Liberty, a massive Army garrison in North Carolina.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on terrorism and military corruption.
The statistics behind the rape gang scandal – let's banish the wholly inadequate word "grooming" – are staggering. For over 25 years, networks of men, predominantly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds, abused young white girls from Yeovil to London to Glasgow. Why did British police services turn a blind eye to the gang rape of tens of thousands of young girls? The answer, in the end, is simple. Racism, for police services from Chester to Penzance, remains the original sin. Institutional reticence over race goes beyond the police themselves: even the Independent Office for Police Conduct's (IOPC) review of the rape gang scandal tiptoed around the heritage and religion of offenders. Yet given the scale of the rape gang scandal, is it now unreasonable to ask if any babies were chucked out with the bathwater? I think they were. With ... many incentives to toe the line, no wonder more free-thinking coppers stayed away, with the remainder grimly susceptible to groupthink. We used to call it "having the CD Rom inserted" – whereby a reasonably competent copper would morph into a pound-shop commissar to achieve the next rank. The next time you watch a press conference with a senior officer, play "bullshit bingo" with the language they use, usually involving words like community, proportionality and diversity. Meanwhile, away from the TV cameras, thousands of young girls were raped, abused and treated like chattel in their own hometowns.
Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals.
Five men are given lengthy jail terms [in 2010] after they are found guilty of grooming teenage girls in Rotherham for sex. The same year, police finally act on sexual grooming in Rochdale – going back years – with a series of arrests. Police and child protection agencies in Rotherham had extensive knowledge of these activities for a decade, yet a string of offences went unprosecuted. [In 2014], Professor Alexis Jay publishes her devastating report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report describes how more than 1,400 children were sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in the South Yorkshire town. It is scathing about a culture among police and council officials which ignored the industrial scale of abuse, instead treating the victims as troublesome teenagers. A gang of men who embarked on a "campaign of rape and other sexual abuse" against vulnerable teenage girls in Huddersfield were given lengthy jail sentences [in 2018]. The pattern of large-scale exploitation of mainly white girls by groups of men of mainly Pakistani heritage uncovered by West Yorkshire Police in Huddersfield mirrors what has happened in a number of other towns including Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford. Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins apologises [in 2020] to the children abused "in plain sight" by the grooming gangs his officers failed to bring to justice.
Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
A decade ago, with the publication of an independent inquiry, Britain confronted the horror of the sexual abuse of children that had taken place in Rotherham over 16 years by organised gangs of men, mostly of Pakistani origin. The 2014 report conservatively estimated that 1,400 children – some as young as 11, many in the care of the state – were raped, abducted and sexually abused in Rotherham by groups of men. There have been many other reviews and inquiries in other towns and cities where children have been subjected to similar abuse by organised groups of men, including in Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Bristol. Child victims of sexual abuse were not only routinely ignored by those whose job it was to protect them – including social workers and the police – but how young girls were viewed by child protection authorities as complicit in their own rape and abuse, as if it were something they could consent to. A further 2015 review into Rotherham led by Louise Casey was also clear that these abusers could hide behind their race to perpetrate their abuse: she uncovered what she called an "archaic culture of sexism, bullying and discomfort around race", with councillors and staff fearing being labelled racist if they mentioned the ethnicity of perpetrators. In suppressing an issue that should have been dealt with openly and properly, this was a factor in enabling the abuse to go on. As a society, we have a terrible track record of tackling child sexual abuse.
Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law on Thursday changes to the state's public records statute that allow law enforcement agencies to charge hundreds of dollars for body camera footage. Though such videos are central to watchdog reporting and police oversight, Ohio opted to join a handful of states that have made it easier for cops to put a steep price tag on transparency. Over the past decade, more law enforcement agencies have deployed body cameras. At the same time, law enforcement agencies and police unions have begun complaining about the time and expense of turning these videos over to the public when requested. State and local law enforcement agencies can now charge steep fees for reviewing and redacting videos – up to $75 per hour of footage produced and a maximum of $750 per video. Police can require that the fees be paid in advance. Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, was alarmed that the bill was passed and signed with "zero legislative debate." "Ohioans deserve government transparency, especially regarding policing. Instead, crucial records will now be sequestered behind a paywall few can afford," Daniels said. "Advocates, news media, and victims of police actions are right to be concerned how these unnecessary changes will impact their safety and insight into how police operate in and around the state."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption.
Time banks offer an alternative, powered by 21st-century technology, to the U.S. dollar. About 70 exist across the country – some with a few members, others with hundreds – to give value to work that members say often goes uncompensated in a traditional market economy. The Silver Spring Time Bank formed in 2015 and has about 300 members, said co-founder Mary Murphy. Last year, she said, 1,000 hours were exchanged for basic home repairs, dog walking, cooking and tailoring, among other services, without the exchange of money. "You get to save that money that you would have spent," she said. "You get to meet somebody else in your community and get to know that person. That's a bonus." Edgar S. Cahn, an 84-year-old law professor who had worked on civil rights and anti-poverty legislation in president Lyndon B. Johnson's Justice Department, suffered a heart attack in 1980. He said doctors gave him two years to live, with "maybe two good hours a day. I thought: What do I do with two good hours a day?" he said, having beaten doctors' expectations by nearly four decades. "I have to teach people to value themselves ... We're all trained as human service professionals: 'How can I help you?'' " he said. "None of us is trained to say: â€How can you make a difference?' I need you as much as you need me." Cahn became a proselytizer for what he called the "time dollar" – a currency in which an hour of work is worth an hour of work, whether it's performed by a maid, a mechanic or a mechanical engineer. In 1995, he founded the D.C. nonprofit TimeBanks USA, which developed the software used by many time banks around the world. Time banks can serve as small-business incubators and a way for seniors to remain active after retirement.
Note: Read more about the potential of time banking. Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.
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