News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The Gates Foundation is a major influencer and funder of agricultural development in Africa, yet there are no avenues to hold the foundation accountable to the communities it influences. Gates Foundation is the main funder of the controversial AGRA program. AGRA rebranded after evidence-based critiques showed that its 15-year effort to expand high-input, chemical-dependent monoculture farming in Africa has failed to provide food security, despite billions in funding from private donors and government subsidies. Critics say the "green revolution" approach is exacerbating hunger, worsening inequality and entrenching the power of outside corporate agribusiness interests in the hungriest regions of the world. AGRA works to transition farmers away from traditional seeds and crops to patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and other inputs to grow commodity crops for the global market. The strategy is modeled on the Indian "green revolution" that boosted production of staple crops but also left a legacy of structural inequity and escalating debt for farmers. Evidence suggests that the green revolution has failed to improve health or reduce poverty and has created many problems. These include hooking farmers in a debt cycle with expensive inputs, growing pesticide use, environmental degradation, worsening soil quality, reduced diversity of food crops, and increased corporate control over food systems.
Note: 50 food sovereignty organizations wrote an open letter to Bill Gates on how the Green Revolution has failed to reduce hunger or increase food access as promised. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and income inequality from reliable major media sources.
Sam Parnia's medical specialty at the New York University Langone Health System is resuscitation. He also directs large clinical studies of heart attacks (cardiac arrest). That has brought him into contact with a lot of people who are on the brink. It has also strengthened his conviction that near-death experiences show that death is not the end of human consciousness. Hence his new book, Lucid Dying (Hachette 2024). From early on, he was puzzled by the relationship between the mind and the brain. He came to see that the message "from science" was not what he had been led to expect. "Although life and death remain a mystery, science is showing that contrary to what some philosophers, doctors, and scientists have argued for centuries, neither biological nor mental processes end in an absolute sense with death," [he said]. "There is much more to be discovered, but science does ... suggest that our consciousness and selfhood are not annihilated when we cross over into death and into the great unknown. In death, we may also come to discover that each of our actions, thoughts, and intentions in life, from the most minute, to the most extreme, do matter." Many believe that science proves – and must prove – that life beyond death is impossible. But it is difficult for science to refute, for example, veridical near-death experiences, where experiencers recount events that they could not have observed under natural circumstances.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences.
Over the course of his reporting career, Sebastian Junger has had several close calls with death. In the introduction to his memoir, "In My Time of Dying" ... he describes his own near-drowning while surfing. On June 16, 2020, Junger found himself face-to-face with mortality in a way he'd never been. One minute he was enjoying quiet time with his wife at a remote cabin on Cape Cod in Massachusetts; the next, he was in excruciating pain from a ruptured aneurysm. "It never crossed my mind to start believing in God," [said Junger]. "But what did happen was I was like, maybe we don't understand the universe on a fundamental level. Maybe we just don't understand that this world we experience is just one reality and that there's some reality we can't understand that's engaged when we die. All this stuff happens – ghosts and telepathy and the dead appearing in the rooms of the dying – that's consistent in every culture in the world. Maybe anything's possible. If there's ever an example of "anything can happen," it's the universe popping into existence from nothing. Two nights before I went to the hospital, I dreamed that I had died and was looking down on my grieving family. Because I had that experience, which I still can't explain, it occurred to me that maybe I had died and ... was a ghost. I went into this very weird existential Escher drawing. Am I here, or not? At one point, I said to my wife, "How do I know I didn't die?" She said, "You're here, right in front of me. You survived.""
Note: Sebastian Junger is an American journalist, author and filmmaker focused on wartime issues. Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences.
A disturbing trend of undercover federal agents engaging minors online to plan acts related to terrorism abroad, then arresting them shortly after they turn 18, ought to raise eyebrows as well as outrage, given that many of these targets are teens who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities. The most recent case in Colorado involves Humzah Mashkoor, an 18-year-old from Westminster charged with "attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization," according to a U.S. Department of Justice December 2023 press release. Months earlier, in July last year, FBI agents arrested Davin Daniel Meyer, 18, of Castle Rock, charged with the same crime, which can carry a stiff penalty of decades in prison. And in June, 18-year-old Mateo Ventura of Massachusetts was charged with a similar crime of intention after being in contact not with terrorists but with undercover FBI agents. A fourth case occurred last year in Philadelphia. When you look at the striking similarities of these cases, it's not unreasonable to conclude that federal agents are failing morally and ethically by seemingly coaxing and cajoling minors – including two Colorado children with limited intellectual capacity and no history of harming anyone – to cross a line. The FBI agents then "get their man" – even before these individuals are in fact men. Enough time has gone by to show the human element to this story, but no reporters seem to be interested.
Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.
A flurry of reports picked up on the arrest of Mateo Ventura, an 18-year-old resident of the sleepy town of Wakefield, echoing government claims that an international terrorist financier and ISIS supporter had just been busted. The Department of Justice's own press release on the case likewise trumpeted Ventura's arrest for "knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources that he intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization." Ventura had never actually funded any terrorist group. The only "terrorist" he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old, solicited small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and directed him not to tell anyone else. Mateo suffered from childhood developmental issues and had been forced to leave his school due to bullying. His case is less a serious terrorism bust than one of the many instances in which a troubled or mentally unfit young man was groomed by undercover FBI agents to commit a crime that would not have otherwise happened. This law enforcement tactic has been criticized by national security researchers who have scrutinized the FBI's role in manufacturing terrorism cases using vulnerable people who would have been unable to commit crimes without prolonged government assistance and encouragement. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report ... said, "In this way, the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals."
Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.
Humzah Mashkoor had just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. Mashkoor had gone to the airport ... as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department's criminal complaint, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Law enforcement agents first became aware of Mashkoor's online activities in support of ISIS in November 2021. But instead of alerting his family ... FBI agents posing as ISIS members befriended him a year later and strung him along until he became a legal adult. Almost all of the conduct he is alleged to have committed took place when he was a juvenile. "This case appears consistent with a common fact pattern seen in tens, if not hundreds, of terrorism-related cases in which the FBI has effectively manufactured terrorist prosecutions," said Sahar Aziz, a national security expert. "If there was a serious terrorist threat in America, the FBI would not be spending its time entrapping a mentally ill minor."
Note: Read more about the FBI's manufacture of terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on law enforcement corruption and terrorism from reliable major media sources.
The now-former mayor of College Park, Maryland, was arrested on child pornography charges Thursday morning, adding to a long list of mayors accused of preying on young children. Patrick Wojahn, 47, is charged with 40 counts of possession of child exploitative material and 16 counts of distribution of child exploitative material. Wojahn's case isn't an unusual one. At least 12 additional then-current and former mayors have been accused of child sex crimes since 2021, ranging from child pornography to sexual assault. Phil Briggs, the mayor of Spencerville, Ohio, resigned last month after he was arrested for allegedly secretly recording his girlfriend's teenage daughters while they undressed. Ted Tomaszewski, the former mayor of Mansfield Township, New Jersey, was charged in January with sexual assault, luring and child endangerment. He is accused of engaging in multiple sex acts with a 15-year-old. Carl Johnson, the former mayor of West Bountiful, Utah, and a former bishop for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was charged in September 2022 with sexually abusing three girls under the age of 13. He pleaded not guilty to seven counts of aggravated abuse of a child. An earlier Fox News Digital analysis found that at least 349 public school educators were arrested on child sex-related crimes spanning nearly every state in the country last year, averaging to almost an arrest every day on crimes ranging from grooming to child porn to raping students.
Note: Why is Fox News the only major media outlet covering this shocking issue? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Border Patrol agents are warning that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the US by traffickers posing as their parents or family members – and nobody knows how common the horrifying practice is. Authorities have rescued children caught up in two different instances of such smuggling in recent weeks – including one instance in which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple kids to whom they weren't related, according to the Border Patrol. Authorities say it's not clear what is happening to the children once they are smuggled into the US – but many are vulnerable to being exploited for child labor and child sex trafficking. "Sometimes we encounter criminal actions so horrendous, they defy human decency," said Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief of California's El Centro sector in the southeast of the state, in response to the case. In one case, border agents rescued a child at the California border who had been "heavily dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from talking" to authorities, Bovino said Friday. Those agents found that the traffickers had birth certificates for more children. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of children crossing illegally into the US alone and without relatives has skyrocketed. Thousands of those children have also gone unaccounted for after they've been released to sponsors, who whistleblowers say aren't properly vetted, in the US.
Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border.
Tech companies have outfitted classrooms across the U.S. with devices and technologies that allow for constant surveillance and data gathering. Firms such as Gaggle, Securly and Bark (to name a few) now collect data from tens of thousands of K-12 students. They are not required to disclose how they use that data, or guarantee its safety from hackers. In their new book, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools, Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler show how all-encompassing surveillance is now all too real, and everything from basic privacy rights to educational quality is at stake. The tech industry has done a great job of convincing us that their platforms – like social media and email – are "free." But the truth is, they come at a cost: our privacy. These companies make money from our data, and all the content and information we share online is basically unpaid labor. So, when the COVID-19 lockdowns hit, a lot of people just assumed that using Zoom, Canvas and Moodle for online learning was a "free" alternative to in-person classes. In reality, we were giving up even more of our labor and privacy to an industry that ended up making record profits. Your data can be used against you ... or taken out of context, such as sarcasm being used to deny you a job or admission to a school. Data breaches happen all the time, which could lead to identity theft or other personal information becoming public.
Note: Learn about Proctorio, an AI surveillance anti-cheating software used in schools to monitor children through webcams–conducting "desk scans," "face detection," and "gaze detection" to flag potential cheating and to spot anybody "looking away from the screen for an extended period of time." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
In America's schools, 30 million lunches are served every day. There are standards in place for things like calories, sodium, and added sugar. The USDA asserts that lunches consumed from schools are the most nutritious. We sent school lunches to the Health Research Institute, an accredited lab in Iowa, to hunt for what standards don't cover: heavy metals, pesticides, and veterinary drugs. Our tests revealed unseen, largely unregulated components increasingly connected to everything from attention deficit disorder and liver disease to hormone disruption and cancer. Samples we collected from schools in Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland included common fare like breadsticks, pizza, potatoes, and fruit. The lab identified more than 50 pesticides in our samples, with dozens often layered into one meal. 38 different pesticides were detected in just one elementary school lunch. 23 pesticides were found in a single strawberry cup. The fungicide, carbendazim, which is banned in most European countries, Brazil and Australia because it is increasingly connected to cancer, infertility, and birth defects, was found in five of our twelve samples. Glyphosate, a widely used and controversial weed killer ... connected to cancer, diabetes, and heart problems, was detected in multiple samples, often in wheat-based products like bread. Cadmium, a known carcinogen, was detected in our samples at a level 12 times higher than the FDA's limit for bottled water.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.
A federal court in California ruled late Tuesday against the Environmental Protection Agency, ordering officials to take action over concerns about potential health risks from currently recommended levels of fluoride in the American drinking water supply. The ruling by District Court Judge Edward Chen ... deals a blow to public health groups in the growing debate about whether the benefits of continuing to add fluoride to the water supply outweighs its risks. While Chen was careful to say that his ruling "does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health," he said that evidence of its potential risk was now enough to warrant forcing the EPA to take action. "In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States," the judge wrote in his ruling. The judge's ruling cites a review by the National Institutes of Health's toxicology program finalized last month, which concluded that "higher levels" of fluoride is now linked to lowered IQ in children. Chen said he left it up to the EPA which of a number of options the agency could take in response to his ruling. They range from a warning label about fluoride's risks at current levels to taking steps towards tightening restrictions on its addition to drinking water.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
[Robert] Brito and his family, who live along the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, only saw the monetary value of logged trees. Now, when Brito looks at a tree, everything has changed. "We stopped thinking about price and started thinking about [a different kind of] value. For example, when I see a beautiful cumaru [Brazilian teak] tree, 300 to 400 years old ... I still touch it, but with a different mindset. I have access to education, technology, a future for the young people living here, and I still contribute to the preservation of our planet in relation to climate change." Brito's transition ... required the support and alignment of financial, social and environmental incentives. In 2008, the government of the Brazilian state of Amazonas created the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve, in order to preserve nature and to support communities living within it. The designation of the sustainable development reserve led to organisations including the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (FAS) establishing education and health projects there. Brito recalls that one day Virgilio Viana, the director general of FAS, suggested that he might like to work in community-based tourism. "I started receiving people in my own home," Brito says. This trial was a success. He realised that he earned more in a week than he had ever seen in three months of logging. In 2011 – three years after the creation of the sustainable development reserve and over two decades since he cut down his first tree – Brito opened his nature lodge. And he put down his chainsaw. Moving away from blaming or shaming individuals can bring more people into the environmental movement. So can valuing people's prior experiences, such as Brito drawing on his decades of logging as he guides visitors around the forest in his flip-flops.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.
Duberney López Martinéz was only 13 when he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2003. Today, Duberney, 33, lives with his wife and young son after spending more than a decade fighting in the FARC 32nd Front and two years in jail. As part of his reintegration into society ... Duberney got involved in the ecological restoration of the Colombian Amazon. He and another 23 ex-FARC members are promoting the ecological restoration of the Colombian Amazon. The Communitarian Multiactive Cooperative of the Common (Comuccom) ... aims to plant and care for 1 million native trees in order to counteract deforestation from illegal gold mining, cattle ranching, coca-growing and illegal logging. Despite the peace agreement, the conflict is still present in daily lives and memories, according to Kristina Lyons, professor of anthropology ... who has been working in the region. "In Putumayo, armed conflict and antidrug policies heavily impacted bonds among people, communities and their relations with the region's ecosystems," Lyons [said]. "The ecological restoration of the Amazon has deep significance for healing relations between humans ruptured by the conflict and among people and their territories. It can be understood as a form of reparation for war crimes and other kinds of violence in the wake of the peace agreements." "To me, restoring the Amazon is the same process needed for healing the heart of a person," [said Aroca Sanchez with Comuccom].
Note: Read how tourists in Colombia can now take jungle hikes with ex-FARC guerilla guides. Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.
At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, 146 years ago, my ancestors defeated the US army's Seventh Cavalry led by George Armstrong Custer, who had previously massacred Cheyenne people. I want to share with you the story of how my people and my family survived through generations – despite many attempts to exterminate us. We are peace chiefs – we never provoke war, our main role is to steward our people and way of life. My father's grandmother, Quill Dress Woman ... witnessed Cheyenne matriarchs push sewing awls into Custer's ears so that next lifetime he would listen. They did this because after the Washita massacre in 1868, where Custer had attacked a peaceful Cheyenne camp resulting in the killing of many women and children, our Cheyenne chiefs still made peace with him in a sacred pipe ceremony. One of my teachings is that the Creator shows her love for diversity in her creation. Without the understanding of diversity there is no unity, and without unity there is no oneness with Creator. The Creator wants us to love each other. Looking at the wars, mass shootings and genocides happening around the world right now, and reading about what has been done to my people above, you might ask: how can people do this to each other? Today, humanity faces unprecedented extinctions due to what we have done to Mother Earth. What you call natural disasters are Mother Earth's way of healing herself. If western thinking could have solved these life and diversity-threatening conflicts, it would have been done by now. In 1946, Albert Einstein made a call to "let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels". We will never end war and genocide unless we change the mindset that created it. War cannot defeat war, only love can stop war. My love and my forgiveness do not depend on you. I want to forgive you for what you have done to my people, the genocide and the eradication process. This might be our last chance to put an end to this genocidal and suicidal mindset. I love you, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Note: This article was written by Heove ve 'keso (Yellowbird), Chief Phillip Whiteman Jr, traditional Northern Cheyenne Chief. He is part of an organization, Yellowbird Lifeways, that organizes a run in which Cheyenne children follow the footsteps of their ancestors. During this event, they run 400 miles across four states, enduring the harsh conditions of winter. Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) internal watchdog has found that top agency officials retaliated against three staffers for expressing different scientific opinions. The employees who were victims of this alleged retaliation thought chemicals should be considered more toxic, while top officials sought to consider them safer, according to the reports from the EPA's inspector general. EPA scientist Sarah Gallagher says she thought the agency should consider the chemical as toxic to fetal development, while another official wanted to classify it as a lower-priority body weight issue. In another case documented in a report finding retaliation against scientist Martin Phillips, a senior science adviser allegedly changed an assessment in a way that removed "reproductive toxicity" as a concern from safety information that goes to people who work with the chemical. In a third report finding retaliation against scientist William Irwin, a manager also allegedly tried to remove evidence of reproductive toxicity. These instances appeared to have a chilling effect that could impact other agency scientists' willingness to stand up to management. "Other assessors noticed how those who disagreed with management were perceived," the reports said. They added that a person whose name was redacted testified that disagreeing or delaying the resolution of backlogged cases could cause management to label an employee "problematic."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.
Dr Maria Abreu is on the cutting edge of one of the biggest health tragedies in a generation. Over the past decade, the Miami gastroenterologist has diagnosed an increasing number of young people with colon cancer - once considered an old person's disease. Dr Abreu [said] she believes two additives that became common in the 1970s ... are seldom talked about in relation to the colon cancer crisis. The first is high-fructose corn syrup, a liquid sweetener uniquely common to the United States and not used in other countries. High fructose corn syrup was introduced in the 1970s as a bid to stabilize food prices. At the time, President Richard Nixon authorized subsidizing corn crops. High-fructose corn syrup ... became cheaper to produce than sugar. The other ingredient is emulsifiers, which is used to give foods a creamy texture and found in healthy foods such as low-fat yogurts, cottage cheese, and peanut butter. Dr Abreu said these ingredients wreak havoc on the microbiome, a network of healthy bacteria in our guts, [reducing] our ability to protect the digestive tract from pathogens that irritate our cells and create inflammation. Chronic inflammation can also lead to inflammatory bowel conditions like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, which Dr Abreu said 'significantly' raises the risk of colon cancer. The introduction of high-fructose corn syrup and emulsifiers in the 1970s and 80s could explain why so many adults in their 40s are getting colon cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City [found that] the rate of colorectal cancers grew 500 percent among children ages 10 to 14 and 333 percent among teenagers aged 15 to 19 years. Rates rose by 71 percent among people 30 to 34 to seven cases per 100,000 people.
Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. Yet what if the negative news overload on America's chronic illness crisis isn't the full story? Check out our Substack article to learn more about the inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis!
For nearly 40 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, [Anthony] Fauci had served as the ... director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to COVID-19, Fauci had long supported funding pandemic research that other scientists found risky, if not downright dangerous. In 2014, there was a series of embarrassing safety lapses at U.S. government labs. In October 2014, President Barack Obama's administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that could make ... viruses transmissible via the respiratory route in mammals. In 2017, the White House produced the ... P3CO framework. Under P3CO, the NIH would forward grant proposals involving research on known pandemic pathogens or research that might create or enhance such pathogens to a new P3CO committee within HHS for a department-level risk-benefit analysis. To date, the P3CO committee has vetted just three research proposals involving so-called enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, out of potentially dozens that should have been examined. Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins ... found a way to skirt the oversight process. They "realized that if they don't [forward proposals to HHS for review], there is no review." In 2014, [EcoHealth Alliance] received a five-year, $3.7 million NIAID grant to collect virus samples from human beings and bats in China and then experiment on these viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth announced that it intended to create "chimeric" or hybrid viruses out of spike proteins, the part of a virus that allows it to enter and infect hosts cells, from SARS-like coronaviruses discovered in the wild and the backbone of another, already-known SARS virus. When EcoHealth's year five report was eventually submitted two years late, in 2021, it showed that additional chimeric viruses created in Wuhan demonstrated both enhanced transmission and lethality in humanized mice. By that time, the COVID-19 pandemic was already well underway.
Note: Don't miss our Mindful News Brief on the origins of COVID. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
The city's ex-COVID czar got the boot from his job at a pharmaceutical firm Monday – a week after he was caught bragging about hosting sex parties and attending an underground rave at the height of the pandemic. Dr. Jay Varma was serving as a senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio during COVID-19 when he and his wife put on the sex- and drug-fueled debauchery and attended a packed Wall Street rave, according to secretly recorded conversations the doctor had with a woman. "Varma boasted about harassing people into submission over the vaccine mandate and admitted to participating in illegal sex parties, all while he, former Health Commissioner Dr. David Chokshi, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed draconian measures that shut down the entire city," [city Councilman Bob Holden] said. Varma's seamy chats ... were made public last week. Michael Kane of Teachers for Choice said, "What disgusts me the most was hearing Varma say having drug-fueled group sex orgies was necessary for him to be his â€authentic self' because COVID had him â€pent up.'" Varma said at one point, "My wife and I had one with our friends in August [2020] of like that first summer." "So we rented a hotel ... we all took, like, you know, molly [MDMA] and like it was like eight or nine or us, eight to 10 of us were in a room and everybody had a blast because everybody was like so pent up."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Former New York City Mayor's Office Senior Advisor for Public Health Jay Varma admitted to pushing monkeypox drug TPOXX despite the low risk of the disease to the general public, according to undercover video shared by podcaster Steven Crowder. Varma helped guide former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's response to COVID-19, including crucial decisions about public schools and issuing a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. He was exposed last week for having admitted to hosting large nude gatherings during the pandemic while urging city residents to remain isolated. In the new clip shared by Crowder, Varma revealed the risk of monkeypox to the general U.S. population is "very low," and it is mainly a concern for gay men who have unprotected sex. Despite this, Varma said he was pushing to receive FDA approval for TPOXX, otherwise known as Tecovirimat. "We want the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, to approve our drug specifically for monkeypox," he said. Varma added the news cycle was a key component of his push to get approval for the drug. "We also need to keep up the people's belief that the [TPOXX] drug works," Varma said. "So, that's why spinning it in the media is helpful. Basically what we're trying to get the media to say is â€oh, the drug didn't work because it was designed the wrong way, so they're going to do another study and it'll probably work,'" he added. "That's what we want the story to be."
Note: Back in 2022, Dr. Jay Varma appeared on a talk show, warning that he feared "monkeypox could become permanently entrenched." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Drug ads have been ubiquitous on TV since the late 1990s and have spilled onto the internet and social media. The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that legally allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Manufacturers have spent more than $1 billion a month on ads in recent years. Last year, three of the top five spenders on TV advertising were drug companies. A 2023 study found that, among top-selling drugs, those with the lowest levels of added benefit tended to spend more on advertising to patients than doctors. "I worry that direct-to-consumer advertising can be used to drive demand for marginally effective drugs or for drugs with more affordable or more cost-effective alternatives," the study's author, Michael DiStefano ... said. Indeed, more than 50% of what Medicare spent on drugs from 2016 through 2018 was for drugs that were advertised. The government has, in recent years, tried to ensure that prescription-drug advertising gives a more accurate and easily understood picture of benefits and harms. But the results have been disappointing. When President Donald Trump's administration tried to get drugmakers to list the price of any treatments costing over $35 on TV ads, for example, the industry took it to federal court, saying the mandate violated drugmakers' First Amendment rights. Big Pharma won. With a bit of commonsense, truth-in-advertising enforcement, many of the ads would disappear.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption 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.